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“I’m fine,” the youngest among them grumbled over the gurgling sound roaring up from his stomach.
Quiche threaded his fingers through the younger boy’s as he finished washing it out. It had been soaking due to the latest bout of sulfuric rain. His fingers prodded at Tart’s drooping ear. “Quit acting tough. If you’re hungry, then just say you’re hungry, dummy. Maybe Pie’ll be nice for once and help you out.”
A hesitant sound squeaked out from Pie’s throat.
Tart rolled his eyes and pouted. “I’m fine,” he grumbled again.
Quiche huffed out a sigh. “Then quit growling so loud.” He pinched Tart’s puffed-out cheeks to let the air whistle out of the ballooned pout. “You’re gonna wake all the Chimeras.”
There were rations and provisions provided with the lab grown ready-to-eat meals. The gruel was tasteless and mushy and wet, but it was filling enough. The adults could properly petition for more rations, but kids like them with no status, no connection, no anything in this already ghettoized community could only take the scraps they were given and huddle under their hand-me-down blankets.
Those three had come together because they had no one else. The world was hostile to any form of life, and the survivors already banded together in compounds they could hold with relative safety. No one had it in them to care for these three lone troublemakers when life was already so precarious.
Tart had been abandoned. His parents had run off and left him, having elected to focus on the important work of maintaining their menial tasks in the colony. He hadn’t seen them in so long, had all but forgotten their faces. So tiny, and he seemed to think he had all the more to prove from it. He seemed terrified to express a need or want of anything, for fear of further abandonment or burden.
Quiche had apparently been alone from the start. The first time they met, he’d insisted that there was no one to remember or forget and certainly no one worth mentioning. He had nothing and no one at all. He was awfully glib about the whole matter, and similarly flippant with every part of life. In fact, Pie had first met Quiche when the younger boy had tried to mug him at dagger point, before laughing at the fact that Pie had nothing worth stealing despite that noble air about him and introducing himself in a friendly, jovial tone, “from one worthless nobody to another”.
Pie, on the other hand, fully remembered his parents. Everything about them. How they were capable providers and celebrated scouts. He remembered them dying to protect him when their small family unit had had the misfortune of getting caught up in one of the harsh natural disasters that occasionally seemed to ravage this place, far worse than the permanent storm that already plagued the surface of this planet. He remembered everything about them, from their first moments together to the last. He rarely spoke of them, though.
Somewhere along the way, the three of them just happened to come together like this. Among the members of their ragtag trio, Pie had always been the coolheaded observer. That was why, when called to battle, he could slice as finely and as brutally as he did. And that was why, at times like this, Pie always volunteered himself.
Pie finally rose with a stretch and announced, “I will find us something edible.”
“—I’m not hungry!” Tart insisted again, jerking upright just as Quiche was pulling his hair back into a pigtail. He whined and squirmed as Quiche fixed his hair into place.
“Careful out there, ‘kay? Not the end of the world if we’re just hungry for a bit again,” he said. Sardonically, he added with a grin and a shrug, “Not that I care if this dumb ol’ world ends.”
“Not while we’re still on it! After we go back home!” Tart interjected.
“I will simply do standard reconnaissance. There is a good chance I will find something. I give the odds about… 70%.” Pie hesitated at the exit and added, “And there is a 100% chance I will make it back to you. Otherwise, there is a 5% chance either of you would survive without me.”
He heard Quiche laugh at that. “When you get back, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll kick your butt for that comment,” he called. So you better make it back, he left unsaid.
Pie nodded curtly and took his leave.
Pie’s eyes cut well through the darkness, much better than his younger companions’ could. He was the oldest and most mature, regardless of the fact that none of them were anywhere close to puberty. His companions always seemed to think he knew everything, and he intended to live up to that image of himself.
He was gaining some mastery over his wind powers, so the dust kicking up outside was slightly less of an obstacle for him. His pupils contracted and adapted seamlessly, and his fans cleared just enough space for him to navigate.
They often supplemented their meager rations with whatever Pie could scrounge up. It was always minimal, but especially with the latest addition of someone as young as Tart, every bit helped. There were things he could find, here or there, that were just naturally safe to eat, if highly unpleasant. Or he’d often dig through the garbage in smaller villages. People nearby weighed down the tops to prevent vagabonds from scavenging there, so occasionally, he’d have to travel to farther settlements for that.
Mindlessly stumbling deeper into the barren terrain with what little scraps of anything edible he could scrounge up for the day, he happened upon an indiscreet, forgotten shrine adorned in blue, just as another viscous storm was kicking up on the surface.
Taking the chance, he took refuge in it. He used to opportunity as an excuse to clean up the altar as well. It shouldn’t be neglected like this. It was dedicated to their only god. A long dormant deity his people had prayed to for generations. Most of their prayers continued unanswered to this day, but…
Pie remained the most devout of them.
Their ancestors passed down stories about their old home. A land of milk and honey, where the skies were blue and the rain was safe and the water was abundant and delicious food grew from the ground. A world where his friends could play outside, amble in colorful, vivacious terrain, eat ‘til they were full. A world he was certainly going to reclaim with Tart and Quiche within their lifetime.
His parents used to tell him those stories every night, and he personally passed those stories onto Quiche and Tart, though Quiche often seemed half-interested and Tart seemed too naïve to grasp it. The final words Pie heard from his mother were a muffled plea to this God to please keep her son safe. And Pie still stood, with little to show from the accident other than a deep scar on his upper arm, so someone must have answered her prayer.
If only she’d had the wherewithal to pray for something more substantial at the time.
She’d asked for something too small, too inefficient. It was insufficient for the bigger picture. Pie would never lose sight of that.
Scrubbing the last of the dust from the shrine and leaving a bit of the food he’d found as an offering, Pie prayed hard to their savior, hoping that the three of them would be safe, that their people would be delivered.
He prayed to Deep Blue for a messiah to guide them back home soon.
A marvel, truly a marvel. He couldn’t help but hum with pride, knowing his son, his pride and joy, was such a genius prodigy already. Research and experimentation and field work were unusual father-son bonding activities, but his boy had never been one for catch, and the professor’s athleticism had always been somewhat pitiful, anyway.
Dr. Shirogane looked up from the specimen his son had successfully cultured and glanced out the window.
A smile spread on the professor’s face as he watched his family bask in the courtyard. It was very peaceful, with large trees and plenty of space giving privacy from any neighbors, who didn’t exist for many miles with all the land this estate commanded. This pristine corner of the world belonged solely to the Shirogane family. Professor Shirogane could thank his father-in-law for this arrangement. The chairman was instrumental in getting the grants necessary to run this research.
There was something captivating in the ethereal beauty of his wife; he fell in love again every time he laid eyes on her. She sat with long fingers cradling a delicate China cup, a soft smile lifting her features. Her sky-blue eyes were half closed and looking down kindly at Keiichiro, who was smiling by her side as always.
The professor could hear Ryou playing and giggling somewhere.
“Oooh, that’s a good one, Daisuke!” Ryou cheered, spying the small puppy sniffing through the east garden’s flowers. “Pick that one—careful! Don’t disturb the ones next to it! –Yeah, perfect! Good boy!”
The dog panted and circled Keiichiro’s legs in cheerful greeting, and Keiichiro gracefully dodged around it to avoid spilling even a drop of tea. “Good afternoon to you as well, Daisuke!”
It stopped in front of the lady of the estate and presented her with something it was holding carefully in its mouth—a single freshly plucked flower.
“For you, mom! It’s one of the ones I grew!”
Mrs. Shirogane accepted it and twisted its stem between her fingertips, admiring it.
“It’s Echinacea!” Ryou explained, scratching at his cheek with some bashful pride. “We’re going to use the rest of it to make some medicine later, but I wanted to give you the prettiest one to hold onto!”
She smiled and lifted up the puppy, pressing a kiss to the top of its head. “Thank you. My boys are so sweet.” She let the puppy steal one of the dog treats off her table and squirm out of her grasp to the ground. It freed her arms back up, helpfully, so she could bend over and scoop her son into her arms and wrestle him into a hug that he pretended not to want, giggling and insisting that he’s too mature for things like kisses on the cheek from his mommy. “Both of you!”
Keiichiro knelt down to scratch Daisuke behind the ears while he finished up his dog treat, and the puppy yipped and wagged its tail in glee, clumsily alternating between eating its snack and licking at Keiichiro hand.
He felt a hand settle lightly on his own head and glanced up to look back at Mrs. Shirogane, who had apparently released Ryou from her motherly bear hug.
“All three of you,” she amended, giving Keiichiro another proud smile.
At Keiichiro’s feet, Daisuke, treats all eaten, nuzzled between his legs, and on his opposite side, Ryou stood close to him, fists balled into his shirt, a shyly giddy smile spread on his face aimed at his best friend.
Watching them in domestic bliss, the professor put his professional thoughts away for now. Time had been kind enough to give him a brilliant child and a beautiful wife and even a dedicated assistant who was simultaneously his best friend and Ryou’s.
Soon, Ryou and his puppy sped away together again, to roll and frolic and pretend-fight and hunt through the garden.
His wife finished her tea with a satisfied hum and raised the cup to Keiichiro across the table, thanking him as he poured her another drink.
She gestured to him across the way, and he smiled in a polite agreement to join her.
Just as he moved to put his work away and take a break, something caught his eye just before he could.
As tempting as it was to think of his beloved family constantly, he found himself distracted by something else at the moment. His eyes widened, and before he could call out anything, a flicker of strange, blue light effervesced from a small specimen of an unidentified material they’d gathered earlier.
No light or force or energy had been applied to it, as far as he could tell, so that was a curious reaction.
Outside, the wind died down; the sky fell still. No clouds moved. The rustling of the overhead leaves had given way to the angry thump, thump of a growling dog that sensed something amiss.
It took mere seconds, but the scene seemed to pass by in slow motion in front of him.
More specimens of the unidentified samples sparkled and snapped, sending a spray of sparks in his direction. More hues of blue bubbled and frothed around the lab.
When they ignited the oxygen in some volatile reaction, the resulting paroxysm consumed everything, engulfing the lab in a column of flame.
The ground beneath their feet trembled as an explosion tore through the air.
His surprised and agonizing scream ultimately fell on deaf ears, as the samples ignited again and again and again, every explosion following becoming more volatile and unstable. By the fourth or fifth blast, the heat and flames had become so intense that he could feel the flesh on his face burning and blistering.
Everything past that was a blur of loud noises and desperate voices and sweltering heat and so much blue.
“Daisuke!” A faraway cry.
The sound of his son’s puppy barking approached, then vanished all at once with another explosion.
“Ryou!”
Keiichiro caught the professor’s son as the force of the blast blew him back and knocked him near-unconscious. The child’s dull eyes watched the scene unfolding before his eyes, helpless in his friend’s arms.
“Madam…?”
Mrs. Shirogane flinched and hesitated when that plea reached her ears. She gave a sidelong glance to the two young boys, left them with a few parting words, then turned on her hell and ran headfirst into the flames.
“Madam!”
The professor felt the building’s wall give and crumble as his wife burst through and made her way towards him and fell to her knees at his side.
Through the smoke and heat and fire and blue light, he could see the platinum blond strands of her cascading hair. He could feel it as she lifted his head into her lap. A hand stroked his face, cool fingers on his jaw.
Her smile was gentle, and despite the terrifying hues of blue erupting all around them, the blue of her eyes was calming.
“It’s okay, dear. I’m here,” she said.
Her mouth kept moving, her voice kept talking, but it became harder and harder to comprehend the words. He found a soothing comfort in them anyway.
All he could hear was his own heavy breathing and a ringing in his ears.
The voices outside seemed farther and farther away. Everything seemed farther away as he slowly closed his eyes. The world was swallowed up in another flash of light, and the last thing he felt was her curling her body around his protectively.
“MADAM!!”
“Daddy, look! Behind you!”
“Not gonna fall for that old trick again, Ichigo!” her father said, in the middle of winning a heated tickle fight that Ichigo herself had declared on him.
“No, really, look!” Ichigo managed to say in between giggles. She pointed at the sky. “It’s something big and blue!”
Her dad stopped tickling his daughter and looked up. His head canted in confusion when he finally spotted what had caught her eye. “We weren’t supposed to have a blue moon tonight…”
Ichigo’s mom followed his line of sight and mirrored the confusion. “Are blue moons really supposed to be ‘blue’, Shintaro? Especially that blue.”
Finally free and mentally marking it down as a draw, Ichigo scrambled to the window and plopped down to watch the blue moon with sparkling eyes.
And that wasn’t the only blue in the sky.
Her mouth fell open.
It was the dead of night, but the black sky was alight with bright streaks of blue.
Twinkling shooting stars were filling the sky the way butterflies were suddenly fluttering to life in Ichigo’s chest.
The young girl stood under the mirage of twinkling stardust in the sky, head settled on her windowsill in rapt wonder.
Shooting stars punched a hole through a clump of clouds, heading straight down the edge of the skyline. This close, they were huge, white-blue balls leaving streaks behind them against the sky. They soared down from the heavens, hurrying toward the city on the horizon.
“Wow…” Ichigo gasped.
“Wow!” Her mother agreed. “They definitely didn’t mention a meteor shower tonight…”
She seemed somewhat troubled by the sight, but her husband wrapped his arms around her waist and declared, “There are so many shooting stars! We can make so many wishes now, honey!
“Oh! You’re right, daddy!” Ichigo panicked. “Um, what should I wish for, what should I wish for, um…!”
“I don’t need to wish for anything. I already have everything I could want out of life.” Her mother leaned against her father and sighed in content. Her earlier concern had been blown away in an instant. “A beautiful daughter, and a very handsome husband.”
“Oh, Sakura~” The couple cuddled showily. “You’re all my wishes come true!”
Ichigo would usually make a grossed-out face at her parents’ embarrassingly cheesy flirtations, but right now, her attention was glued to the sky.
The first one hit the distant sea, but it was difficult to see the splash since it was so far away, and the light died soon after it hit. Several more of the shooting stars followed behind, falling much closer, as if they were converging on a single location.
Ichigo was enraptured. She’d never seen anything so strange– or beautiful. It was unearthly. “It looks like they might fall towards us…” she said absently.
Shintaro sat beside his daughter and ruffled her hair. “Oh, you’re right! They look like they’re really close! They might hit us!” He said, suddenly making a comically shocked face and tugging his daughter’s ribbons. “What’ll we do if that happens? Are you scared?” he teased.
“No!” Ichigo was indignant. “Why would I be scared?”
“You’re the one who said they were heading our way,” Shintaro reminded her.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, if any of those shooting stars hit the city, your daddy will protect you! I’ll hit them right back, and they’ll fly way back up to the sky and back to their home!” Shintaro picked up his old kendo sword and swung it around like a baseball bat in a show of force.
“Back home…” Ichigo echoed, not looking away from the stars. “…Hey, Mommy? What are shooting stars?”
Sakura scrunched her face up. Ichigo was still at that phase where she thought that mommies knew everything. “They’re… stars that fall out of the sky, right? Comets, meteors…”
“Where do they fall? Do they just fall through the sky forever and ever?”
Sakura shrugged with a sympathetic smile. “That’d be pretty sad, don’t you think? I hope they find a way back up to the sky. Maybe some of them do.”
Ichigo leaned her head against the windowsill and… frowned. Something about that answer was profoundly depressing, somehow. Tears prickled at the corner of her eyes, reflecting the glittering light.
“N-nevermind that, Ichigo! Don’t worry about those stars! They’re just fine!” Shintaro cut in, trying to brighten the mood. “More importantly! Shooting stars are wishes from the universe! You never said what you want to wish for! You have to decide while they’re still falling, so don’t miss your chance!”
Ichigo squinted up through her tears at the streaks of light flying through the sky for split-seconds. Each individual one wasn’t giving her very much time to make a wish. But there were so many. The night was illuminated by more shooting stars than they had ever seen before. Surely, she could think of one for one of them.
Her short twintails swung amidst the cold windy night as she turned the question over in her mind.
Was there any wish she had worth wishing for? Was there any dream she desperately wanted fulfilled?
She wondered if her friends from kindergarten were watching this same sky right now. It was way past her bedtime, and it felt like something she wasn’t supposed to witness, but she was too drawn to it to even try to look away.
If Miwa was here, she’d wish for a giant pile of candy and sweets. But Ichigo wasn’t that hungry, and she didn’t want to get any cavities.
If Moe was here, she’d wish for the cutest clothes for her and her dolls. But Ichigo wasn’t one for dolls, and she liked the clothes she already had, and her papa said she was growing up really fast, so she might not fit them by tomorrow.
What was her favorite thing in the whole wide world that she wanted? Did she even have one?
It wasn’t as though there was nothing she liked or nothing she wanted, but she couldn’t think of anything worth a wish, or even a million billion wishes, if she got one for every blue streak across the sky.
She couldn’t think of a single thing worth a proper wish. No matter how hard she tried…
She loved these lights like she loved nothing else. They felt warm and magnetic, like they were glowing just for her.
But she wasn’t sure why the scene left her achingly wanting.
The meteor shower must have gone on for over an hour, and this was already long past the time when Ichigo was usually fast asleep, but if Ichigo was tired right now, she didn’t show it. She just kept staring out at the falling stars. Something inside her buzzed with excitement and disquiet.
Slowly the meteors’ streaks disappeared from the sky, and the moon and stars were alone again, gradually fading back into colorless white dots.
“I think…” Ichigo looked around expectantly. She wasn’t sure what word she was looking for to describe the feeling, but in the end, she didn’t get a chance to find it.
She was scooped up in her father’s arms and held high enough for him and his dad to make eye contact. “I think it’s well past your bedtime. The light show’s over, so let’s get you to bed.”
She didn’t argue too much. She let her daddy carry her to bed and tuck her in, she let her mommy tell her a bedtime story that Ichigo couldn’t focus on, she let them turn off the lights and close the curtains and go to their own room.
But she couldn’t sleep at all that night. Whether her eyes were open or closed, she could only envision those blues. The tear-streaked sky was imprinted in his mind, and her frustration grew more and more as that unanswered question from earlier remained out of her reach.
“I wish I had something really good to wish for.”
Just as the lightshow died down, a child, pretty as a porcelain doll, opened his eyes for the first time. For a few long moments, the husk was completely motionless and silent, a missing ache in his heart. He knew he was alone. Aside from that, he knew nothing but the shadows that surrounded him.
Eventually, the empty creature took his first breath, and his heart sang its first beat.
His body came to in piecemeal entities: the beat of his heart, the twitch of his fingers, the light in his eyes, the patch of sweat at the back of his neck, the weight in his gut. Being born was an agonizing process, assuaged slightly by the delay it took for the sensation of pain to properly register. The wind whipped at him lightly, flicking his hair around, his fringe falling into his eyes. Acrid smoke coated his tongue, and he coughed, hoping to break apart the clenched darkness in his chest.
He felt so, so small.
He steadily became aware of how damp and cold and sallow the patch of dirt he lay on was in this empty, infertile lot… His body unconsciously trembled. Slowly, where he lay, vegetation flowered around him in waves.
Buttercups and dandelions and forget-me-nots. Flowers upon flowers, thousands of them sprung forth from the ground where his body touched.
The freezing boy sat up from the ground as his vision steadily cleared.
His expression was completely lifeless. His doe eyes were glossed over, and his mouth hung open.
The first ideas formed in his head, and immediately, he knew his purpose… vaguely. The precursor of a memory or a drive gnawed at the back of his mind. It was slippery, but the thoughts were growing like tangled weeds.
It was odd. He could feel knowledge, the answers, right at the back of his mind, but he could not bring them forward. Alone and barely aware and newborn, he supposed that he should feel worried or afraid, but it was like those emotions had been locked away. It was like swimming through a fog.
A slithering pain started somewhere in his sternum and worked its way outwards until his throat seized and a sneeze forced its way out. More flowers and vines rose from the neon blue spittle, and with that hacked up, he finally felt able to speak. He vocalized a few meaningless sounds, searching for… something. The word nagging at the back of his mind still hadn’t made it to his tongue.
Nonetheless, it took only a few seconds for the doll’s focus to sharpen. He sat up straighter in the patch of newly overgrown flora with his legs folded beneath him and tried to pull himself up. Thousands of thoughts still whirred through his brain, so many new sensations were assaulting all his new senses, but he gave his attention to this small task.
He made several failed attempts to bring himself upright before finally managing to plant his feet into the ground. After a few moments, the boy managed to stabilize his legs, learning how to bear his own weight upon them without toppling over. He stood there, staring intently at his own feet. He stumbled around in place, trying to understand how to make his skinny legs work.
Though he wavered slightly, he remained standing, gradually straightening his back and lifting his head and shoulders until he had developed a more natural looking stance.
Finally, the boy managed to lift one of his legs and took a small step forward, pausing briefly to re-learn how to balance in this new orientation. In time, he was able to take another step, and then another, slowly making his way forward.
His first steps. It’d be a momentous occasion, if anyone cared to record such trite firsts for a nonentity.
He walked around the brand-new garden, dodging all of the equally newborn flowers that had sprouted from the earth with every step. While he was running his hands over nearby tree bark, measuring its scars, he noticed his own arm was marked with the pigment of the sea and sky. Blotches of skin glowed a dull, deep blue that leaves and flowers craned to get closer to.
He wasn’t sure what the patches of light in him were, but they itched like scar tissue, and the tissue was raised and squirming, like something was trying to escape. It was a dull ache as the skin births new cells from within.
Resisting the instinct to scratch at the spots, he pulled the sleeves of his blue shirt down and covered the incandescent bruises to hide the imperfections in this form. Something told him that they’d heal over, and he’d look normal, good as new. All he needed was to survive long enough.
Survive.
Without his weight being propped against the stability of the tree, the boy stumbled. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground.
Mouth full of dirt, the boy channeled his strength into lifting himself off of the grass and puzzled out how to get his legs back under him. Out of breath but fiercely determined, the child bore his legs into the ground with all the force he could spare, slowly rising until he could stand once more.
Oh. This wouldn’t do.
The hollow thing understood so little, but he knew this much—he needed to survive. And he needed more than this to survive.
The weeds, the tangle of thoughts, they were blooming.
Crocodile tears welled up in his eyes, and he cried out loudly.
It worked.
Soon, there were people, gawking at him with curiosity and mild concern. They towered over the boy imposingly. He looked back and forth between the faces of his newcomers, holding back the tension and apprehension he felt at their presence.
The people, at least, didn’t suspect him of anything. They were captivated, in fact.
The boy that stood in front of him was the most adorable child he had ever laid eyes on. He had black hair that swept about in feathery wisps and deep brown eyes that stared vacantly at the ground. With olive skin and long lashes, he exuded a kind of beauty that could only be described as cherubic, particularly when he stopped his tears and gave them a calculatedly sweet smile. His first facial expression.
Immediately, the people fawned over the child.
And then there were questions.
And it was a headache.
Their inquisition was met with only more eerie silence and more entrancing smiles. The boy appeared to be looking right through them.
They very slowly released their hold on him, backing away an inch at a time and discussing among themselves who to contact consult on this matter of what they’d concluded was an abandoned child. It wasn’t a bad guess, but the child already knew he’d simply been alone from the start. And that start hadn’t been so long ago.
They turned their attention back to him and extended a beckoning hand, demanding one last question of the boy. They seemed to expect a proper answer this time.
For several seconds, the child only stared at them, unsure of what to do. The people waited patiently while the child concentrated.
Dazed, he finally uttered a word, but couldn’t remember what it meant. All he knew was that this word was once very important to him somehow. Maybe? Probably? He wouldn’t be able to know for sure.
“…‘Masaya’? Is that your name, kid?”