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Birthdays weren’t really a big thing in Imperium.
Or, maybe they were, and Sora just—wasn’t good enough as a kid to earn one.
It had never been a big thing—well, not until running away, that is. Honestly, for a while after that, it wasn’t a thing, still.
Really, it was never a thing until Arin.
It was random—and out of the blue question while they were in the middle of running from the last junkyard they’d robbed.
“Hey, when’s your birthday?”
Sora glanced at him incredulously. “…what?”
“Well,” he jumped over a crate. “It occurred to me that I’ve known you for, like, a year, and i never found out when your birthday is,”
“Oh, uhh…” she was at a loss. How was she supposed to explain, to the personification of a ray of sunshine, that she had never earned the right to be celebrated? She racked her brain for something to say. “It’s, um—June first?”
“The day of the Merge??” He exclaimed, grabbing her hand and steering her into an alleyway that would lead back to their home. “Your luck is horrible,”
“Yeah,” she smiled at him sheepishly. “Yeah, i guess it is, isn’t it?”
“Damn—” he fired his grapple gun, pulling her close with his free arm as the like pulled them towards the rooftop that was currently their campsite. “—we missed it by, like, four months,”
“We did?” Sora disentangled herself from him, rubbing her prosthetic arm as she glanced at the calendar they had lying around. October fourth, it said. “…huh. I guess we did. Ah, well, no big loss there, right?”
Arin didn’t laugh. Didn’t even return her grin. “…no big loss?” He echoed, and his eyes did the thing they do when he’s sad.
“Yeah?” Okay, now Sora was just straight up confuses. “It’s not that important of a thing to have missed, Arin,”
“Not that—of course it’s important!” He yelled. She flinched, grabbing her golden arm—something she did when she was nervous. He noticed. He always noticed. “Oh—Sora, I—I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to yell, I just—”
His voice lowers, softens, as if he was afraid being louder would cause her to break. “Just…it is important. At least, it’s important to me. You’re important to me,”
“It’s just a day, Arin,”
“It’s your day,”
“So?”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Is mine important?”
“…what?”
“My birthday,” he clarified. “Is that important?”
“I—yeah?”
“Then why isn’t yours?”
“Because—because I didn’t do anything. It’s not, like, an achievement, or—” Sora faltered, trying to find the right words. “It’s not something I earned,”
“Sora,” Arin said slowly. “You don’t have to earn existing,”
She tilted her head to the side, staring at him in confusion.
“Y-you—you do…know that, right?”
And, god, he just sounded so—heartbroken.
“I—y-yeah, yeah, of course I know that,”
After a moment of silence, he sat down on the comforter they had laid out on the rooftop, patting the spot next to him. She joined him hesitantly.
“…you were lying, weren’t you?”
“Huh?”
“Earlier, when you said your birthday was the day of the Merge,” he glanced at her. “You were lying, weren’t you?”
“…yeah, I was. I have no idea when it actually is,”
“Is it okay if I ask…why? Why that day, I mean?”
“It’s…it’s the day I made my first real choice for myself. It’s when I chose to just be me, instead of what everyone wanted,”
“Okay, yeah, I can see your logic, but…really? Y’know, some people call that the ‘day the world ended’,”
“Eh, well, it was the second best day of my life, so,”