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When they meet, he is six.
She is four - four? perhaps, she seems smaller than that but she's always grouped with the four-year-olds by the scientists so she must be four, it's only logical - four and small, and cute, and bouncy.
Her bright pink pigtails bounce when she speaks, when she jumps, when she breathes, and Lato watches out of the corner of his eye as she plays with the other kids.
She smiles at him, and he does not smile back. He doesn't want to play, but that doesn't stop her from hovering around him, asking him questions, telling him stupid jokes. Her voice is so high-pitched, like a mouse's squeak.
"You should be quieter," he tells her, and when her lip wobbles, he adds: "The scientists notice when the loud ones go quiet."
Her mouth rounds into a little pink "Oh", and she gives him a shaky little smile.
Lato ignores it and goes back to his book.
When the first of his batch dies, he is eight.
She is six, six and still too small for her age, and for once she does not bounce. She cries, instead, loud like she hasn't been since Lato warned her. The dead girl was close to all the littles, and was the one who put her hair in pigtails every morning.
The rest of her agemates seem shaken, and Lato's group are grim. They knew the dead girl would be the first to go - she was always frail, despite the power crackling through her veins, and she grew weaker with every day that passed during her shortshort life - but they didn't realize just how soon it would be.
Lato does not cry. He grieves, quietly, the night it happens, with his face pressed into his pillow. Then he gets up the next morning, and life goes on.
She does not wear pigtails anymore. Lato keeps finding her hiding in small places, eyes red and puffy.
When he finds her hiding in a corner of the labs, he huffs.
"You can't keep doing this," he says.
She sniffs.
Lato sighs. He reaches out, tapping two fingers on her wrist. "Give me your hairbands."
She jerks away. "No!"
"Do you want me to show you how to do your pigtails or not?"
"No!" she wails, and then two chubby arms are clutching at him and a cold, wet nose is being shoved against his shoulder.
He waits, patiently as he can, for her to finish covering him in snot and tears.
Then he shows her how to do her hair.
She's wearing pigtails the next morning. They are crooked and uneven, but when she asks him, anxiously - and she's never been anxious before - if they look right, he tells her that they'll do.
He is ten when her first agemate starts showing signs of decline.
She is eight, and finally beginning to grow just a little. She and her agemates do not notice the decline as soon as Lato does, but they figure it out quickly enough. There is more hand-holding, more hugging and cuddling and time spent together. Her group has begun to realize their own painful mortality.
She holds Lato's hand, sometimes, and every now and then he does not jerk away. She is clingier. He is angrier, battling a simmering heat that rises up behind his ribs every time the scientists ask for another test, another experiment, more time, more attention, more life.
He is twelve, and he runs.
She is ten, and her hand is clutched tightly in his, her fingers hot and sweaty. Lato drags her with him, forcing her to keep up with his longer legs.
Run, run, don't look back, get away, getaway, run, escape, live - live?
She is silent, pink pigtails bouncing wildly as their feet pound on the pavement, but Lato feels the energy, the excitement, coursing through her and thrumming in their clasped hands.
They are out. They are free.
He is sixteen, and he wakes up in the middle of the night because he can't stop coughing. He wakes her, even though she sleeps across the hall, and she follows him on silent feet as he goes to get a drink of water.
She is fourteen, a little taller, a little more developed. He can see hints of the woman she will be someday, though she still wears her girlishness like a veil.
She makes tea, and they sit together as he sips it, trying to soothe his sandpaper throat. She rubs his back, firm and gentle, as he coughs and coughs.
His hand comes away from his lips speckled with red, and he hears her inhale sharply. Her face tightens, and she turns to put a hand on his chest.
He grabs her wrist. Shakes his head.
"I can help," she says. Her voice trembles.
"You're dooming yourself if you do," Lato says harshly.
"I'm doomed anyway," she says, her face white and still. The skin around her mouth has taken on a greenish hue. In that moment, she looks more corpselike than he does.
"So am I," Lato says, and the words sit heavy in his chest. "We all are."
He is twenty, and he has a mission.
She is eighteen, and she follows him. She does not ask for much, so when she asks him to take her on a date, he agrees. He does not see the point. Their love - if such a thing were ever to occur - would be so shortlived.
"But not worthless," she argues. "Even ordinary people die someday."
"It will end," he tells her.
She smiles, and her face is almost too bright to look at. There is joy in her face, and it makes something in Lato's chest twist painfully.
"Then we can enjoy it while it lasts," she says. "I'm not asking for it to last forever. But I want to be in love and live my life to the fullest before I die."
He agrees, then, and her hand is warm in his as they walk through the park. Her pigtails bounce, and for just a moment, Lato allows himself to simply be.
He is twenty-two, and he knows he is dying.
She is twenty, and still too small and squeaky. He loves her anyway, and doesn't know whether or not to resent her for that.
He can see the grief lurking in her eyes as she drops to sit down next to him. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he tilts his head to rest on hers.
The movement brings agony, and he sits very still for a moment as he waits for his vision to stop graying out.
It doesn't.
He feels her shudder, a deep breath stuttering through her lips. She takes his hand. Her fingers are soft and warm against his skin.
He's cold.
"We had a good run, didn't we?" she says, and there's a smile in her voice even as it thickens with unshed tears.
Lato swallows.
"...yeah," he says, the word a ghost that dies before it leaves his lips.
She sniffles. "I love you, Lato."
He can't speak.
He mouths the words anyway.
"...love you too."
He's drifting, memories swirling in slow, dizzy circles as he sinks further into the quicksand. He can't feel her hand in his anymore, can barely feel her weight pressed against his side.
He sees bouncy pink pigtails. He keeps circling back to that, for some reason.
She speaks, but the words slip out of his grasp.
It's getting harder to breathe.
Lato's face twitches in an aborted smile. He can see the pink pigtails more clearly now, can see her reaching out to him.
He reaches out to grasp her hand, her name on his lips.
"Hinalea..."
His consciousness dwindles, embers of thought winking out one by one.
The last of Lato's lights goes out.
He is still smiling.