Our Last Days as Children

[Zach Kaiser]

"W-Well...yeah." Which was an overly simple way to put it, so he expanded on it a bit. "I mean, a lot of people are wary of a guy if he dates a younger girl, but..."

He blushed; it didn't matter how silly it was, telling Akizetsumei how he felt about her always made him feel much younger than he was. So much for the cool older boyfriend image, he supposed. "I care about you; a-and I know what I feel isn't wrong."

And that was the truth. He had real feelings for her, and though other people might think he would take advantage of her, he knew he would never do that. He couldn't bring himself to hurt her in any way, and he had no doubt if he moved too fast he'd only end up hurting her.

[Nayt]

"I . . . you . . ." Akizets bit her lip.

He was so sincere, too. There was no doubting him at all! She wouldn't have doubted him, anyways, because she never ever had reason to doubt what Eld told her, but still! The way he said it all . . . that he didn't mind how young Akizetsumei was, that what he felt for her was right, no matter how weird their age difference was.

It certainly felt right to her, too! It felt so wonderfully right. She'd have never traded her relationship with him for the world. She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed him tightly. There was something she wanted to say to him right now, one wonderful four letter word she wanted to use in a three word sentence, but her mother had told her to wait for that! It almost hurt her to not say it, because it was about the most honest and genuine thing she could say right now, but she refrained. Instead, she whispered:

"You're the sweetest guy in the world, you know that?" she asked rhetorically--

--before she leaned up to place a soft kiss upon his lips.

They shared the same bed that night, Akizets having snuggled up to Eld, under the same covers, with her head upon his shoulder and her hands loose across his chest. She was comfortable that night-- comfy and warm, and she wound up sleeping longer than she had in years. Well . . . in a healthy way, at least. By all means, that girl could sleep all day when she was sick, but she slept for about nine hours in Eld's arms--and then when she woke up, she shut her eyes and took in the warmth of the moment until Eld woke up.

[Nayt]

Later that afternoon, Gestahl of Terra came by to retrieve his daughter. He knocked on the house door, of course, and Urikuse-- perhaps suspecting what happened between Eld and Akizets --asked him to wait at the door whilst he got her. Akizets was fortunately awake, and she went out to meet her father. This ended . . . weirdly . . .

"Why . . . are you wearing boy shorts?" Gestahl asked with a furrowed brow the very second he saw his daughter.

"Oh," Akizets looked down at her legs, "'Cause my clothes were dirty and they didn't have any other shorts that'd fit me."

Which was an unnervingly honest answer. It was a double edged sword sometimes, but if you had a pair of eyes or ears and you had at least the smallest fragment of common sense, 100% of the time, you could tell when Akizets was being honest and when she wasn't. You didn't even have to know her to tell.

Nevertheless, Gestahl didn't exactly apologize, but he apparently took a half day off of work to spend time with his daughter. It was possibly the closest thing she was going to get to an apology, if only because while Gestahl did, in fact, feel bad for snapping at this girl, a girl he knew was fragile in almost every way, he didn't exactly want her to get the impression that crying and running away from home would solve all her problems. She was still rebuked, but not too terribly harshly.

Honestly, the fact that Gestahl took Akizets out around town, bought her dinner, and generally used the day for father-daughter bonding was enough for Akizets to manage through any level of rebuking. Well, so long as he didn't yell at her again. Even to her that was scary!

That previous night, however, was not the last time Akizets spent the night at Eld's house, and was especially not the last time she slept in the same bed as him.

---

Suffice it to say, though, Akizetsumei was not the only one of them with problems. She could overreact and she was certainly resistant to the whole "growing up" idea, that was true, and it was fortunately something for which Eld managed to actually have-- or at least develop --the patience to stand. Acceptance, after all, was what somehow made this relationship, one that no one but Akizets and Eld ever dreamed would last more than a few weeks, go on for five straight months with neither breaks nor break ups. There was, though, some acceptance on Akizetsumei's part, too . . .

Eldridge Tsukimono was, after all, a guy.

. . . A guy that could really hold a grudge.

---

It was a month prior to their first night sleeping in the same bed. Theirs was then a relationship that had blossomed for a solid three months, and really showed no signs of stopping. On that day, just a few days following their three month anniversary (which was decidedly stranger than their last two anniversaries, because Eld did this thing when they were kissing which really surprised Akizets and threw her off, but she didn't hold it against him; didn't kiss him on the lips again that night, but was still able to laugh it off), they were on a walk through town. Akizetsumei had somehow managed to talk her father into letting her have two gold coins to do with as she pleased.

Naturally, she decided to take Eld around town and not let him pay for a single thing.

It was the beginning of spring and Akizets had to start wearing a light jacket; a long skirt and closed toed sandals (provided she wore socks, too) wear just fine, but her mother just did not let her out of the house wearing anything else.

"So whatcha wanna do?" Akizets inquired cheerfully.

She was practically bouncing by Eld's side, half tempted to skip with each step, and sometimes swinging her arm gently whilst holding Eld's hand. She was really on cloud nine when she could treat Eld to something.

[Zach Kaiser]

"Oh, I don't know." Ordinarily, Eld wouldn't allow her to pay for a thing. After all, he got paid decently well for the time he put in at the clinic, and had money stored away to boot. Akizetsumei, meanwhile, was pretty much limited to rare occasions when one of her parents gave her a little spending money.

But she was just so thrilled at the prospect of treating him to something, he couldn't bring himself to say no. He just made a mental note to buy her a present or treat her to something at a later date.

"I suppose we could look around the market for a bit." While not nearly as big as Galaens', it still changed fairly frequently with merchants passing through.

[Nayt]

"Okay, sure!" she exclaimed merrily.

Akizets practically marched towards the market. Except it was a very bouncy, energetic, and eternally happy march. Anyone that might have looked on and concluded that she was parading would've been absolutely right. Why she was parading was not what one would expect, though. She was not parading around her boyfriend as if to say "yes, this is what I have, be jealous of me!," but rather, she was all around gleeful that she could treat Eld to a day out for once. It'd been, what, months since she'd done so? They weren't even dating back then!

It wasn't until they were almost at the market that she remembered something, which prompted her to walk a bit slower. She thought about it for a second, considered bringing it up later, but upon concluding that she would most definitely forget tomorrow if she waited, sighed (in her mind) and came out with it.

"Oh, um, s-so, um, Eldridge?" she said after a moment of walking, "I toooootally forgot to do this and I was gonna way earlier, but, um, I wanted to apologize. Um, for the other night. I didn't mean to get all weird."

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld instantly turned red; that was something he would have perfectly fine with not having been brought up. Especially in public. He looked around, hoping no one heard that and thought she was referring to something much worse than she actually was.

"N-No need to apologize; it was my fault. Sorry." He really needed to be more careful when it came to things like that. It was pretty clear Akizetsumei had no interest in anything more than cuddling and light kissing, which while he had no problem with it it was occasionally difficult to remember when they were alone.

[Nayt]

There were fortunately no one around that was either listening to them or paying attention enough to recognize what they were talking. There were folk around, though. They were all en route to the market, too, but they all probably had stuff to do, so they weren't about to listen in on the goings on between Eld and his younger girlfriend.

"N-no-- no way," Akizets shook her head quickly.

She slowed to a stop and turned a bit so she could look Eld in the eyes. Akizets frowned. She didn't want Eld to feel bad about that. From what she knew, it was completely normal. In fact, it was abnormal for her to freak out so much! I-- I mean, I didn't even kiss him for the rest of the night!

"Boys do that kinda stuff, so," Akizets said, her voice prone to stuttering and stumbling from an inherent shyness regarding the subject matter, "I just shoulda been more prepared! So, um, yeah. You can, um, if you do that again, um, I promise I won't freak out next time."

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld shook his head. "No...I shouldn't have..." He trailed off; going back and forth like this was going to get them nowhere. "In any case, you don't have to force yourself for my sake. I don't want to do anything if you're not comfortable with it."

Which was pretty much his stance on progressing their relationship. His relationship with Sarah had not exactly been a standard one; in all honest, even though he had more experience with girls than Akizetsumei had with guys, he didn't have any more idea how a normal relationship worked than she did. This was already the longest "official" relationship he'd had.

"A-Anyway," Eld continued, wanting to change the subject, "see anything interesting?" His best bet was distracting her from the subject; she was stubborn enough that if they kept this up she'd end up doing it later just prove she was okay with it.

...Which wasn't something he was actually against, but only if she were really fine with it and not just pretending to be for his sake.

[Nayt]

"Oh, um," Akizets turned to face the market again.

She went silent for a moment. Eld was lucky she was naive, otherwise she'd have caught on to his ploy and totally called him out on it.

"Oh! Hey! I think I see somethin' over there," she announced, "Oh, wow. That'd be so cute on you."

And so they dove headlong into the marketplace, exploring aisle and aisles of carts and mobile shops all set up with goods and wares put on display. Luckily, this was not Galaens, and poor kids weren't running through the stalls, stealing food and whatnot. That would've been terrible! Akizets and Eld shopped for awhile, but ultimately didn't start buying anything just yet. A lot of things were either not quite as awesome when up close, or ten times as awesome, but also ten times more expensive than Akizets could afford.

There were two people that eventually caught her attention, though. They were looking at hats. There was a tall young man in a white shirt and slacks. He looked a fair bit muscular. By his side was a young Umbra woman in a red-and-black dress. The Umbra woman caught Akizetsumei's attention for half a second, but not one to be so wowed by an exotic person, she put her attention upon the young man, who looked eerily familiar to her. Akizets only saw a brief glimpse of the man's profile, but . . .

"H-- hey, Eldridge?" she tugged on his hand, then pointed towards the young man and young lady, and whispered, "Who's that?"

[Zach Kaiser]

"Hmmm?" Eld looked up from the stall to see who she was pointing at; his reaction was a mixture of gladness and annoyance. One of those people he really would have liked to talk to again, and the other one...well, he'd gotten a little better, as he'd proven awhile back, but Eld still didn't particularly enjoy seeing him.

Of course, as Akizetsumei didn't specify who she was talking about, Eld made the assumption that she wanted to know who the exotic looking woman was, and not the Hillcrest native. "That's, umm, Kageko. Have you never seen an Umbra before?" he asked.

He was torn between wanting to go up to them and getting Akizetsumei to put some distance between them, so he ended up just standing still.

[Nayt]

"I, um, n-- no," she shook her head, "She's really pretty, but . . ."

Which was true. The Umbra woman was gorgeous! The color of her skin made it look soft as velvet. It was hard to see any blemishes at all. Unreal was the best way to describe how the young woman looked. That was super cool and all, but Akizetsumei wasn't asking about her.

Still, she did make a mental note to ask around about her, because she'd never met an Umbra before.

"I, um, I meant the guy," she pointed again, this time trying to be a bit less broad.

He reached up and plucked from the rack a wide brimmed black hat. Really wide brimmed. The hat was about as wide as his shoulders. It was sleek, though. He presented himself before Kageko, as if to ask how he looked, but received a slight frown of disapproval.

"I swear I've seen him before," and it was really starting to bug her, too!

[Zach Kaiser]

"Eh? Him?" He couldn't hide his surprise; that was who she was talking about? Maybe it was just a gender thing; girls noticed guys more and guys noticed girls. "That's Noah." The disdain in his voice was evident.

"So, did he just give up on college or something?" he muttered, mostly to himself. He didn't get it; he'd thought Noah and Kageko weren't an item, but here they were together again. It certainly looked like it could be a date. But Kageko had to be way too classy for a guy like Noah.

[Nayt]

Akizetsumei's head perked up at the name. Quickly, she spun about to face Eld, even let go of his hand, to put her hands together in front of her. She suddenly became an irrepressible ball of energy, one that Eld could only possibly deflate by answering her next question with "no."

"Wh--! Wha . . . ?!" Akizets practically cried out, "Noah? You mean, like--"

The disdain in Eld's voice might have been evident, but the surprise in Akizetsumei's voice was just as evident. In fact, for all Eld's disdain, Akizetsumei seemed about twice that in elation.

"Like Noah Herst? That Noah?" she asked excitedly.

[Zach Kaiser]

For several seconds Eld just stared at her blankly, unable to connect her reaction with anything meaningful. Then it dawned on him that somehow, the mention of Noah's name got her excited. That was...strange. Troubling, even.

"Y~e~s..." he said slowly, stretching out the word as long as possible. He gave her a skeptical look, as though this was some kind of illusion and if he just squinted hard enough he'd be able to see through it.

"...Do you know him somehow?" he asked. This was almost like a mystery, and he needed a clue to solve it. Just why would the mention of Noah's name cause any kind of positive reaction from her?

[Nayt]

Oh man! It was just as she suspected! The second Eld said his name earlier, she knew it had to be him. Oh maaaaaan. Akizets was thrilled. She covered her lips with her hands to try containing it.

"Eee!" she practically squealed, "Ohmanohmanohman!"

But failed, clearly. She then paused as Eld's question sunk in. It was actually a fairly easy question to answer. It was a topic she hadn't really broached before, but that was mainly because it never came up and he never asked. It also had a lot to do with the fact that she hadn't seen Noah in so long. That wasn't to say that she completely forgot about him or anything, but when a person's been gone a long time, sometimes you stop counting the days!

"Noah's, um! He's a friend of mine! Ihaven'tseenhimin for~eeeeeveeer," she then looked from Eld to Noah's back, then back to Eld, "U-ummmmmmmmmmayI?"

She was out with Eld, after all! As much as she wanted to just run off out of the blue, she couldn't justify it if it was going to be a thorn in her boyfriend's side.