Our Last Days as Children

[Zach Kaiser]

"A friend?" The disbelief was evident in his voice. That Noah Herst had friends certainly was strange; if anything, he'd been rather popular with kids his age before going off to college. That he was friends with Akizetsumei was something he had trouble wrapping his head around.

But that was a story for another time. As much as he really, really didn't want to talk to Noah, it was impossible to say no to Akizetsumei. "Yeah, go ahead," he said reluctantly. No doubt she'd take off right to him, hyper as she was; he'd end up trailing slowly behind her, dragging his feet all the way.

[Nayt]

And indeed she did race off for him. Provided Eld's permission to run off, she really wasted no time in it. One second, she was standing before Eld, the next, she was darting a forth of the way through the main market road, and the next, she was throwing what little weight she had into this man. Without any reservation at all, Akizets rather enthusiastically called out Noah's name, slammed into his side, and threw her arms around his chest. She practically attached herself to the man's hip all in one fell swoop, prompting Noah, after shooting his back up in surprise, to look down at this girl clinging to his side almost as if he were silently asking "what is this body that has attached itself to me and what is it doing there?"

This prompted Kageko to look around Noah to see Akizets, then to Eld in the distance, still walking towards them--begrudgingly slow he may have been. She was at first surprised, then loosened up, smiled slightly, and nodded her in to him in acknowledgment.

It took Noah a second to realize it, but as soon as he realized who was clinging to him . . .

"Whoa, hey!" he exclaimed as he wrapped an arm around her. "Love of my life! What're you doin' here?"

Akizetsumei looked up to him and stuck her tongue out at him. He was so weird! Calling her things like that! But she was way used to that by now.

"Wonderin' what you're doin' here!" she replied promptly. Then after a second. "And why you didn't write! Like, ever! Even though you promised me you would!"

"Ah, uhhh," Noah scratched the side of his head, "Uhhh . . ."

[Zach Kaiser]

It wasn't often that Eld looked like a rebellious child, but the way he walked all hunched over with hands stuffed into his pockets certainly made him seem like one right then. He gave a small smile at Kageko's nod, one which quickly evaporated at the "love of my life" comment.

He knew better than to take that literally, of course. Akizetsumei didn't have the duplicity to be seeing Noah behind his back, and if people were raising objections at Eld dating her, Noah, who was older than him, would have definitely raised some red flags if there was any hint of a romantic interest.

But that didn't mean it didn't annoy him. Perhaps it was the Cizokian half of him, but Noah's overly familiar way of speaking just rubbed him the wrong way, and likely would have even there wasn't a history between them. Even when it was with someone he was, it seemed, familiar with.

Once he was a bit closer, Eld spoke up. "It's good to see you again Kageko...Noah." There was just enough of a pause to leave it ambiguous whether or not Noah was included in the initial warm greeting. And even then, he only made it ambiguous because he had not forgotten their last encounter.

[Nayt]

"Likewise," replied Kageko pleasantly.

Akizetsumei let go of Noah and stepped back, folded her arms over her chest and gave Noah the most stern look she possibly could. Which really wasn't all that stern or intimidating, and though she certainly meant business, it was almost impossible to take her seriously when she was like that.

"Ummm uhhhh ummmm does not tell me why you have not written me a single letter, Noah James Herst," Akizetsumei's natural falsetto voice betrayed her stern she was trying to sound just then.

But despite that, Noah hesitated, until he at the very least found a topic that was a good enough distraction to steer Akizets off that course.

"Eh, uh, oh, hey, Eldridge," he turned to face Eld, suddenly more excited to see Eld than he ever had been in his life--and for obvious reasons. "How's it going?"

This blatant attempt of derailing did not please Akizetsumei of Terra. It did not please her at all.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld tilted his head to the side, as if deciding what to do. "Oh, I'm alright," he replied. But if Noah thought he was going to help him get off the hook, he would realize he was wrong when he saw the cheshire-like grin spread across Eld's face from over Akizetsumei's shoulder.

"I seem to keep running into you in town, but it sounds like Akizetsumei hasn't heard from you in awhile. I take it you didn't visit her while you were around?" he asked, all innocence.

He'd quickly changed his mind; Noah being friends with Akizetsumei was a great thing if he could use it to make him uncomfortable.

[Nayt]

Noah was at first relieved, but then . . . not quite so relieved, as Eld served only to make the situation worse. It felt like he'd been punched in the gut rather suddenly, and though that may have been Eld's intentions, Noah was not the only person disserviced here. Whether Eld knew it or not at first, Akizetsumei was infinitely more hurt than Noah.

"I . . . what?" she looked up to him, her expression softening--dropping from stern to . . . sad. Slowly desperate. "I-- is it . . . you've really been here for . . . and you never . . .?"

"I--" Noah caught the words in his throat and pushed them back, "It's not-- okay, yeah, I've been back for awhile, but-- it's--"

Akizetsumei took a step back, bumping into Eld.

"Y-- you were away so long and-- and you never wrote-- and-- and you never even visited? Even when you were here? I--"

"H-- hey, it's-- it's not tha--"

Akizetsumei looked down. Her lip quivered. "I thought we were friends?"

There was a crack in the girl's voice. It was slight and subtle, but though she lowered her head and looked at the ground, Noah could tell that she was tearing up.

"Akizetsumei," he said, his voice now much less casual, "I'm sorry. It's--"

But it was too late. She shook her head quickly, backed into Eld again, spun around, weaved away from Eld, and ran.

"Aki--" Noah tried to reach for her, but it was too late. "Akizetsumei!"

And with that, he took off after her, leaving Eld and Kageko alone.

[Zach Kaiser]

When Akizetsumei backed into him, Eld gently caught her by the shoulders, but she didn't seem to notice. Nor did she seem more than vaguely aware of him when she took off running. He may have been her boyfriend, but she'd apparently known Noah for longer--and he had a place just as important in her heart, perhaps even more so. The thought made something inside him burn in a way he'd never quite felt before.

When Noah attempted to go after her, Eld grabbed his arm as he ran by, half turning in the process, but unable to bring himself to completely face him. "You know I hate most about you?" he asked quietly. Perhaps because of how rotten he felt now, all pretense of friendliness was lost. "The way you pass everything off as if it's no big deal, like if you just pretend nothing happened everyone will forget it did and forgive you."

Right now he wanted to do any number of things. Running after Akizetsumei himself was high on the list, as was punching Noah as hard as he could right in the nose. But what he wanted to do and what he should do were two entirely different things, and in this case what he should do was what was best for Akizetsumei, not him.

"Don't do that this time." So instead of doing what he wanted to do, he let go of Noah. And if he took more than half a second more to go after her, he'd add, "Go!"

[Nayt]

Eld grabbed Noah by the arm, but rather than look at him, Noah simply stopped and kept staring ahead. He wasn't unaware of Eld's issues with him, but for reasons he'd never broached, he hadn't taken care of that problem. Still, Eld had every reason to dislike him, that he and Noah could both probably agree on.

"Never planned on it," was all he said once Eld let go of his arm, after which he wasted no further time here and began after Akizetsumei. Eld hadn't the opportunity to say anymore.

With Noah and Akizetsumei gone, Kageko stood there, alone with Eld. She passed him a look and a shrug of her shoulders, before turning to face the hat racks again. The stall was open like a room, with an elderly man at the end of it, barely at all paying attention to them. Kageko picked up the hat Noah was looking at before, that wide brimmed black hat, practically as wide as a cliche witch's hat, but with the top of a fedora, and made mostly of leather. She set it on her head, which was a fairly snug fit, what with the horn on her forehead and all. Actually, it was kind of uncomfortable. Kageko wasn't physically capable of wearing hats. Such was the life of an Umbra, though.

"Don't worry too much about this," Kageko said to Eld, though didn't exactly turn to him just yet. She was still looking through the hats. "It was . . . a matter of time, really. Until she and Noah met again. What happened here would have occurred with or without you."

It was a fairly blunt way of putting things, but . . . well, she meant it with the utmost kindness. Eld seemed like the kind of person to her that'd beat himself up over the matter, blame himself for creating a situation where a girl cried and whatnot . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

He didn't immediately acknowledge that she said anything. He just continued to stare off after Noah, wanting to be the one to run after her in his stead. But Kageko had a point: even if he'd been the one to bring it up, ultimately it wasn't his mess to clean up.

"That doesn't mean I feel any better about it. The last thing I wanted was..." He shook his head; he didn't know it, but she definitely had him pegged. "I should've just kept my mouth shut."

But even if he didn't feel much better about the situation, he appreciated the gesture, and gave Kageko a weak smile of gratitude.

[Nayt]

Kageko shook her head. She finally turned to face Eld. He didn't seem to get it, but that was okay. Maybe later on he'd come to terms with this inevitability.

"I gather that . . . you are an acquaintance of Noah's?" she asked.

It was a safe bet to make, of course. Eld mentioned Noah before, back when he first met Kageko, and just earlier, the way he talked to Noah, it seemed like he'd known him for a very, very long time. Long enough to build up a great deal of spite and hatred.

"And by your reactions . . ." she paused to think about it for a moment, ". . . that suggests that you, too, are ill informed about him?"

She'd no intent to offend, of course. It was possible to be ill informed on a subject matter without being a complete idiot. In this case, it was fairly easy to be ill informed, especially since it was all on Noah to keep everyone in the loop, and he seemed fairly reluctant to do so unless absolutely necessary.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld merely nodded to her first question. Acquaintance wasn't exactly right, but it was as close a word as he could think of. They certainly weren't friends, that was for sure. Her second question, however, earned her a hard stare for a moment. Then he caught himself, and lowered his head. It wasn't right to be angry at her over his problems.

"I know he's changed," he said quietly. "But that's not enough for me to forgive him." And that was as close as he was going to get to admitting he was at all wrong.

When he looked back up at her, he'd calmed down a bit. "I suppose it's something like, he doesn't want to involve her in whatever it is you two are doing, right? Last time I saw him, he was fighting...he's gotten a lot stronger than he used to be. Must be fighting a lot. He's supposed to be in school."

[Nayt]

Indeed, Eld was ill-informed . . . though now that she thought about it, uninformed might have been the better choice of words for this situation. Nevertheless, she checked once to her left and once to her right, then eyed the man that owned the hat shop. It didn't seem like there was anyone around her that were listening him.

Kageko nodded her head, then. "That was his intention, yes. He applied to and was prepared to enroll in a high class school in Greoul."

Since Noah wasn't going to do it, and making Eld a better informed member of society seemed to be the most able way to fix all future problems between Eld and Noah, Kageko decided to take it upon herself and take care of it for Noah. In all her time knowing him, Kageko knew well enough that Noah was the worst at fixing his own problems.

---

"I never got to school."

Noah had caught up with her. It wasn't hard. Akizetsumei may have been one of the fastest runners in Hillcrest, but she was just a kid, and though Noah was frequently seen as being the same person he was before he went off to school, physically speaking he was a very changed man. He caught up with her by the time she was almost back home, and barely managed to coerce her into talking to him. He apologized profusely to her and asked, at the very least, that they could go somewhere private to talk where no one could listen in on him. Akizetsumei was reluctant to even talk to him, but she still hoped that Noah was being honest with her, so she went with him, anyways.

It wasn't until they reached the bottom of a hill-- a tall hill in Old Hillcrest --that Noah felt they were in a private enough place to talk about this.

"What?" Akizets asked, though she was still frowning and visibly unwilling to let her feelings budge.

"I never got there. I never arrived and I never enrolled," Noah replied with a heaved sigh. Suddenly it felt like a whole world of weight was lifted from his shoulders.

This . . . kind of upset Akizetsumei, actually. "Why?" she asked, her falsetto voice lowering with audible displeasure. "That . . . that was the whole reason you left and everything."

"I know," Noah nodded his head, "And I planned on it. I felt like hell leaving you behind. I seriously did, Akizetsumei."

Akizets frowned, folded her arms over her chest, and averted her eyes from him. She could hardly bring herself to believe that.

Noah refrained from sighing again. Instead, he got straight to explaining himself. It was a bit of a fantastic explanation, but they were out here practically in the woods. What reason did he have to lie to her here?

---

"His destination was Die Universität," Kageko's pronouncing of Greoul's language was actually completely spot on. She sounded like a native speaker with just two words. "This called for a carriage to take he and his belongs to a port north of the Xexorian Desert. His driver was an age old companion from Galaens, a young woman named Joyce Pavlin."

That was all old news. Noah made this whole big scene about how he was leaving to go off, get an education, and return as a better man, with some intent to change this town and whatnot. It was a big production that nearly raised Noah up to hometown hero status, but the fact that no one ever heard from him since then really put a damper on that. Since then, he was mostly forgotten in town. It was almost two years ago that he left. Two year without a single word of contact made a person quick to lose track of.

"Shortly before reaching the port, they were intercepted by a small troupe of highwaymen," Kageko continued, "They took their money, their valuables, and after deliberation between themselves, they intended to take Pavlin, too. Pavlin resisted and was fatally shot."

[Zach Kaiser]

"W-What?" He didn't know any of this, of course; he'd never heard of Noah's companion, but that was no surprise, as he knew very little of Noah outside of personally interacting with him. But while he wasn't sure he'd have believe it if he'd heard it from Noah's mouth himself, he had no reason to doubt Kageko.

Even so, it was hard to swallow. "Y-You're kidding, right?" He sounded less skeptical and more hopeful. For all that he liked to think he was smart and mature, Eld was a fairly naive kid. It was difficult for him to even fathom the kind of event Kageko was talking about other than as fiction.

He simply didn't want to believe there were people that bad in the world.

[Nayt]

Kageko shook her head and frowned slightly. "Sadly, no."

---

"Wh-- what?!" Akizetsumei cried.

Her refusal to be kind was entirely broken. Noah had been nice enough to leave out the gory details-- details such as what those men had wanted to do to his friend --and Akizetsumei was fortunately too naive a girl to make the connection. Noah hated even thinking back to that time.

"Y-- you can't be-- she was-- she was seriously . . . ?" she asked, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

Noah nodded his head. His chest felt heavy just talking about it. "I tried to save her. But the shot was too bad. The wound was too deep."

"O-- oh my-- oh gods," Akizets covered her lips.

"I stayed with her as long as I could, but we were too far from civilization and I couldn't move her. All we could do was wait and hope someone came by to help," Noah sulked his head and shoulders, "A local patrolman was the one that found us, hours after she died. I was unharmed and covered in evidence, so . . ."

---

"Noah was only released from Feiyan City Penitentiary five months ago. He was confined wrongfully for the murder of Joyce Pavlin. He was released only because the highwaymen were caught and admitted to a majority of their crimes--one of them being the murder of Pavlin."

Kageko's method of explaining all of this was fairly narrative--almost disconnected, even. She felt for Noah and the family of Joyce Pavlin's, but there wasn't much she could do about the situation, only alleviate wounds as needed. Sadly, all of those wounds were emotional.

"Noah attempted to correspond whilst in prison, but the only address he could vividly recall was his father's," Kageko added, but didn't exactly say what came of that . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

"I...see..." Even with his limited knowledge of Noah's life, he knew of his father. He was not a popular man; there were quite a few rumors about his abilities as a parent (or lack thereof), although none of these reached Eld's ears until after he'd left. It was easy to figure out that Noah's father would have been less than helpful. But that wasn't even what bothered him most...

"It's...not right! How could they...? There's no motive, I bet he didn't have a weapon on him, least of all a gun! Even an idiot should be able to tell...should be able to..."

Eld looked like he was about to explode. A fierceness was his eyes, as though if it was possible he'd have gone out and corrected this injustice himself. A story like this just wasn't one he could deal with easily. It was only made possible by people who were callous and careless, people who didn't care about doing the right thing.