Chapter 108: ——≈{Zero}≈——

"Sometimes I wish I could go back.

Not to change things, but to feel some things twice."

-Nicole Locorriere

---

"Hey, you! What are you doing here? Papa said that 'icky brats' aren't allowed in the gardens!"

A young boy, barely over the age of ten, looked up from a peculiar blue rose, only to be greeted with a girl who looked to be eleven. Perhaps twelve? She could have been that age, or she could have just as easily been nine; her pudgy cheeks and bright green eyes like that of a doll saw to that. The boy amended that thought. It wasn't just her eyes; the rest of her looked like a doll as well.

Button-like nose, curly black hair, long eyelashes...

He mentally compared it to his big sister's prized Annabelle that not even he could touch, and not a single checkmark was left unchecked.

Truly, she was...

"...like a doll."

"W-What?! You trespass in the garden and then you utter some nonsense about a doll?!"

The girl-like doll stuttered out in mortification, seemingly unused to 'compliments'. Or perhaps the girl was just tired of people comparing her to an inanimate toy, effectively making her an object? The boy pondered silently to himself. Whatever it may be though, she was pretty. Delicate in a way his big sis wasn't, but not fragile either. Yet not without an abundance of buttons to push either; it was horrifyingly obvious that she had some kind of inferiority issue. Or perhaps a case of self-loathing?

Huh? What was he thinking about again? Oh yeah, the doll. She was fidgeting now, a look of...

(Just like his earlier thoughts, these too slithered out of his mind, too young and too old at once, a touch of death blurred twice over until it was all but a smudge. Some might say he was a reincarnation of a life long past, and some would be right. To a degree, anyway. It was nothing more than an echo that escaped the ever-present grasp of death itself and soon would fade away too. It did nothing, would mean nothing to the entity that was the boy in the future, but it was there, nonetheless. Perhaps the echo would break something, create something where nothing should be, but that was something worth pondering another time.)

Whatever it may be, she was...

He didn't know the word for it.

The sensation he got as he observed her...

He'd have to ask his big sister later.

"Hmph. If you don't want to respond like a dolt, then I won't talk to you either."

The boy blinked.

Lonely? Yes, the doll-like girl was lonely.

"Hey, miss doll... What's your name? 'Mine's Zero. Wanna be friends?"

The girl-doll squawked in indignation.

"M-Me? I'm... I'm not a doll! And you are tre-trespathing in Papa's gardens-..."

Her face neared a boil as it dawned on her that, in her haste, she messed up the big-girl word she had definitely practiced. Why did she have to screw up when it really mattered? But the boy, Zero, she vaguely remembered, smiled for the first time since she had been secretly looking at him, even as the little twat had to smother his own giggles. At least he looked less sad.

"Wanna be friends, miss doll?"

Zero repeated it again, oddly insistent, serious in a way the young girl had seen her Papa display.

"Ahh... Fine, you persistent b-brute! But my name isn't doll! It's Ieyasu!"

---

"Oh, it's nice to meet you, miss doll. I've heard a lot about you from my brother."

"My name isn't doll... It's Ieyasu..."

The young girl sulked, unable to even get angry at it anymore. Right after she met the boy she had come to know as Zero, he stuck to her like a fly and never left her side. While a teensy itty bitty part of her was rather grateful to him for this, the rest of her was rather annoyed at the boy's tendency to introduce her, or in this case, tell everyone beforehand how doll-like she was.

Well. Only his sister being 'everyone', but she still had her right to be annoyed!

"Of course, Miss Ieyasu. Promise you won't be mad at me? My brother has a tendency for the overdramatic, but he never means any harm from it. He just truly means you all the compliments that can be implied from it. Oh, and my name is Ziri. A pleasure to meet you."

"Eh-... That's not fair..."

Now she couldn't even be mad.

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"Ieyasu! Come on, come on," Zero, that brute grabbed her arm and started to run, leaving her no choice but to run as well. "We've already explored all the hiding places at your dad's place, so you have to help me find all the places here!"

Ieyasu pouted.

"Why do I have to help you if you're so slow? This is your house, isn't it? How can you have not explored everything yet?"

She let out a sigh of relief as the boy slowed down, but it got stuck in her throat at the deep sadness that seemed to cloud over his very person, dark and possessive as if it would never let her friend out of its grasp. It looked wrong on him, like those stupid clothes Auntie Shiran wore, but worse. So, so much worse. Ieyasu gritted her teeth as she fought to keep her tears away.

She-... She was a big girl now, so she couldn't cry!

Instead, she would help Zero...

"Ieyasu... Why are you crying?"

Buttonsnips.

"You-... You just looked so sad and I-..." She sniffed. "I messed up somehow, didn't I? I didn't mean to make you sad."

That was the true opening of the floodgates as she sunk to her knees and cried.

It was only minutes later when hiccups became sniffles again that she left a hesitant hand on her back, lying limply in an awkward 'hug'.

"Hahaha! Z-Zero, what's with that?" Ieyasu dragged the hand more tightly around her back as she grabbed his other arm while sternly telling both of the thin limbs to stay put with a brilliant smile on her face. Perhaps it'd be more convincing if her nose still wasn't full of snot. Still... Zero couldn't hate it. Not when the sheer warmth from her threatened to swallow him whole. "Here, you dummy. This is how you hug someone. Got it?"

"Y-Yeah... I got it. Thanks... Ieyasu."

"You're welcome!"

Her smile was blinding.

---

"...Big sis? Big sis! I-... I finished counting a while ago, but I... I can't find you! Please come out! Please..."

"Big... sis..? No, you can't-! You can't be-... Please say something, please-!"

"I-Ieyasu? No, no, we can't leave, big sis is still there! She's-... SHe's jUsT sLeEpInG, i nEeD to wAKe hER uP-!"

...

"She's dead, isn't she, Ieyasu? Because of me. Because of my quirk...  Big sis is d-dead because I-... I-..."

---

"Zero... You can't just run away because..."

"This house has never done anything for me, Ieyasu. Not that way you have. Not the way Big Sis did. I... I can't stay here any longer. It was bad before, but they look at me with so much fear that I... I might go insane, Ieyasu. And you... Aren't you suffering too?"

Ieyasu didn't say a word in response.

"Ieyasu... Let's run away together."

"H-Huh?" The words spilled from her mouth unknowingly, but warmth began to blossom even amid confusion.

"That bastard has been giving you hell ever since your Mama... went to heaven, right? We could travel the world, no, wherever we want. As long as it's far, far away from here. So far that all the running in the world would never let them catch up. Just the two of us. We'll be free."

"Free..."

He cradled her body with all of the desperation of a drowning man.

"Say yes. Please. I don't know what I'd do without you, Ieyasu."

She only squeezed tighter, but it was an answer all on its own.

AN: Last chapter next chapter. Although I do plan on doing an epilogue. We'll see~

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