"Excuse me," Kira murmured as she tried to weave her way through the crowded aisle of the train without pushing anybody. "Sorry."
As she finally freed herself from the crowd, sixteen-year-old Kira mentally sighed. Few people besides herself got on the train at her station, so she usually had to walk through the mob of people waiting near the doors to get off at the next stop. Still, Kira never quite got used to the congestion near the doors, and it seemed to be even busier than usual that evening. After a minute or two of scanning the car, she spotted a vacant seat across from a blond boy who appeared to be a few years younger than Kira who sat beside someone in a suit of armor.
"Um, may I please sit here?" asked Kira as she gestured to the open seat, trying not to stare at the man in the armor.
A surprisingly young-sounding voice replied from the armor, "Sure, go ahead," cheerfully as the owner's companion continued to stare out the window with a thoughtful, if not slightly grumpy, look on his face.
Thanking the… man? boy? …person in the armor and plopping her heavy bag down, Kira claimed the seat and scanned the crowd once more before pulling a book out of her bag. The high number of people on the train that day surprised the brunette, especially because the train connected only a handful of small towns to the capital city of Amestris.
"So, are you heading into Central, too?" questioned the short blond boy after a few minutes.
Kira put the book down on her lap and shook her head. "My dad lives near the station just outside Central, and I'm visiting him for the weekend. My older brother is already up there." Unsure of what else to say as a feeling of shy awkwardness grew within her, she added, "My name is Kira, by the way."
The blond smiled. "I'm Ed, and this is my younger brother, Al."
Younger brother? thought Kira. He looks a lot older than, um… Ed. Come on, Kira, he just told you his name and his brother's name! Remember, Ed and Al! She mentally kicked herself but proceeded to ask where the boys were headed.
Al responded, "We're going to Central to meet up with a friend of ours, but he asked us to pick up something for him at the station before Central."
Ed scoffed when Al mentioned the word, "friend," but Kira shrugged it off. Maybe Ed and the unknown person were what some called "vitriolic best buds."
"So, your parents are divorced, huh?" Ed changed the subject.
Kira nodded. "Ever since I was about six or seven. I'm pretty much used to it now, though. How about you guys?"
Ed glared slightly at the floor, and Al's helmet—and presumably his head—turned to the side. A pang of guilt suddenly hit Kira, and she knew that she had wandered into forbidden territory.
"Y—you don't have to answer if you don't want to, though," she stuttered out. To be honest, her imagination was already coming up with theories, but she told her mind to shut up and tried to squash down her disrespectful curiosity.
"It's okay," Al amended, leaving the question unanswered. "You didn't know."
About five minutes ticked by, each of the three lost in thought as an awkward silence descended upon them. Kira wondered whether or not she should apologize but reasoned that she honestly didn't know what effect the question would have. As each side of the "Apologise vs. Don't Apologize" argument struggled for dominance, Kira's attention was called back to the real world as Al asked another question.
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Kira requested, embarrassed about spacing out.
"What book are you reading?"
The brunette girl looked down at the book cover before replying. "It's called The Scarlet Letter. I have to read it for school," she wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I can understand most of it, but it's really boring. I'd rather read fantasy or mystery novels."
Ed pulled his gaze from the floor and lightly stated, "We've been running around so much that we haven't had time to read much besides alchemy books, huh, Al?"
"That's true."
Curious about this new piece of information, Kira inquired if Ed and Al were alchemists, and both of them nodded.
"Um, could you tell me a little bit about alchemy?" requested the brunette as a faint blush spread on her face. "I'm going to be a writer, so I'm always looking for new writing material."
The last thirty minutes of the forty-five-minute train ride were taken up by a question-and-answer session about basic alchemy, Ed and Al explaining while Kira nodded occasionally and tried to commit the information to memory. When the three departed the still-crowded train, Kira waved goodbye to Ed and Al feeling much more comfortable with them than she had felt when she first sat down.
"Hey, girl with the huge bag!" a young woman called to Kira. "Come here."
Kira walked over cautiously. "Um, is something wrong?"
"Is something wrong?" the red-haired woman asked incredulously. "Do you know who you were just waving to? Those were the Elric brothers, see?" She handed Kira a newspaper with a picture of the boys and the names Edward and Alphonse Elric written underneath the photo.
The sixteen-year-old girl stared at the paper incredulously.
"What the—?"
A/N: This is about a year old, and it's not my best work. I need to work on my characterization for Ed and Al, but I have a reason for uploading this story, which was actually an experiment:
Could you tell that this was a self-insert fic?