It was always implied that Naminé was there. She didn't really exist, because she was a nobody and nobodies were generally associated with words like "nonexistence" and phrases like "never was"...but she was still there. She just happened to exist in a way that didn't and draw pictures, because that's what artists did and that's all Naminé was—an artist—if she was to be considered anything at all. In truth, she was a better artist than Kairi. Kairi had always wanted to be an artist, but she was a terrible artist. Something in her said that Naminé was part of that unfulfilled aspiration. Nobodi
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es were like that, weren't they? That was terrible. Naminé didn't exist, after all, so it only made sense that she would be a good artist. She would be the something that Kairi wasn't and would never be. That was terrible. She didn't have feelings, either. She could fake them, but any "feelings" were but her own shells of loose fragments of Kairi's soul. They weren't even her own fake feelings. She couldn't be proud of her drawings because she couldn't feel pride. She couldn't be happy with Kairi, either, and it made Kairi sad. She told her not to be sad, not because it would hurt her, but be
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cause it wouldn't effect her. She couldn't feel, after all. There was no point in empathizing with someone that didn't have emotions. It was a fruitless labor. So, one time, just to check, Kairi handed over one of Naminé's drawings to a friend—not even an art-obsessed one. It was excellent, but she noticed it was lacking something. It had color, depth, perspective, and was better than she thought Kairi would be, but it was missing an aspect integral to art, she said, and it disturbed her to the point where she wouldn't even take it. Kairi herself was extremely disturbed. Naminé was telling the
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truth when she said she didn't have emotions, and all of that with an empty smile. Smiles were "pleasing" to her, Naminé had told her.
"I can tell mine aren't 'pleasing' to you. I know what 'natural' smiles look like. I cannot imitate them. If I could, then I know would look 'better' smiling than any of my 'best' drawings. That is a fact. It's an unshakable truth. You must know this already, don't you?
"You're smiling."
All of that had been said, purely objectively, because it was true. Not because it would feel nice, or because it would look good, but because it was true and Naminé was stati
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ng the truth. She said that she was only going to tell the truth from now on because fabricating lies was not "good", and though it didn't feel "bad", and she had vague "memories" of feeling "good" when she changed Sora's memories of Kairi to memories of herself, they didn't actually exist and so there was no point in doing it. Feeling "good" wasn't "good" when none of those concepts existed in her anyway. She had real memories of Kairi's own emotions, but she couldn't feel what they were really like...
"I... I don't know what to say."
...just that they were there.
"Then don't say anything. Yo
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u want to feel for me again, don't you?"
"I—"
It was just like her.
"Don't. There's no point."
And always with a smile.
"Naminé, you bother me."
"OK."
"No, it's not OK."
"OK. I mean...not OK."
"No, it's not—"
"It's not what?"
"It's nothing."
"Oh."
"And at the same time, I feel that when you're not there, something's missing."
The part that's not supposed to be, missing. How ironic. When had it gotten to this, of all things?
"So, if I told you that I wasn't going to listen to you and feel for you anyway because, you know, I can do that, then what would you say?"
"Amusing. I'd say it's amusing."
A/N: If anyone's wondering about how the fic was arranged, I'd just like to say that it's exactly 3600 characters, and each section is exactly 600 characters, 100 words each if you ask a publisher, hence the weird breaks in-between words. Very Naminé-ish, don't you think?