Foreign
Chapter 1: Ballrooms of Mars
Life was emulated through thousands of wires that connected the mother earth to her respective elements, raging across the land and destroying that which she had given to the humans who had not played their subservient role. It was the game of destruction and decadence that she played, moving her pawn on the lines of the knight and destroying all of what used to be a regularly visited town with her storming tsunami. Her priest ravaged the good farm land with terrible soil and rain to wash out all of the vegetation.
The world had been at her revenge for millions of years, taking and giving, taking and giving. She pulled the strings on the back of her marionettes that swayed viciously in the dominating wind. She who brought the world to a stop with one wave of a hand and the earthquakes that followed her backhand.
Still man rebuilt his lodgings. It was a war between nature and mankind. Nature would destroy the few inches that humans and gained and then humans would regain those few lost qualities. What lived in between the lines was something that nature and mankind wanted nothing to do with.
Those that lived between the lines had been strange creatures that were not accepted in human terms, at the age of fifteen turning into a strange being, free of care or worry, only contained to this world by a fluke of whether they kept their original mind or not. These were the children who were taken in and, eventually, mutilated for what they represented: free will, anarchy, chaos, no law.
Is law truly important?
No, spoke the flaming crimson liquid that pulsated through a tube and into three tanks all held separate. Science was not affected by law in any way possible. This was the utmost highest rank and nobody could do anything about it, whether they were authority or not. Science always got away, like the Bonny and Clyde of jobs.
This is what kept a child from growing up into a normal person who went to college and earned a degree: the strange appearances from birth, the swift look in their eyes that held more vitriolic passions than innocence, and that constant reminder of the thing they would become in their prime age. Life was shut down for these children.
Not all children can get away. Labs are protected by five Carriers, men who have the strength of a bear and wear huge black coats for intimidation. Not only are there Carriers, but there is Nidhogg, the vicious beast that chews at the original tree of live, who searches for the lost children and when finding them, usually tears them to shreds. Even beyond Nidhogg is the ever present fear of the other children who have escaped and will find other children and sell them. The populace does nothing against this.
Thus, it was incredibly hard to believe that one child had actually broken his air-tight glass cage and spent his time wisely, stabbing the Carriers with a shard of glass to death. He struck fiercely, as if he were taking back all of his years in those deaths. All that mattered was that the Carriers were dead and the one thought that was spawned by death was always freedom. This was Freedom, which was out into the ever-present world that shunned the children and almost seemed like a paradise; if you thought about it in a haunting way, that is.
Being able to discard the bodies was almost like he was being awarded with a trophy of some sort. He didn't have to make a speech which was more relieving. He grabbed two of the large black coats and wrapped them around him and sat in silence to gain some warmth back. It wasn't everyday that you killed two Carriers, nor was it everyday that you got more to wear than a shirt and jeans in the deafening snow.
Finally, the child reclaimed his equilibrium and took a long time walking to the golden door of freedom. Two coats were heavy and the persistent thought of leaving them behind nagged at his conscious brain. But he would freeze to death outside without them. That's how they killed almost all of the escapees. Luckily, the killing hadn't reached his brain yet. The child did not know that his white shirt had been stained velvet red from the brutal grasp of freedom. He felt as if he were five minutes behind himself.
Today was Sunday. Sunday is the day when all of the scientists take the day off. Therefore, I am home free for the rest of the trip, if I have someplace to go. It was all figured out in his head, even if he couldn't completely register all that had gone around him. One of the first to actually escape.
He opened the door to the outside world and took in a few breaths of the new life that awaited him outside.
Life.
Precious, alluring life.
How you glitter among your pretty little stars.
How you can kill such beautiful young things.
**
It was a rather interesting apartment. Not one of those new ones that held almost every single technological advance that had ever come to light since the days of the humans. There were only three rooms inside, a reclining room, bedroom, and kitchen. It was all the man really needed. He had lived by himself since he was sixteen and had learned to deal with it.
Yes, the howling wind during winter bothered him when he was all alone. Sometimes he did wish for a companion, but if life was going to leave him to depend on only one person, he knew that it would have to be the soul that sat inside of his own body. If he ever worried about loneliness, he could always reminisce about the days with his father. When he was alone, his father would tell him stories until he fell asleep. Then he wasn't alone.
The new apartments were covered with technology that broke apart each day and the repair lines were always bugged. If you ever did get a repair man in, he'd only make the damage worse. They worked this way. It was the logic of corporations. Once the repair man made it worse, then you had to call the company and the company would offer a man worth more money than you earned in a week. The new and more expensive repair man would push one button and fix everything.
Ogami Yugo was more than intimidated by technology; he didn't trust it, period. He couldn't stand the fact that a machine made by man was doing everything for him, poisoning his food, creating a mess, and the AC turning automatically off when the heat outside got the worst. It was always a wonderful vision to see a humble apartment made like the old houses used to be made, back in the twentieth century.
"Is it all right?" the seller asked in a timid voice. He really wanted to get rid of this wonderful apartment that he probably thought was a dump. He had asked that question millions of times afterward and before the whole selling process. The seller was a man with trembling hands and a neurotic face that implied his own success with the technology of this future world.
Yugo nodded quickly, wishing desperately that the man would leave him in peace for once. He had an important phone call to make and he knew that if he spent anymore time with this flake then he'd miss her and probably never hear from her again.
"I really wanted to make it nice and I tidied it up and-"
"Leave. Now." He didn't want to sound so primitive, but he wanted this man out with haste. If he was going to stay in the apartment and twiddle his fingers, than Yugo was inclined to tear him up on the spot.
Without a word, the nervous man was out. He finally got the point, it seemed.
Yugo didn't spend another second thinking about him and grabbed the phone off of the office desk next to the red couch. He pressed the memorized numbers and was relieved to hear the alluring sound of a dial tone. Not that annoying buzz of the machine reading back the numbers you had already pressed.
"Hello?" he asked when he heard the sounds of children playing in the background.
"Why did you leave?" It was her. She had demanded an answer from him and he couldn't simply hang up and hope never to hear from her ever again. It wasn't in his nature to leave people hanging. He had to come up with some stupid answer.
"I'm not a people person, Alice. There are too many kids in that area. It was making me nervous. I had to get out of there. I had to get away from all of the people who lived there, I got bored of them. They were happy neighbors. I was offered this apartment and when I took one look at it, I felt as if I needed to live here. I'm sorry."
"You were my only childhood friend." Alice sounded as if she were about to cry with the last impending tears that were left between them. "You were the only person I could love."
"We all remember how that turned out", Yugo answered, somewhat sarcastically. "Just because we split. you know, went our own ways. doesn't mean we're not friends anymore. I can still check up on my little sister, right?"
Her chuckle sounded more than relieved; Alice sounded as if she had been refreshed with a new life. "Of course you can. I was waiting for you to ask that. So, I guess you'll come and visit from now on?"
"If I have your okay then maybe I will."
"You have my permission." With that, she hung up.
He could now put the phone down and plop into his new couch with a sigh of content. It wasn't just the idea of this twisted confession but more of a way of making up to the one girl who had been one of the sweetest he had ever known. Youth had skewered his precepts of friendship and he actually believed they could make it as a couple, but his own blood proved him wrong.
Yugo wasn't a person of habit, but more of necessity. It was necessary to make up to Alice to go on with life. It didn't mean that he actually was going to visit her; it just meant that he had made up to her. It was necessary to live alone for a while to find where his threads were placed in the weavings of fate.
The outside smelled rather nice. It was a secluded apartment. not truly in an apartment complex, but isolated and so small that it couldn't be considered a house. He was compelled to see what his "backyard" was like. His view from the front was only of the huge cities created by man's new, breathing mechanical life form.
His view from the back was anything but technology.
A step outside created the pleasing sound of the crunching snow under a wet boot. Relief from the world that existed beyond his back could be seen in the crooked smirk that dominated his face. Yugo was never good at smiling impulsively.
He inspected the outskirts of his own yards. They led far away, into an old sky that had survived repetitive abuse from the reckless humans. There was a solitary tree, in the middle of the evanescent drizzling snow and that's where the boy was.
It appeared almost natural at first. Yugo had mistaken it for a hole in the tree, for it was so small. But a child it was. Short dark brown and hair with yellow eyes all appeared to seem normal, were it not for the double black coats that he wore and the barcode on his left cheek. Blood trickled down a youthful forehead and a slim cut had been made in his right cheek, gushing out blood for such a small little insignificant cut.
The child smiled, as if he had been expecting Yugo all day long. He walked up casually but obviously in some pain. He stopped right in front of Yugo and smiled honestly. "About time you came around here", he spoke coldly.
"What. What are you doing here?" It was the only sensible question that would come out of his mouth.
The child merely laid his head on Yugo's chest and whispered, "Carry me."
**
He felt terrible for actually taking the child in. This meant that he wasn't going to live his life in the mollifying embrace of a radiant apartment that spent her winters curing those with insatiable pasts.
Yugo had carried the child into his apartment and sat him on the couch. He had spent hours watching and taking in the appearance of a child yet to age into the climatic advances of life. He was guessing silently that the child had to be either thirteen or fourteen. Somewhere around there.
Underneath the huge black coats was a frail child with barely enough meat to cover his bones. It seemed rather stupid or rather cruel of a parent to send their child out into the cold with just a white shirt and jeans.
The child woke up not because of the ardent flame that Yugo had started in the chimney place but because of the time he had spent inside of himself, healing his internal wounds. Staring now took place between child and adult. The throne of time took an utterly long pause, allowing the two to look at each other as if they were in some zoo made for human beings.
"What were you doing around my house?" He wasn't going to allow time for the child to charm his heart.
The child barely recognized the look of adamant fear inside his retinas and didn't spend time to adjust his eyes. "Give me a second to collect my bearings, would you?" The child spoke without innocence marring his words. It almost sounded cynical in its own way.
"What were you doing around my house?" Yugo shouted louder than before. Collect his bearings, my ass.
The child didn't answer and took his time, putting his legs over the couch, sitting up straight, and smiling rather unpleasantly. "I expired."
"You what?"
"I expired. You don't know anything about the expired children, do you? Of course you don't. If you did you would have given me a room and fed me immediately, because everyone knows that if you're not nice to me you'll get bad luck."
"I may not know much about technology, but I can smell a trick where it comes from. I'm not giving you anything unless you give me something first. You either a. bring me something nice or you b. give me information like what is your name and where did you come from."
There was a vitriolic glare in the boy's retinas, searing through Yugo's old battered shield. Yugo did not want to spend the rest of his life staring in those cold eyes. He managed for now, pretending to really look into the abyss of pupils that shrouded this child. It didn't take long for the child to break.
"An expired child is one who lives in the orphanage and is sold over to science until their expiration date is met. Then the child is killed before they can change. There, you got your damn explanation. Now tell me what you were doing around this house."
"I live here! Well. I've lived here for an hour, but I still live here. What were you doing around my house?"
"I escaped and got over here. Long description, right? This was probably the only place I could stay, anyway. I'm not fond of technology and once I saw your little house here, all quaint and humble-like, I decided 'that's the place I'm going to go to.' So, using my precious little mind-"
"You're getting blood all over my couch!"
"It's not my blood so I wouldn't worry over it, since you care so much about me! Look, are you going to be nice about this or do I have to scream and yell at you like a little child? I'm lost and I have no family. I've got nowhere to go. If you kick me out and I die, it'll all be your fault." The last sentence had been spoken with a sepulchral tone that endeared Yugo to look outside the window and not meet the child's eyes.
"Why should I care whether you live or not?"
"I had this friend back at the labs. I promised her that I would help her out. And now she's waiting for me. If I'm dead, she'll wait for me until they eventually kill her and she'll think that I meant to kill her when only my best concerns were out for her."
"Oh, so you've got a girl-"
"NO!" For a minute, Yugo could almost believe this child was a murderer, the glaring prospect of a choleric mind that was just out to destroy any who passed the line of fire circling his mind. "She and I. we're just friends. Nothing more than that. She's my friend and I want to protect her. Wouldn't you want to protect someone who you cared about; who wasn't a love interest, but just was. was a part of you?"
A wave of silence passed through discreetly. Yugo's eyes stayed glued to the window like a moth to a light. He was obviously taking deep consideration on some decision that would plan the future life of the child. It would bring out the new life in which he could live in or it would be the plain death that awaited this child outside of Yugo's home.
"Since you're bleeding all over it, you'll live on that couch. I'll get you a blanket and a pillow, but don't get too comfortable. If somebody wants you, I'm giving you to them. At night, you don't bug me, period. You sleep soundly if you want to stay. You got that?"
"Yeah." The child reclined on the couch and could finally actually relax. "I have one question: What are you going to name me?"
"What? You need a name now?"
"They called all of us child at the labs. We were child one, child two, child three. Then they got to child two the second and crap. So will you name me?"
"If you're not gone in two days, I'll name you. Is that clear?"
"Clear. I've got another question." Yugo rolled his eyes and wondered what the child could possibly want to know now. He had asked for one question. Now he wanted another. The next thing Yugo knew, he would ask for another and another and another. Before he knew it, he would be revealing his life story to this child.
"What am I going to call you?"
Chapter 1: Ballrooms of Mars
Life was emulated through thousands of wires that connected the mother earth to her respective elements, raging across the land and destroying that which she had given to the humans who had not played their subservient role. It was the game of destruction and decadence that she played, moving her pawn on the lines of the knight and destroying all of what used to be a regularly visited town with her storming tsunami. Her priest ravaged the good farm land with terrible soil and rain to wash out all of the vegetation.
The world had been at her revenge for millions of years, taking and giving, taking and giving. She pulled the strings on the back of her marionettes that swayed viciously in the dominating wind. She who brought the world to a stop with one wave of a hand and the earthquakes that followed her backhand.
Still man rebuilt his lodgings. It was a war between nature and mankind. Nature would destroy the few inches that humans and gained and then humans would regain those few lost qualities. What lived in between the lines was something that nature and mankind wanted nothing to do with.
Those that lived between the lines had been strange creatures that were not accepted in human terms, at the age of fifteen turning into a strange being, free of care or worry, only contained to this world by a fluke of whether they kept their original mind or not. These were the children who were taken in and, eventually, mutilated for what they represented: free will, anarchy, chaos, no law.
Is law truly important?
No, spoke the flaming crimson liquid that pulsated through a tube and into three tanks all held separate. Science was not affected by law in any way possible. This was the utmost highest rank and nobody could do anything about it, whether they were authority or not. Science always got away, like the Bonny and Clyde of jobs.
This is what kept a child from growing up into a normal person who went to college and earned a degree: the strange appearances from birth, the swift look in their eyes that held more vitriolic passions than innocence, and that constant reminder of the thing they would become in their prime age. Life was shut down for these children.
Not all children can get away. Labs are protected by five Carriers, men who have the strength of a bear and wear huge black coats for intimidation. Not only are there Carriers, but there is Nidhogg, the vicious beast that chews at the original tree of live, who searches for the lost children and when finding them, usually tears them to shreds. Even beyond Nidhogg is the ever present fear of the other children who have escaped and will find other children and sell them. The populace does nothing against this.
Thus, it was incredibly hard to believe that one child had actually broken his air-tight glass cage and spent his time wisely, stabbing the Carriers with a shard of glass to death. He struck fiercely, as if he were taking back all of his years in those deaths. All that mattered was that the Carriers were dead and the one thought that was spawned by death was always freedom. This was Freedom, which was out into the ever-present world that shunned the children and almost seemed like a paradise; if you thought about it in a haunting way, that is.
Being able to discard the bodies was almost like he was being awarded with a trophy of some sort. He didn't have to make a speech which was more relieving. He grabbed two of the large black coats and wrapped them around him and sat in silence to gain some warmth back. It wasn't everyday that you killed two Carriers, nor was it everyday that you got more to wear than a shirt and jeans in the deafening snow.
Finally, the child reclaimed his equilibrium and took a long time walking to the golden door of freedom. Two coats were heavy and the persistent thought of leaving them behind nagged at his conscious brain. But he would freeze to death outside without them. That's how they killed almost all of the escapees. Luckily, the killing hadn't reached his brain yet. The child did not know that his white shirt had been stained velvet red from the brutal grasp of freedom. He felt as if he were five minutes behind himself.
Today was Sunday. Sunday is the day when all of the scientists take the day off. Therefore, I am home free for the rest of the trip, if I have someplace to go. It was all figured out in his head, even if he couldn't completely register all that had gone around him. One of the first to actually escape.
He opened the door to the outside world and took in a few breaths of the new life that awaited him outside.
Life.
Precious, alluring life.
How you glitter among your pretty little stars.
How you can kill such beautiful young things.
**
It was a rather interesting apartment. Not one of those new ones that held almost every single technological advance that had ever come to light since the days of the humans. There were only three rooms inside, a reclining room, bedroom, and kitchen. It was all the man really needed. He had lived by himself since he was sixteen and had learned to deal with it.
Yes, the howling wind during winter bothered him when he was all alone. Sometimes he did wish for a companion, but if life was going to leave him to depend on only one person, he knew that it would have to be the soul that sat inside of his own body. If he ever worried about loneliness, he could always reminisce about the days with his father. When he was alone, his father would tell him stories until he fell asleep. Then he wasn't alone.
The new apartments were covered with technology that broke apart each day and the repair lines were always bugged. If you ever did get a repair man in, he'd only make the damage worse. They worked this way. It was the logic of corporations. Once the repair man made it worse, then you had to call the company and the company would offer a man worth more money than you earned in a week. The new and more expensive repair man would push one button and fix everything.
Ogami Yugo was more than intimidated by technology; he didn't trust it, period. He couldn't stand the fact that a machine made by man was doing everything for him, poisoning his food, creating a mess, and the AC turning automatically off when the heat outside got the worst. It was always a wonderful vision to see a humble apartment made like the old houses used to be made, back in the twentieth century.
"Is it all right?" the seller asked in a timid voice. He really wanted to get rid of this wonderful apartment that he probably thought was a dump. He had asked that question millions of times afterward and before the whole selling process. The seller was a man with trembling hands and a neurotic face that implied his own success with the technology of this future world.
Yugo nodded quickly, wishing desperately that the man would leave him in peace for once. He had an important phone call to make and he knew that if he spent anymore time with this flake then he'd miss her and probably never hear from her again.
"I really wanted to make it nice and I tidied it up and-"
"Leave. Now." He didn't want to sound so primitive, but he wanted this man out with haste. If he was going to stay in the apartment and twiddle his fingers, than Yugo was inclined to tear him up on the spot.
Without a word, the nervous man was out. He finally got the point, it seemed.
Yugo didn't spend another second thinking about him and grabbed the phone off of the office desk next to the red couch. He pressed the memorized numbers and was relieved to hear the alluring sound of a dial tone. Not that annoying buzz of the machine reading back the numbers you had already pressed.
"Hello?" he asked when he heard the sounds of children playing in the background.
"Why did you leave?" It was her. She had demanded an answer from him and he couldn't simply hang up and hope never to hear from her ever again. It wasn't in his nature to leave people hanging. He had to come up with some stupid answer.
"I'm not a people person, Alice. There are too many kids in that area. It was making me nervous. I had to get out of there. I had to get away from all of the people who lived there, I got bored of them. They were happy neighbors. I was offered this apartment and when I took one look at it, I felt as if I needed to live here. I'm sorry."
"You were my only childhood friend." Alice sounded as if she were about to cry with the last impending tears that were left between them. "You were the only person I could love."
"We all remember how that turned out", Yugo answered, somewhat sarcastically. "Just because we split. you know, went our own ways. doesn't mean we're not friends anymore. I can still check up on my little sister, right?"
Her chuckle sounded more than relieved; Alice sounded as if she had been refreshed with a new life. "Of course you can. I was waiting for you to ask that. So, I guess you'll come and visit from now on?"
"If I have your okay then maybe I will."
"You have my permission." With that, she hung up.
He could now put the phone down and plop into his new couch with a sigh of content. It wasn't just the idea of this twisted confession but more of a way of making up to the one girl who had been one of the sweetest he had ever known. Youth had skewered his precepts of friendship and he actually believed they could make it as a couple, but his own blood proved him wrong.
Yugo wasn't a person of habit, but more of necessity. It was necessary to make up to Alice to go on with life. It didn't mean that he actually was going to visit her; it just meant that he had made up to her. It was necessary to live alone for a while to find where his threads were placed in the weavings of fate.
The outside smelled rather nice. It was a secluded apartment. not truly in an apartment complex, but isolated and so small that it couldn't be considered a house. He was compelled to see what his "backyard" was like. His view from the front was only of the huge cities created by man's new, breathing mechanical life form.
His view from the back was anything but technology.
A step outside created the pleasing sound of the crunching snow under a wet boot. Relief from the world that existed beyond his back could be seen in the crooked smirk that dominated his face. Yugo was never good at smiling impulsively.
He inspected the outskirts of his own yards. They led far away, into an old sky that had survived repetitive abuse from the reckless humans. There was a solitary tree, in the middle of the evanescent drizzling snow and that's where the boy was.
It appeared almost natural at first. Yugo had mistaken it for a hole in the tree, for it was so small. But a child it was. Short dark brown and hair with yellow eyes all appeared to seem normal, were it not for the double black coats that he wore and the barcode on his left cheek. Blood trickled down a youthful forehead and a slim cut had been made in his right cheek, gushing out blood for such a small little insignificant cut.
The child smiled, as if he had been expecting Yugo all day long. He walked up casually but obviously in some pain. He stopped right in front of Yugo and smiled honestly. "About time you came around here", he spoke coldly.
"What. What are you doing here?" It was the only sensible question that would come out of his mouth.
The child merely laid his head on Yugo's chest and whispered, "Carry me."
**
He felt terrible for actually taking the child in. This meant that he wasn't going to live his life in the mollifying embrace of a radiant apartment that spent her winters curing those with insatiable pasts.
Yugo had carried the child into his apartment and sat him on the couch. He had spent hours watching and taking in the appearance of a child yet to age into the climatic advances of life. He was guessing silently that the child had to be either thirteen or fourteen. Somewhere around there.
Underneath the huge black coats was a frail child with barely enough meat to cover his bones. It seemed rather stupid or rather cruel of a parent to send their child out into the cold with just a white shirt and jeans.
The child woke up not because of the ardent flame that Yugo had started in the chimney place but because of the time he had spent inside of himself, healing his internal wounds. Staring now took place between child and adult. The throne of time took an utterly long pause, allowing the two to look at each other as if they were in some zoo made for human beings.
"What were you doing around my house?" He wasn't going to allow time for the child to charm his heart.
The child barely recognized the look of adamant fear inside his retinas and didn't spend time to adjust his eyes. "Give me a second to collect my bearings, would you?" The child spoke without innocence marring his words. It almost sounded cynical in its own way.
"What were you doing around my house?" Yugo shouted louder than before. Collect his bearings, my ass.
The child didn't answer and took his time, putting his legs over the couch, sitting up straight, and smiling rather unpleasantly. "I expired."
"You what?"
"I expired. You don't know anything about the expired children, do you? Of course you don't. If you did you would have given me a room and fed me immediately, because everyone knows that if you're not nice to me you'll get bad luck."
"I may not know much about technology, but I can smell a trick where it comes from. I'm not giving you anything unless you give me something first. You either a. bring me something nice or you b. give me information like what is your name and where did you come from."
There was a vitriolic glare in the boy's retinas, searing through Yugo's old battered shield. Yugo did not want to spend the rest of his life staring in those cold eyes. He managed for now, pretending to really look into the abyss of pupils that shrouded this child. It didn't take long for the child to break.
"An expired child is one who lives in the orphanage and is sold over to science until their expiration date is met. Then the child is killed before they can change. There, you got your damn explanation. Now tell me what you were doing around this house."
"I live here! Well. I've lived here for an hour, but I still live here. What were you doing around my house?"
"I escaped and got over here. Long description, right? This was probably the only place I could stay, anyway. I'm not fond of technology and once I saw your little house here, all quaint and humble-like, I decided 'that's the place I'm going to go to.' So, using my precious little mind-"
"You're getting blood all over my couch!"
"It's not my blood so I wouldn't worry over it, since you care so much about me! Look, are you going to be nice about this or do I have to scream and yell at you like a little child? I'm lost and I have no family. I've got nowhere to go. If you kick me out and I die, it'll all be your fault." The last sentence had been spoken with a sepulchral tone that endeared Yugo to look outside the window and not meet the child's eyes.
"Why should I care whether you live or not?"
"I had this friend back at the labs. I promised her that I would help her out. And now she's waiting for me. If I'm dead, she'll wait for me until they eventually kill her and she'll think that I meant to kill her when only my best concerns were out for her."
"Oh, so you've got a girl-"
"NO!" For a minute, Yugo could almost believe this child was a murderer, the glaring prospect of a choleric mind that was just out to destroy any who passed the line of fire circling his mind. "She and I. we're just friends. Nothing more than that. She's my friend and I want to protect her. Wouldn't you want to protect someone who you cared about; who wasn't a love interest, but just was. was a part of you?"
A wave of silence passed through discreetly. Yugo's eyes stayed glued to the window like a moth to a light. He was obviously taking deep consideration on some decision that would plan the future life of the child. It would bring out the new life in which he could live in or it would be the plain death that awaited this child outside of Yugo's home.
"Since you're bleeding all over it, you'll live on that couch. I'll get you a blanket and a pillow, but don't get too comfortable. If somebody wants you, I'm giving you to them. At night, you don't bug me, period. You sleep soundly if you want to stay. You got that?"
"Yeah." The child reclined on the couch and could finally actually relax. "I have one question: What are you going to name me?"
"What? You need a name now?"
"They called all of us child at the labs. We were child one, child two, child three. Then they got to child two the second and crap. So will you name me?"
"If you're not gone in two days, I'll name you. Is that clear?"
"Clear. I've got another question." Yugo rolled his eyes and wondered what the child could possibly want to know now. He had asked for one question. Now he wanted another. The next thing Yugo knew, he would ask for another and another and another. Before he knew it, he would be revealing his life story to this child.
"What am I going to call you?"