A/N: Nezumi reflects on his emotions - or lack there of - during his first night with Shion when they are children.
This room was a lot warmer than Nezumi was used to. The bed...it was too soft. Nezumi had never had a bed like this. He wondered how he wasn't sinking through the mattress to the floor. The blankets felt so heavy on top of him, but it was a welcome weight. Nezumi felt so light and empty, he was sure that the comforter was keeping him from floating away.
That's when the feeling stabbed Nezumi in-between his ribs, causing him to lose his breath. Who was this person that had caused him to feel this way? Nezumi had always felt so...full. Full of hatred, full of regret, full of sorrow, full of fear... But, as he lay here with this strange, young boy, he felt so empty.
He didn't feel happiness, but he didn't feel resentment. He just felt...depraved of feeling anything. Nezumi was a flower, bending in the breeze with the rustling grass. A flower did not feel pain when a bee came to collect nectar; a flower did not hope that someday it would be plucked by someone who would love it. A flower simply existed, took in sunlight, and felt the cool breeze.
Nezumi felt, in that moment, like he was laying in a field of tall grass that stretched up to the sky. He felt bathed in the radiating warmth of the sun, and indulged in the scents of mulch, lilac, and grass. This felt like home. And amidst the grass, just within his reach, was this odd boy, sleeping so peacefully.
Unable to resist the urge, Nezumi squeezed the boy's hand. 'Who are you?' he wondered. This boy that had sutured his wounds, fed him, and given him a place to stay. This person who had, most likely, sacrificed his future just to have a moment with this street rat. Who was this person? Was he just as lonely and tormented as Nezumi? And had this night in Nezumi's presence also brought him a feeling of relief and emptiness?
He recalled witnessing the boy scream into the storm, mingled with the moans of the wind and the cries of the Moondrop.
There was a longing, deep in Nezumi's rib cage, somewhere he hadn't felt in a long time. The empty husk within himself called out to know more about this boy. Although Nezumi knew he would leave before the boy could awaken in the morning, there was a hunger to know that their paths would cross again.
'Who are you? Why do I want to know more about you? Why do you make me feel this way?'
