Hello hello! It's bubbles again with another chapter of 1 Hundred! Thank you and farewell to the 44th president of the U.S Barack Hussein Obama II. You have done well for your people. And hello to Trump era.

As always, a BIG (BIG) thanks to Tears of Hearts and Ravenfeather613 for reviewing! You guys are what make me enjoy writing~

- OH AND GUYS PLS CHECK OUT PREVIOUS CHAP, I UPDATED IT WITH EXTRA STUFF! ADDED ONTO THE END OF PREVIOUS CHAP! -

Now ladies and gentlemen, please sit back, relax and enjoy the show…

Sitting silently at the table was a quieter than usual, now seven-year-old boy whose arms and legs were no longer thin sticks. Ever so slightly, he swung his legs and slumped forward so that his chin rested on his folded arms. He could feel that his arms weren't as bony and uncomfortable to rest on anymore. He first started noticing that his arms and legs had developed something rather firm and squishable the moment he landed his first punch on the old man during combat training. He could clearly remember how the man raised his eyebrows, eyes widening in surprise, exclaiming a word of congrats.

Ever since that spark of epiphany, he's come to realise a lot of things has changed. One thing was that he's definitely become stronger, not to mention healthier too. His calves had some degree of curve to them, and his ribs weren't as obvious as before, there was also this weird squishable and soft thing that the man liked squishing around his cheeks.

Not only did he gain more body mass, his outlook towards the underground society has also gotten better. Before he met the man, he could remember that everything, everywhere looked like death to him. It was either kill or be killed. Nobody could live a fair life.

But now, he hasn't seen that gruesome, unfair version of the underground for ages; ever since the man started taking care of him. The man changed him. If the man wasn't there at that time, he would still be stuck in that filthy, narcotic environment. He might be still running away with his life barely in his grasp, his birthday still completely unknown, still frailly weak and thin, still ignorant about everything. If it wasn't for the man's patience and teachings, he would definitely not had the guts to go out alone to buy bread yesterday.

He wouldn't even think as far as to buying it; stealing it would be the first thing that would fly into his mind. Not only stealing, killing would be plan B if plan A failed.

He might've already lost his life to malnutrition or physical abuse from his uncle if he wasn't here now.

The brighter side of the underground, his life wouldn't have been discovered if the man wasn't there. The boy also knew another thing: he gets this weird, fuzzy, and weirdly warm feeling when he's with the man. But the problem is he has no idea what it means. He's come across many different new feelings that the man helped him experience through the course of time.

He really wondered why.

CRASHhhHHHHhh-

The sudden loud sound of disaster nearly scared the living daylights out of the boy, who jolted painfully in his hard wooden chair. A brain-searing pain raced through his system due to the sudden tensing of his muscles because of the thunderous crash from somewhere else in the house.

If it wasn't him who made the noise…then it must be the crippled guy! Knowing the fact that something must've happened to him, the boy's blood ran freezing cold.

That was another feeling that felt was to him. Feeling fear for someone else. Especially towards the man. It's as if he's feeling hot and cold at the same time; the warm fuzzy feeling and the blood chilling, heavy feeling.

He stumbled out of his chair in a panicked hurry, skidding around the corners and running towards the man's room. Each step he took seemed to add another tonne of dread and all sorts of negative feelings onto his heart, but there was also a part of him that screamed out 'he's going to be just fine!'

'What if he's unconscious? What if there's blood? What if he's…dead?!' were the string of thoughts that repeated in his mind. He couldn't stop himself from worrying.

His eyes glazed over when he stopped outside the room. He didn't want to see what happened.

The boy got one thing right; it was the man who made the noise. Except he wasn't dead, or bleeding, or unconscious.

Though the man was on the ground and in slight pain. "O-ow… gah!" he grumbled from a mess of fallen books. He had one of those thought-lapses where he forgot his left arm was gone and tried using it to support himself, causing him to lose balance due to the sudden transition of weight.

Uncomfortable under the mess, he felt a presence and craned his neck painstakingly up to get a glimpse of the person standing in the doorway. "– o-oh. It's you. It's nothing to worry about… I sorta tripped and-"

Before he could explain fully, the boy snapped out of his trance and launched himself through the books towards him. He buried his face in the man's chest and wrapped his arms as far as he could around his waist. 'Of course it's something to worry about, damn it!'

The man freed his arm from under the boy and raised it away from him. He stared down in confusion at the huge bundle of raven black hair. "What are you- Oowww! Book! Stabbing into back!"

The boy didn't care if a puny book was stabbing painfully into his back. He wanted to listen to his heart beating, to make sure that he was alive. He's just relieved that the man alright…it was as if it was the time when he ran down the street unbelievably early in the morning to find the man again. He pinched the man's cheeks as punishment for making his heart sink into his stomach with worry.

"Pinching my cheek…making me suffer the pain of having a book jabbed into my back…" The man muttered with irritation. "…You're definitely coming shopping with me today." He chopped the boy's neck with a solid hit, half-heartedly stunning him.

With the boy's grip loosening, he propped himself up and observed the pile of books that happened to topple out of their places. He sighed tiresomely at the mess. "This is going to be a pain in the ass to clean up… but I'm going to do that later!" Peeling the boy away from his chest, he slung him over his shoulder and stepped away from the mess as if it was never there…

'Heh…If he was here…he'll kill me then bring me back to life just to tell me to clean it again if he saw this uncleaned mess…' The man thought flippantly. "But then again…he's…" His eyes trailed to the dazed face that's hanging upside down. His gaze fazed slightly when he saw the slight similarities between the boy and the person that has been clouding his mind ever since he took the kid in.

He shoved the hesitant and diffident thoughts away and trudged towards the front door. He can still clearly remember the day when he came in through that door with an unconscious stick like kid and the loaf of warm bread that he tried stealing. Now looking at the same kid who came through that door now, it's almost as if looking at a completely different boy. A boy that became a part of his life rather than an external entity which he could simply give away. He's taught the boy many things that he's been taught himself, it was almost as if the boy was his…

…The boy was just someone he really, really cared about.

"Why'd you dump all this on me." The boy grumbled. His neck still ached painfully from the powerful chop that rendered him to be an unmoving lump of meat for a few minutes, and just as he could move again, the man gave him two paper bags filled with random groceries to carry around. He has no idea how he could shop so fast in such a short time, not to mention carrying him around.

"Not my fault that I only have one arm." He replied. He gave the boy a playful grin. "And you're a lot stronger now, so why not?"

The boy glared icily at the man and sped up his walking pace, walking ahead. "We're going home." He stated with little patience.

"O-Oi…Wait up-" He called, but the boy's mind was elsewhere.

He saw a woman calling out to a child about his age. "Nick…! Come here." Her voice pealed out as a gentle assertion, cooing the child to come over to her. At the strange word 'Nick', the child started paying attention.

The boy observed the scene with curiosity. The man's never taught him any 'Nick' word and wondered what it meant, and why it caught the other's attention. Without knowing, he slowly came to a stop and stared as the two walking away.

The man caught up to him and looked at him cautiously, slightly confused why he stopped, as usually when he called for him to wait up he would walk even faster. He slung his drawstring bag onto his shoulder and lightly tapped the boy's head.

He noticed that the boy was gazing at the mother and son walk away. "What's up?" he cursorily asked.

"…" The boy looked up at him. "Hey, what does 'Nick' mean?"

"That's the kid's name." He replied. He wondered what the boy was trying to get at.

"So…your name is 'old man'?"

Upon hearing that the boy is still referring to him as 'old man', he bonked him hardly on the head. The boy immediately shot him a spiteful glare.

"I'm not old and 'old man' is not a name." He stated.

"Crippled man." The boy suggested.

"…" He looked at empty sleeve. "'Crippled man' is not a name either."

The boy furrowed his brows in thought. "Then…" He started walking again, slowly. He swivelled around and looked straight at the man's unfathomable green-blue eyes. "…what is a name? Do I have one? Does everyone have one?"

For a fleeting moment, the man realised that they didn't know each other's name…and considering that the boy was asking him for a definition of 'name' then does that mean he doesn't have one? After all these months they've been together…

Then the boy asked one final question. "What's my name?"

The man's head swam with thoughts, trying to piece together things that have been bugging him ever since he arrived at the underground. 'His looks like him…his background story fits his…but I've never been sure too sure. If only he had a name then…but if his name turns out to be his…would that mean the moment I died…I-I…'

He opened his mouth to reply, "You-" but it never fully came out. Before anything else could come out, he felt the blood drain away from his head, the uncomfortable feeling of light-headedness, causing his sense of balance to do a 360. Different coloured sparks clouded his vision, temporarily disabling his sight. Adding to the sense of dizziness that seemed to affect his entire body, all he could hear was loud ringing as if he was standing in a room full of alarm bells that went off at the same time.

Lowering his stance and pressing his right hand to his head was the best thing he could do to prevent himself from toppling to the ground, wherever that is. It was almost as if all his senses that connected him to the outside world gave up.

And he sort of understood why they would suddenly stop working.

He's been solely relying on concentrated black tea to stay awake these few days, and he's barely received any proper sleep as well. Whenever he closed his eyes, realistically clear dreams would plague his slumber. They may not be scary; in fact, most of them aren't, but they make him recall the utterly heart-wrenching feelings of loss and guilt that he had done his best to evade over the past few years. So he's been trying to not sleep altogether.

Which he now know was a pretty bad idea.

He's so tired that his body doesn't even bother registering the feeling anymore, and doesn't bother to until everything snaps under the physical strain of pushing his body too far beyond its capabilities. Sometimes people learn best via the hard way.

To the boy, it was like an internal world apocalypse when the man pressed his fingers to his head in what he thought was frustration. But as soon as he started stumbling sideways towards the wall, collapsing against it in the progress, and not yelling at him for asking weird questioned, he knew something else was happening. Something that was definitely not good.

All those dreaded thoughts and feelings that appeared when the man crashed into the bookshelf that morning started resurfacing and getting ten times heavier. He could feel his heart palpating rapidly, his breath quickening and he could hear his heart distinctively loud hammering against his eardrums.

"H-Hey! W-what- Are you o-ok? W-what's wrong!" He stammered in a hurry, dropping his paper bags in the progress. He could clearly make out that his eyes were unfocused, and despite it being relatively cold, there was perspiration on his forehead, his face slightly flushed red as well. "H-hey! Don't do this without t-telling me!" he yelled anxiously.

'WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO HE'S GOING TO DIE-'

Just as things couldn't possibly get even worse, the boy picked up the sound of metal clashing against brick, lots of footsteps and the shouts of drunkards coming from a smaller alleyway leading onto the main road where they were. Having been around environments where he hears things like that for six years, he knew that they were extremely bad news, even towards a man struggling for consciousness and a kid that has had enough experience to bring one of them down; only one, not a group armed with metal bats and bars.

'WE'RE BOTH GOING TO DIE! HELP! NEED TO FIND HELP!'

The boy grabbed the man's shoulders and shook them with his body weight, desperately trying to snap him out of his agony. "H-Hey! C-come on!" The boy was shaking him vigorously, but it seems like it's not working at all. If they don't get going soon they won't be able to get anywhere afterwards. They would both be lumps of dead meat on the splattered cruelly across the ground.

The boy didn't even try dragging him. That would make them both bigger targets. He could only wait painstakingly for the man to clear up again, hoping that the gang wouldn't come too fast…

"P-please!"

I promise the story isn't going to end in the next few chapters. It's not time yet.

Please FF and R!

*Oh and guys, please tell me any plot holes you find, or anything that needs to be explained!*

Next week will be a packed schedule for me (Australia day, dentist, Chinese New Year, getting my social life back in check = 2 days to write) so I will be pretty mucked up to write good quality stuff -3- (damn social life and their shenanigans these days)

Love y'all for reading this~

Bubblepop32 out!

Ps. Pls excuse any grammatical errors or mistakes!