Disclaimer: NO.6 is not mine.


11. The Morning

I watched Nezumi smoothly bringing the spoonful of soup up to his lips—how he could make such characterless movement seem so graceful was beyond me—before speaking up, "What are you gonna do today?"

He cocked his head at me as he swallowed the consommé, "Maybe to the theatre."

"Oh, what for?" I really didn't expect him to answer me with something concrete—'nothing' or 'none of your business' was more like it. The fact that he gave me a proper reply made me, well, happy.

"None of your business."

I scowled.

That was when my mother stepped into the dining room, her hair damp. She'd cooked us breakfast—Nezumi had insisted that he cooked, but she had waved him away from the kitchen and told him to explore the house some more instead—and had gone to shower afterwards.

Did I mention that though we didn't stay in our house in Lost Town, we still kept it? My mother insisted that she wanted to keep doing her bakery business and our house in Chronos was kind of secluded and private as compared to the other one, which was located in a neighbourhood with streets busy with people. It meant better business, and admittedly, she'd gotten herself more than a few loyal customers around the area, whom she'd be sad to lose. So she would leave the house to her bakery very early in the morning and start baking her bread and cakes together with two other workers she had employed to help her run the shop.

I had to say, I was glad that my mother found happiness in doing what she liked for the people she liked—like that girl Lili who frequented her shop almost every single day, I heard that mom had even started teaching her to bake after she finished her lessons at school. After what had happened two and a half years ago—no, after the time when we were banished to the Lost Town, I really wasn't sure if my mom had been fine with everything. I knew that she had always been a strong woman, but I hadn't been there when I had been off in the West Block. I hadn't been there to see how she had coped. But seeing how happy she was now, I'd like it to be a reward for what she had gone through in those hard 4 years. She really deserved this happiness.

Today, unusually, she was still at home to see me go off to university. Usually, I would be the one seeing her off to the bakery, but this morning she had called her employees to inform that she would be coming in late. I know it was because of the addition to our house members. She was definitely dying to get to know more about him, if the way she had kept us at the dining table during dinner last night was any indication.

Nezumi didn't seem to mind her attention. If I hadn't known better, I would deem his calling my mom 'Shion mama' as flirting—and what with my mom actually giggling and told him to call her by her name instead.

I guess his charm with women—or people, if he wanted to—still hadn't faded, or worse, gotten stronger.

"Shion, shouldn't you be leaving for school soon?" mom inquired, glancing at the digital clock on the wall.

"Yeah," I stood up from my seat and brought my plate and cutleries to the dishwasher, followed by Nezumi right behind me, doing the same.

He was on my tail as I walked to the front door, grabbing my bag from the table and getting my shoes on.

"I'll walk you to school," he said. "I wanna see how it looks like."

Oh? I thought, So he really didn't spy on me in those 2 years?

"Okay," I said, kinda pleased that we get to talk more during the journey.

I kissed my mom goodbye—Nezumi smiling oh-so-charmingly to her and I could swear I saw pink on my mom's cheeks—before stepping out of the house into the morning sunlight, my dark-haired friend right on my heels.


A/N: Sorry if this chapter ends rather awkwardly/abruptly! I don't like to have very long chapters for this fic and I'd rather save the next events for the next chapter(s?). So I decided to cut it there and write the rest in a new chapter.

Anyway, I hope you still like this one! Didn't really mean to elaborate many things on Karan, but what's done's done.

Looking forward to your reviews! Thank you so much to everyone who's subscribed to this fic, and also to those reading this fic at all hahaha and BIG thank yous to reviewers! I love getting inputs about my writing, be it the content or my writing style on its own :)

Please look forward to the next chapters! They should be up soon.

0512 iluvafjk