Xing Huo spends a lot of time staring at the boy in the test tube.
She's seen him grow, suspended in water but somehow breathing, motionless for a long time but slowly, slowly, only to her who has observed him for so long, starting to move more. It's a twitch of the fingers here, an eye movement there, a slight lean from the spot he'd occupied a moment ago and still it is progress. He is waking up, she can tell, even though he should not be waking up for a long time still.
She knows that this boy is the original soul, though halved. If she had not been told it so many times by her creator she would know it still from the slight magic she holds, enough to see, if she looks just right, the seal broken on his chest, the one which matches the one, dimmer, on the clone's.
She recognises it on herself, the mark of a clone.
It is why she is here, with him, rather than outside helping with anything else her creator has planned. She knows little, if she is honest with herself, beyond the basics of what he is intending to do. There is something comforting to her about that, about the lack of responsibility which comes with knowing nothing.
She has no soul of her own, not even a split of one, and yet she does not crumble away like happened to the girl's body so many times or shatter into one million pieces as had the other clones of the boy. She does not know why she was successful, though she thinks that she should somehow when she has the slightest edge of motivation fizzing at the edges of her mind.
Staying here stabilises her, perhaps.
They are trapped in an instant here, insulated from the passage of time though they witness it in the correct order, going from start to end like a string of beads pulled taut, each one pulling the next. She cannot fall apart here, no time passing to allow it. She doesn't mind that though she supposes that she wouldn't mind falling apart either.
Sometimes she sees things which almost let her feel. A boy whose right eye changes from blue to yellow several scenes after she first sees him, two children, pink and blue, a mokona, the one which does not show up on their viewscreen, the few non-human creatures that she has seen in her life.
She wonders if they are somehow messages from her original or else something to manipulate her just as her creator would if he knew what she was seeing.
Xing Huo has said nothing so far and does not plan to say more.
There is a sentiment within her which prevents it, a strange desire to see the dream end though she does not truly know what it means. The words roll regardless in her head, like a rock being tumbled by the ocean until it permeates the waters it is held by.
Xing Huo looks down at her hand, pale and unmarked, used for nothing.
She wonders if Yuuko feels the same tiredness, if that is why she is standing still, soulless but intact, content.
If she is a pawn for the witch too she hopes that she serves her well.