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The distance between us…
…is a mere three feet. Not important. Inconsequential.
She sits there with her sketchbook and draws. I watch from the shadows, something akin to curiosity stirring within me.
"Are you drawing more memories?"
"Yes," she replies, eyes never leaving the paper. "Marluxia wants new ones… for an experiment," she adds, and her voice is laced with pain and regret.
I get up and peer over her shoulder, marveling at the life-like quality of the figures sketched there. "Are those for the Keyblade Master?"
Naminé's pencil stops moving across the paper, her hand lays motionless but tense still. The faces of her last drawing are still blank, but the rest is awfully detailed; there's no mistaking the characters depicted there.
"No, these are for Riku."
I stiffen at the mention of my unwitting twin.
"What's the experiment, then?" That revolving feeling of near curiosity, returns now. I still can't see her face, but I know she's close to tears; her shoulder blades twitch and her head is bowed. I take one more step and put my arms around her.
"Tell me."
Her head swivels, but she doesn't push me away yet. "Marluxia wants to see what would happen if—if they thought they were more than friends," her voice is a thready whisper, and there's no definitive emotion in it.
"Ah," I sigh into her hair. The distance between us is nonexistent now, but it's still an illusion. Just like with Real Thing and the Keyblade Master. Naminé's drawn them really close, touching even, but in reality they remain worlds apart.
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