This takes place post-game, so spoilers, obviously. But specifically, this one-shot was inspired by Shu's 30 km Around the World event, where he and Yuki find the outer walls. That was the big… event of that event, but the part that really grabbed my imagination was the conversation they had leading up to it, where they realized some of their childhood memories were false. That idea—and the identity crises that would probably stem from it, really grabbed ahold of me. So here we are.
Small Worlds
The muscles in her legs burned. Sweat was making her t-shirt stick to her back. Her chest was starting to get tight.
Natsuno pushed herself harder.
These sensations were all so familiar. They mirrored the experiences she'd had of so many afternoon track practices. Experiences that hadn't really happened…
She'd had almost two years to get used to it—the knowledge that her whole life before they'd awoken from their pods had been spent in a virtual world—but lingering on it too long still caused her chest to tighten in a different way. Her mom with her kind smile and endless patience… Her dad with all his cheesy jokes… Her little brothers with all their energy and spirit. They were all fake? How was she supposed to just accept that?
There was the sound of skittering rocks and loose dirt behind her. And then a gasped out, "Ah! Natsuno-san, please wait up a moment!"
She slowed her pace until she came to a more natural stop, just the way she'd been coached. When she finally turned back to the boy behind her on the trail, she was breathing hard.
Keitaro had righted his footing and was looking up at her, appreciating this brief reprieve. The hill had steepened drastically in the past half mile or so, and he'd found himself struggling to keep up with her. But there was only fondness in his eyes as he observed the girl before him. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion. It only took a moment or two alone with his thoughts for his own to flush for another reason.
Having caught his breath, he cleared his throat. He'd emerged from his pod without his usual hat—or the scar that had prompted him to start wearing one, for that matter. But the nervous habit to hide it had been harder to forego. He ducked his head on reflex before reminding himself that it was just Natsuno. He met her eyes with a smile.
"When you suggested we take advantage of our day off to go on a hike, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind…" He chuckled a little. "You put my military training to shame."
Natsuno huffed out a little laugh of her own. "Oh. Sorry about that, Keitaro-kun."
She shuffled her feet, a little bit out of guilt—she had kind of just taken off once her thoughts had gotten to be too much—a little bit because she was ready to get going again. "I think we're almost at the top, though. Come on!"
She held out a hand, not backtracking but leaning down to him. Keitaro didn't need any extra motivation to stride forward and take it.
He almost expected her to ease back into a run, but she let him catch up and they chose a mutual—if still demanding—pace. With the incline, it left them breathing heavily enough to dissuade conversation… But she never let go of his hand. Even if they were both rather sweaty.
RS-13 Alpha had turned out to be a beautiful place. It frustrated Natsuno to no end that they'd barely been able to explore it. There was just so much work to be done.
Not to understate how grateful she was for the technology that had been left to them! Their pods had resided in the center of a perfectly habitable facility. Their spaceship—as Natsuno had insisted they all call it—had come stocked with medicine, food (in the form of variably gross rations), and—most importantly—machines that were prepped to transform raw materials like grass or soil into items like tools or clothing. Future technology was pretty wild. Or… She guessed it was technology from the past now.
Some, like Okino, had jumped right into analyzing the available tech, seeing the limits of what could be done with it and producing new things all the time. Others… namely, anyone who'd been raised to believe they'd been born before the 2000s… didn't take to it quite so naturally. But there was plenty of land to farm once those tools had been produced. And they'd all gained a greater appreciation of their individual skillsets.
Iori had become quite the interior decorator once they'd realized their facility had a structure that could be rearranged if you pushed the right buttons. (She was quick to defend that it would be a useful skill to hone for when they got around to developing and laying out towns.) Nenji had proven to be their best angler and much preferred the trips to the beach and lakes over plowing a field. Megumi had taken over nearly all the kitchen duties. And there was plenty of harvesting and gathering to do from the native plants in the area for the pilots who hadn't found a particular niche.
Past-pilots, she reminded herself. Sometimes the fact that they were all managing to coexist this well without some world-ending threat looming over their heads was the most unbelievable thing of all.
"Wow," Keitaro breathed beside her. They had reached the top of the little mountain Natsuno had wanted to climb. It wasn't the tallest peak, but the view below was still breathtaking. From up here, they could see all that encompassed their new world. All the developed parts. All that they'd accomplished so far.
She still hadn't released his hand. She squeezed it. "Amazing, right?"
She could sense just a second of hesitation before he squeezed her hand back. Keitaro's tone was almost reverent. "From up here… it all looks so small."
Their grasp on each other drifted apart as they moved to settle back against the tree line. This mountain wasn't tall enough to be capped with snow or anything. The trail they'd trekked up had been a rough, natural one, surrounded by a sparse pine forest all the way to the top. It was just set back far enough at the peak that when they sat down like this, all they could see was the sky stretching out ahead of them.
Keitaro released a breath in a peaceful sort of sigh. Drying sweat was making Natsuno feel a bit chilled, but this was comfortable. It had been a while since they'd just hung out like this. Though their free days coincided, (Iori had designed the work schedule, and she was sure none of it was actually coincidence) something always seemed to get in the way.
As a result, their 'relationship' didn't feel like a concrete thing just yet. Not like it was with some of the others. Juro and Megumi were practically married! Had been from the moment they'd all awoken. She and Keitaro on the other hand… Well, she'd only just managed to convince him a few months ago that surely they knew each other well enough by now to be on a first-name basis. (And he'd been a blushing mess when she had, but Natsuno wasn't complaining. His awkwardness was honestly kind of adorable sometimes.)
Keitaro let his head rest back against the tree bark but then hunched forward and twisted to eye the rough surface.
"What is it?"
"Just an odd mark," he murmured.
She looked herself and saw a dent in the bark. Almost like it had been struck by a rock or something. He was right. It was odd. Made her wonder if two of the others had come up here and gotten into a fight or something. She just couldn't puzzle out how it might have occurred naturally. But whatever. She would have given it a mental shrug and returned to their cloud-gazing… if not for the faraway expression on her companion's face.
"Keitaro-kun? What's wrong?"
"Huh? Oh, uh, nothing." His focus snapped back to her, but he couldn't seem to resist another glance at the spot. And his eyes looked so sad…
Natsuno gave him a sudden bump with her shoulder, startling him. Her voice took on a lighter, playful tone, trying to coax it out of him. "Come on… You can tell me."
He made a soft sound deep in his throat, acknowledging this. "It just… reminded me of something. Back home… When I was still preparing to go off to war… When… When Chihiro was still my Chihiro…"
Natsuno winced but just managed to keep it off her face. The tiny, reawakened professor was a subject they all avoided around Keitaro, almost unconsciously, for exactly this reason. Like flipping a switch, he looked so sad… She wanted to take his hand again but didn't want to interrupt him.
"Chihiro was playing in the Kurabe's house one day, fighting invisible monsters… She accidentally put a dent like this in the pillar in their dining room. Tamao-san's father had a short temper. He really laid into her for it. Afterwards, she ran and hid in the closet in the guest bedroom. I remember I spent over an hour sitting on the floor of that room, trying to coax her out… Natsuno-san?"
Keitaro's retelling had taken on a lighter, fond tone by the end, but the details had washed over Natsuno like a bucket of ice water. All the feelings and troubling thoughts she'd come running up here to avoid flooded her chest until the pressure was almost unbearable. As if to try and alleviate this pressure, tears sprung to her eyes. They spilled over before she could stop them, and the first sob was quick to follow.
Keitaro's horrified expression prompted guilt to bubble up in her chest as well, but there just wasn't room for it right now. She brought a hand up to brush away some of the tears. Natsuno wasn't usually the type to break down like this. She needed to get a hold of herself. But it was no use. Not just yet.
Keitaro hesitated for just a moment before reaching out a hand to place gently on her back. Under other circumstances, she might have found it a little funny. They were already practically pressed up side to side against each other after all, leaning up against the same tree. But the way things were, it was just… sweet. When he pulled her closer, rested her forehead against his chest, she could feel how fast his heart was beating.
He was good at this. Whenever something had spooked her as a child, Yuki-chan would also pull her close, but she'd rush to fill the air with words, talking about anything and everything to distract her. And it would work, but there was something about Keitaro's method… No matter how much her tears might fray at his nerves, he remained reserved. A steady, silent presence. He simply let her cry it out. Natsuno wouldn't have thought so before, but it was… comforting.
His resolve really was something else. She felt like her breakdown lasted forever… but Keitaro didn't budge until her wave of emotions finally receded. He held her steady as she pulled back, his hands warm on her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," they said in unison, their voices equally shaky.
Natsuno laughed awkwardly. "What are you apologizing for?"
"W-well… For… For whatever I said wrong."
She shook her head sadly, the embarrassment giving way to a weighty melancholy. "There's nothing wrong about it… I've just been thinking a lot lately about the… the simulation."
She was sure Keitaro's grimace mirrored her own. It wasn't anyone's favorite topic. But…
"That's understandable," he replied reasonably. "After all, we all have more than a decade's worth of memories from that place. Even if it was mostly fake… we can't be expected to just forget our whole lives as we knew them."
Natsuno drew her knees in a little closer. "When we were still inside, getting ready for the final battle… Yuki-chan told me how she and Amiguchi-kun explored the outer walls. While they were there, they started talking about childhood memories—how they had some of the exact same ones, even though they'd lived two totally separate lives until right before the invasion. It was too similar to be a coincidence."
"Manipulated memories," Keitaro murmured gravely in confirmation. "I've heard some of the others discussing it."
"I've tried not to think about it too much," Natsuno admitted. "It's just… scary, you know? Like, if my memories aren't real… then who even am I?"
"Natsuno-san…"
"That story you just told," she cut in before he could try to reassure her. If she didn't get her thoughts out now, she knew she'd be quick to bury them again. "About a year before we met, my grandfather came to stay with us for a week. He's really strict, and my little brothers were constantly getting in trouble with him. One day, they were chasing each other around with my dad's old metal baseball bat. But then Shiro—the younger of the two—accidentally banged into the pillar in our dining room. It left this huge dent, and our grandpa freaked out. Afterwards… Shiro went and hid in my closet. I remember I kept glancing at the clock by my bed. We sat like that for more than an hour. I finally managed to convince him to come out by promising to make him pancakes for dinner."
Keitaro's reassurances had slipped from his tongue. He looked shaken. "Tamao-san made a special dessert that night…"
Natsuno smiled at him sadly, and the urge to comfort him almost made that smile crumple again. "It's just… In the whole group, I'm the only one who had younger brothers. My memories of them… I was sure that at least those were really mine, you know?"
"That's… disconcerting," he said at last, once he'd had a moment to process.
She bumped him with her shoulder again, but her heart felt a little lighter. The wave of fondness hit her just as hard as the tougher emotions had. "Yeah, but you mean that in the 'fascinating thing you'd like to study' sort of way."
"W-well…" He blushed and trailed off, but her responding giggle was genuine.
They settled back into the comfortable silence they'd begun with. Once Keitaro had tamed his flushed cheeks, he cleared his throat. "Natsuno-san, I'm not sure what it means that some of our memories were implanted or manipulated by Universal Control. We're all still so different, it's hard to say why it deemed certain tiny experiences important enough to replicate across our different lives."
She wanted to giggle again. When he got like this, she didn't find it terribly hard to believe his original self had had a hand in the high-tech research that had gotten them here. But she held it back. His pondering wasn't done.
"Amiguchi-kun spoke of ordinary childhood memories. Peaceful days. In those instances, perhaps the simulation was just trying to keep the balance—add credence to the belief that we truly were ordinary kids living ordinary lives. But maybe some of the others…"
He trailed off, lost in thought.
"The others?" she prodded curiously.
"I was just thinking that perhaps some of our shared experiences were purposely constructed," he answered, and his smile was surprisingly serene. "We were all that was left of humanity, after all. Perhaps the simulation had been coached to nurture certain personality traits in each of us."
"It would've been really tragic if we'd gotten this far just to self-destruct again," she agreed.
"There was quite the age gap between Chihiro and myself. I certainly honed my patience helping to take care of her."
"It was the same for me," Natsuno realized. "Until my brothers were born, I was kind of your typical spoiled only child. My parents really indulged me whenever they could. And my friends sort of took care of me too, the way you'd look out for a younger, more naïve friend, even though we were all the same age. Then when my brothers came around… I'd never known anything so innocent and fragile. It made me more responsible, you know? More independent."
There were plenty of jokes he could have cracked about her sense of responsibility… Running off to another time at a moment's notice at the prospect of a real-life alien encounter… but all she got in response was a fond smile. She was grateful. It was comforting to think all those years of memories had been for something—and something noble, even. But a tide of grief was still pressing in on her heart, leaving a heavy feeling in her stomach. Perhaps with time, it would become easier. For now, she was happy to leave this conversation where it was.
She jumped to her feet with a speed she knew would surprise him, stretching her arms over her head. "Well, that's enough of that. Come on—the sun is starting to set. You don't want to try going down that trail in the dark, do you?"
Keitaro didn't need any further convincing. He let her lead the way, and before they were even halfway home, he'd slipped his hand back into hers.
Review please!
I don't own 13 Sentinels.
This is the first one I've written that's set in the post-game, and it was cause for all sorts of canon-anxiety. ^^' They tell you so little about what their lives will be like afterwards in the game itself… Writing the worldbuilding bits was just a constant mental stream of 'Am I contradicting something they did share? Is this plausible at all? Is this something I think is canon but is actually from someone else's fanfiction I read?' I think it turned out okay, though…
