"Something's bothering you."

He was back in Aerith's office. He no longer had an excuse for coming; it was starting to feel like a safe haven.

"I'm fine actually, thanks," Sora said.

"Then you wouldn't have come here," she smiled sympathetically. That was one thing Sora could appreciate about Aerith, she wasn't judgmental, and she didn't try to one-up you. Being in her office was like taking a warm shower, soothing.

"I don't know…I got a job," Sora offered.

"Oh? And how's that?" she asked. He knew he couldn't elaborate, but general discontent was fair game.

"Eh," he shrugged, "not really something I'd wanna be doing, but we need the munny…"

Aerith nodded. His words lingered in the air as he wracked his brain for something else to speak about.

She came to his rescue. "How are things at home?"

Sora considered this for a moment. "They're fine, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Well, the party was kind of a mess, my brother's an idiot, we've got serious financial issues, and my mother sure isn't helping. So yeah, I guess," he spoke with barely concealed anger. His hands were beginning to shake.

Aerith looked taken aback at his words, but her expression quickly reverted to that of gentle interest.

"It's just," Sora continued, "I don't know, I feel like – what's the point, you know? I get up, I go to school, now I go to work, I come home, and for what?" he shrugged. "It's the same, everyday. I just don't see it."

"Sora, do you have trouble sleeping?" Aerith inquired.

"What?" he gave her an odd look. "No."

"Fatigue? Loss of energy?"

"No."

"Restlessness, then?"

"No, what are you-"

"Feelings of worthlessness?" Like you've-"

"I'm not depressed," Sora interjected sharply. "I'm not," he repeated as she watched him unsurely.

"I just…" he trailed off; searching for the right assortment of words he knew existed that could explain everything.

"It feels like maybe this is it. Like I've got the short end of the stick now, and that's all there is to it. This is my one shot at life and this is what I get? This is all there is?"

Aerith said nothing, silently urging him to continue. Sora obliged.

"I don't know why everything has to be so hard, because really it isn't. All the crap I have to put up with all the time, I just-" he shook his head, "I just wish I could shake it all off, forget it all, my brother, my mother, everyone, everything. I wish I could start over."

Sora fell silent, embarrassed of his outburst. He fidgeted under Aerith's watchful gaze.

"Apatheia," she spoke.

"What?" he asked, perplexed.

"Something the ancient Greeks devised. There was a school of philosophy, the Stoics, who believed the end goal of human ethics should consist in training oneself to become unperturbed by the passions, or emotion," Aerith explained.

"And they call philosophy art," he snorted.

"Well, nobody said art had to be in good taste."

He was strolling through the school courtyard, a pleasant little place located directly in the middle of the school. Used mostly as a shortcut to get to other parts of the building, the biology classes would occasionally venture out into its greenery to study the organisms that made it their home and the photography club would come out after school and take pictures of the scenery. Sora could understand why, the place was positively serene when one was alone.

Sora sat down on a small stone bench and stared ahead at a small pond, watching the water break as bright red goldfish darted up to the surface before diving back down into its depths. Perhaps being born a goldfish would not have been as stressful. Sora felt his phone go off in his pocket; he sighed and took it out.

It was a text message from Kairi. He felt his spirits lifting in spite of himself. They had exchanged phone numbers, ostensibly for the project, but Sora had a feeling she'd be initiating conversation if he didn't. He pressed open.

Wanna eat lunch with us?

He frowned. Was that a serious question? She certainly wasn't stupid, she was firing off answers to questions in math class every single day that made Sora's head spin, she had seen the way he'd been treated on the first day of school; she must know he wouldn't be welcome at her table. He considered his response.

Probably not a good idea

Sora sent his reply and waited. He couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of joy at the idea that she actually wanted to eat lunch with him, which was a novelty in itself. She had been making quite the effort to get to know him, and they were having fewer problems than he had initially anticipated they would in disregarding the incident at the party. Don't ask, don't tell. His phone buzzed.

I'm not sitting with them

Sora's eyebrows shot up in surprise as he absorbed this new information. Certainly, this was unusual. Rarely did he find Kairi separated from her group of friends, Riku included. Maybe they were all sick or something.

Who's us?

A reasonable inquiry, he thought to himself. If she wasn't sitting with 'them', then who was 'us'?

My sister and your brother.

Different, very different.

Where are you?

We're on our way to the courtyard

Sora chuckled. Same, different, either way, he'd have no say in the matter. As if on cue, he heard one of the doors to the courtyard open and heard the distinct sound of his brother's laughter.

The three of them were coming towards him, though they were all so wrapped up in whatever the topic of discussion was that they had yet to notice him. He had seen Naminé plenty of times before, hadn't managed to catch her at the party, but he couldn't help but admire how her long blonde hair billowed out and fell over her head and down her shoulders. Something of a beautiful mess, she was a somewhat conservative dresser, but her petite figure jived very well with whatever she chose to wear, and today she was wearing a brilliant white dress that stretched down to the top of her legs. Upon further consideration, Sora found that she usually wore some variation of that.

Kairi looked stunning as well, with her crimson hair and her paralyzing figure. Sora almost loathed using such words in describing someone he knew, but a pretty girl was a pretty girl. They came from good stock.

Roxas noticed him first. "Hey, Sora! How'd you get here so fast?" he boomed. The girls turned their gazes to him.

"I was already here," Sora shrugged.

"Hi, Sora," Naminé said politely, giving him a small wave.

"Hey Naminé," he greeted. He turned to Kairi, who was looking at him with a pleased smile on her face.

"Hey," he said, then instantly regretted it. It was a simple acknowledgement, but to him it sounded loaded with unspoken history. Maybe it wouldn't be so easy.

"Hey," she responded in turn.

Nobody seemed off put by their tiny exchange, perhaps it was just him. Perhaps he was thinking too much. Roxas unfurled a white sheet.

"Let's eat, I'm starving," Roxas rubbed his stomach dramatically, laying out the sheet on the grass before pulling out bags of cafeteria food. Something reminiscent of a picnic, is that what this was? It was all very peculiar. Sora wanted to question, but he decided to go along with it.

"Yeah," he agreed, settling down onto the grass and taking a chocolate bar from the bag. Say what you want about school food, but he was at least glad they sold sweets.

"You should eat your greens," Kairi chided him humorously.

"I like chocolate," he replied simply.

"I noticed," she giggled.

"Did you guys get that project in English too, the one on that book?" Roxas queried.

"Yeah, we did. We're partners, actually," Sora said, looking over at Kairi.

"Really? You didn't tell me that," Roxas complained.

"You didn't ask."

"I knew," Naminé said cheerfully. She was staring pointedly at Kairi.

"Okay, it's not that big a deal," Kairi said, and to Sora's eyes, it looked as if her cheeks turned a faint pink.

"I got stuck with some guy; people call him Goofy or something. Pretty much the worst," Roxas divulged, pointing his hand towards his head like a gun and pretending to shoot himself.

"Don't say that," Naminé slapped him lightly on the shoulder. "I feel bad for him."

"Who is he?" Sora asked.

"He doesn't have a lot of friends," Kairi said, Sora noted how sullen she suddenly sounded. "He's always the last one without a partner in Gym."

"Oh," Sora considered this. Another one for the fire.

"Yeah, well, none of you have to work with him. Who are you with?" Roxas turned to face Naminé.

"Oh, a boy named Ventus. He's very nice, I think," Naminé remarked. Roxas turned away, noticeably disgruntled.

"Nice, huh?" he grumbled.

"Yes," she affirmed, taking a small bite of her lunch.

"I don't even understand what we have to do," Roxas bemoaned.

"It's kind of weird, you have to find a time your partner was…upset by something and then you tell your partner a time you were upset by something. Then you relate it to the book and write a report together," Kairi explained.

"So…it can be about anything we were upset about?" Roxas asked, bewildered by her summary.

"Well, no. It has to be about something you thought would work out, something that you believed in, but something that didn't work," she clarified.

"Do we have to present it?" Roxas questioned.

"Yeah," Kairi nodded.

"Damn," he muttered.

They ate in a comfortable silence. Sora couldn't say that he exactly minded this, it was better than sitting alone in the cafeteria, and it was preferable to hiding out in Aerith's office. But its status as abnormal was precisely what was at issue. They were from different worlds, the two pairs of siblings. This anomalous outdoors venture flew straight in the face of conventional social hierarchy. Kairi should be eating with her friends, Naminé too. He knew that Roxas and Naminé had somehow become friendly; how that occurred he had not the slightest idea. Kairi, being her sister, would likely wish to accompany them if they were to go on a lunch date, wouldn't she? Was that what this was all about?

"Speaking of our project," Kairi spoke, "we really should get a start on it, so we don't fall behind."

"Yeah," Sora agreed. He was going to have a talk with Roxas later, that much he knew.

"Do you think you'd wanna come over, to my house? We could work on it there," Kairi suggested.

"Yeah," Sora said distractedly, before realizing what he'd just agreed to. "Wait, um-"

"Great," she bubbled, "is after school okay?"

He was in it now. "Sounds good," he said. There was no backing out.

Wednesday. Smack dab in the middle of the week. He wished he had more time to prepare. He stared at the clock as it ticked down to the final minutes of the school day, towards that golden 1:40 PM that made everyone cheer.

Everyone but Sora, of course. School was never his preferred way to waste away the day, but given his recent extracurricular activities he was beginning to appreciate it for what it was, a refuge. The clock struck one forty and the bell sounded off. The kids around him rushed to escape the confines of the classroom, pushing and shoving, laughing crudely as their timid teacher attempted to remind them of their homework over the roar of students now rushing down the hallway. Reluctantly, Sora stood and made his way through the wild crowd and out to the front of the school.

Kairi said she'd wait for him outside, but he couldn't catch a glimpse of her in the typical mess that the front entrance became as people filed out of the school. Sora walked out and stood by the sidewalk, hands in his pockets and rocking on the balls of his feet.

He saw her before she saw him, walking out of school with Selphie and some girl with blue hair, the three of them chatting enthusiastically, Selphie jumping up and down and Kairi laughing at something the blue haired girl said. Riku came out from the crowd and greeted them. Sora looked away, he didn't want to get caught staring.

He waited out in the open for awhile, before he felt a tapping on his shoulder. Sora turned to see Kairi smiling up at him.

"You ready?" she asked. Sora nodded. They began their walk to her home. Sora didn't feel the need to say anything, and apparently neither did she, because the quiet that stretched between them was not awkward, it just was.

The closer they came to Carroll Gardens, the more nervous Sora became. He already felt out of place the first time around, but entering one of the Garden homes was something of an entirely different magnitude. He imagined meeting her parents, their initial look of surprise when they laid eyes upon him. The very idea made him want to turn tail and run. He looked down at his clothes, just the usual jeans and a shirt. Nothing spectacular, nothing out of the ordinary, he was just average. Hopefully that was enough.

Sora knew they were close as they passed the familiar river bank that separated the neighborhood from the city. Apartments became residential homes; the houses took on a more affluent quality. Sora looked around to make sure no passerby's were looking at him and was satisfied when he saw nobody was. They had arrived. Sora trailed Kairi up the steps of her patio and to her doorstep. There was no turning back.

"My parents aren't home, so don't worry about that," she told him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was like she'd read his mind. She opened the door and Sora followed her inside.

It was about what he expected. Immediately he spotted the spacious den with the large fireplace, the kitchen with its marble countertops and the winding wooden staircase that led up to the second floor. Something Sora could only dream about. Kairi started up the stairs, when he didn't move she turned back to him.

"You coming?" she asked.

Sora nodded wordlessly and followed her up the stairs, where they entered a hallway that held numerous doors on either side. He wasn't even going to try to figure it all out.

"This is my room," she told him, opening one of the doors. Perhaps the most shocking thing so far was how mundane it looked. Nothing in excess, except for maybe the queen sized bed and the white woolen carpet that covered the floor; a desk, a few shelves holding makeup, a closet, brown walls, and a window comprised the totality of her room. Neat and tidy, but nothing like he'd imagined.

"It's nice," Sora commented. He could think of nothing more to say.

"I'm going to get changed real quick, wait for me here?" Kairi pulled out some clothes from her closet. He nodded and she left for the bathroom.

Here he was, alone in a girl's room, in Kairi's room. Sora shrugged to himself and sat down against the bed; new experiences and all that. Kairi came in soon after and he was surprised to see her wearing black sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt. He'd never imagined someone like her wearing something like

Like I would

She noticed him staring. "What?" she asked, clearly amused by his gaping.

"Nothing," he said quickly.

Kairi down on her bed next to him and started rummaging through her backpack. She pulled out her copy of Fear and Loathing and a notebook.

"I've always wanted to go to Vegas," she confided.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, something about being out in the desert and being able to see the stars…it's just really nice," she said.

"I know. You don't really get to see much of the sky here, with all the light," Sora said.

"I used to live somewhere where you could see the stars. Ever hear of Destiny Islands?" Kairi asked, lying down on her stomach. Her head was positioned right over his shoulder, and her voice so close to his ear sent chills down Sora's neck.

"No, I haven't. Was it nice?" he queried.

"Yeah," she answered. She said nothing more. Sora could tell there was something there, something more, the tension was quickly mounting.

He acted fast to defuse the situation. "We should probably start this," he held up his book. Kairi nodded and sat down next to him, so close that their shoulders were almost touching.

"I guess we have to talk about a time we were disappointed," she laughed. Sora smiled uncomfortably, he could think of more than a few times where he'd been disappointed. They looked at each other, unsure of how to proceed.

Something willed him to speak, and he found he was unable to resist the words that spilled forth from his mouth. "I used to think it gets better."

Kairi looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"This," he opened out his arms to emphasize his point, "life, I guess. I don't know."

Kairi looked away; seemingly unsure of how to react. He began to feel stupid for talking. Suddenly, Kairi faced him.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Sora's eyes widened at her words. "For what?"

"For Riku, for the way they treat you, I'm sorry."

"Well, it's not your fault," he dismissed her with a hand wave.

"It is," she insisted, "when I saw him do that to you on the first day, I was so angry. But I couldn't do anything," Kairi stared ahead at her wall, unable to meet his gaze.

"I…I get it, I understand. You don't have to explain yourself to me," Sora assured. Kairi ignored him.

"He wasn't always like that, you know," she said.

"Who? Riku?"

Kairi nodded. "We've been friends since we were kids, he used to live on Destiny Islands with me," she rubbed her shoulder nervously, "our dads ran a company together, but the economy went bad so we had to move here," she shrugged. "He wasn't always like that."

"Then what was he like?" Sora prompted.

"He was nice," she stared wistfully up at her ceiling, "he was kind, he was always helping people. But…" she trailed off.

Sora waited for her to continue with bated breath. Kairi shook her head and looked down at the floor.

"His parents, they're…hard on him. They put all these expectations on him and expected him to do it and I think the pressure was too much. I know his dad abuses him, he doesn't talk about it but I see the bruises," she choked, her voice heavy with emotion.

"Kairi…"

"I tried to get him to talk to someone, if not me then someone. But he didn't, he just…he just does what he does. I know he's into drugs, dealing them or whatever. I know he hurts people, I know all of that," she looked at him and he saw the sadness and regret in her eyes. "So I'm sorry."

Sora took a minute to process this information. Riku had serious problems after all and Kairi thought it was her fault. He knew she was getting more anxious by the second with his lack of response, but something was nagging at him.

"Is the reason why you started talking to me…because you feel sorry for me?" Sora asked her.

"No," Kairi shook her head, "I started talking to you because I want to talk to you, Sora."

"Why?" he asked. "And what was that today at lunch?"

"That was me trying to help Naminé, I thought you might wanna join," she answered.

Then it hit him. Like being submerged in a steaming hot tub, his epiphany broke through the blood-brain barrier and washed over him.

"You don't like them," the words tumbled from his mouth.

"What?" she puzzled.

"Your friends. They aren't really your friends, are they?"

"What are you-? Of course they are," she argued.

"No," he shook his head, "you're not like them. I know you're not like them."

Kairi said nothing. He knew he had broken her will to dispute the point. There was nothing left to contend with. Hearts and minds.

"You can talk to me," he said gently. "It's okay."

She looked so broken, so sad in that instant, that Sora had to fight the urge to wrap his arms around her. He wasn't looking for a repeat of last time.

"I'm friends with Riku and Riku is the one everyone loves, what else is there to say?" she said bitterly.

"Why are you still with them? Why don't you just leave?" he pressed.

"I can't do anything. I don't want to end up like…like…"

"Like me," Sora finished for her.

"It's better this way," Kairi said. "For me, for Naminé, for everyone."

"Doesn't look better to me, and it definitely didn't look better at the party," he said. Sora knew he had veered the conversation into dangerous territory. Take care, a voice in the back of his head spoke, or this conversation will become a confrontation.

"They wanted me to drink, I said no," she said nonchalantly, as if it were a mundane occurrence.

"And?"

"And what? They wanted me to drink," she repeated.

"That's it?" Sora looked at her skeptically.

"They called me a lightweight, whatever," she said. Sora could see her jaw tighten as she spoke.

"So they call you names."

"It's not a big deal," she said, "it was all too much, I guess. I'm sorry, but I didn't even want to go the party-"

"I didn't want to have it," he quipped. Kairi smiled at that.

"I end up having to go to them all the time and I just…I'm just tired, Sora."

"I know," he said, and he bumped her shoulder with his.

"Sometimes I think you've got it much better than I do…" she said, "I know it isn't true," she added before he could open his mouth. "I just like to think that things could have been different, in another life. It doesn't have to all turn to shit, y'know?"

"It doesn't," he said.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"I don't."

They stared at each other intently and started to laugh; the two of them laughing so hard that they fell to the floor and struggled to breath, echoing through the empty house.

Suddenly they heard a door opening downstairs, and a voice called out, "Kairi? Is that you?"

They stopped and listened closely; the sound of footsteps ascending the staircase, drawing ever closer. Kairi's eyes widened in panic.

"You have to go," she spoke in a hushed whisper. Sora looked at her in confusion.

"What? Why?"

"I'm not supposed to have anyone over," she said, quickly standing up and moving in front of the door.

"Then why did you invite me?!" he whispered harshly

"Kairi? Naminé?" a woman, her mother, Sora surmised, was approaching quickly, her voice emanating from the hallway just beyond the door.

"I didn't think anyone would be home. Go out the window," Kairi commanded.

"What?!"

"No choice, sorry. I'll text you later," she said, and then she slipped out the door and closed it quickly behind her.

Sora stared after her, dumbfounded. Then he kicked himself into gear and rushed over to her window, he lifted it and stared out at the lawn below. There were some hedges just under him; if he dropped down carefully he might make it out without a scratch. He threw one leg over the window sill, straddling it and praying silently that no one would walk by and see him.

As he attempted to carefully maneuver his other foot over the window, he felt the hard surface of the ledge disappear from beneath him and fell back against open air. He hardly had time to recognize what was occurring before he was falling backwards out of Kairi's window.

He landed in the prickly branches of the hedges, the tiny green leaves rustling furiously as he attempted to disentangle himself from the web of foliage that had absorbed his fall. He managed to extricate himself and rush across the front yard and out into the street, stopping to catch his breath only when he had made it three blocks away.

The realization of the inanity of the past hour descended on Sora and the uncontrollable laughter returned to him. They had more in common than he thought.

She was like him.