A/N: Welcome, readers, to Affliction! It's great to finally be productive with this story again. I already posted this chapter before but brought it down, did major revisions and reposted it again to have a smoother flow to my plot. Anyway I don't want to keep anyone reading this hanging while I'm still in the mood to keep this up so I'll be writing while I have the opportunity.

Now I hope you enjoy reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own Suikoden Tierkreis.

Normally, anyone who had known Nemne for a long time would say that she was a cheery girl who always had a sunny expression. She would be upbeat, optimistic, held nothing against anyone who wronged her, and, if someone was that observant enough to notice it, the most energetic out of all the six Porpos-kin Starbearers in the castle. You would see her with a smile almost if not all the time, as she went on singing awkward songs and making her sentences into lyrics as soon as something had become so exciting that she couldn't hold in her excitement, or when she felt like doing it while she did something she felt would be interesting.

Yet behind all this cute and sweet exterior of hers hid her exceptional fighting skills. She was skilled with throwing her boomerang, and had an accurate aim whenever she threw knives or daggers, which more often than not, managed to strike their mark. You could even say that she had a good way with keeping up an innocent girlish image and still managing to beat the crap out of monsters. It was only expected though, that she were to be like that, for she was a warrior of Naineneis; in fact the second-in-command of the Porpos-kin's greatest warrior, Nimni. And together with the gray Porpos, Nomno—who masked his hidden strength underneath a lazy personality—, they were a fierce fighting trio whom even ironheaded knights from faraway cities by the sea shouldn't be taking lightly.

However, on that very morning, if you were to even look at said pink Porpos then, even Semias would bet five thousand potch that you'd say that she was none of aforementioned things and that she was something otherwise.

She looked like she was in a total slump as she sat there on the long, wooden seat. Her head was low and her black eyes looked tired and sore as she stared at the piece of paper she held-the same one where she had written her song the previous night. Her free hand was limp at her side, unmoving. She had been there for almost a quarter of an hour and was completely unaware of whatever it was that was going on around her. She couldn't even hear the sound of the waterfall crashing beyond the window behind her.

Her eyes kept their attention towards the note, but somehow, barely any of the words she had written registered themselves inside her mind. Most of them seemed like a total blur to her. Absently her eyes slowly looked past it, before seeing the wooden floor. Despite what she was seeing, her mind felt blank, and she felt unable to think about anything at all.

She shut her half-closed eyes, and let out a yawn. She opened them again, and saw the stairs that led out towards the tavern and the hall that led to Lord Diulf's room and the rooms of the other Furious Roar Starbearers. She held her head, feeling a bit woozy, before deciding to lie down the long seat and take a nap. Anyone would've thought that what she did seemed completely ridiculous, since it was still the middle of the day and that the sun was still high up in the sky. But she didn't really care-all she wanted to do was go to sleep. It didn't really matter to her whatever anyone would say about what she was about to do, even if it did somehow make her a bit like Nomno—

Her eyes snapped open and she immediately sat up at the thought of the gray Porpos. Her body trembled slightly as her hands clenched into fists in frustration. In her mind, the memories of the dream she had when she had fallen asleep on her bed without her noticing came back to her in a rush, much to her dismay. She clutched her head, shook it around wildly, and let out a groan. She had been trying to get this thought out of her mind for hours, but whenever she was about to go to sleep, it always managed to come back to her again, which was already annoying, considering that this very thought was the same thing that deprived her of her sleep last night. Whenever she would close her eyes, the memory of the dream haunted her, and she feared that she would have it again if she went to sleep. She did whatever she could, just so she wouldn't have to think about it, but no matter what she did, it always came back.

Not again… She thought, frustrated. She considered the idea of going over to sleep in the lake, but decided against it; she would have to be going out through the dining hall and the pier—the two places where she usually expected Nomno to be—and she really didn't feel like seeing him right now. Sure, she could just jump off from the window there, but come on; even if she is a Porpos, that was practically a dumb idea and people might even start asking her why in the world she did that even though she could just walk straight in there-something which she tried to avoid to keep people out of her affairs as much as possible.

And practically all those affairs involved the gray Porpos and that dream she had about him the previous night.

She shuddered at the thought, her face paling the longer it remained in her mind. She shook it off, and stood up from where she sat. She began walking down the stairs. But then, her feet suddenly slipped forward, immediately snapping her awake as she fell forward towards the stone floor. Reflexively, she brought her arms up to her face, bracing herself for impact.

However, she never felt that pain surging through her arms or through the other parts of her body, nor did she come into contact with the floor. She opened her eyes at once to see what held her back, and looked up to see Nictis, looking down at her as he held her. He had just come out of his room, and by chance he saw her falling down the stairs. Nemne sighed in relief, grateful for the Furious Roar tribesman for catching her from her fall.

Nictis set her down gently on the floor. As soon as she felt her slippers touch the ground, she put a hand to calm her pounding chest. All this lack of sleep was making her clumsy, apparently…

"Are you alright?" Nictis asked. Nemne looked up at him, but not so much that she had let him see the the tiredness in her eyes and give him more cause for concern. "Y-Yeah," She stuttered, avoiding eye contact with him. "Thanks a lot." Come to think of it, Nictis' eyes always looked like they were closed, and it somehow made her think that he was just like—

She slapped herself on the forehead at once and grumbled something incomprehensible, much to Nictis' surprise. "W-What's wrong?" He asked as a sweatdrop formed on the side of his head. She let her hand slid to cover her right eye, and opened her left one to look at him.

"…It's nothing," She muttered trying her best not to lose her cool, since she was in front of someone she didn't really know so much. It was bad enough that the thought and very sight of Nomno along with that dream last night kept her from going to sleep; having to find something (or in this case, someone) else that reminded her of him was practically too much already.

"Are… Are you sure?" He asked, concerned. She was glad that he was, but still-she didn't really know him that well personally, and she really had no intention of letting anyone know about her problem, whether she knew them or not. "Y-Yeah," She said, lowering her head and walking towards the tavern. "…I'm fine…" She trailed off as she said those last words, leaving a confused Nictis scratching the back of his head as he wondered what had gotten into that Porpos girl.

Nomno… It wasn't as if Nemne was angry at him or she hated him now or anything. Of course she still held those feelings of affection towards her friend and she still liked him. The only problem was that, after she had that dream last night, she hadn't been able to sleep (all she really wanted to do was just sleep at that moment, really) and she began having this nagging feeling that he would probably do what he did to her in the dream one of these days. For the most part, she tried to shake it off, thinking that Nomno wasn't like that and she knew him long enough to say that he wasn't the kind of person who would even think of doing such a thing.

But then again, just because they were friends didn't already mean she knew all there was to know about him. After all, he spoke only with snores and she could never find out that much about him even if she tried asking him to describe himself. Also, most of the questions he responded to were "Yes or No" questions. She felt like she would've been prodding in her nose too much into his privacy if she kept asking too much; she didn't want him to think that, since she herself had her own private matters she didn't want people to know of.

She pinched the bridge of her snout. If it weren't for that dream she had last night, then perhaps, she would've been able to get a good night's sleep. But she didn't want to blame Nomno for this. She may have seen him in her dream doing those… Things to her, but still; that was only a dream, that Nomno in her dream wasn't Nomno at all and that it was just an illusion, and it wasn't like Nomno actually wished she dreamt of him doing that…

But she never knew.

Her pinch became tighter as a headache came in along with the contradictions to her statements. Why was she even thinking about these things anyway…!?

She was broken from her thoughts when she felt herself bump onto someone, and she staggered backwards. She almost fell to a sitting position on the floor, but she managed to retain her balance. She looked up to see her friend Sisuca, holding a wooden bucket full of water in one hand and a rag in the other.

"Oh, Nemne," She spoke, seeming a bit surprised at the sight of her friend. "I almost didn't see you there! Are you alright?"

There was that question again, she noticed. But she put off this thought and replied, "Y-Yeah. I didn't see you over there either… Sorry."

Sisuca raised an eyebrow as she saw that Nemne was keeping her head low and had a hand on her head. "Hm? Nemne, what's the matter? You seem kind of troubled…"

Upon hearing her friend's question, Nemne felt a surge in her nerves driving her awake. Shaking her head, she tried staying as positive as possible. "Oh, it's nothing all that much," She replied. "Just feeling a little sleepy right now." Deciding to divert Sisuca's attention away from her well-being, she said, "But what are those things you have there for?"

"Oh, these?" Sisuca raised the items she held on both hands. "Well, you see, I've been asked to do a little errand today, and since you asked maybe you would be interested to help me?"

"Sure, I don't mind helping you," Nemne told her. From the looks of things, it looked like she was just doing some simple chores and needed a hand in them. She was tired, yes, but it wasn't as if she would find herself getting some sleep any time soon. Perhaps Sisuca could help keep her mind off these troubling thoughts…

"That's great to hear!" Sisuca smiled cheerfully at her friend's interest to help out. "But first, let's get you a bucket and a rag of your own…"

The Stone Tablet of Promise: a twelve-foot tall obsidian monolith where the names of the one-hundred and eight Starbearers fighting against the Order were engraved. It seemed like just a huge list at the castle's basement where the names of the Company members were suddenly imprinted by a white light upon recruitment, or the Order's literal blacklist as Liu once jokingly put it, or even perhaps a gigantic tombstone to some. But it didn't take a veteran to say that there was more to this tablet than what it appeared to be. The tablet's purpose remains a mystery to many of the Starbearers in the castle, and it was just as mysterious as the person that came with it when it first appeared: the Tenkan Star, Zenoa. And no matter how hard anyone—even the Company's leader—tried to ask her about what was the secret behind it, the tablet guardian would merely frustrate them by telling them that it was a secret or by beating around the bush to the point that the people who were asking merely gave up trying, much to her amusement.

Then came a day when she put up a request to have the Tablet of Promise polished and even adding that people should consider it as an honor. Though the leader felt a bit ticked off by client rather than the request, he decided to send people anyway since it was, after all, a job that needed to be done and one that had payment. And, as if the client's personality and the last sentence on the request weren't bad enough, everyone the leader sent to the mission failed, some almost miserably. After seventeenth dispatch group returned from their failed mission, the leader almost threw an enraged fit, but thankfully, Marica was there to calm him down before he even managed to break or destroy something of high or important value.

However, one person in particular stepped up to the job, saying that she'd be more than happy to do the mission for everybody, especially for her little baby. And although the leader was a bit reluctant about letting her do it—even adding that she wasn't his mom—he sent her off to do it anyway, saying that they won't know if she'll be successful unless she tried. At this answer, she immediately got a bucket of water and a rag before trotting down the castle basement, but not without a particular pink Porpos who was now a bit unwilling to do the job mostly because of Zenoa's intimidating and mysterious presence.

And so now…

"…By the time I get back I expect this tablet to be spotless, and I mean spotless you hear?" The black robed woman spoke, her voice echoing throughout the basement and sending fear down Nemne's spine. "Hopefully the two of you aren't going to end up like the last bunch that came down here to do this. And I better see my reflection on this tablet, too. Got it?"

"Don't worry! We'll be sure to make it spick and span!" Sisuca exclaimed cheerfully, while Nemne nodded hastily with a forced grin on her face. Zenoa raised an eyebrow at the black-haired girl's enthusiastic answer, and muttered, "I will be the judge of that…" before walking past them and going up the long flights of stairs that led to the first floor. As soon as Zenoa left, Nemne let out a sigh she felt she had been holding back for some time while Sisuca set down the bucket she held and knelt down on the floor.

"This tablet is huge," Nemne stated in awe as she looked up at the Stone Tablet of Promise. She had heard about the tablet from Nimni and Priestess Neira, but this was actually the first time she was ever down here to take a good look at it for herself. Her height was just around a fourth of the tablet, and while she knew there were more taller people who did this very task before, she wondered how come all those people that had been previously dispatched by their leader weren't able to clean it so well. She then knelt down next to her friend and took a wet, dripping rag out of the bucket before squeezing it dry.

"We should start at the bottom first," Sisuca said as she pressed the rag against the tablet's flat surface. Turning towards the only Porpos in the large room, she asked, "Let's get started, shall we?"

Nemne gave her a nod in reply as she did the same with her rag. "Yeah, let's go."

"You're certainly sleepy today, Nemne," Sisuca pointed out. "Did you get enough rest last night?"

"Not really…" She mumbled audibly, enough for Sisuca to hear. "But I'll be okay."

The pair cleaned for what lasted almost an hour and a half, making some small talk as they did. They mostly talked about their task at hand, what they had been up to for the past couple of days, and what they planned to do as soon as they finished cleaning the tablet. Nemne said she was going head straight for her room to take a bath then rest, and Sisuca said that she would attend to other chores as soon as they were done. Although they started at the same time, Sisuca seemed to be making faster and better progress compared to Nemne; in fact the black-haired girl had already gotten herself a stool to sit on a while ago (with the help of Roberto, who happened to be around when she was carrying it), wiping whatever parts of the tablet that she could easily reach at that point in time and even some parts of the tablet that Nemne was supposed to clean. And though it seemed like Sisuca was rushing and making it look like she was working hard on her part, Nemne doubted that was the case. She was pretty eager about doing this job; heck, she even dragged her down here to help her with it and keep her company while she was doing it even though she wasn't feeling well…

Nemne glanced slightly towards the woman in the blue, brown, and white color scheme above her. Sisuca was a good friend, and she tended to be as a sort of a mother figure to several members of the castle—the Company's leader, Jale, and Liu in particular. And her maternal personality wasn't just limited to simply that, however; she was also good with cooking, cleaning, and other house related activities. Sometimes, when they aren't doing things together, the pink Porpos would see Sisuca cleaning rooms of other Starbearers when they weren't around, or even doing laundry out by the lakeside. So in a way, she was like this particular woman whom she once read about who wore glasses, loved to do chores—especially laundry—and was married to the right-hand man of a town mayor who was murdered and had his head hung on his manor's entrance. But that last one, apparently, is yet another story in this work of fiction.

Sisuca was also a good singer—she had the voice, she even loved composing songs, and singing turned out to be just another one of her hobbies and talents. Nemne could still remember the day she first heard her friend sing—the same day they first met, and the same day when she asked if the Citro girl could give her some singing lessons. Sisuca agreed to, but Nemne asked if they could keep their lessons a secret, since the Porpos girl felt a little shy about having people know that she was taking lessons from her—something that Sisuca gladly complied with.

But unfortunately for Nemne, the both of them were eventually found out, for after one of their sessions, they happened to see Anya and Luvais spying on them outside the room where they were, much to Nemne's astonishment and embarrassment. Before Sisuca was about to ask what the two were doing there, the eavesdroppers already hightailed it out of there, and reported to their leader of what they were doing. In all honesty, Nemne felt a little annoyed after that incident, since it felt like they were invading her privacy in a way, but she let it go soon after.

She yawned for the nth time that day, wiping her eyes with the back of her free hand. All she really wanted to do at that moment was have a nap, but when Sisuca dragged—err, offered her to join in the task of cleaning the Tablet of Promise, she couldn't find it in herself to say no. She didn't get much sleep last night, but hopefully this simple task of cleaning up the Stone Tablet of Promise would keep her from being reminded of him…

She paused from her wiping. Now that she thought about it… Where was he again?

She thought back to when she had arrived at the dining hall with Priestess Neira earlier during breakfast. They found that Nomno wasn't sleeping at their table; he was usually sleeping there every morning. She figured that he had probably slept in up in the male Porposes' bedroom or was probably somewhere else. When Namna arrived alone without Nimni accompanying him, the Priestess asked where the blue Porpos was. It was then that Namna had told her that he was sent to a mission along with Nomno and another Starbearer to accompany Tuhululu in his trip to buy Laggart Pelts in the nearby Citro Village. Since the young Wanderer wasn't exactly much of a fighter, Rekareka asked that he be accompanied by anyone who was brawny. She didn't care if the people he had to go with had a good business sense or not (it was actually better if they didn't); what mattered that her son had bodyguards to keep him safe.

Nemne thought over Rekareka's request as she continued wiping the tablet. The request asked for people who were strong, and she began to think about Nomno's abilities. The gray Porpos was a good fighter, and she knew that. His only downside was that he was usually asleep, giving enemies a chance to attack him first whenever they ended up in a battle. Despite this however, he managed to make up for it by immediately waking up and retaliating at the enemy in a furious rage, and, along with one of his Marks of the Stars amplifying his strength whenever that happened to him, it made him a total powerhouse to be reckoned with even though he may seem slow and dimwitted at first. It was a good thing that others saw his potential in his fighting abilities…

As well as the fact that he nowhere near the castle grounds this time, because if he was, he would probably make an attempt on her like he did last night—

She ground the heel of one of her pink sandals along the tiled marble on the floor, crushing the idea away. As she was thinking over this, she was already wiping an area just above her head when her eyes caught sight of the gray Porpos' name on the tablet. Putting down her hand, she moved back a bit just so she could see it clearly and raised her other hand to polish the surface where his name was. Above his name were characters that read Chibaku Star, and beside that was a phrase that said, The Barbarous Star. Nemne blinked. It felt as though Nomno's behavior after someone attacked him from his sleep and the description of the Chibaku Star were similar to one another, and that seeing it now after she was just thinking about how he fought made it feel like a coincidence.

Besides, it wasn't just his fighting style that seemed barbaric, and Nemne thought back to the times when she watched Nomno eating.

Nemne paused at the thought. She shook her head all of a sudden. How could she say that about him? Okay, sure, maybe it was kind of true… Actually it is. She stomped one foot on the floor. But still!

Even though he did seem that way… Behind all that strength, that rage he showed whenever he countered an attack, and… Those appalling eating habits… Underneath all that was a person whom she knew had a good heart. He was a person who was full of innocence and someone who was there to give someone some comfort when they needed it, and it showed in how he was so curious about things he found new and interesting and whenever he was there for her to talk to respectively. And she should know; she was his friend after all, and she knew him for years.

But then again, she could never tell, really, since she always felt like she never knew enough about him, and who knows? Perhaps the barbarism could mean that he was secretly just like the Nomno in that dream of hers…

She clutched her head with her free hand and shook it almost wildly to drive the contradiction out of her mind. Why was she even having these thoughts about him right now? She… She knew him well enough to come to such a conclusion such as that, so there. A-Anyway, she had better things to do than think about this, especially since she knew that she was just being paranoid and that Nomno wouldn't be anything otherwise to what she described him to be. He had proven already to her so many times that he was all of those good things she said about him in her mind and not some kind of madman. Gripping the rag tighter, she went back to her spot in front of the tablet, and began wiping again. But while she did, her eyes just couldn't help but glance at his name every now and again, bringing the contradicting thoughts back in her mind, much to her annoyance.

After a while, she sighed. She really wanted to get this out of her head, so she looked over to her left and lowered her head to make sure her eyes avoided the sight of Nomno's name. As she did that, she caught sight of her name on the tablet. Perhaps she was also affiliated to a particular Star like Nomno was, and out of curiosity, she backed up again to see if there was one for her. The characters above her name read Chiku Star, and beside it were the words, The Empty Star.

The description caught her by surprise as she kept her eyes upon it. Her Star's description didn't exactly match with her actions, personality, or something that made her unique in her own right. The Empty Star… She scratched the back of her head. How exactly was she empty? The word "empty" could mean a lot of things, but the empty in the statement was an adjective, so it could either mean that she was meaningless or something about her wasn't filled up. She didn't want to think that the empty meant that she was meaningless, so she decided to just say that there was something inside of her that needed to be filled up by something. If that was the case, then what was it?

Maybe it's just that you're hungry… Like he said he was back then, remember? A voice in her mind teased, and Nemne knew what it was talking about. Nemne gritted her teeth and held back her urge to just smack her forehead upon the Tablet of Promise to drive the thought away. There went her mind again, thinking about that gray Porpos and even using that godsforsaken dream in teasing her about it. Why her mind had to torment her this way, she never knew—

"Nemne?" Sisuca called from above. The pink Porpos immediately looked up at the sound of her name, grateful for the other woman's distraction from her annoying thoughts. "Y-Yes?" She stuttered out.

"Could you hold the stool for me while I stand up?" She asked as she pulled one leg close to her chest and rested her foot on the seat. Nemne put the rag in the bucket before walking over to hold the legs of the stool. "Okay, go ahead," Nemne told her as she kept the stool firm on the ground. Sisuca carefully stood up, and put out her free hand on the tablet to help keep her balance. Once she felt that it was alright, she sighed in relief and began polishing the upper parts of the tablet.

"Thank you," Sisuca said, looking down at her. Seeing this, Nemne smiled. "You're welcome," She replied and let go before going back to do her share of the work they were doing. After a squeeze of her wet rag above the bucket, she continued from where she stopped earlier.

The both of them were silent as they worked in the next few minutes, but it was eventually Sisuca who decided to break the silence again. "By the way, Nemne…"

Nemne paused from what she was doing. "What is it?"

"Do you mind if I talk to you about something?"

Nemne really didn't need to think twice about that question anymore. Right now, she needed a distraction. Anything would do. "Sure, what is it?" She replied before shifting her attention to another part of the tablet. They were going to be down there for a few more hours, so the least that they did was talk about more stuff to help keep their tasks interesting. Besides, they were both friends, so whatever it was she wanted to talk about with her, of course, would be okay. It was only normal that it would be like that.

"I've noticed…" Sisuca began, trailing off a bit before continuing, "That you've been acting really strange lately."

The Porpos girl froze on the spot, immediately thinking otherwise.

A/N: Chapter 6, everyone. As you can tell, this chapter and the next follows the Zenoa's request mission plot. I initially thought of making it longer, but I decided to divide it into two parts. I don't know if anyone has read this chapter when I posted it before, but if you haven't, well. CLIFFHANGER!

So, what do you guys think? Feel free to use the review box below.

Thanks for reading! -Zip