Hello~ *profusely apologizes for unforgiveably slow update*
I will not dilly-dally anymore; to the third chapter~~~
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Chapter 3 – She Will Not See You Again
Commencing memory-information scan…
X's eyes opened to a small white room sprinkled with light blue and a small amount of mixed flesh and black. He blinks once, and slowly, the chunk of mixed flesh and black have slowly formed, and soon, he could recognize features: wide eyes, small smiles, and some even slightly reddish-noses.
He could see faces. Weary faces. Relieved faces.
Familiar faces.
"Where…?" he began.
"Ssh," a voice hushed him. X blinked again, and subtly moved his irises to the left, and found a familiar set of long blond hair just to his left. His eyes journeyed around its loose strands, and noticed the owner's arm, which he barely felt wrapping around his neck until the owner moved it, pulling him closer into what seemed like a frozen embrace.
"Hush," she said again, pressing her lips to his shoulder, making them brush against the cloth of his shirt as she spoke again.
"I'm here now, so everything will be okay…"
"Wha—"
X's eyes remained frozen as he stared in front of him. He tried to eye the faces one by one, silently naming each and every one of them in his head.
Family and some intimate friends, he thought to himself. The way they stared at him scared the boy to silence.
He moved his head a little, only half-listening to their whispers or relief and gladness. There was something wrong with this picture, but he couldn't put his finger in it.
That is, until he finally noticed the lone figure in one corner whose frozen frown plastered across her face has made her stand out amongst the other faces.
Y was watching him in his small tableau.
X gives her a questioning look, to which she replies with a nod, silently mouthing words with her lips, leaving her disembodied voice to simply play in his head:
"Just play along, X."
Confused, the boy obediently pressed his lips together and tried to "play along" in the best that he could. He couldn't see the person's face from that position, so instead, he directs his gaze back to the pool of faces who were also watching their small tableau, all of them looking at him with varied faces of relief, making him feel a bit uneasy at whatever was happening.
The girl embracing him must've sensed his growing confusion, for she finally lets him go, and settles to just holding his face gently, smiling to his face.
X couldn't believe himself.
The person before him, too, was Y. A younger Y.
"Everything will be fine from here on end now, okay, X?" she almost cooed to his dumbfounded countenance. "Because I'm here, and nothing will ever hurt you again…" She looked at him with expressive eyes.
"Okay, X?"
X blinked, but he knew better than to question things now of all times.
"O-Okay…"
His eyes went back to their small audience, feeling more and more aware of their gazes, making him feel uncomfortable. Y's face was still intact, still in front of him, and, despite his confusion, he shifted his gaze to hers.
Y's smile grows even tenderer as she spoke again.
"This time, I promise to you, I'll never leave you again…"
The other family members and friends have begun emptying the room in small groups in succession, and soon, younger Y had to get out of the room to make a phone call and such, but not without giving him one last goodbye:
"I'll see you, okay?"
And, just like that, he was left alone with older Y.
Both did not speak until the echoes of the others' voices soon died down as they went farther away from that room. The first one to speak was Older Y.
"So…" she began
"Don't worry, I managed to recollect my thoughts while my Y and the others were talking," he interrupted, freeing himself from the bundle of blanket he had found himself trapped in. "Although, unfortunate that I actually ended up waking up in the middle of something."
He sighs as he throws his covers away, and slides himself to the edge of the bed. Y walks forward and sits next to him.
"So, I'm in this memory, huh?" she muses, looking around. "Who knew there will actually come a time when I'd have to relive this moment over again…" Y sighs.
"Not really a good memory to relish…"
X had only watched her, his right hand flying to his left wrist, gently wringing it, feeling the newly tended cut sting from under his bandage. The pain seeps through his skin, making him remember everything too clearly: the bitter taste of arsenic on his tongue, the rough feeling it gives him as it travels down his throat, the amount of cold sweat that had already escaped his body as his family found him sprawled on the floor…
X shakes his head.
"I'm surprised that you're catching on fast, but I guess that's a good thing…" Y commented at him. "Saves us time…"
She follows X's gaze as the latter journeys his eyes across the blue and white ceilings all the way down to the wall containing the room's only window, draped over by blue, bird-patterned curtains.
Hummingbirds, she thought, tasting unpleasant bitterness rising from her stomach through her throat.
Why must she remember, too?
"By the way," X asks, looking at her. "I've noticed something while we were waiting for the room to be emptied of those other people… How come they barely noticed you at all?"
"Simple," she replied. "They couldn't see me…"
"Couldn't?"
"If you think about it, I'm not really a part of this scene originally. Pinré Inc's computers generates memory copies only through the data they have of a particular scene, therefore an unidentified virus like me can roam around without having my presence acknowledged."
"Virus…?"
"Well, technically, you can call me a virus—an unwanted corrupted file that was able to survive several deletion processes…" She slightly giggles. "I bet the people who are treating you right now are in shambles trying to find me."
The confusion in X's eyes remained, and Y figured it would be futile to just spit out random information, especially in a situation like this.
"Let's speak of this again later," she says, standing up. "We need to go."
X's expression changed.
"W-Wait, why?"
Y stood up, stretching. "The deletion process that destroyed your Y's from the other memory fragments will reach us here soon. We're lucky that it's not as fast as it was the previous times, therefore we still have time to go as far as possible…"
"Can we stop the deletion process that way?" the boy asks, standing up.
"Sadly, no," she says, walking to the window, pushing away the blinds, letting the noon sunlight in. "Not yet, anyway…"
X watches her as she pushes up the glass covering, and steps one of her legs over the window pane.
"The thing is, I'd rather take you as far away as possible from here before you get knocked out again…" She steps her other leg over, directing her feet towards the metal platform of the building's fire exit.
"Lessens the chances of you forgetting everything again."
She jumps off, lands on the metal platform, climbs on its railings, jumps again, and lands gracefully to an alley way. X follows along carefully.
His feet lands shakily on the ground, but nonetheless he recovers easily, swaying a bit as he walks towards Y.
"Guess your body's still weak from the treatment, huh?" she comments.
"No, I'll be fine…" He stares up back into the window, a wistful expression on his face. The image of his Y returning to an empty bed any minute from now doesn't seem like a pleasurable one to imagine.
"X?"
"I feel sort of bad for leaving her," he explains. "She might get worried."
To that, Y sighs an exasperated sigh.
"And here I thought you'd be used to it by now…"
X stares at her, confused.
"She's not going to see you again, X."
The confusion turns into hurt.
"Believe me, by the third or fourth time, you'll start getting used to it."
Together they tread the rather gloomy path that led them to goodness-knows-where. Not a soul was in sight, and, silently, the two thanked whoever it was generating this memory copy for this certain circumstance. Watching too much people moving around, talking, can be quite tiring to one's eyes.
Y, at least, had enough.
"I've been memory-hopping since the first quarter of the process," she suddenly began. "I've seen too much, X, especially now that the whole process is halfway done with you, so don't blame me if I know too much …"
There was a small glint of bitterness in Y's eyes, but it disappears as quickly as it appears, and she returns to their default, undecipherable expression.
X chose to convince himself that he had imagined what he saw.
"So, you said you're a virus," he prods, looking forward to avoid looking into her eyes again.
"Yep," she replies. "I used to be just a copied bit of information that holds a portion of your memories, those that were significant to the memory fragment I belonged to. But then, I was able to escape…"
X kept his eyes forward, afraid to look at whatever expression she was beginning to show through her eyes.
The high buildings around them were gradually disintegrating as they went on, and the ground was slightly shaking. No sound came with the destruction, but X might as well can feel all the panic this scene could've caused the townspeople, and it was surging deep within him.
But older Y was calm, and almost ignored everything, and, hesitantly, X did the same.
"To be honest, you're a virus too, X," she was saying. "But you're a 'good' virus; the one that 'absorbs' all pertinent information per memory fragment—the ones involving 'Y'—by reliving everything. And once the 'absorption' is done, the memories are purged from you while the image of Y is 'deleted' from the scene. Remember that train that burst into flames?"
She pulls X calmly closer, saving him from some falling debris. X took time to recover from the shock, but Y easily dismisses it as something normal, and carries on.
X, once again, hesitantly does the same.
"Uhm," he called after her. "This might come as a weird and out-of-topic question, but how come you're aware of all these 'deleting processes' and such? And how come you know that I'm the one deleting you?"
It was then that Y finally halts. Her shoulders tense for a bit, but she lets it go too easily, and looks at X with a smile.
"You told me so yourself, X!"
-…-
"Look at it all out here… It's all falling apart!"
She walked away further, afraid to hear more.
But, still he continues, his footsteps gradually getting faster, his voice getting louder.
"Can you see it, Y?! You know of this! You know where this is leading! By morning, you'll be gone!"
He finally stops, and gives one last scream.
"I'm erasing you, and I'm happy!"
-…-
"After that, I reacted quickly, and escaped… I can't really explain into words how that happened, but the moment I found out what was happening, I can already follow your memory-hopping, except that I retain my memories, and you don't. That was until I succeeded in turning you into a virus, too."
X remains silent.
"So far, I've been to fourteen different memory fragments, including this one, and I noticed something: there was no specific sequence to the memories, except for what seems like their degree of importance to you, which is kinda vague in itself, because one moment I'm facing a younger X, and then one moment, I'm facing an X older than me. It's crazy…"
Y giggles again. X still remains silent.
"And it also makes my goal a little harder to achieve since the fragments that come after the one I came from involves X's who have no idea what the heck was happening. Which is why I need to go even deeper to your memories to know why you wanted to erase me…" She conjures up a bitter smile.
"Only then will I know what to do…"
She turns to X, wondering why he wasn't responding, and found X's broken eyes staring into the distance, making her heart stop a little.
Y knew this expression above all else.
"X?" she calls softly.
"I erased you…?" he was mumbling. "But why on earth would I do that? I… I'd never…"
"X, come on, it's okay… Don't… Don't burden yourself, X. You're still recovering from…"
"But, I…"
"X."
"But, Y, I…"
His voice was close to breaking, and Y was afraid of what he'll do next. She remembered how fragile his emotional stability was during this time, and for that she was afraid.
In a hurry, she tried to search for something else that could swerve the topic somewhere else. Anything.
"Say, remember that song you used to sing to me back when we were kids?" she suddenly asks.
X slowly stares at her, his eyes still broken, but there was a tinge of curiosity.
"Song?"
"I came across it again during my memory-hopping. You know… 'Oh my darling, hummingbird'?"
To that, X's curiosity turns to confusion.
"Don't you mean 'Clementine'?"
"You changed it to 'Hummingbird', remember? Your own rendition?"
"From what I remember, you're the one who gave me that nickname… Why would I make a song about my own nickname?"
"But you did," she argued enthusiastically. "That one that goes…" She begins clapping to the rhythm.
"Oh my honey, oh my lovely…"
She looks at him expectantly. He just stares at her, confused.
Until a small smile forms across his face.
"Oh my darling hummingbird…"
"Right!" she cheered, clapping some more as they mumbled the rest of the song.
"Oh my honey, oh my lovely,
Oh my daaaarling hummingbird…
Nananana nananana…
Something something hummingbird…"
And then they both laughed.
"I can't believe you remembered that!" X cried.
"I can't believe you sang that!" she threw back. "Man, you were sappy as a kid!"
"Hey, that was supposed to be a joke!"
"You're a joke, Hummingbird!"
The rest of the walk, they began reminiscing of their childhood days, and all the memories have made X suddenly aware of the necklace hanging around his neck.
His most prized possession: the plastic ruby necklace he won from a cereal box which he loved so much, though, he doesn't actually remember why. However, he does remember that Y had always wanted it when they were children, and always begged for him to give it to her.
As they sang the song again, trying to remember the rest of the words, his hand flew to his neck, feeling the plastic gem with his fingers.
He wondered why he never gave it to her in the first place, and wondered again if ever he would give it to her in the near future.
He remembers the last memory-fragment they were both in, and it made him feel even sicker, being reminded of what he was supposed to do at that time.
What kind of sick, twisted idea had occurred to him that makes him want to delete Y? He had always loved Y.
"You okay, X?" she suddenly asks.
The boy stares at her for a moment, before slowly nodding.
"I'll be okay, Y," he whispers. "I'll be okay as long as you're here…"
To that, Y snorts.
She's doing all this just to prevent me from erasing her, he thought to himself as they continued their walk. I wonder if I'll really be able to save all these memories…
"And what about that time you asked me if I'll marry you?" she asks, looking back at him.
"Was that a joke, too, Hummingbird?"
Even if it was just one memory…
"Maybe…"
Just this memory…
Oh my lovely, oh my honey
Y went on some more regarding their childhood as they went farther and farther from the city. Soon, he could see trees and vast grassland, and he knew that they were already treading a route that led to another city, although he couldn't it in himself to name the city where they have come from, or the city they were heading to, and neither could he think why he should.
He was supposed to say something when the sounds of crashing and utter destruction have begun filling his ears. He looks around frantically, looking for Y.
Oh my darling Hummingbird
She wasn't far from him, but this time, it was her that he couldn't hear. She was reaching her hand to him, and he tried his best to run to her, but somehow, all the noises mixing themselves in his head have made him confused, making him unable to veer himself to where she stood.
Y had realized this and she tried to run towards him instead, all while trying to dodge the falling debris, all seemingly directed towards her.
Scan completed. Unknown entity found and marked.
X's eyelids were growing heavy. He knew that he will conk out soon, and he hoped that he could reach Y before that.
He couldn't afford being parted from her now, and Y absolutely wouldn't want that either.
She springs forward, narrowly dodging a falling tree, and grabs X by the hand, just in time for X's knees to buckle. Y tightens her hold and pulls him to a certain direction.
The boy could not process what Y was saying to him, nor could he tell which direction they were going, and so he chose to let Y lead the way.
He barely knew anything anyway.
Oh I love you…
"X, stay with me, okay? Stay with me!"
Oh I need you…
"X!"
"Y…"
Never leave me, hummingbird…
Hm?
What's wrong?
The patient… I think he said something…
Don't worry, that's very normal… I think the patient is going through one of the deleting process. Based on experience, they have got to be the most painful parts…
…This poor lad…
Have you found the virus?
Indeed, I have, Doctor.
Good. May I entrust the special deletion to you?
Of course, Doctor.
-FIN-
Yey, that concludes Chapter 3 ^_^ I'm sorry for the rather 'shitty' narrative—I'm trying to practice this new style in narrating, so I'm hoping you guys still get it, even if I did (try to) put some subtlety in the mix.
Chapter 4 might come a little later depending on how the rest of my school year will go, but I sure do hope you guys stay tuned :D
Thank you ^_^