Chapter –10: Foreign

The blond boy clutched at his brother, his twin. They were cramped into the tiniest, dustiest corner in the room. All around them were creaking, spring metal beds, boys running around wildly, shouting and laughing and some of them just lying on the floor, looking as dead as corpses. But they were all very much alive, even if some of them didn't want to be. A few of the boys in the room wore well-to-do newsboy clothes, while others were dressed in white, robe-like rags. Orphan clothes.

The twins wore neither—they were still in the clothes they'd slept in just last night, just until the morning, when two heavy-set men had bound them and gagged them and dragged them away from their screaming, crying, begging mother. Their mother, who they knew they'd never see again. Their mother, who'd lost her husband, parents, sister, brother, and twin sons in the span of two weeks. They'd only been in this country for a month.

Only for a month had they been in this country that promised opportunities, freedom, land, wealth, success, happiness. Instead, the promise was exchanged for racism, discrimination, crime, sickness, filth—everything that they'd already had in their home country.

The twins didn't bother crying—or rather they didn't want to. They were too old to cry. Eleven was far too old an age for boys to cry. They didn't even need to cry anyway. They didn't want to. They didn't have to. No matter how much they felt as though they would. It'd already been half a day that they'd sat curled up in the corner like this, not knowing where they were, what they were here for, or what would become of them.

Fai gripped his twin's hand harder and breathed the taste of dust in and out shallowly. He glanced up as the footsteps they'd dreaded came nearer. The other boys had ignored them up to this point—except for the few that'd dared to glare at them for their singling fair hair. But a boy now approached them, older than they were by three or four years, and with shoulder-length hair—sleek and black and clean.

The stranger boy knelt down before them and offered his pale hand. He smiled—Fai thought he had a wonderful smile. His gaze wasn't warm—it was rather cool, covered with ice tracks, frozen—but Fai thought his smile brilliant enough to make up for it wholly. "My name is Ashura." The way he spoke was slow, steady, and there was a slur to his words—foreign, just like they were.

Fai had learned enough English to make-do with introductions—to a certain extent, at the least. "Fai. I am Fai." He shrugged one shoulder, nudging his twin. "This is Yuui. He is…my…brother," he continued—broken English. He took Ashura's hand, unsure of what to do with it. In his country, men kissed women's hands.

Ashura forwardly threaded his fingers through Fai's hand and his smile this time reached to his cold eyes. He glanced at Yuui briefly, offering a welcoming nod, but his line of sight swiftly returned to Fai. "You have hair…" he said, "You have hair like…" He pursed his lips thoughtfully. Fai's eyebrows creased in bemusement. "Ah, like this." Ashura reached into his pocket with his free hand and held a small ring—just a plain band of pale, white gold—before the twins' eyes. "We can be friends?"

Yuui locked eyes with Fai, and Fai's heart thumped as he looked back to Ashura. "Yes. Friends."

A/N: These are just like the ones in Secrets. They're "Negative chapters" as TheRecorder dubbed them. Which means, this one, for example is Chapter -10, meaning it happened 10 years before the main storyline. I got the idea from the way Tite Kubo did the Turn Back the Pendulum arc in Bleach. Anyway, this one is super short, but they'll get longer as more happens. And they won't all necessarily be in chronological order. It depends on whose past I'm playing in. Ashura, Kamui, Fai, and Subaru all have interconnected pasts, and they're all different ages, so the timelines will be a little varied.

And don't worry. When it starts to get superconfusing I'll give you a cupcake to make your head feel better, and so you hopefully don't send me a blowtorch via express mail.

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