Pain Is Only A Game If You Can Count To Zero
"Hey, Soubi!" Natsuo called with a bored look on his face. Youji was close by, sitting on the couch that Natsuo was leaning against with his legs dangling over Natsuo's torso. Nastou traced over creases in Youji's pants while Youji zoned out into a video game.
"What?" Soubi asked bluntly and none too happily.
"I'm bored." Natsou stated, dragging the final syllables of his words out longer then necessary.
"Go to the park or something." Soubi randomly suggested before turning back to his painting.
x
The thought of fresh air intrigued Natsuo, something about it felt nicer then the paint filled apartment. 'I swear one day we will get high just staying in that place.' Things like a change in smell is as dramatic as it got for two Zeros. So Natsuo convinced his twin to come out with him.
"Youji, Youji." Natsuo half-whined as he faced his twin and tugged on his sleeve. "Let's goo!" Youji had been getting rather bored of his game so after a little prompting he agreed, after all as long as he was with Natsuo it didn't matter where. All the better if it would please him.
And so the two mischievous twins later found themselves wandering around the local park. Unlike most 12 year olds, the Zeros didn't spend their time at the park tossing balls and hopscotching. They people watched, looking for prey. Someone to toy with. They let their devious, curious personalities loose as soon as they got away from Soubi's harmful glare.
That's when the spotted her, a pretty girl was more fun to play with, right?
The girl, seemingly the same age, sat idly by a tree, pondering what to do with herself. The girl sighed unhappily. Without company it was pretty boring to come to the park. 'Maybe I should go to the stream in back and skip rock or something..' But then she spotted two people who looked much more interesting than skipping stones.
A few moments after Youji and Natsuo locked onto their prey, she came skipping toward them.
"That's a new development." Youji whispered playfully to his twin.
As she approached closer they saw she had an excited grin, one that was mischievous in a whole new way. It was a typical kid look, playful, curious, stupid. But she had something else to her willingness, bravery, she looked pretty adventurous for a kid.
"Hey." She greeted, bluntly and childishly. As if it were normal to walk up to strangers looking so determined and strike a conversation.
Natsuo was struck with apprehension, this was pretty.. different. But Youji took charge, loving an out of the blue challenge.
"Hey there! You want to play with us, pretty thing?" Youji asked in his most charming voice. Through his daze, Natsuo felt an unidentifiable pang in his stomach at the sound of his twin's voice.
He grasped Youji's hand and joined the conversation with his own dazzling smile.
The prey replied, "Sure, girly boys."
"Eh? Why the name calling?" Youji asked still in charming mode. Acting, was always fun.
"You called me a name so I'll call you one back." She said, shifting her left hand to her hip.
"Well then frog face, what's your real name?" Natsuo asked with some distaste seeping through his joke.
The girl place her other hand to rest on its hip and stood a bit straighter before proudly announcing herself. "Fujiwara Shiori! You may call me Shiori."
The twins chuckled a bit at her fun attitude before she closer approached Natsuo.
Natsuo almost stepped backward as the girls face came closer to his, but he held his place and stared back at her. He stared back with one eye, that is.
"More importantly," She started, glaring as directly as she possibly could into Natsuo's eye, "What did you do to that eye of yours?" Her question was blunt, rude, childish, and pretty intrusive but the Zero boys were overcome with happiness. It was like she was begging to be toyed with. Such an open and forward way of speaking wasn't used by most people, everyone was so polite and curt about their speech. Polite is boring. Shiori was intriguing.
"Hehe, you sure you wanna know?" Natsuo asked, his deviousness coming forward with all previous thoughts of apprehension completely knocked away.
"Yeah tell me already." Shiori asked.
"Well Shiori, I poked it out. With. My. Finger."
Shiori looked back at him dumbly, his simple words not making much sense.
Seeing her inability to process it Natsuo jumped at the chance for a gruesome tail. He spoke with an eerie voice as if he was reciting a ghost story, "When I was just a kid, one day I probed my open eye with a finger. It makes everything go all black if you press enough, see. So I wanted to know what would happen if I poke it more, and I did. Next thing I knew I felt dampness on my face an when I touched it, my hand came away covered in blood. The sticky, warm stuff, it was all over staining my shirt beet red and I'd never seen so much of it." Natsuo told the tale pretty much to the truth, he didn't tell it often because it was a reminder, as Nagisa had said, of his stupidity. Every once and a while, though, he told it to a kid to scare them off.
"Didn't that hurt?" Shiori asked dumbfounded for a moment.
"Nope, not a bit." Natsuo said truthfully.
"Yeah right!" Shiori accused suddenly releasing how out of it the story was, "Anyone would stop from the pain way before their eye got poked out."
"You know what the worst part was?" Natsuo asked, trying once more to trick her, "The gushy feeling of my squished eyeball, the insides feel like nothing else, I'll tell ya."
"Hmmp! I bet you just wear that patch for show. If you're going to make up a story make it something believable. Even /I/ wouldn't be able to stand the pain of that and not stop." Shiori was somewhat proud of her pain resistance. It was one of those 'cool' things to brag about with her friends, stories to pass around fueling egos that would hopefully be forgotten with time.
"Ooh," Youji prompted, "You think you can stand worse pain then we can?"
Shiori nodded confidently, "I know it! No one's beaten my record, two girly boys won't be able to, no way."
"Eh, okay but a fair warning, frog face, we /don't/ feel pain."
Shiori just laughed, "Whatever, let's play.. The pain game!"
Youji and Natsuo had never heard of this 'pain game' before but whatever it was they figured they could defy it, and if all else fails they had a world of spells backing them. In other words, why not.
"Kay, what's the rules?" Natsuo asked.
"There are none. You just play." Shiori said darkly. Before the Zeros could react a hand shot out and slapped Natsuo's arm. Natsuo didn't even flinch, there was no impact behind it, all he felt was a brush of skin. In actuality if he hadn't seen Shiori lunge at him he probably wouldn't even have noticed. But Youji noticed it very much, he saw the girl lash out, attack, his most important person.
"Oh so you wanna play it that way?" Youji said as he slapped Shiori's arm in retaliation.
Shiori nodded and they commenced in a 'pain game.' Shiori was trying to gain ego, boast that she beat two kids at once who thought they were better than her. The Zeros were merely intrigued by her, studying every reflection of pain that she showed.
It didn't take long for the splashes of red on Shiori's arms to become overwhelmingly painful. "Why-why aren't you hurting?" She sputtered at the twins. Then she asked louder, desperately, "Doesn't it hurt? Are you so inhuman not to feel pain!" Tears formed in her eyes.
Youji and Natsuo were stunned, "We are- inhuman. But that has nothing to do with pain." Youji said to her.
"We only know the pain from in here." Natsuo said as he pointed to his heart.
"We can't compare it to that." He pointed to Shiori's arms. "But maybe you could try to see what hurts more for yourself."
Shiori took in their words not really grasping the meaning. Mainly the only thing shooting out at her was the faint realization of two people unable to feel pain, and she didn't know the half of it. Even so, she would remember them for a long time, neither the Zeros nor her knew it now, though. Shiori sniffled in her tears, and winced at her pain.
"Ahh! How troublesome! Whatta sermon Natsuo!"
"Eheh! Let's get outta here." Natsuo grabbed his twins hand and they began to walk away from the park.
"Eh! Wa-wait up!" Shiori called running after them. "Uh, you guys, You Win!" Her words held much more meaning then winning a slap fight- in fact they didn't refer to the game at all.
The Zeros just smiled back at her, she gave them a huge grin and waved goodbye.
Weeks later, Shiori's friends were confused as to why she would no longer participate in her once favorite game, and Shiori herself didn't quite know. It just wasn't right anymore.
Shiori is probably in Ritsuka's class, she isn't one of those bullies to Yuiko but one of the children who peered on with interest at the computer screen, with no concern to Ritsuka, when it revealed Seimei's death.