Both Uni and the reader are 6

Friends:

He's there again, leaning against the tree by the river, the (h/c) boy she met a few days ago.

The one that called her pretty.

Uni couldn't help but blush at the memory. She truly did not expect it and she found the boy fascinating. Living all six years of her life in her Family's forest mansion, she did not have many friends. Only the maids and guards her mother hired to take care of her but even they were rather awkward towards her. Her mother visited but only on special occasions and they weren't much.

Needless to say, she never had a friend her age. She had never even seen anyone her age.

She lived pretty deep into the forest so she supposed it was normal. Though it was rather sad. Most of the days, flowers were her only friends. She would treat them like people minus the fact that she watered them. She supposed people wouldn't like it as much if she sprinkled them with water. She tried. She talked to them, she ate with them, and she took naps with them.

Flowers, though also living things, did not move, did not sleep, and did not reply when she spoke to them. Nobody understood when she said they were her friends, nobody including the maid that taught her how to make flower crowns.

Despite Uni's protests, she proceeded in picking the flowers saying that they were many anyway. Weaving the flowers together, the maid left Uni to help her co-workers do the laundry. She did not notice the tears in the corner of Uni's eyes.

Well, Uni supposed that her friends were still alive. Taking the crown from her head, she stared at her friends sadly.

She wondered if they were angry with her as they ran away from her with their new friend: the wind.

"Wait!" she cried, running after them. She wasn't able to reach them in time when they fell into the water and flowed away with the current. The current was strong and her legs couldn't catch up.

Her friends weren't going to get any slower and she knew that the river wasn't going to stop flowing. She was about to give up when the ring flowed into a pail. The owner of the pail pulled it up and stood. She was glad he noticed the flowers in his pail. He blinked ang pulled it out, he stared at her friends weirdly..

"Excuse me!" Uni called out of breath. "Those are my flowers."

And in an attempt to hand over the flowers, the boy broke the ring.

Silence had followed afterwards.

"Oops…" the boy began to look nervous. "S-Sorry…."

Uni swallowed her sadness, not wanting to burden a stranger with it. She smiled up at him gently. "It's alright."

She had seen a funeral once when she was very young. She remembered that the body was put in a very small coffin that was painted white. Their family symbol was printed on the cover. It was placed in a small boat that was filled with white, orange, and yellow flowers. Setting the coffin on fire, they pushed it into the river where it flowed until the body dissolves into ashes and the fire into the night.[1]

Now Uni didn't have a coffin to place her friends in and they would probably get mad if she picked more flowers just to offer it to them. Her mother always told her not to play with fire and so all she could do was send them off into the river, staring at them longingly as they flowed away.

"You're pretty."

… what?

Uni's sorrow transformed into surprise when she heard those two words come from the boy's mouth. Blood immediately flooded her cheeks and she stared at him with wide eyes.

The boy was unfazed; as if he did not say anything normal people wouldn't say to strangers. He simply stared back, a bored expression on his face.

"Don't go throwing stuff in the water," he scolded as he brushed past Uni casually.

Uni had simply stared at his retreating form, hearing him wonder out loud if the water was still drinkable. He shrugged to his own question before moving on.

Three days has passed and Uni made sure to come every day. The boy always came to the river to fetch two pails of water. Usually, he would take a break and lean against the tree, waiting until the sun decided to hide behind the clouds again, not noticing Uni who would hide behind a bush just to observe him. Today was no different,

but Uni wanted it to be.

Her heart pounded against her ribs as she began inching out of the bush. All her careful movements were easily put to waste, however, when a twig snapped under her feet. The boy was slow to react. A few palm-clamming seconds passed before he turned to her sleepily.

And yet to Uni, those seconds were spent with the boy snapping his head towards her questioningly.

"U-Um…!" Uni spoke nervously. The boy blinks at her sleepily.

"P-Please be my friend!" she cries, closing her eyes in fear of rejection.

"Hey…."

Wh-What if he thinks she's weird? And doesn't want to be friends?

"Hey…!"

What if he's inching away right now? Trying to get away?

"Hey!"

Did he want to tell her how weird he found her? Oh, she doesn't want to hear it!

"HEY!"

Her chain of thought broken, Uni stares at him fearfully. His eyes remain half-lidded but they showed no annoyance. He motions her forward and she complies feebly.

He pats the spot beside him and Uni sits down slowly. The moment her bottom touched the grass, the boy's head plops down on her lap. Uni stared at him shocked.

"(Name)," he said, closing his eyes. Uni blinks before her eyes soften.

"My name is Uni…" she introduces herself softly. (Name) groaned, muttering something about how she could ask such a thing.

Smiling sweetly, she realized that her friends had not left her, they simply led her to a new friend.

~End

A/N:

1. So... can somebody guess whose funeral that was? :3