After lunchtime Eru sat at the table and waited for Ibara to pass by. Then she caught her and asked to speak with her. The other servants were used to this; sometimes getting pulled aside to do random acts of service or to be scolded, so having another person called out was a sign that everyone else should be okay.

"What do you need, Miss Eru?" Ibara asked as they stepped out into the hall, she politely bowing with the etiquette that she had been taught for her job.

"Oreki agreed to have me over to his shop to see what he does. I want to go immediately after lunch. Please escort me there."

Ibara looked a little startled then regained her composure. "But why would you want to see that grouch? It's not really common to go into his shop anyway, especially when you can just order something over the database. I can even do it for you, if you'd like. But going all the way out there to see him...that's really out of the way for something as boring as his job."

"Mayaka, I do really want to go out there. I only ever go out when the poor have returned home, so I have never seen the city in the daylight when people work. I want to see him do his job!"

Ibara sighed. "I suppose you're right. I'll go. But I'll need to leave early to get your clothes so you won't be noticed."

"By all means!" Eru exclaimed. "Go right now! I'm sure my food is fine, seeing as you have already tasted it for me. I will be waiting by the back entrance."

Her friend nodded then walked swiftly down the corridor while Eru returned to the group to eat.

"Oh! I am so very glad lunch is over!" Eru commented with a grin. As she walked along with Ibara toward Hotarou's shop. "It is certainly more interesting to associate with the common folk than with the upper class."

"Well, there's good and bad to being poor," Ibara added. "But I'd almost prefer to be rich. You have so much freedom and no fear of the Organization."

"Hmm, I have never feared the Organization because they are the ones who give us what we need." Eru wondered. "Why do you fear them?"

"Well," Ibara hesitated, lowering her voice, "we know that they are always watching us, almost like they're waiting for us to make a mistake. While they do give us what we need to survive I've heard it quite often that they just make people disappear for no reason."

"I have never heard that."

"Because they don't really mess around with the rich, for what I know," she replied with a shrug. "And like I said, there are many people who disappear for no reason. They've been working, doing their job, et cetera and they just vanish! So we have to be careful in whatever we're doing. Especially since, you, a rich person, has come into the mix. We never know when it might come after us."

"It..?"

"We're here," Ibara interrupted. She opened the door, letting Eru in first.

Hotarou was in the back working on his one-a-day project. He finished one project per day unless otherwise asked to prepare something. He heard a little ding go off near his head. Customers? I don't think I was expecting anyone...He moved his hand to his shirt and pressed the top button. In this was a button that activated a speaker.

"I'll be there in a minute. Take a seat." The two girls heard and obeyed, sitting on plush seats sewn by Satoshi and crafted out of black metal by Hotarou himself. They heard the hammering quiet then stop. A few other noises later they saw him appear, covered more than normal in ash and dirt.

He seemed a little surprised to see the two girls. But Eru reminded him of his promise. He sighed forlornly. "Did I actually agree to that?" he said aside to himself. He gestured for the girls to follow him, but Ibara stayed back.

"I just remembered that I have to go finish in the kitchen, today was my day to clean," she nodded and dismissed herself. Hotarou continued walking.

"I am very excited to see your work and how you make it!" she beamed at him.

"Hmm." The passage opened into a cavern like area that sloped out into a field. It was filled with many different types of materials and wood, and despite being very open, was very hot from the furnace.

Eru stared in wide-eyed wonder around the room, taking it all in. "This place...so this is where all of your wonderful creations come from!" she exclaimed. She walked quickly around the room, examining different objects.

"Be careful not to get too close to the furnace," he warned, moving back to his project. He began heating another piece of metal, turning it carefully with the pliers. Suddenly he felt a presence near him he turned, almost smacking heads with Eru. He jumped back startled and almost dropped the molten piece of metal. "Get back! Idiot! Didn't I tell you it was dangerous?!" he yelled, scaring himself and the girl.

Eru started back, her eyes welling up with tears. Hotarou, realizing his sharp comment and recovering from his fright, rolled his shoulders up and rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

"I-I told you to stay away from the furnace," he said after an awkward moment of silence. "You could get hurt." The two stood as they were then Hotarou moved first. He moved carefully back towards the furnace and after tossing in some more wood continued to heat the metal. He sensed that Eru, still a little startled, didn't know what to do so he recommended a seat a little ways away for her to sit on.

The quiet continued between the two. Hotarou felt partially responsible for killing the mood, but didn't know quite what to say and found it difficult to start and maintain conversations in general. So he waited for Eru to speak.

When she did, her voice was quiet and she spoke timidly. "How did you learn to be a black-I mean metallurgist?"

Metallurgist? Is that the term for it? Hotarou pondered. "It's a bit of a long story."

"I will listen," Eru interrupted quickly.

He sighed and began. "Well, to be honest, my family was never in this business to begin with. When I was young I was placed in an orphanage, because my parents disappeared; they were presumably dead. You probably don't know much about orphanages. Most of the poor world doesn't really know about them either.

"In short, it's shameful to be an orphan. We're the lowest of the low; the most unfortunate among the poor. Orphans are trained with basic skills and wherever a job needs filled they are thrown into it, without any prior training.

"I'll elaborate; orphans receive basic brainwashing. 'Like your job', 'working is good' that sort of thing. Other children are given more rigorous training as to why you should like your work, what it does for society, and how to do it. The leftover children that don't have a family job history aren't wanted in society, but they exist, and always will, so they might as well be put to use. Therefore, if a certain job looses a worker, in my case, a matallurgist..."

"Metallurgist."

"Whatever, the position needs to be filled. I was the oldest in the orphanage at the time, and when a job needs to be filled, the oldest in the place fills the spot; qualified or not. The job I was thrown into when I was 9 was being a fire stoker because the last one had died."

"How?"

"How? You say?" he hesitated. "Well, he was the last orphan they had which, the oldest at the time was 7. He was working the furnace and he tripped and fell..."

Hotarou heard a stifled gasp. He turned back and took the metal out of the fire. "It's not surprising that happened, children that age shouldn't be doing jobs like that," he said quietly. He took out his hammer and began forming the metal. He hammered until it was what he wanted then took some pliers and began shaping it.

"I managed to keep myself alive somehow for 3 years," he continued. "Then the metallurgist above me, an old man who taught me all I know about life and crafting metal, died. I was bumped up and took his place. He taught me despite the fact that it wasn't part of his job to teach me. I became the head of the sector for metal crafting and actually outgrew the system, so it seems. The rich people apparently began to specifically request my name and my work and somehow I was moved to have my own shop."

"Somehow?"

Hotarou paused his work for a moment. "I don't really remember what happened. I remember going in one day and being told that I had been sent to a different address. And that was here. I've never worked with another person here, never an apprentice, or another metallurgist at all. When I walked in I had three assignments, all the tools I could want, and the fuel for the fire."

"Why?"

Hotarou shrugged, indicating that he had completed his story. Eru sat, thoughtful about what Hotarou had just told her. Many things spun through her mind; questions and curiosities about which she wanted to know, but too many to ask. But one question stood out in her mind.

"Was it hard?"

"What? Learning to be a metal worker?"

"No, becoming an orphan."

The question surprised him. "I don't know what you mean. You can't decide whether or not you are going to be an orphan..."

"But loosing your parents...you must have been so lonely."

Hotarou reflected. He could clearly remember the day he became considered an orphan. It was early in the morning and the sun was just beginning to shine over the hill tops. He walked hand-in-hand with a woman, he couldn't recall who though, toward the doors of a run-down building. It looked like it had been some kind of factory turned into a children's home. Some strange ivy-like plant clung desperately to the walls, trying to engulf the structure and he remembered after learning to read what the partially swallowed sign above the door read: 'Useless Children's Place'. He remembered the only time he had ever felt fear was at that point. He could feel that this wasn't a place anyone would ever want to be. He wanted to go home. He had told the woman so, but she pulled him along all the more quickly.

The doors slid open to the sides and he was shown in. The building was dimly lit by lights that sometimes flickered on and off. It was obvious that no one there was cared about. A sad woman who looked like the half-alive remains of a once beautiful person, spoke shortly with the woman he had walked with. His escort released his hand and walked away he attempted to follow her, but was taken by the other hand by the skeleton-woman and led to the upstairs. He was shown a room and a bed that was going to be called his own. The space underneath it and on top of it was his own, but nowhere else in the house would anything be 'his'. He was shown to the school and then left in the midst of the lunchroom to figure out what he was going to do.

The orphans weren't mean. All just frightened, almost to the extent of being in survival mode. He still had some acquaintances which he would sit with during lunch and classes. But never any 'friends'. He didn't feel lonely. He thought that in a group of people, you can't be lonely. But what he did feel, though he didn't quite understand it at the time, was that he had been abandoned. He never once remembered crying during the time he was there. He just sat around the others and felt empty.

He never understood where his parents went. He never asked. He just wondered. Did he miss his parents? He didn't know. He never became attached to anything or anyone. That was one thing he learned during his time in the orphanage. In this world, don't be attached to things. They will take it away. They who? He wanted to know, so badly did he want to know. Who? Why? Where? How?

"Oreki?" Eru woke him out of his revere.

"Oh, I, hmm," he let out a breath. "I don't really know. I don't remember much."

"Oh Oreki, I am sorry," Eru said softly, placing a hand on his back. "Sometimes you have to go through things like that to become the person you are today."

Trying to sound philosophical, huh? He stood and turned to the rest of his project, with his newly shaped piece of metal in hand. He glanced around it then sighed.

"What?" Eru asked looking intently at Hotarou.

"There's no where to put this," he smirked contemptuously. This girl is very distracting...then he realized something. He set the metal aside and began cleaning up his things.

"What are you doing?"

"Do you realize," he said, ignoring her inquiry and still continuing to tidy up the place, "that I've never told anyone about that before?"

"About your past?"

"And yet, why did I?"

"Why indeed," Eru wondered aloud.

I've never even completely told Satoshi or Ibara that before and yet I go tell this girl whom I've known for three days. I shouldn't do that sort of thing. My past is for me to know, and no one else, he decided. "Are you going back now?"

Eru looked out over the icy cliffs and realized how dark it was already outside. "Oh! What time is it? I never keep a watch on me. I hope I won't be late for dinner, people will start to suspect something!" Eru looked around frantically for whatever she thought she had brought.

"Here," Eru looked up at Hotarou. He held out an old-fashioned pocket watch to her. "I know it's not stylish, but it has all the features any other watch has, phone, positioning system, time; you know."

"It is quite pretty!" she took it and glanced at the time. "It is 5:43. I have enough time to get to the other side of town," she turned to go; Hotarou called her back.

"I'm giving this to you. You can keep it," he informed her, a little embarrassed at having to say it twice.

"What? But is it not yours?"

"Well, I made it, but I have several others. So I don't mind giving this to you because you don't have one." She took it from his hand and smiled gently.

"Thank you! I will treasure it, especially since you made it!" she clutched it between her hands and held it close.

"Well," Hotarou coughed awkwardly to hid his blush. "Let's get you to the station." He led the way out of the shop and back into town then gave the formalities and saw her off on the train. When she left and he sighed, he found that his heart was beating a little faster. He shrugged it off, dismissing it for the sudden amount of activity, but still was slightly curious about it.

Thanks for reading! please do review!