Sensory information, what your brain tells you about the world, is one of the things that I find most fascinating about Noa Kaiba. What must it be like, I find myself wondering, to have spent more than half one's life in a false world? In the Matrix?

What would be important to you? What would matter most?

I think, for Noa, what matters most is . . . warmth.

In all its meanings.


.


"What's the most surprising thing you've learned about the world? You know, now that you're back in it, I mean. If you had to pick one thing you have a new perspective on, what would it be?"

Noa thought long and hard on this question. He paid close attention to everything Ryo said, and particularly to any questions he asked, because they just seemed to carry more weight; more than the questions of other people, anyway. He didn't understand why that was.

Kisara would have been able to tell him. "You are smitten," she would say, in that airy way she had that made it seem like this wasn't the only reality she existed in.

In the end, it didn't much matter why he cared so much about Ryo's questions.

Only that he cared.

Noa finally said: "It's warm."

Ryo eyed him suspiciously, like he was wondering whether Noa was mocking him, but didn't say anything.

"When I think back on my life before," Noa went on, staring off at nothing, "all I remember is cold. Not, like, winter cold. Not blizzard cold or trapped-in-a-river-current cold. I mean, like . . . metal. Cold the way a laboratory is. Clinical. You know some classrooms where the air is kept at 65 degrees because it's supposed to keep people alert? Cold like that."

Ryo frowned thoughtfully; his brow furrowed. "The kind of cold that saps your strength," he said slowly. "The kind of cold you can't fight. It sneaks into you, settles in like it belongs there. By the time you notice it, it's too late. You're already a dead man."

Noa nodded. "Yes. Yes, exactly." He hummed low in his throat. "I don't even know for sure if I'm remembering anything. It might be . . . well, I'm not sure, actually. I don't know." He shook his head. "Reality made no sense in that machine. The only thing I understand anymore, the only thing that clicks for me about the time I spent there, is that it was cold."

Noa reached out and brushed his fingers against Noa's arm. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean to . . . bring up painful memories. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, no." Noa waved a dismissive hand. "It's okay. It's just . . . when I first woke up in this body, and I realized that my old life was buried. I couldn't help but marvel at how warm it was. Especially when Mokuba and Aniki led me outside the hospital for the first time, and I was in the open air, after . . . what, eleven years? Twelve?"

Ryo smiled. "That must have been a very special day," he said.

"It's my birthday," Noa said. "I decided that. When we started setting out my identity, getting all the paperwork started. Nobody knew if I was telling the truth about when I was born, after all. Chichiue kept me as close to the chest as he could. I'm not even sure if I ever had a Social Security number. Hell, Mokuba showed me his school ID once. Found it in an old backpack or something. I never even had anything like that."

"It's like you were a ghost, haunting the world."

"Yeah. But not anymore."

Ryo's smile widened. "Not anymore," he said. "You're too warm."