Himitsukichi

The classroom is filled with the boisterous sound of students loudly talking. Everyone seems to be excited for the weekend. Can’t say I blame them. The new school year only just started, and the summer heat hasn’t died off yet. I am not part of the noise, however. I was up late last night out with friends, and the fatigue is really hitting me. The fact that my seat is by the window, and I can feel the sun’s afternoon warmth only makes me even more sleepy.

“Alright class, settle down please.”

The history teacher Sister Adelaide enters the classroom. Unfortunately for her, none of the other students have heard her and are continuing with their noise.

“E-hem! It is time for history class, so quiet down!”

She raises her voice to try and get the class to calm down, but to no avail. My classmates aren’t getting quiet, and one of the boys even brandishes his middle finger towards Sister Adelaide. This is the last straw for her.

*Thud*

“Quiet! All of you! Right now!”

She furiously slams a textbook onto the desk while yelling at the top of her lungs. It’s more than enough to quiet down the class and wake me up. All the students rush to their seats and settle down in a flash, but it’s not enough to quell Sister Adelaide’s anger.

“Damiano! Come to the front of the class!”

She points a ruler at the boy who gave her the finger. His face has been drained of all color. I don’t know what he was expecting, he should’ve seen this coming. He’s violently shaking and petrified by fear.

“I said, come to the front of the class!”

Another thud sounds out from another textbook being slammed down. This is enough to get Damiano moving. He slowly but surely makes his way up to the teacher’s desk. Sister Adelaide looks at him with pure disgust as he does so.

“Pull your trousers down and bend over.”

Damiano looks like he’s about to burst into tears as he knows what’s going to happen. As he starts unbuttoning his trousers, I can’t help but feel baffled by his actions. If you hate punishment that much, why go out of your way to upset a teacher like that? What a moron. Once his pale buttocks are out, some of the students start snickering and whispering to each other.

“I suggest the rest of you keep quiet, unless you want to be punished too.”

Sister Adelaide is able to get the class to quiet down again and she walks over to Damiano with her ruler in hand. The sound of the ruler slapping against Damiano’s skin soon fills the room. It’s a light punishment, only ten lashes. Regardless, Damiano’s rear end is quite red by the end of it and a few tears are falling down his face. He gets redressed and then somberly walks back to his desk.

“…Now that we’re through with that delay, let’s get started.”

Sister Adelaide begins to write on the blackboard and proceeds to start class normally, acting as if nothing had happened.

“Today, we’re going to be discussing the history of the Vatican. Specifically, how LOVE managed to steal it away from The Catholic Church.”

Ah, I know about this, my father told me about it years ago. The Vatican was once the most vital area to The Church long ago. Where all high ranking members lived. To make a long story short, the wealthy elites behind the creation of LOVE despite being atheists knew that they needed to gain control of the most holy spots on the planet if they wanted to control most of the world’s population. It was surprisingly easy for them; all they had to do was bribe the members of the Roman Curia to let them kill the then current pope and then install a new pope who would act as a puppet for LOVER politics.

Soon enough, the pope declared that Vatican City would become a province of LOVE, which lead to disarray among Catholics. Although groups such as Old Catholics and Sedevacantists used to be controversial among Catholics, once LOVE took over the Vatican, every Catholic outside of LOVE had to deal with the Protestant nightmare of high amounts of branching off into various different groups. Where I live, we simply refer to our church as La Chiesa cattolica italiana Disapora It’s essentially the church for Italian Catholics who aren’t from LOVE and are far from our motherland of Italy.

According to the history books, the story goes that roughly 200 years ago, millions of poor farmers in Italy left the country in the hopes of finding better pastures. My ancestors ended up moving to the United States, a large country that prided itself on its freedom and being a “melting pot” of various people from all over the world. Unfortunately, those values turned out to be a lie. Italians living in America were violently discriminated against and seen as slimeballs who did nothing but engage in criminal activity. We were only accepted and given “freedom” once we could be stereotyped as charismatic crime bosses in entertainment.

Not only that, but as the years went by, we slowly lost more of our culture as Italians in America stopped speaking out native language and started to be seen more as just “typical white Americans” who use a lot of hand gestures. The “melting pot” did nothing but melt away our identity. In a strange way, the destruction of the old world was a bit of a blessing for us. Sure, we’re still far away from Italy and our chances of getting to return are slim, but thanks to the formation ofHOME and our state specifically, we’ve managed to rebuild some of our innate culture that was lost to Americanization. Italian has become the mother tongue again (although we do learn English in school if only to communicate with the PearlCoin members who visit), we started to celebrate holidays and traditions that had become forgotten in diaspora and have even made sure to give our state a special Italian flair in terms of how our building look.

The story of our state is always told with a deep reverence here and while there are aspects of it that do impress me, I’m not swooned with deep emotion every time someone brings it up. Don’t get me wrong, I like being Italian and I think it’s neat that my birth language is the same language as my homeland, it’s just…well, what’s the point of being excited about being Italian when I know I’ll never get to visit Italy? I once learned in class that international travel used to be a common luxury in the old world, but that was no longer the case after the collapse. These days all air and sea travel is controlled by either LOVE government officials or members of cryptocurrency groups, and you have to be insanely wealthy if you want to be able to use one of their planes or boats. Sure, there are cars and motorbikes, but those are illegal in HOME and even if they weren’t, it’s not as if I can drive across the Atlantic Ocean.

“…Marco…Marco!”

The sound of Sister Adelaide’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts, and I can see that she’s standing right in front of my desk. This isn’t good.

“…For how many years were the Papal States active?”

Oh, good. A question that I know the answer to.

“Approximately 1,114 years Sister. They ended in 1870 with the capture of Rome which would then be followed by the unification of Italy in 1871.”

Sister Adelaide gives an annoyed sigh and heads back to the front of the classroom to continue the lesson. You see, unlike Damiano, I’m not an idiot and I know how to avoid punishment. I like to learn, but I also find school boring, so I usually do all of my studying at home and then use class time to daydream and sleep. I don’t know what it is about school that makes learning new things so painfully dull, but I guess it doesn’t matter as long as my scores are good.

The rest of the class goes by without any further incident and the bell signaling the end of the school day chimes loudly. I quickly gather my school supplies before leaving the classroom. I know Gloria doesn’t have anything to do this afternoon, so I figured I’d pick her up. Her classroom is right across the hallway from my classroom. I peer my head in the class and wave at girl with silky blonde hair and she joyously bounces up to me.

“Marco!”

Gloria wraps her arm around mine and we walk out of the school building.

“You’re not with you friends today?”

“I was with them almost all last night. I just want to get some sleep.”

“That’s not healthy Marco! You shouldn’t abuse your body like that!”

 Gloria lightly admonishes me for my poor sleeping habits. Gloria and I have been romantic for a few months now. We’ve known each other since childhood as my family likes to sell crops to her family’s shop, but it was only recently that Gloria confessed her romantic feelings for me. And although I don’t feel the same strong level of romantic affection as she does, I do like her enough that I accepted her feelings with no problem. While both of our parents aren’t fully sure if they want us married, they’re not against our relationship either. Plus, being Gloria’s lover has helped to quell rumors that some students were spreading about me being a homosexual.

“Look, I like to be with my friends, and sometimes that means staying out late. I don’t do it all the time, and certainly not multiple days in a row. I’ll be getting plenty of sleep tonight.”

I give Gloria a light kiss on her forehead. She holds my face as I do so.

“Um…You…You can kiss me on the lips you know.”

She stares at me with a hopeful look on her face. To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for me to be Gloria’s first kiss, but if she really wants it, then I’d probably be hurting her by not doing it.

“…Alright…”

I lean into her and the two of us share our first kiss together. It’s a light kiss, no need to go any further than necessary. Although our kiss was light, the two of us can’t help but gaze into each other’s eyes for what was probably only a minute or two but felt much longer.

“We…We really need to hurry home.”

Gloria breaks the silence, and we continue on our way. It’s odd. I’ve read about first kisses in stories before and have heard others talk about them. From the way adults go about it, getting your first kiss is a powerful moment, only topped by losing your virginity. And yet, that kiss with Gloria, while it felt nice, didn’t feel powerful. I don’t feel like I’ve gained anything new from it, and I don’t really understand what was so special about it. Gloria seems to feel the opposite of me though. She looks spaced out, her face has a slight blush on it, and she can’t stop fiddling with the rosary beads she’s wearing.

“Umm…So Marco, I know your birthday was two weeks ago…It’s just…”

Gloria stops suddenly and starts looking through her bag.

“I…I’ve been making you a gift for the past few months and I finally finished it!”

She pulls out a small patchwork stuffed bear from her bag. The stitching is awkward, giving the bear an odd mix of colors and patterns. Its ears are different sizes and the eyes are…”unique”, to put it politely. It’s obviously the work of a novice and would unnerve most children.

“I’ve been practicing making toys before, but this is my first completed project!”

Gloria beams in pride, not caring about how rough the bear looks.

“Thanks…You really didn’t need to do this you know.”

I graciously take the bear from her. Although the bear may be unpleasant to the eyes, it’s still a (late) birthday gift from Gloria and more importantly, the first toy she’s made. It’d be cruel to reject it.

“Of course I didn’t need to do it! I just wanted to!”

She grabs a hold of my arm again, and we keep walking. We talk a little about our day before arriving at the small farm that is my home. I can see my older sister Isabella waving to us.

“Hello you two! How was schoo-ghek!”

As she comes to greet us, she notices the stuffed bear in my hands and stops in her tracks.

“Um, Marco…What is that thing?”

Isabella is trying to stay composed, but it’s clear that the bear is creeping her out.

“It’s a late birthday present I made for him!”

Gloria answers her question before I can say anything, seemingly unaware that my sister doesn’t like how the bear looks at all.

“O-Oh really? Well, th-that’s so sweet of you…”

Isabella does her best to compliment Gloria, though I can tell that she’s struggling and wants to run away screaming from the bear.

“I can’t stay to talk unfortunately. My mother’s sick with a cold, so I need to help father out at the store. I’ll see you two later!”

Gloria waves goodbye and walks off into the distance back to her home. Once she’s out of eyesight, Isabella whispers into my ear.

“You can throw that disturbing bear away if you want. I can even make up a story if you need it.”

…I know the bear isn’t great to look at, but is this level of animosity really necessary?

“I’m not going to do that; this is a gift from Gloria!”

“…Alright, I understand, just-just try to keep it out of sight, will you? We wouldn’t want to be giving Dina and Erica nightmares now, would we?”

So she says, but it’s obvious she’s more concerned about herself having nightmares rather than our younger sisters.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

I head inside of the house. Here, I can see my mother preparing dinner, and my father sitting in front of the fireplace reading a book.

“Hello Marco. How was school?”

Mother looks up from the vegetables she’s cutting to greet me. Father sets his book aside to do the same.

“It was fine. One of my classmates was foolish enough to think giving Sister Adelaide the finger wouldn’t end poorly for him. Nothing too interesting happened beyond that.”

My father starts to grimace a bit. At first, I thought it was perhaps that he was reminiscing about a painful experience with Sister Adelaide in his youth, but then he started walking closer and examining the bear Gloria gave me.

“…Marco, would you mind telling me what the hell that thing is?”

“It’s a gift from Gloria. She made it as a late birthday present.”

Father frowns as he examines the bear, scratching his beard.

“…Look, I know Gloria’s excited about learning to make toys, but she needs to understand that you’re too old for that kind of thing. You’re practically a man now. There’s no need for you to own a toy bear, and especially not one that looks like…that.”

“I understand, but I just can’t throw it out either.”

I head to my bedroom. Because I’m the only boy amongst my siblings, I have a bedroom all to myself while my sisters share a different one. I place the bear on a desk, take my shoes off, and lie in bed. The weariness of being out late last night gets to me and I soon fall asleep.

Life has always been simple for me, but it wasn’t always easy. While my father and I have a good relationship now, that wasn’t always the case. When I was little, I couldn’t really get along with other boys my age, so I chose to spend time with my sisters instead. My father really didn’t like this, especially since I liked to crochet with Isabella. Yet when I tried to get along with the other boys at school, it always ended with me being pushed in the mud, punched in the face, or both. I didn’t know why they disliked me so much, but looking back I understand now that it’s because I was a bit of a moron as a child and didn’t really understand the difference between “being feminine” and “being masculine”. It’s not that I disliked “boy activities”. I always wanted to join the other boys, whether it be playing tag in the forest or squishing random bugs. It’s just that I had a terrible habit of being too open about my enjoyment of “girl activities” such as crochet and picking random flowers in the outdoors.

It wasn’t until I was about ten years old that I finally understood that was the reason why I was so disliked by other boys. I realized that if I were to get along with the other boys, then I needed to start hiding my enjoyment of “girl activities” and stop hanging out with my sisters so much. Of course, this was a slow process, but after getting into a fight with another boy and pushing him headfirst into horse manure, I was finally accepted by the other boys. Getting male friends also made my father happy, and that was the most important part. Honesty is the worst policy, and the hyper individualism of the old world is what led to its eventually collapse and the creation of the horrid state of LOVE. If society doesn’t approve of you, then it’s up to you to change yourself for society. Forcing society to change for you is the epitome of selfishness, especially if you don’t represent the majority.

A loud knock at my bedroom door stirs me awake, and the door opens revealing Dina and her messy hair.

“Dinner’s ready Marco!”

Author’s Note: Holy shit I finally made another chapter of this fucking story after God knows how long. Not only were there the typical issues of procrastination and laziness, I also lacked a general motivation to write more, but I guess posting my writing online has given me that motivation I needed. Still, it is a bit stressful trying to flesh out the HOME part of this world a bit more (especially trying to portray Catholics when I grew up protestant). I actually have a bit of my own personal ‘bible’ to use for writing this story and I’ve actually been changing a lot of what I originally wrote in there because it wasn’t satisfying. On a final note, I want to make it clear that I didn’t invoke the whole thing of the pope being killed by LOVE because of Pope Francis’ recent death. That is merely a coincidence.

“…You’ve never been inside this house before?”

Ariel and I are standing in front of the front door to the abandoned house. After spending several minutes in silence together, Ariel said she wanted to go inside for more privacy, and I reluctantly agreed to it. I think it should be fine if she goes in first and deals with all the potential spider risk itself.

“No. Never felt like it.”

That’s a lie of course, but she doesn’t need to know that. With no hesitation, Ariel turns the doorknob and manages to open the door with no difficulty. She practically bolts into the house, apparently not caring about how dusty the house looks. I watch her explore the living room for a few seconds before I decide to cautiously enter as well. There don’t seem to be any spiders in the living room at least. Ariel turns to me once I enter.

“Why were you at the park?”

She has a suspicious look on her face. I can’t say I entirely blame her. It is just a tad too coincidental to see someone you know suddenly come at the right moment with a rock to throw against your attempted molester. I figure that the best way to respond to this is to act like she’s being the weird one.

“I was at the park because I like to hang out at the park sometimes. I don’t know why you’re acting like that’s a problem. Pretty sure that’s an ungrateful way to act towards the person who saved you.”

She doesn’t seem convinced by my reasoning, still looking at me with disapproval.

“But then how did you know we were getting…’intimate’? And you know, I get that Mr. Richards was getting pushy, but you really didn’t need to throw a rock at him, that wasn’t necessary!”

Even after everything that’s happened, she’s still defending the guy. How sad.

“Because I happened to notice a young girl being taken into the woods by a much older man, thought it was weird, and it turns out I was right. And yeah, what I did was necessary. The way things were going, he was going to force himself in you before you could even get your handcuffs out.”

Her disapproving look softens a bit and changes into a mixture of confusion and pity.

“…I think you mean well Gray, but you’re rather violent and that bothers me. I was considering telling my parents about when you shoved me to the ground, but I decided to be nice and keep it a secret, but I still don’t know if that was the right decision.”

I can feel a vein throbbing in my head at her accusation, but if I raise my voice at her, that’ll only encourage her false belief that I’m violent. So, I stay quiet as she keeps talking.

“Everything’s been crap ever since I came here, and Mr. Richards’ been the only person whose ever really understood me…and now I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

She looks dejected. Somehow, despite all the shit she’s pulled against me, I can’t help but feel some pity for her. I’m not delusional enough to think that I can “fix” her or anything like that, but I figure that if this girl’s going to force herself into my life, then I should at least put in some effort in keeping her from doing even more stupid shit.

“Oh, you’re not from here?”

I speak as if I didn’t overhear her classmates talking about it.

“…Y-Yeah…Can you keep a secret?”

She walks towards me with a nervous look on her face.

“Yeah.”

“…Are you sure? You’re not lying to me again, right?”

Is she still mad at me about that? Geez, the only reason I did that was because of her. But fine, I’ll pretend I was the bad guy for now.

“I’m not lying. If I break my promise, you can kill me.”

That response makes her step back.

“K-Kill you!? If you’re suicidal, you should just kill yourself like a normal person!”

“…I’m not suicidal. I’m just trying to emphasize how serious I am. You can decide what you want to do to me if I break my promise.”

Ariel stares at me for another minute before deciding to talk again.

“…You probably don’t know this, but Brenton’s not my real brother and the family who took me in have nothing to do with my real family.”

“That doesn’t shock me. The two of you really don’t resemble each other at all.”

I lean back against the wall of the house as she continues to talk.

“Umm…Out of all the things I need you to keep a secret, I especially need you to keep the jobs of my new parents a secret the most.”

“Sure.”

She’s back to looking unsure.

“…You better be telling the truth, okay!? If word got out about what my new parents do…I-I don’t exactly what would happen, but it would be pretty serious shit, I know that.”

Judging by how distressed she’s acting; I have some good theories as to what her new parents might be doing for a living.

“Well, given how freaked out you seem, I can presume your current parents are involved with the PearlCoin Organization in some way?”

“…Those guys? N-No…It’s um…It’s more like…”

She keeps stammering and it’s getting on my nerves.

“Look, I get that you’re worried about bad things happening to you, but I can’t help you unless you tell me exactly what’s going on.”

She becomes silent for another few minutes before speaking again in an unusually (at least for her) meek tone.

“…I um…My new parents…They’re part of a group…that um…”

I have a pretty good idea of where this is leading, but I decide to not interrupt her and wait for her to finish.

“…I…IwasborninLOVEandmyHyperactiveNarcissismwascausingmymothersalotoftroublesoIwasgon

nagetsenttoamentalhealthcenterbutIdidn’twanttogoandonthedayIhadtoleavethecarthatwassup

posedtotakemetherewaslateandnooneelsewasaroundsoIunzippedmyoutdoorssuitsoIcouldseew

hatwasgoingonandIsawsomepeoplejumpingintoaholeinthestreetand-“

She takes a deep breath in the middle of her rapid fire tangent. I decide to take advantage of the moment to interject.

“Okay, I’m gonna need you to speak more clearly. I’ve only been able to catch maybe four words that have come out of your mouth so far.”

It took about 40 minutes for her to explain everything. Ariel’s story is somewhat unusual, but not all that strange either. She was born and raised in a trauma victim residential tower for women in LOVE. Although she was loved dearly by her two mothers, issues started to arise when a crack was found in the wall in her family’s personal room when she was five years old. It can’t be overemphasized just how strong the propaganda about “the spores” is in LOVE. It’s to the point where there are no windows in residential towers and when a citizen is being transferred from one residential tower to another, they’re required to wear suits that cover their entire bodies including their faces in order to prevent them from ever getting a real glimpse at the outside world. So as you can imagine, a crack in any room in a residential tower, especially a personal room is more than enough to cause a freakout.

According to Ariel, all the residents of the floor had to be quarantined in medical rooms for a week while the entire floor got “fumigated” and the crack in her room got fixed. “Fumigations” are the proper response for incidents like this in LOVE, but of course it’s all fake. According to ex-LOVERS who were involved with higher ups of the government, the “fumigations” consist of nothing more than machines making a fake fog with dry ice. The people on the upper echelons of LOVE’s society and especially the government workers are more than well aware that the entire narrative of the “deadly spores” is bullshit. They just continue to push it either because they like how it benefits them, or they’re terrified of the consequences of trying to speak the truth (those consequences being getting sent to a mental health care center for an immediate lobotomy).

Regardless of the actual truth, this incident led to Ariel being viewed in the same vein as someone with leprosy in the old world. She was banned from leaving her family’s personal room and her mothers were required to get weekly medical checkups. Furthermore, her mothers became victims of severe persecution from other members of the residential tower. Usually, the persecution came in the form of insults, but physical altercations would also occur.

“…The others liked to spray or dump water on my mothers. As a way to ‘rid them of spores’…”

Despite these hardships, life remained as normal as it could be. Since Ariel was barred from ever leaving her family’s personal room, she had to be educated via an online school program and would receive visits from a nurse once a week to check on her vitals. She did well in her education and was praised by her mothers and online teachers for her inquisitiveness and desire to learn more. But the older she got, the less admirable those traits became.

For one, she started to become curious about those strange creatures known as “men” and started to read up about them. This caused strife with her and her mothers, but because LOVE (surprisingly enough) has no laws against citizens in single sex trauma victim residential towers studying and reading up on the opposite sex, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Ariel wasn’t just curious about men though. She was curious about the outside world, and more importantly, why she never seemed to feel all that ill despite the incident with the crack in her wall.

That’s when she started to break laws. When she started bringing up these questions to her nurse, the LOVE POINTS for her family’s personal room began to drop. Anything that could be even remotely interpreted as “spores denial” will always guarantee a massive drop in LOVE POINTS with no exception. Although her mothers tried to get her to stop, Ariel just couldn’t stop saying things that the government didn’t like.

“…I don’t get what I was doing wrong. If the spores weren’t affecting me, then that could mean a cure for the spores is possible, right? Something better than the medicine treatments? But saying that only got me in trouble…”

Most people would agree with her logic, the problem is that she still doesn’t seem to understand that there was never a “spores problem”. To be fair, Ariel’s attitude is a pretty common one among people who escape LOVE. Most escapees from LOVE were born raised with the idea of “the deadly spores” being so deeply ingrained into them, that when they go through a similar incident, they don’t immediately think “the spores aren’t real”. Rather they become of the belief that they’re immune or that the spores affect people differently. This might sound inoffensive to an outsider, but the problem is that once these citizens start having these beliefs, they start doing things like questioning the monthly medicine treatments, which is a grave sin in the society of LOVE.

Ariel’s behavior started to cause so many problems that her family’s LOVE POINTS were getting to the point where getting evicted and forced into a regular residential tower was becoming a possibility. In desperation, her mothers brought in a psychiatrist to examine Ariel. This led to Ariel being formally diagnosed with “Hyperactive Narcissism” and being told that she would need to be treated at a mental health center. While your average citizen of LOVE may not know the truth of the mental health centers until they get sent there, they do still know it’s something to fear, if only because of the fact that people who go to mental health centers never come back.

Ariel was uncomfortable with the prospect, but she had no choice but to obey. The day she had to leave for the mental health center started normally enough. Her mothers helped dress her in her outdoor suit and some government officials came to lead her outside due to the suit blinding her sight. However, when she was led outside, she heard a sound that she thought was that of a car crash and the government officials ran off leaving her confused.

After waiting for according to her “what felt like forever (probably a few minutes or so in reality), Ariel decided to unzip the top part of her outdoors suit to see what was going on. What she saw was a mess of destroyed vehicles in the street with government officials freaking out. Not too far from that she saw some people crawling into what she didn’t know at the time was a manhole. Due to a mixture of not wanting to go to the mental health care facility and being confused by the chaos going on, Ariel decided to make a run for it and climb down the hole too.

It turns out that on the same day Ariel was meant to go to the mental health care center, the plans of a group from the territories known as LB (LOVE Bombers) were also going off to help someone completely unrelated leave. Although LOVE’s infrastructure is based off highly advanced technology, it still suffers from the fact that most power grids tend to be interconnected.

While the upper class areas of LOVE have backups to their power grids, this isn’t the case for most citizens. Thus, a pretty common tactic for escape assistance groups from the territories and dissidents from LOVE looking to escape is to find a way to hack into the main power grid and cause a power outage in all buildings and vehicles in the current vicinity for long enough that escape is possible. And so Ariel made her way into the sewers. While her appearance wasn’t expected, she was accepted by LB along with the guy who was their main target in helping escape. She then obediently followed them in the sewers for the next seven hours.

“…I didn’t really talk much the whole time, but my mind was racing. I-I mean, for the first time in my life I saw men right in front of me…”

Once they arrived at the LB headquarters, there were some issues that needed to be worked out. Not only was Ariel’s arrival unexpected, she’s also young without any parental guardians with her. Letting a girl like her live on her own in the lawless territories was something that no sane person in the group was going to allow. After a few days of deliberation, a couple involved with the group decided to take her in. That couple obviously being Brenton’s parents. An agreement was made for her to live with the family until adulthood and that’s who’s she’s been with for the past month and a half.

“…You know, I was so amazed by what I saw when I first arrived here. The forest, grass, flowers, bugs and animals…But I think those are the only things that I like about being outside of LOVE.”

After that final sentence, she plops herself down on the nearby tattered couch. I decide to follow along and sit down with her, and I continue the conversation.

“So, what don’t you like about being here?”

“Well, I don’t like my new family for one. My mom and dad are pretty annoying compared to my two mothers and Brenton’s a dweeb! I was excited about going to school at first because I wanted to know what it was like to be around other kids my age, but it turns out they’re all shitheads who hate me for no reason! I just wanna go back home but I know I can’t…”

She looks down for a few seconds before piping back up.

“That’s why I’m looking to get a boyfriend or at least a fuck buddy! That way I can move out from my new family and stop going to school! It’s tough though because a lot of the men around here don’t take me seriously because of my age. But I don’t wanna be with boys my age, they suck! …I was getting so close with Mr. Richards too…”

She gives me a frustrated glance before continuing.

“You know, I did consider you as a possible option for a boyfriend but you’re just too violent and I can’t risk becoming a victim of domestic violence…Well, I-I guess I still wouldn’t mind becoming friends with benefits with you…”

The next glance she gives me is shy yet flirty. I respond to her as honestly as I can.

“There is no way in hell that will ever happen.”

“O-Oh come on, you don’t need to be so harsh about it! Especially after you ruined my relationship with Mr. Richards!”

She really doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation she’s in, does she? I’m finding myself getting increasingly exasperated with her.

“I saved you from getting taken advantage of by an older man. I’m sorry you don’t like kids your age and your new family but pursuing older men like this is only going to end with you getting hurt even more.”

I get up off the couch, leave the abandoned house and start heading back to my apartment. Surprisingly, Ariel didn’t stalk me at all on the way back, I guess she decided to stay at the abandoned house. Whatever the case may be, I don’t care. I’m not interested in helping random teenage girls with their problems. Perhaps it’s morally wrong to think this, but I can’t help but wonder if it would’ve been better to let her get molested.

But then again, she’s not a regular kid, is she? I know from my time reading articles on pursuitspecial and reading forums on PSDS that there’s a bit of a recurring theme among people who were born and raised in LOVE. Kids aren’t allowed to be kids in LOVE. The government treats them like miniature adults the moment they’re out of diapers. Part of indoctrinating the children with the government’s propaganda involves having all the toys and children’s programming be about the same complicated philosophical/political topics that are taught in the education rooms (albeit, with the obvious bias towards LOVE’s own system).

Close bonds between children and their parents are also generally discouraged, to the point where once a citizen reaches a certain age (that varies from province to province), they’re required to move out of the personal room they grew up in and move into a new one. The government states that this is to encourage individual independence and prevent parents from treating their children like property, but the truth is that kids not being close to their parents makes it easier for them to see the government as their parents and thus much easier to indoctrinate. Come to think of it, the way she was talking, Ariel did seem to have a strong bond with her mothers despite growing up in such a culture, didn’t she? She really is an odd kid.

The rest of the evening and night went by without anything else of note happening. The next morning also went by without any issue. I decided to go make a visit to the abandoned house before work. To look over Marisa’s grave of course. When I arrive, I see the same ginger girl whose been bothering me for the past week come out the front door.

“Oh, you’re here!”

That’s right, it’s Saturday. Somehow despite our last interaction ending on a sour note, she still seems excited to see me. She’s also carrying around a piece of paper.

“…What’re you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I came to hang out.”

While talking, she hands me the piece of paper.

“I took what you said to me yesterday into consideration, and I think you do have a point. I grew up not knowing anything about men, and while I’ve been studying them as much as I could for the past year, I’ve only been living among them for a month and a half. If I’m to get a proper, loving boyfriend who treats me the way I deserve to be treated, then I need to get a better understanding of men. So, I wrote out some questions I have regarding men’s behavior, thoughts, physiology, and…their anatomy.”

She blushes a little while saying the final bit of her tangent. Looking at the paper, there are about fifty questions or so written down. Some of them are basic things that you’d expect a girl ignorant about men to be curious about, others are about overly specific things that few men have ever thought about in their entire lives. The fact that each question is highly detailed, and many use medical/scientific terminology that no one uses in daily life leaves me both disturbed and impressed by how much effort she’s put into researching men. After a few minutes of going over the questions in my mind, I figure I should give her something resembling a response.

“…Look, I know you weren’t around men for most of your life, but you can’t learn everything from just asking me random questions or reading stuff on the internet. If you want to understand the opposite sex, then you need to spend more time around them. But you also shouldn’t be wasting your time with random older men either.”

She eyes me suspiciously.

“…Are you telling me to hang out with the boys from school? Because I’m not doing that! On my first day in school, this asshole boy tricked me into going into the boy’s changing room after gym class! Ever since then, all the boys do is say really mean and gross shit to me and treat me like a slut!”

There are tears welling up in her eyes as she spits her words at me. It’s clear at this point there’s no way my message is going to get through to her. So I relent.

“…Fine, do what you want. I don’t have time to argue. I have to leave for work soon.”

She immediately flashes back to looking happy.

“Oh! I’ll come hang out with you there too!”

I give up. I can’t stop her from following me.

“We haven’t got any new releases since the last time you were there, you’d be bored.”

“…I don’t think I’ll be bored. Besides it’s better than going home. I really can’t go home right now.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Well, I got into an argument with Brenton because even though I’ve told him a million god damn times not too, he always hogs the living room TV even when it’s my turn to use it. So as revenge, I deleted the save data on one of his video games. He got really pissed, and I ran out of the house and came here.”

My brother would’ve murdered me if I did something like that to him as a kid.

“…Yeah, it’d be good for you two to make up.”

“Well, we can make up once Brenton apologies as I have nothing to apologize for!”

This is what my life’s become, huh? Being forced to become friends with a random bratty teenage girl. Still, for as annoying as she is, there is something oddly pitiful about her that makes me feel something resembling guilt about abandoning her. I guess I’m just that spineless.

Author’s Note: The last of the backlogged chapters of LOVE for now. Which means I need to get back into writing for real. There’s a lot that caused me to stop writing. Part of it was feeling like the group I was a part of wasn’t achieving any real progress, part of it was nerves because the next arc is going to be a bit different from the previous arcs (flashback arc, not from Gray’s POV), and part of it was distraction and general laziness. I can’t honestly give a good time frame of when I’ll be starting up on the next arc, but I hope I can at least get some more of this story out before the end of the year at the very least.