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Chapter 11

World in a crayon

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Kokoro attentively examines the entries on the organizer displayed on her wide tablet's screen held on her left forearm, slowly tapping on the interface to add items to the list in front of her.

"Hmmmm… let's see… a new pillow… toothpaste… shampoo. Is that all?"

Past her tablet, a red-headed girl with a flower hairpin in Pistil uniform stares at her peeking past the white tent drawn on the entrance of her room.

"Yes, please." She bows her head to the girl.

Kokoro smiles to her and slides her slender finger on the screen, dragging the digital list and dropping it in the interface container referencing that room, one among many organized in a column to the side.

She's in Sphere 1, in one of the four dormitory buildings dividing the Sphere equally each cardinal direction, scanning the row of external rooms of the third floor and noting down all the stuff the Parasites need for their daily activities.

"You have my code, right?" She asks the girl peeking.

"Yes… 556?"

Kokoro courteously nods.

"If you need anything else in the meantime, just message me. See you next time!"

"Thanks again, see you tomorrow!" She smiles back.

Both exchange waves, and the red girl disappears back inside. Kokoro then brings the tablet to her chest with both hands and proceeds with composed steps to the next room of the open corridor, fluttering her blonde-greyish long loose hair.

From the skylights, carved into the Sphere's curved walls in front of her, penetrating beams of daylight cut the air above the top of the dormitories, a multi-leveled vertical structure built on each cardinal direction of the Sphere's upper section. Each level consists of a main corridor, open like a terrace towards the center giving view to the other buildings, blocks of squared rooms divided by side corridors leading to dead ends and bathrooms, each one separated from the other by concrete walls and a thick, white curtain. Central to every floor, wide U-shaped set of stairs extends all the way to the bottom floor, where it's possible to use a wide straight staircase to descend into the empty central plaza.

She stops in front of the next white curtain and draws a breath.

"Hello, anyone here?" She calls to the room's owner.

No sign of a response.

"H-Hello?" She calls again, hesitant.

Suddenly, a Stamen with black, curly hair and a squared jaw with a straight nose, deep gray but bloodshot droopy eyes and wide, stretched eyebrows peeks from the tent. Still in his pyjamas, his unnatural white complexion makes Kokoro recoil from the surprise.

"What do you want?" He says locking eyes with her.

"Ah! Um…" She hesitates, keeping the tablet between her and the ghostly face.

"Uhhh… I'd like to ask if you're in need of…"

"…" He continues staring at her, without batting an eye.

"…A-a-anything…" She diverts her gaze to the side bouncing off from the imposing attitude of her interlocutor.

"No, thanks." He cuts short.

"A…Are you sure…? I won't be back until tomorrow…"

"I'm su-Ahhh!... Damn migraine…" He curses and recoils as he grips his forehead while holding onto the curtain, gasping for air while painfully cringing.

Kokoro's mouth opens and her eyes flash in understanding. "Are you in need of medicines?"

The Stamen's look softens while he waves his hand and massages his temples with his other.

"N-no, I've got some already…"

"Are you taken them as prescribed?" She softly inquires.

"Y-yes…" He recovers and looks at her sighing, still pinching his brows from the pain.

"If you need some more, just don't hesitate to call me. If it worsens, please go up the hospital for a check-up."

"Thanks… Code 556?"

"Yes… Call me Kokoro."

"Kokoro, eh..." He smiles, still a bit in pain. "Do you happen to know Goro?"

"Ah, yes! He's my squadmate..." She meekly says, surprised.

"Could you… please say hello to him for me? I'm Code 371. It's since about a week that I'm…" He cringes ever so slightly and nods his head towards his room's interior.

"Oh… of course!" She fidgets with her large tablet, almost using it to shield herself from the boy.

"Thanks." The Stamen bows her head to her.

"For n-now, be w-well!" She bows back and nervously takes her leave, turning to the side and quickly proceeding onwards. The Stamen of the room follows her with his pensive gaze and, when Kokoro disappears from his sight, he shifts back once again in the shade.

Kokoro sighs as she walks along the terraced hallway towards the next room. She startles and halts suddenly as a loud siren goes off, echoing all around the Sphere, then turns and peeks above the metal railing framing the open corridor's ledge to spot red led lights flashing at the center of the plaza down below, in front of each of the dormitories in a circular shape. The Parasites at the center of the room, talking and strolling, notice the intermittent lights and quickly wander off the platform. When they do so, the LEDs turn green, the siren stops, and curved metal bars rise from the outline of the circular mesh, closing into a spherical cage.

Everyone in the vicinity is doing the same as her, leaning on the railings to observe the event, or just peeking out of their room's tent, already anticipating what was happening. Kokoro takes notice of a quick movement from her side vision and turns her head: she sees a young Stamen running out of the room she was about to poll, in his gray uniform, almost the height of her chest line, stopping in front of the railing. Deep brown, unkept hair, lifting himself up on his toes to clear the parapet with his light-brown eyes, he looks down curiously to the maintenance lift access door, parting in two. His eyes widen and, not even noticing the long-haired girl, he quickly returns inside jumping the steps in front of the room to disappear past the heavy white tent dividing it from the corridor.

"Trash day!" An uncouth, happy voice could be faintly heard.

"A-Ah, sure…" A girl's voice resounds back, followed by rustling noises.

Kokoro turns back her gaze to the cage and, after some time, the elevator door parts in two. Slowly, the silhouette of a bell-shaped maintenance cart pops from the hole in the ground as a round platform levels with the plaza's floor. Besides the vehicle, she sees two blue figures… the big one is for sure Futoshi, as she can distinguish his brown-reddish parted hair. The other one is… Ikuno? She can't tell by the cap that she's wearing… She must be her, since she always volunteers for that duty.

Her attention returns to her surroundings: Parasites start bustling around, some gathering at the terrace to watch the opening cage down to the central plaza, some others talking while walking back to their room to return outside with black sacks. Futoshi blows his whistle to start the collection, and people streams towards the stairs leading to the ground floor.

Kokoro is fully aware that she can't continue her poll, then leans on the railing and opens the tablet screen to review what's left of her job. Today she managed to finish Sphere 2 really quickly mostly because she streamlined the process by giving out her code, so she could be contacted by her Communicator. All she ever has to do is compile all the info and forward it to Zorome and Mitsuru, that would deliver the stuff directly to the requesters.

She sighs, knowing her job is really… tiring at times. Kokoro wishes it would be easier than said…

The young Stamen returns outside keeping the tent open for his Pistil, that comes out with their trash container. Black long hair gathered in a loose tail, the girl… had the same white complexion of that creepy curled-haired Stamen earlier. She unsteadily descends the steps to her room with a contrived smile, almost as if in constant pain…

A brief lapse and the girl plumps down the steps on her side in a deaf thud, with the sack she was carrying spilling its contents on the floor, lying on her side, motionless.

Kokoro, after a long second, fumbles and lets her tablet almost fall to the floor. She hurriedly kneels to the ground at the fallen Pistil's side, as the young Stamen freezes in place with scared eyes and mouth open wide, shivering while dropping the tent he was holding onto.

"Are you ok?" Kokoro blurts in panic. "Did you bang your head?"

"Uhhh…" The Pistil weakly howls trying to prop herself back up with her elbow, and almost slides again on the white tiles. Kokoro supports her by her side to prevent her to go down again.

The Parasites all around stop on their tracks, witnessing the situation like salt statues. Kokoro shoots her glance at the surrounding crowd, opening her mouth to beg silently for help, only to be met with her same freezing fear in their eyes. The small boy snaps out from his daze and runs in shock to his Pistil, to make himself a pillar for her to hang on.

"N-no I didn't bang my head…Ah!" The Pistil winces her head with foggy eyes and unsteady breathing.

"Hang on to m-me!" The boy reassures her companion with his feebly trilling voice.

"Are you sure? Why are you in such pain!"

"It's happening since yesterday… out of the blue… my head feels like… it's gonna burst open..."

With the little boy's help, Kokoro manages to bring the girl upright on her knees. The girl cringes and massages her forehead, sighing painfully.

"Didn't you go to the hospital yet?"

"N-No…"

"Why?"

"Who… would take care of my… S-Stamen? T…The… Commander… told me…"

"But you need to be checked!" Kokoro utters at the doors of hysteria.

Why the hell everyone is in that state, she cries out loud in her mind. Everyone was fine earlier through the week! Is this a Parasite flu epidemic? What she's supposed to do?

Suddenly, she locks in place as waves of nausea clash on her chest.

Oh no, not again, she begs internally while summoning all her flimsy courage to fight back her recurring illness and bringing her hands to her mouth ready to force her mouth shut, pearled by a tear that found a way out of her scared, wide blue eyes, leaving a rivulet on her cheek.

Is… she going to be… the next?

"Do you need help?"

She turns her head the direction of the raspy voice and catches the face of the curled haired boy she met earlier, still in his decolored complexion and with complete disregard in still wearing in his white pyjamas. He's squatting at her side, frowning, his head angled down to peek over her distraught face. A long second, after which Kokoro exchanges his gaze silently.

"Y-yes…"

"If you want, I can call the hospital and get someone here…"

"Please!" She jumps forward and desperately grabs him by the collar, pushing him off his squat.

"Whoa! OK, OK, calm down now! I'm not in a good shape either, so don't shake me like that!" He retorts annoyed, pushing lightly on Kokoro's shoulders. She stabilizes her breathing and loosens the grip to let him stand. Kokoro reassesses herself, noticing she totally forgot about her sickness…

"Let us move the girl over there first." He points towards the steps the girl tripped on.

He gets up, and Kokoro follows him suit without hesitation.

"Let her lean on me." He orders the boy, that complies promptly. He shoulders the girl on one side, arching her arm over her shoulders, and Kokoro does the same the other side. They drag the black-haired Pistil over to the steps to let her carefully down.

"Thanks, 371…" The girl thanks the Stamen, still holding onto her head, sighing but recovered.

"Don't mention it. Guess you're a white as a blanket like me, huh!" He says while plumping beside her.

"Ahah… you and your sick humour." She curls up the side of her mouth.

"Hmpf! You have your lame puns too…"

Both laugh at each other, bringing newfound levity to the previously difficult situation.

"Thanks…" The young Stamen timidly mentions to his older counterpart.

"You're welcome, boy." The squared-jawed Stamen says back to him while extracting his communicator from his pocket and pops up in mid-air its holoscreen.

"Thank you for helping." Kokoro bows to them. "I'll be going for now… If you need something, I'm always on duty."

"Sure!" The young boy fully smiles to her and his Pistil does the same.

Kokoro sighs in relief… Even though the two of them are one not better than the other, at least this time two sick people make a slightly healthy one… Turning around, she retrieves her wide tablet from the ground and glances a bit taken aback at the abandoned sack toppled by the girl.

"I'll be delivering that myself." She reaches over and shoves the trays spilled over back inside, then rotates the top and tightens it in a knot. "Please, don't overexert yourself and wait for one of the Parasites up in the hospital to arrive." Kokoro says while recomposing her feelings.

"Sure, leave it to me." Says 371 while fiddling with his communicator.

"Then, see you soon." After bowing again, the girl proceeds down the stairs saluted by the three Parasites.

She joins the descending stream of people carrying bags like her, slowly following the groups of two to three Parasites happily talking towards the fourth floor, sighing.

"Flowers were way easier to handle…" She meekly comments while slowly descending the stairs.

Following the U-turn of the ramp, she once again looks over the railings and notices that Futoshi's at the trash cart by himself- Ikuno maybe went somewhere else. Further descending, she reaches the ground floor, then she strolls into the plaza and reaches just behind the queue waiting to throw the garbage inside the bell, the sack in one hand and the tablet in the other. She really wishes she had something to carry that slab more comfortably…

Stuck in the queue, out of boredom, she gets up on her toes to level her eyes over the crowd's shoulders, trying to see what's Futoshi doing over to the cart. As he's looking her way, she waves his hand at him, but Futoshi at first tries to ignore her, but then returns her gaze with a contrived smile and waves her back.

Kokoro goes back on her heels, forlorn.

After a while, she goes on her toes again to try to observe him again and… he's just standing there, idling... immobile, with his back slouched and gaze fixed to the ground… and the hand on his other ear…

What's he doing?

Kokoro sees Futoshi's pensive face… slowly transforming into one of terror.

Kokoro tenses up, confused by his teammate's behaviour.

The metal whistle escapes Futoshi's hand and collides with the ground in a loud ring. He darts up a frantic face upwards the north dormitory building, opening his mouth like wanting to shout his lungs out in a vacuum.

A Pistil in the act of launching her sack freezes in place like the other Parasites all around, staring at his strange behaviour, then drops her sack in surprise when Futoshi savagely clamps his teeth and launches in a sudden dash towards the north dormitory.

Running like hell towards the stairwell, he howls "Make way‼" and the mass hurriedly divides in two as the Parasites are bumping into each other and goofily tripping on their own sacks. Futoshi strides up the stairs like a bull, tackling the climb three steps at a time and quickly disappearing up the stairwell.

"What the hell, man!"

"What's up with him? Is he mad?"

The Parasites utter in protest while Kokoro tails him with her scared stare, trying to process what was happening. An emergency? Ikuno…? She looks at the face of the building, finding it empty… Why?

She noticed Futoshi dropping something while running, so she leaves the sack on the ground and proceeds to go search for that small object. Finding it still on the ground, she picks up the strange cylindrical object.

"He dropped this…" She identifies the object as the earpiece of the communicator.

Maybe he was in contact with Ikuno and… something happened.

In her head flashes the image of her friend and teammate…

…White hair…

She remained injured from the Gran Crevasse battle! How couldn't she remember that!

Returning to reality, she finds all the surrounding Parasites being magnetized by the stairwell, looking up to try and discover why their teammate disappeared that way. In urgency, she runs to grab Futoshi's whistle and blows it immediatly.

"Excuse me…!" Kokoro says after getting the people climbing the stairs to stop. They turn to look at her and Kokoro almost panics at those many eyes staring, but quickly steadies herself, focusing on her next words to say.

"Please, continue… with the delivery, I'm going to check him myself." She says, spreading wide her arms to address everyone.

The Parasites stare at each other, then insecurely descend back to the plaza.

Kokoro then starts climbing the stairs fastest she could manage up to the third floor, stopping at the landing in front of the open corridor to get the air back in her lungs, bent in two by her muscles aching.

"How… did he… whew… climb… this quickly…" She protests in gasps. He doesn't remember him being that much athletic at all!

She catches her breath and pushes herself upright on her knees, then she enters the corridor to look around. Left of her, she finds an Ikuno sitting curled on the ground against the cement lid where the railing was affixed, alone, with her hand pressing on her mouth. Kokoro runs towards her shouting, worried.

"Ikuno!"

The white-haired rocks her head up and shoots a painful glance to her friend, her cinder long hair dancing left and right from her messy running.

"Did you feel sick!?"

"N-no." Ikuno stares away from her.

Kokoro slides on her knees to her and covers her hand to feel her forehead.

"I said I'm OK." Ikuno tilts to the side and shields his face from Kokoro being overly fond of her temperature.

"Don't lie to me! Are you sure!" She flowerily worries while she feels her cheeks.

"Y-yes…" Ikuno blushes slightly and escapes her caring hands.

She hesitates, then she turns her head the other way and points her earlobe with her finger, showing her the earbud she's wearing.

"A-Ah! Futoshi dropped this!" She digs into her skirt pocket and gets out Futoshi's.

Ikuno nods and raises the thumb to her, then looks away and asks away to seemingly an imaginary person.

"Can we tell her?"

A short while in which Ikuno stops in place to listen in to the comms, then she suddenly locks eyes with her.

"Wear that." She tells Kokoro pointing the earbud she was holding.

Kokoro stares at her blinking, then her gaze flutters on the earpiece on her hand. So, she twirls it in her fingers to orient the cone-shaped rubber end towards her to place it in her ear cavity.

From its audio feed she hears fast tapping on a surface…

"H-Hello?" She intrudes.

The tapping stops.

"…Greetings, Code 556."

Kokoro startles and identifies the deep voice as Hachi's.

"H-Hello sir!" She straightens her spine, and her eyes wander off focus.

"There's… a certain situation I'd like to inform you about."

She freezes in place. Situation?

"I-Is this a serious thing…?"

"Yes."

Kokoro's lips part. She knew it the moment Futoshi dashed up that stairs, didn't she?

"Do you want to help?"

"Of course! I-If I can be of help… I'd be happy to… Anything!" She demonstrates intensely.

"Mh…" Hachi wanders a little. "…Are you sitting right now?"

"Y-Yes…" Kokoro wavers, a little tense.

But her lower lip starts to tremble.

A brief pause.

Then, in his usual neutral tone, he asks her the last question.

"Can you promise me you will stay calm?"

…

…

Futoshi stands at the entrance of the room immobile, his gaze fixed on the sack lying toppled on the floor with his mouth hanging open in a stiff expression. Then, shaking off his passiveness, he turns around to close the entrance curtain and switches on the ceiling lights of the room.

This MUST be kept secret from everyone. As Hachi ordered.

Is Ikuno OK? Was she just sickened because of those sheets? In fact, the air is so rotten that Futoshi is compelled in pinching his own nose. He's worried about her running off like that, but he can't expect to be constantly on her shadow. He knows perfectly she can pull her weight… this time, a bit of alone time is better.

Open and searched suitcases, the previously well-made beds now ruffled for being searched and a line of disorderly placed teddy bears on the left one… How did Ikuno see this room before she started searching?

Why that much blood on those sheets?

First thing first… lets… dig this sack out…

Oof. His forehead starts to pain a little, maybe he banged it while he bashed down the door earlier… That, or the smell is getting to him more than he would admit.

Futoshi shudders at the mere thought, but someone has to do this.

He slowly closes to the sack and extends his hand to get grab the white and red…

A flash.

White.

Red.

Red over white.

Everywhere.

Futoshi's head split in a sharp fit of pain.

"Ah-!" He protests while recoiling backwards. "What the hell…?" Futoshi grabs his chest, tightening into his fast and brief breathes, trying to regain control of his consciousness.

"What…"

What was that?

In his vision, in a brief moment, everything painted white with spots of deep red. Futoshi felt he went to another place like he was removed from his body. Impossible, since he's still standing in the same room, grey walls with the same beds, bright as day. He blinks repeatedly, confused...

Disregarding that sudden ache, he shakes his head and then keeps looking at the bloodied white sheets lying on the floor, feeling a little uneasy. Why isn't he bothered of the smell anymore? He kneels down and reaches with his hands to pick up the sheet lying on the floor to open it wide with both hands.

"A pillowcase?"

The thick cloth has a single, big spot of liquid blood and doesn't feel it has been used yet, like it just came out from the automatic iron press.

"This is unused."

He places down the stained pillowcase and goes to the beds to feel the bed sheets it was made with.

"Those are used for sure… They didn't change their beds with the weekly spare blankets."

He returns to the sack and digs into it, careful in not dirtying his hands. Inside he finds more stained sheets, this time those were more heavily and erratically blood stained: another pillowcase, two mattress covers and two bed sheets in the same state.

"Those are unused, too…"

He stops when he reaches the bottom, where the rest of the menial things they used in the earlier day was compressed. Various snack wraps, dirty disposable food trays, cutlery, paper handkerchiefs, bottles, some crumpled pieces of paper with drawings on it- wait, the little girl draws?

Futoshi grabs a ball of what seems to be paper out and straightens it on the floor in front of him. It was a childish crayon-colored depiction of the little girl and other Children playing with a ball in the plaza down below, as he can make out the shape of the dormitory's view from there drawn on the backdrop…

"She plays with others."

He can ask around for her too. But for now, one thing was in his mind that he just couldn't ignore. Where did the blood came from? You bleed if you're injured, so… Maybe the Stamen inadvertently injured himself and ran with his Pistil upstairs to the hospital? Or the Pistil maybe dropped a milk teeth, since she's very young… or cut herself while playing…? But you can't drop that much blood for a scratch that's for sure! Then, they had something big to fall onto, or cut really badly themselves with? Like… a tool or a knife…? That's impossible! Only plastic cutlery is allowed here, and there's no way you'd cut yourself with that.

Futoshi scratches his head while sitting crossing his legs, then he takes the drawing off the floor, folds it and puts it in his pocket. He gets up, leaving the other stuff on the floor, and faces the bed of the Stamen. Unfortunately, he can't be sure of what happened until he finds the reason for that… incident.

I guess the Stamen taking care of her is responsible, one way or another.

He lifts the cushion, checks its contents, removes the blanket and cover then lifts the mattress on his side to open it and removes the internal mattress foam.

Nothing.

"If you do a search, you have to do it properl-… Ouch!" That sharp pain hits him again, and the mattress falls back down as he grabs his temples with both hands. "Be good, head of mine!" Futoshi protests as he quickly recovers.

Turning to the Pistil's bed, he starts removing the cushion, and under it there's a box of crayons and a drawing book.

"Yup, yup!" He smiles. "This is going with me, maybe she has drawn something of her situation with that strange 121 guy." He talks to himself satisfied.

He takes both crayons and book to place it on the floor, to then repeat the same search with her bed.

"Well… sorry about this…" He says in a not-so-sorry tone while undoing the Pistil's bed to check for hidden things, finding again nothing. Then, he proceeds to check all the plushies for any hole or zip openings.

"Why am I even do this…" He shakes his head. "This is not a per- OW!"

He cringes and squeezes his eyes, his head aching once again like someone shot a needle in his skull.

"This room! I hate it!" He vehemently protests of being constantly in pain.

As soon he recovers from the stars popping behind his eyelids, he makes to throw the plushie away. About to launch it back on the bed, he stops. Something slimy on the surface of the soft short fur of the teddy bear feels against his thumb.

"Oh…" He opens his eyes to look at the stain.

As he's used in being injured during his Stamen service, he knows what's blood or not. And that black spot on the teddy bear looks like wet blood.

"…The one hurt might be the Pistil." He states.

…

…

Ikuno lowers her head and stares Kokoro directly in her eyes looking for a confirmation on her friend's sad gaze, pointed on the stained teddy bear placed on the floor in front of her. In a vacant room close to the Parasite couple's one, Futoshi finishes his explanation of what he found in that room that could be of help, while sitting in front of both.

"…I understand." She weakly says, her chest slowly expanding with her breath.

"…And then, I found this under her pillow." Futoshi hands the drawing book in front of her. She takes a deep breath, then extends her hand and grabs it off from his hand.

Kokoro gets it with both hands and opens it slowly, twirling the pages with her thumb to quickly see its contents. More than half of the book was full of drawings… she closes it with a -clap-. Under the surprised stares of her teammates she gets up, proceeds over the room's corridor, then looks over the curtain Futoshi closed when coming out.

"…I remember them. They were that couple…" Kokoro turns around and exchanges both their gaze.

"Earlier this week, Code 121 requested some things… Nothing dangerous." She walks over to her tablet placed on the unused bed and flicks open the screen, then selects the weekly request list of that room.

"He asked for a change of bedsheets, soap, new toothbrushes, a pair of underwear for her…"

Ikuno slightly blushes.

"What the hell?" She protests. Those are dangerous!

"I-It's ok… they were trained to do that, right…?"

"Correct." From their communicators' headsets appears Hachi's voice, who overheard the conversation. "The new Nana, helped by other manservants from the Garden, instructed everyone that had a young Pistil how to take care of them. That was before the Gran Crevasse battle, after they were assigned together, a month ago. You can't expect Children of their age to be self-sufficient."

Kokoro nods. "I was told, because I met them all."

Ikuno and Futoshi sigh out of their newfound smiles. That was a good thing to hear! Having someone that knows the situation at the dormitories is exceptionally useful.

"Did you know about that Parasite couple too?"

"Yes… The Parasites also knew them, they were like any other couple. He is a little brash and has a certain bad character, but he's very kind with her. No one ever heard something strange of them. She was happy the times I visited them, always drawing something…"

Kokoro's sides of the mouth turns upwards for a brief moment, to then fall back down.

"I wonder what happened to them… How did they disappear?"

"People just don't disappear under the cameras." Futoshi retorts.

"Maybe after the handout they went to the hospital?" Kokoro suggests.

That was the simplest suggestion ever made, and one of the most likely. Ikuno's face illuminates at that possibility, since that would end the search immediately.

"That's right! In case of an incident, they would go there for sure!"

"If they did, they would be picked up by the security cameras. The system didn't track any of the two leaving the room." Hachi stops Ikuno in her tracks.

"Even at the hospital?" She wonders.

"Yes, especially the hospital, because it's designed to have top notch security for the personnel inside and for the health of the patients."

"…" A dull silence from the three signals Hachi to be more explanatory.

"Usually, in hospitals, Adult top doctors are tasked to manage the wards, so security is extremely high. Including security holographic doors and scanners. It's very unlikely that they went there without being scanned."

"I can't believe he didn't take his Pistil to get first aid…" Kokoro says worried. "That would be the first thing if my Stamen would be hurt…" She meekly glances Futoshi under her bangs.

A moment of silence from Hachi's part, then he picks up his commander attitude once again.

"We're going against time. The blood was wet, meaning the incident happened fairly recently. Given the quantity of blood you reported, the Pistil's life is probably in danger. Since the behaviour of the Stamen is extremely suspect, that indicates he has some responsibility in the matter."

Ikuno swallows down her throat her uneasiness.

"Remember: the objectives are to find the disappeared couple, assess whether they are in danger or not and report back immediately. I'm now going to watch the raw live feed of the camera down the corridor, about the time when the breakfast handout started. For now, just stand-by and wait for my analysis to be done. After that, I'll point you towards a search zone."

"Just one thing before that. Code 196, I task you to get in touch with Code 013 and explain him with the situation on the field and coordinate with him for quick medical attention."

Ikuno nods away. "Yessir."

"Any questions?"

"Sir. Question." Futoshi asks.

"Granted." Hachi says.

"Do the cameras have fac-Ow!" Futoshi feels a sharp pain in his head. "Ehh-" He massages his head.

"What happened?" Hachi asks impassable.

Ikuno looks at him strangely. "Are you in pain?"

"Ah, just a little pain fit in my head." He justifies himself.

Kokoro instead looks at him extremely preoccupied and grabs his head with her slender fingers.

"Are you sure? Is it the first time happening?" She anxiously questions.

"Y-yes!" Futoshi blushes a little while her soft hands massaging his temples.

"Does it hurt if I touch you?" She starts feeling the surface of his head, trying to find eventual bumps.

"N-no!" Now Futoshi's face colors intensely like a tomato.

"…I know. You should come over to the doctor that's coming over at the east dormitory. A Pistil has headache too, maybe he could scan you." She softly says.

Ikuno looks away, feeling out of place.

"Well…" He wavers at her offer. "We have other important stuff to do…"

Kokoro releases him, albeit still worried about his pain.

"If you have the chance, do so. Head injuries aren't to be underestimated." Hachi orders. "What did you wanted to ask anyway?"

"Uhhh… Actually… nevermind. Just a spur of the moment…" Futoshi wonders.

"Well then, for now that's all. Out." Hachi closes the communication.

The trio look to each other and then gets up from the room's floor, pulling off the earbuds from their ears (Futoshi having received back his own) and one after the other returning outside.

"Ok then… We have what to do. See you later!" Ikuno sends off his companions, then returns inside.

…

…

The looming fan noises of the AC vibrates through the cool air of a luxurious office with a library on both sides. Placed between a glass wall offering the Spheres' aerial view and a cherry wood curved desk, filled with a terminal and loads of large books, a large red synthetic leather boss chair titled backwards.

Sitting onto the chair and extending his legs onto the side of the desk as support, Hisui is talking with his audio communicator in a tense tone.

"Sure, Ikuno. Weren't you given one? Well… I'll send you a number to dial through…"

"Thanks, 013."

"Ah, no biggie. Aaand, if you'd like, since I'm gonna bust a vein from the pressure up in here, I'll be happy to take a walk and check the room out with an assistant, so I can be also close at hand. If that was a lot of blood, then I'd like to take a very good look at it."

"W-why?"

"Let's say these days Parasites are constantly visiting the hospital with very strange migraines. Some of them are unable even of walking from the pain and I'd like to know more of this, even at the point of storming into one's room."

He flips his thumbs in a circular motion, hands joined.

"Recently, many of our volunteers are hanged up on going back and forth the Spheres. I hope Hachi is aware of what's happening there, health-wise."

"I don't have the confirmation, but I think he's not."

Hisui snickers in disdain and bumps the table with the palm of his hand.

"I knew it! Always spying everything like a Guard, but knowing essentially nothing about what he's seeing."

"…You would?" Ikuno inquires defiant.

"Hmpf, yeah I would." Hisui says with a frown.

"…How?"

"I'd get out of my desk and figure it out, instead of staying on that ivory tower of his. Now if you'd excuse me, I'm gonna prepare to get downstairs."

"One more thing… What about Ichigo and Goro?" Ikuno asks worried. "Are they still there? I can't find them on the comms."

"Ah, I almost forgot. Goro didn't feel that good, so he got in bed. Ichigo's at his side, too." He states with a detached tone.

"WHAT?" Ikuno gets louder in reaction to the surprise news about his teammate and her friend.

"What 'what'? You guys are busting out 14 hour shifts every day! Are you kidding me?" Hisui tilts himself back up on his chair and leans on the desk while talking animatedly. "I guess that girl really likes to slave drive!"

"D-Don't you dare! Ichigo helped us all! We're doing this by our volition!" Ikuno heats up her tone.

"Yeah sure, but what happens if you burn out? Or you're tangled by priorities or bigger problems than yourself? Who distributes the food? Or worse, changes the water?"

"We're just gonna push through! We always did that!" Ikuno bravely states.

Hisui takes ahold of his head thinking how just bad their mentality was.

"Push through what? Do you think this is a military operation? No, it's not! This is a different type of fight! You can't do this on your own!"

He lies his elbows on the table to support himself.

"Do you think the objective is to kill some Mohorovich class roaming around and everyone's a helpless Adult that can't even get up in the morning? Did you ever stop and acknowledge this is not just the fight of Plantation 13 and that everyone has a stake in this? We're all in the same boat!"

"W-We are the only ones that have experience in this! No one except us knows how to do anything here, how this place would even function without our work!" Ikuno utters her desperate rebuttal.

"You're right there, absolutely right! But please, hear me out for a second. Do you remember the medical camp at Gran Crevasse?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know I was the only competent person in the entire medical camp?"

"What are you saying…? We all had a course on basic medical training…"

"No, that's not it! Do you know how to sew someone on the field? How to search a vein and perform an unassisted injection on someone? What treatment to give knowing a vague medical report? Performing a cardiac massage by hand?"

"Why…"

"A Stamen was looking at me, kneeled against a litter, completely lost, incapable of staunching even a wound. Later that day that same Stamen was applying Blood EVs better than everyone that ever studied on the books, and he looked like he could take on the world!"

"When a stream of injured filled the beds, do you think I just 'pushed through' and took everything by myself? No, because everyone would have died! Instead, I gave everyone a piece of my knowledge, making them capable of pulling their weight. And guess what, they were literally begging me! They wanted to fight too! You just have to give them a choice, an opportunity, a way to improve themselves! I can understand why people in the Spheres are breaking down, they are left alone, scared!"

"How… did you know? Were you given books…?" She asks confused.

"I became a medic quite long ago. And, you know, I'm STILL teaching the Stamens and Pistils that volunteered to cure their teammates that day!"

"Long ago…?" Ikuno's voice fills with wonder. "Just how old are you…?"

"Yeah, look…" Hisui mellows his tone. "I'm 24 years old."

"A-Ah?"

"You're… 15, close to 16, right?"

"…" Ikuno tensely pauses. "Are you… an Adult?"

Hisui freezes on the spot, trying to process the question, his eyebrows arching upwards. Then, realizing what Ikuno asked, his mouth fills with laughter.

"Oh-ah? AHAHA! What? Adult? Me? What the hell?"

"Eh-Wh…?"

"I'm a Stamen like any other! Didn't I fight with all of you at the battle?"

"Y-Yeah, you did… I saw your FranXX. A black, standard one."

"I'm also trained as a medic."

"How? W-why…? Why are you a medic… and also a Parasite?"

Hisui recoils and his perplexed brows squeeze together. Then, his expression paints in seriousness.

"Oh… I see… No one ever told you. Well, forgive me for my laughter then. I didn't know…"

Hisui grabs his chin and his gaze wanders around, unfocused. The situation is graver than he thought.

"Well, we've got something important to talk about, then. First though, the couple…"

"…Yes."

"I'll be down with someone in no time. If you want, after all of that and after the situation is resolved, you can get to my office to continue this conversation."

"All right."

"Also, sorry for my short fuse, earlier I tried to talk about this to Ichigo and she burst like a volcano, so I was still quite angry..."

"No problem. I understand where you're coming from."

"For now, let's leave at that." Hisui tries to cut short the conversation.

"Sure. I'll be in touch if I find anyone."

"Good. Later."

Hisui closes the communication.

Hisui shoots his vexed eyes upwards and lets himself fall on the chair's back, reclining it almost level with the ground. He closes his eyes while slowly exhaling, summoning his non-existent ability of passing out at will. He massages his temples, then sighs out a mellow lament.

"Just kill me now."

After a while, he opens his eyes and the ceiling tiles' complex patterns of flowers and green tendrils sprawling like ivy welcome him.

"Dr. FranXX, what the hell you've signed me up to…"

…

…

Ikuno furiously mashes the end call button on her communicator and lets out a growl of pure rage!

"What the hell! That guy! I HATE THAT GUY! UGHHHHH‼ He makes me MAD!"

The walls vibrate due to her voice while she pinches her nose, slamming the hand holding the communicator on the unused bed's mattress on which she's sitting on with a -THUD-.

"Who the hell that guy thinks he is? UGH! He makes me SICK!" She lashes out. Then, exhales violently and lies down on her side trying to quell her spirits. She's still in the room at the end of the corridor that her, Futoshi and Kokoro choose as the meeting room to avoid prying ears and eyes. It's isolated, so she's positive no one heard her, even at that banshee-like volume.

"He's right, though…" Ikuno admits with extreme disdain. All this time they didn't even thought about the long term. They just reclined their heads forward and powered through everything without a thought about the situation. Now that she's pinned in the Parasite couple's search, she can't continue to collect the garbage. So, who's going to do it in her stead? No one. And that's just under -one- urgent task.

At least Goro managed to rally someone to help him in his endless cleaning and taught them the ropes... he did good in that regard. But that was menial job. If Ichigo delegates someone else, for example, the machinery cleaning, who knows what would happen? Could she give that task to someone she… trusts?

Yeah… trust. She remembered Hachi didn't even told them why they were doing all those things in the first place. He's the one teaching and really leading them, and one thing he didn't teach them was… to build trust.

"I was supposed to trust them…" Ikuno repeats what Hachi said to himself during the call in the lift. If Futoshi wouldn't have gone off the line and asked more details about the task, she would have been completely in the dark about everything. But… now that she thought about it, it has always been like that.

No one ever told them the truth, no one ever explained them the situation they were in, the world they were mashed into and the service they were doing. All they ever needed was a boarding house in a cage and orders to follow, no questions and no answers.

Now they made the dormitories their boarding house, the Spheres their cage. With Hachi thinking everything and giving their fair share of orders to follow, everyone's happy in their element doing the bidding of someone else and having or avoiding any stake on the battle, moving with no motivation at all other than to indulge the Adults and getting praise...

Nothing's changed. They built a cage for themselves, again.

"Damn…" She digs her face into the mattress, cowering in a fit of shame. "Not again…"

Ikuno wrestles with her mind a bit, then takes a critical decision.

That cage must be torn open.

"This can't be going forward any longer. I need help. Everyone should help and be helped."

She doesn't know why Hachi wants to make her wait, but they need more information to try and wrap around the things they found in the room. And for sure, some camera recordings don't say anything about those following questions:

Who was this Code 121? Why being so unapproachable? Did he have some kind of problem?

And his Pistil, Code 723? Why is she attached to him, if he's such a jerk?

How did the Pistil get injured? Why didn't they call for help afterwards?

She feels completely alone. So, first she will search for help to understand those two and why they're behaving the way they do. Second, she needs to find those two poor souls quickly, because that much blood means only trouble.

That's a start.

The help of whom? Certainly, from someone that knows what's up in Sphere 1 and knows about those two in particular.

Kokoro knows everyone's faces... She's in.

What about the others?

She doubts Mitsuru and Zorome would know more than Kokoro. They frequent a lot the storage units downstairs, so it's a no-no.

Miku doesn't have a fixed task. And she lives in Sphere 3.

Goro's out of service… heh. Poor boy.

Ichigo's always fixed on her tablet and tends only to visit the command building…

Asking to the other Parasites is really in order, is it? She feels scared of asking other people in general because she doesn't know what to expect from them - she tried to escape from that fear, but now she can't just brush away the help people that live in this dormitory with that Stamen couple. Especially…

She lifts herself off the mattress as an illuminating idea strikes her with powerful force.

"Especially their neighbours!"

She springs up from the bed and strides along the corridor, towards the front of the dormitory where she leans on the terraces to see how's going the delivery down below. She hopes no one had problems delivering their share, and in marvel, she discovers that the queue considerably shrunk as some Parasites decided to help throwing inside the sacks for those that didn't manage to. Everyone is now returning to their rooms in a relaxed manner and, coincidently, a brown-haired Pistil wearing a fracture brace on her forearm comes strolling towards her from the stairs.

"H-Hi…! Good morning…" Ikuno approaches the Pistil waving, equipping the earnest smile she can muster, impeded a little by her embarrassment.

"Hello! You're a Plantation 13, right?"

"Yes."

"What happened? Why did your teammate escape like that? Ehm… Furoshi, right?"

"Futoshi. I had a problem, actually…"

Ikuno isn't really lying, is she?

"Ah! I see! Are you OK now?"

"A-Ahah! Yes, that one is gone now. But now I have another one..."

"Oh…" The Pistil's expression slightly bends in worry. "Could I help…?"

Why the hell she thought it was hard?

"Ehhh, yes actually. It's about the couple living in that room over there - do you know them?"

"Oh, yes! 121 and 723, right? I live the room just before theirs." She points at the curtained room in front.

Ikuno's eyes beam. "Did you see them recently?"

"Ah-you mean today? Yes, at breakfast! I saw your friend pulling him by the sleeve for asking breakfast twice! Such strict rules…"

"Well, we're on rations to be honest… And after that? Did they return to their room?"

"I actually don't know. I ate on the stairs with my squad…" She presses her lips. "What… happened to them?"

"Ah… they… left." Ikuno confesses.

The Pistil widens her eyes in surprise. But then she slumps her shoulders, downcast.

"Ah… I see. Maybe they changed rooms…"

"Why would you think that?" Ikuno feels she's catching onto something.

"He's… quite the antisocial guy. Maybe I did really piss him off…"

"Really?"

"Y-Yeah… Yesterday afternoon I talked with her Pistil while she was drawing in the front of his room… and he didn't take it gladly."

"Wa-Was he being aggressive?"

"Yes..." She smiles, embarrassed. "He barked at me to get off his Pistil and told her to draw inside the room."

"Oh wow, I see. What the hell, that guy…"

The feeling she had while confronting him was warranted.

"What did he have?"

"I wouldn't know… I was a bit scared about talking to him."

"I'd be, too. He didn't feel like a pushover earlier."

"But you have such a steady hand! You clashed with him head on!" The Pistil smiles at Ikuno that reflexively smiles back, somehow glad for the compliment.

"…What about her? Was she different from her usual?" Ikuno presses.

The girl's gaze clouds by a mist of fear and astonishment.

"Yes. She… became different too."

Her eyes dart around, trying to give sound to her deep-buried thoughts.

"S-she was always so energetic! She would always wear a smile, dart around to go and find the Children of her age. She was the soul of this dormitory… Then…"

Ikuno hangs to her lips, eyes peeled.

"In a matter of days, she smiled less and less, at the point that she started skipping going to collect breakfast… She would stay on her own, gloomy… Drawing all day. When I approached her, I did so because… she was crying."

Ikuno nods pensive, her gaze shifting to the side.

This picture is shaping into a nightmare.

"Thanks... for telling me."

"No problem… Please, if you see them, could you tell me? I'm there if you need me…" She points to her room close by.

"Sure, I'll be in touch."

Both exchange their salutes, then Ikuno follows with her gaze the Pistil returning to her room and disappearing behind its thick divider curtain.

So, it was well worth it. She already knew some things; some others were extremely worrying.

The Stamen became aggressive very recently, to the point of freaking out the people around him and those approaching his Pistil. Why? Was he stressed by something? Something must have happened, she didn't know him but there's always a reason for everything.

Also, why the Pistil became suddenly sad and unsociable? Was it because of him being irritable, and that change saddened her? Are those things connected somehow?

Wait…

Was he… lashing out on her?

Ikuno's imagination suddenly shifts to her earlier dream, superimposing her thoughts.

Two hands, gripping a small neck.

Rage.

Violence.

Blood.

Ikuno's heart suddenly races and her hand darts to the side trying to grab the handrail of the terrace, her senses coming to a grinding halt before ejecting her consciousness from her imagination. She leans on the railing, feeling her legs giving in and her lungs shuddering at each breath, being filled by strong waves of terror and guilt.

She clenches the rail and steels herself, her emotions still warmongering in her beating chest tensing like a vibrating steel cord, trying to stand her ground. She feels her cheeks being caressed by a tear, so wipes her face with the sleeve of her overalls while her shoulders tremble.

"Excuse me, are you ok?" A worried voice from behind her.

She turns, and a Stamen was looking at her with a follow of five other Pistils and Stamens, all very preoccupied about the white-haired girl painfully leaning against the railing and giving them a tear-laden glance.

"I-It's n-nothing!" She panics out of shame and quickly runs into the nearby internal corridor, escaping from the worried Parasites. They recoil from her fleeing, then stare at each other in apprehension.

She enters once again the room where she, Futoshi and Kokoro went for some privacy, desperately having the same need as before. She launches on the bed and burrows her face into the naked mattress, gripping its side and letting herself cry onto its rough fabric with an intensity she never shown before. With her laments being suffocated, she lets out every inch of emotional strain she had accumulated, liberating herself from the grave burden her mind accumulated just in the recent hour.

Or in the recent days… maybe years.

"S…Sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" She begs on, almost crumpling the stiff mattress to contain her shape like a body pillow. She goes on sobbing for a while her fibrillating breath lashing her slender frame and a wet stain of tears forms against her contrived freckled cheeks.

After a while, her breathing relaxes and her arms release the grip on the mattress as the stream of tears slowly comes to a halt. She lies prone on the mattress, letting her empty and clear mind untainted as much as she can. Then, tired of lying down, she helps herself sitting in a big sigh. Leaning on her left arm, she breathes in and out softly…

Sometimes, you need to let something out.

In fact, her head was lighter than before. She felt every inch of her body relaxed, her mouth ever so slightly curves back to a meek smile even if her deep green eyes are still bloodshot from the weeping. She deeply breaths, then undoes her white hair removing her butterfly clip, falling unbridled above her shoulders. Sitting upright, she darts her look around the room where she spots the girl's stained teddy bear on her drawing book lying on the floor. She leans over and lifts the drawing book on her lap, digs in her side pocket for her glasses - glad they didn't bend - and wears them on her nose.

She opens the book and glances on the drawings, slowly flipping pages from the oldest to the most recent. The drawing of her in the Garden, her holding hands with her Stamen, then one about her piloting in the Pistil position, images of other black FranXX battling blue Klaxxosaurs with orange spears, a big Genista and a cutely drawn Argentea smashing into a mass of blue and violet… things.

Ikuno smiles at the fervid imagination of that little girl. Her drawings were quite detailed, and the well-drawn lines are showing how much she likes drawing. In fact, the book was almost full.

She likes drawing especially her and her Stamen hand in hand. Then, flipping pages of her drawing Klaxxosaurs of improbable shapes and her daily activities, comes a very detailed drawing of her Stamen hugging her. That's cute!

It almost looks unreal that 121 might have brought violence on her by the amount of drawing she made of her depicting him and…

…Oh, no…

Flipping the page over, she uncovers a drawing of the girl's room, colored in shades of red.

The floor, red. Same with the walls, her teddy bears, the ceiling...

Her clothes…

The pages were dotted by black spots.

Her tears.

That was the drawing she was making when the girl before approached her. Looking closer, it was never finished as there were uncolored spots and glaring blank spaces in the picture, something she never did before in her drawings.

Ikuno's throat lumps, but she quickly clears by swallowing her insecurities.

She would not let her tears go unanswered.

She darts up and, pinching her glasses against her nose, takes the book and the teddy bear, then strides confidently towards the couple's room. She enters it, finding it messy as Futoshi left it. Plushies lying helpless on the floor, the mattresses pulled out of their covers, crayons spilled from their box.

She deposits the drawing book on the floor and places the stained plushie on it.

Raising her head towards the white and red sheets, she cringes violently.

Ikuno has never been good with blood. Even her own made her extremely sick just by looking at it.

But this time, she stares it down like an eagle, challenging its eerie presence while clasping her fists.

Then, she turns to find her cap still on the floor from when she dashed out in horror. She picks it up and wears it, then walks confidently out of the room.

Her squared glasses could not hide her determined eyes, looking forward.

She's going to the bottom of it.

…

…

After some loud knocks at the office's door, Hisui brings his head upright. He wanders his dozy gaze at the door made of cherry wood while lifting his upper body off the little space left on his desk he was sprawled onto to close his tired eyes for a while. He recomposes himself, slapping his cheeks together several times, then he speaks up.

"Come in."

The door opens by half, and a pair of wide, sly, downturned eyes with deep blue iris belonging to a Pistil in teal medical uniform appear leaning over the door to greet him. She has brown, tendent to deep violet, long hair falling straight then curving at the points, with her bangs gathered behind her head with a hairpin. Her thin brow and her full-lipped mouth curled in a slight grin, she waves cordially her hand to him.

"Hello, chief! I'm ready with the tools."

"Hi, 042. Sure, coming over." He gets up and strides towards the girl, adjusting his white coat.

He goes out of the office and closes the door behind him, then proceeds down the corridors with the Pistil assistant following him just behind him, carrying a medical suitcase in her left hand.

"Do you need help?" Hisui turns to ask to him.

"No, it's OK, 013." The girl waves the suitcase effortlessly to demonstrate that.

"Apparently, now I'm named Hisui."

"Whaaat? Who named you?"

"A P13."

"Whew, that's an achievement!" She exclaims thrilled.

"I just asked." He states bluntly.

"Do you feel different?" The Pistil jokingly asks.

"I don't know. They feel different, though. Way more than we were."

"Uh! Really! Why did you ask to be named?"

"I felt… inspired by them. They started acting like they owned the place, and they sure did. Meeting, organizing, working… they didn't need any Adults to tell them what to do. They just took initiative, asked Hachi to teach them the ropes and then did their thing. You know, no one's perfect, they still need to file some very rough edges, but nonetheless they tried harder than anyone else to create their own place to live."

"Ah! I see. Did the Hiro guy name you?" The Pistil leans over his shoulder with a conceited look.

"No." Hisui cringes.

"Oh." She says disappointed, slumping her shoulders. "Wasn't he the guy that started the naming thing between the younger ones?"

"Yeah… but I didn't feel like asking him."

"Whoa, what happened? Did he step on your toe getting off the bed?"

"Eh- no, he's… different. Too much different. He felt… off."

"Off? Why? Isn't he like the best Stamen ever?"

"Sure, but the moment I met him, I felt he was somewhat… unbalanced. He constantly rambled about his Pistil in a very obsessive way while in a depressive daze. I mean, I would be worried as hell if 028 was hurt, but I think I wouldn't sound like a broken record like he did. I felt just leaving him alone. Maybe it's just me, though."

The Pistil squares him up.

"Maybe he has PTSD, you know. Those are not things to laugh about."

"I can't tell, I'm not a psychologist."

"I am, and I'm gonna review him in a while, since he's awake."

"The little girl first." Hisui reminds him.

"And the Stamen. Maybe something bad happened, and he felt threatened."

"Are you sure?"

"Very positive. Did they find a picture book of the Pistil?"

"Mh-mh."

"I want that."

"Why?"

"Children don't communicate as you do. They use… other ways."

"I see. The Garden shaped you up well."

"Hm-hm." She affirmatively hums.

He keeps walking towards the Wards Department, and after a couple of long corridors he turns to her.

"I'm going just to make a quick visit."

"Sure, I'm staying here." She points at a waiting bench along the corridor.

Hisui approaches the first room past the bench and leans on the door, opening ever so slightly. A dark room cut by a blade of light comes into view, revealing a bed with a hill of sheets on top, like someone was buried underneath, and a small girl sitting beside it sleeping arms crossed onto the mattress against the hill.

He slowly closes back the door, then looks over at his assistant and nods.

"Nevermind, they're sleeping. Better leaving them be for now."

The Pistil nods affirmatively, looking him in an interesting way. Then, she gets up from the bench and returns to his side to proceed down the corridor towards the couple's room, past the hospital.

…

…

A rhythmic tapping on the surface of the desk, Hachi stares blankly at the black and orange screen, bored of watching, through the sped-up CTTV loop registration, the same corridor for 30 recorded minutes without a sign of the couple, although sporting with duty the same hard and impassable stare all the while.

At one point, be blinks and slowly shifts his composed sitting position forward, perching his head on the desk. The skylights of the command station are shining bright from the sun now well up in the sky, and Hachi, at one point, glances outside the picture of the screen distracted by the outside view. To his disappoint on himself, he clicks his tongue, rewinds the recording and replays the section he missed.

After a while, he pauses the playback and gives himself a brief pause to stretch his back and arms, being sitting onto a chair all the morning. His gaze shifts over the sea of terminals and spots the new Nana's bobbed-haired head, still staring at the screen immobile, like being part of the chair she was sitting on. Hachi stares at her for a while, not sure if praising her for her aptitude at being a stationary guard duty sentinel or throwing on her head his communicator to wake her up. He settles for a more discreet approach as he fires up his command line and types away a command. In a second, on Nana's terminal appears a message:

Would you stop staring at the prompt and start working already?

Nana doesn't even flinch.

Instead, she slowly turns her head around to look at Hachi, sporting her closed-lid eyes and a terribly creepy closed-lip smile. Hachi begins the stare-down battle, in which he glares at her squeezing his eyelids - a battle won by attrition as Nana slowly turns back towards the terminal and turns on the aerial drone cameras all around Bird's Nest and digital seismograph charts.

Another 30 minutes' worth of video registrations made before the breakfast handout revealed nothing out of the ordinary, meaning a completely still image. He speeds up the recording playback and the tent remains as still as a wall. He starts caressing his buzz cut like a brush, then a blur passing by the tent makes him recoil and tap on the laser keyboard to stop the recording.

"Here we go." He declares victorious.

Rewinding the video, he looks at the tent at real time and discovers that the movement was just a nearby Pistil with brown hair with a medical arm aid coming out a nearby room… the playback speed made him think the blur was from the couple's one. Hachi clicks his tongue in disappoint once again, followed by a weak sighs. This should be the moment in which the breakfast handout starts, and the Parasites start streaming towards the stairs to get to the center of the room…

Nothing. Not even a sign of the tent slightly bending, or the lights turning on-

Oh. The room lights. With the curtain closed, it's pitch dark in the rooms.

And the ceiling light above the room is turned off.

Hachi rewinds the registration towards the hour before the handout and, slowly, the lights of the nearby rooms turn on… except the ones of the couple's room. He fast forwards and it remains dark, as the recording started. Then he returns to real-time playback and, one after one, the Parasites living nearby proceed out from their rooms to retrieve their food.

Superimposed to their faces and heads, on-screen green-bordered squared reticules appear, showing on their code and a graph showing the analysis of their facial muscles for information about their emotional status. But from the room, no movement at all - even when the Parasites return in their rooms breakfast in hand, the lights inside remain dark and no sign of movement from the tent.

"They weren't in the room to begin with?"

This is way an absurd conclusion. But 121 clearly retrieved the breakfast… The room had their personal belongings, were they already…

"Wait a moment, what if…"

Hachi exits from the recording and brings up the camera's recording lists and selects the one associated with the tera-resolution cameras atop the Sphere that records the aerial view of the plaza. He fast forwards to when 214, 196 and 666 were distributing the breakfast. A forest of heads and green squares fills the screen, each one encompassing a Parasite, but Hachi just types away the filter command and the squares reduce to just one: Code 121's.

The Stamen retrieved his breakfast tray, then walked off the crowd to approach a small figure dressed in white that was standing close to the elevator… who was that? Hachi removes the filters on the square indicators and…

There's not a reticule on his or her face.

That Parasite small and tiny… it must be his Pistil! But why she's not recognized by the system? She was waiting close to the elevator, among the confusion of the bustling crowd amassing at the multi-level cart that contained the trays. The Stamen handed her his pack to the girl, then returned into the crowd only to be waved off by 214 shortly after - he has quite the memory to remember his face after glancing him.

Then, he returned to his Pistil close to the elevator, pushed the button to access it and shoved the pack inside, hidden behind the corner next to the door, to take hold her Pistil's hand and return to the crowd to be given another pack by 196, that squared them pretty intensely… But Code 121 was incredibly calm and collected according from the emotional scanner, even when facing head-on someone Hachi knows has an inquisitive personality like 196.

But when Code 196 got close to the Pistil and she ran behind him, his aggression values shot up like crazy.

Hachi's eyes freeze onto his skyrocketing graph.

That. Should. Be. Not. Possible.

The emotional activation levels read from his facial muscles were similar to a fight-and-flight reaction, but his body language was completely non-aggressive and geared toward the preservation of the status-quo. How did he…

No.

First question.

How did he remove his emotional limiter?

Second question.

How did he learn to suppress his emotions that way?

Hachi feels an enormous urgency to review the Parasite's information.

Why didn't he think of doing that before?

Hachi's lips clasp in disappoint towards himself. The search is getting more complex by the minute, and searching for his data takes time.

Time that they don't have right now.

What he can do by now is to follow them and discover where they went after that scene - he follows them returning to the elevator to retrieve the pack 121 left, opening the doors and… going inside it, closing the doors and pushing the button to take the elevator to the lobby.

This morning they weren't in their room. Interesting.

He immediately goes back down to the terminal and searches for the recordings of the lobby, where he pans the timeline just before the moment the couple walked out of the elevator. This time, both of them didn't have a squared reticule and the stamen was leading his Pistil by the hand, almost like dragging her along by force, towards the bridge connecting to the external ring of the base.

He switches to one of the close by cameras and discovers that both their faces were hidden by… dust masks.

Ah… the masks were disrupting the facial recognition software.

Maybe, as 196 suggested, they were going to the hospital, maybe the Stamen got that equipment to prevent the Pistil from...

…Wait, then why did he also wear it? And why not wearing flu masks?

He follows the duo crossing the bridge and entering ring corridor. Past the external door, they turn in the direction of the hospital.

Following them walking quickly like they were being followed, he switches the camera to the one looking over the ring corridor, just past the bridge connecting with Sphere 1. But the recording of that camera is completely black. Those were perfectly functioning cameras!

Even those in the side rooms, connected to that part of the corridor, were all dark. The duo enters the blind zone of the cameras, but then doesn't appear at the other end of the corridor where the other functioning ones are.

Hachi rewinds the black camera very quickly, searching for the last clear images of the corridor before they went dark. Finding those, he notes that he was seeing the recordings of the day before, at night. Playing forward, he sees the Stamen, 121, strolling along the corridor with an empty black trash sack. He passes past the camera, then the visual goes dark, clearly being covered by the same sack the Stamen was carrying.

Hachi recoils and shoots up from the chair.

"Who is that Parasite?" He utters in disbelief.

He covered all those cameras with black sacks.

This is an intentional security breach. Hachi's mind immediately launches forward in thinking, fastest he could manage, the most plausible theory he had in mind for what happened.

The Stamen broke out of his emotional control, most likely after the battle, out of trauma. Driven by a mental condition, he's not able to suppress his base instincts, so routinely hurts his Pistil for calming himself, Hachi guesses with calculating precision.

Not wanting to be discovered, he makes a safe room covering the cameras of the surrounding and drags the Pistil into an isolated room, that is not cleaned by Code 056, and then organizes himself with sacks and covers to clean after the fact. The Pistil cannot resist him and is scared, stays silent for not wanting to be hurt further, bottling all the trauma.

Then, he gathers the dirty stuff into the sacks to get rid of them, using their room as a storage unit and throwing them when the gathering comes.

Hachi terminates his reconstruction.

"I have to protect them."

His eyes blink with determination.

"System control: declaring tactical alert, type orange."

A robotic voice from the terminal goes back to him.

"Servicing system alert call. User CER-008 declares General Alert. Status: orange. Assessment accepted. Mode switch."

"Code 121 is declared as a high threat target." Hachi utters.

"Pinpointed 121 as high priority target. Volumetric scanning: active. Gun emplacements: active."

"Set nonlethal mode."

"Nonlethal mode: activated. Guns are live."

"Assessment over."

«Ping»

The desk terminal switches off and the tactical big screen some meters away turns on, displaying the sections of Bird's Nest in a 3D environment supplied by side holographic screens floating beside the main one. Hachi walks off his desk towards the tactical display and stops in front of it, hands in his pockets.

Nana looks at him past her terminal with her ever-present smile and comments, her shoulders slouching, in a whisper.

"Aren't you… a bit overreacting?"

"Not one inch." Hachi almost shouts, having heard Nana's remark. "He's potentially very dangerous, for himself, his Pistil and others around him."

Nana's smile slowly bends in worry. What just happened?

…

…

With careful motions, the tall Parasite doctor with thick, squared glasses and a brown dandy cut hovers the scanning device over the black-haired Pistil lying on her bed and the imaging of her cranium appears on his tablet screen. He moves it around to try and find the cause of her migraine, but his mouth morphs in a worried grin as his scan reveals nothing out of the norm.

He shakes his head, then turns off the device.

He feels her head with his fingers to discover traumas, and she follows his hands with her eyes, still in a daze.

"Does it hurt?"

"No..." The Pistil weakly responds.

"Hmmmmm." He nods, still clueless as before. "I can't see what's the problem."

"H-how…"

"I mean, you're weak and stressed... What have you done in the previous days?"

"Nothing... I just talked, read a book, passed time with my Stamen..."

"Are you absolutely sure? Weren't you nervous, or had an episode of something that scared you...? Or something that made you overthink?"

"W... well... I'm more nervous than ever because I feel I'm fading out..."

"When you sleep, do you have nightmares?"

"No... But when I wake up it's like I didn't sleep at all..."

"Your cortisol levels are off the charts. You can't be serious. I advise you to stay in bed and..."

"But how! How I'm supposed to... care for… and... Ugh!" She cringes, experiencing a painful fit to her head.

The Stamen immediately reacts on reflex and turns on the device. He scans the Pistil head again, and once again sighs in disappoint. Even with the symptoms ongoing, the scanner picks up only the area of her brain processing pain lighting up, and nothing else.

"Nothing!" He exclaims vexed. "But still, don't be nervous, it only worsens your situation. I'll talk with someone up in the hospital to be on watch for you and your Stamen, since you're not the first one having this migraine by a long margin. We'll try and help you in every way."

"O…Ok…" The Pistil, reassured, closes her eyes and tones down her breathing.

The doctor takes the scanner and the tablet, shoves them back in his duffle bag and takes out a box of Paracetamol tablets.

"This is what I can do for now. Please, let yourself be medicated for a while. Take one tablet with water each day, one every five to six hours."

The medic writes down a memo and gives to the Pistil the box of pills wrapped by the note.

"If you're worsening, please call me. For now, farewell."

"Thanks… See you…" She waves from her bed, then drags the arm on her eyes, trying to rest her eyes for a while.

The doctor gets his bag on his shoulder and walks to the divisor tent. After shoving it apart, four Parasites appear waiting him in line outside: Futoshi, Kokoro, a tired 371 and the young Stamen, all looking at him. The doctor adjusts his thick glasses and shakes his head.

"I don't know about her, either."

The four of them exchange worried looks.

"Is she dying, doctor?" The young Stamen asks with teary eyes.

"No… don't worry. She's… tired. You should take care of her."

He then turns to Futoshi, waiting for his response.

"About you… Well, to repeat it again, your symptoms for now are somewhat insignificant. You have no traumas as far as I can tell, so just keep yourself in check..."

He waves his finger on his own head while explaining further.

"…Code 056, Goro as you call him, was taken in because overworking. So, make sure to take some free time, and I assure you your headaches will disappear."

Both Futoshi and Kokoro open wide their eyes and mouth from the surprise.

"What… did Goro…? My." Futoshi's gaze falls to the ground in confusion. "I would never have thought…"

"Ohhh…" Kokoro grips her uniform's skirt. "He looked fine this morning…"

Instead 371 nods left and right and raises his hands in a yielding gesture.

"He's a literal machine. I told him to slow down…"

Kokoro and Futoshi looks at him with questioning looks, but 371 just launches them same look.

"What, he's your teammate and you don't know at what point he pushes himself? Weren't you at the Gran Crevasse Battle aftermath, or - ah, suuuure! You were transporting tanks… of course." He snarkily remarks.

"W-What's your deal?" Futoshi asks defensive, pecked in his softest.

"Aaand the inhumane work rhythm he has when cleaning…" He swings his head slightly left and right with a very difficult expression. "…There's a reason why I didn't join the cleaning volunteers when my Pistil asked me to: I have some self-preservation!"

"Yeah, when I checked him, he was literally a mess. He's staying there for… at least for the day." The glassed Parasite doctor remarks.

Futoshi then remembers the deal with the exploding Klaxxosaur back in Cerasus and agrees that Goro has somewhat always had a… tendency to be always on first line with active self-sacrifice. He somewhat feels, not with a bit of surprise, that such behaviour… is by nature very noble. He would surely oper-

"Ah…" Futoshi recoils a bit, but he steels himself and hides the pain from the headache still plaguing him at random. "A-ah… Sure. I'll be careful."

"Well, if it's everything, I'm off for now." The doctor waves at the four, then proceeds down the corridor.

The four wave back to him, observing him going down the stairs while writing a message on his communicator. Then, the young Stamen enters the room back to his beloved Pistil, his eyes full of tears.

"I'd leave them alone for now…" Says a meekly smiling 371.

"Are you fine now…?" Kokoro meekly asks to him.

"Yes. It's way better than before. I guess… this pressure in my head has gone for now."

"Good! Thanks for the help!" She smiles radiantly.

Futoshi freezes at her smile almost entranced, his lips slightly parted by the awe. Time slows down while his everything collapses onto her, as he savours her beautiful expression, her delicate, snow white skin, her long eyelashes crowning her large, downturned blue eyes…

Her smile…

She's perfect.

Kokoro notices him with her side vision and Futoshi embarrassedly diverts his intense stare. Then, a fit hits him, not in his head but in his chest… one that is thousands times more painful than the former. His hand wanders onto his heart while he leans on the railing of the corridor. As he fixates his gaze into the air's nothing, Futoshi tries to regain footing with reality and his feelings.

It hurts so much…

Kokoro notices him moving to the side in slight pain and turns to him and worriedly tries to get his attention.

"Are you…"

Kokoro's lips freeze midsentence as she sees his friend clenching his chest, not his head, after looking at her. Her mind instantly flashes to the moments, some weeks ago, where she was rejected by him for being his FranXX partner after she was... changed.

"Futoshi, I'm…"

"It's OK, Kokoro, it's OK… I'm still just a bit confused… Don't worry about it." He waves to her a meek smile, masking his true feelings with a relaxed tone, wanting to avoid Kokoro to feel bad about him still hurting because of those warped desires of him, residues of that day he wanted to forget.

Kokoro doesn't look assured of his explanation and, instead, she's jolted by a spark of guilt. Her face melts in a helpless expression while she joins her trembling hands and brings them to her chest, her urge of shouting out her helplessness suppressed by his carefree attitude. She opens her mouth, but no voice comes out at all, chocked by her insecurity.

Futoshi, knowing he upset her, curses himself in silence.

"Sorry, Kokoro. I'm going to… help Ikuno with…" He says with a suffocated, tense voice while turning around towards the stairs, completely unable to face his feelings. He then strides forward down the stairwell, wanting to get down as fast as he could, to create the most distance from her and his pain.

Kokoro shakes her head aghast, seeing him getting far from her with his back slouched forward. She forces a breath in her lungs to regain her composure, but her anxiety remains lodged in her chest.

"N-n-no…" She utters, but her voice comes out as a whisper. Futoshi was running apart from her, but she wanted to stop him.

"Wait!" Her voice picks up volume now, but he's already well gone down the stairs. Her feet move on their own, slowly accelerating from a walk to a dash trying to tail him.

She runs to the stairwell and quickly tackle the steps to tail Futoshi.

Code 371, witnessing the scene, slouches his surrendering shoulders.

"Those P13, what a mess..." He drops his remark while returning to his room, scratching his head.

…

…

"Hi, excuse me, do you know Code 121?"

The Pistil Ikuno was referring to looks at her dumbfounded.

"Huh…? N-Nope, sorry…" She waves her off.

Ikuno was just polling people at random coming down the stairs of the north dormitory, but she wasn't having any luck finding someone that would know that Stamen. She abandons the Pistil and then blocks another Stamen on his way up.

"Hello, excuse me…"

"H-Hi!" The Stamen looks at her nervously.

"Do you happen to know Code 121?"

"Ehhh… Ah! That lonely Stamen up the third floor?"

"Yes!" Ikuno beams him with both eyes open wide.

"No, sorry, he's quite the strange guy, so I just leave him alone…"

"Ah, OK, thanks anyways."

Ikuno parts with the Stamen.

The consensus on Code 121 is that he's a lonely guy, a strange guy, he stays inside most of the time and even if you encounter him going outside of his room, he avoids any form of interaction, including eye contact or any other word other than monosyllables when prompted. The person that talked most with him was Kokoro without a doubt, and she judged he wasn't a bad person.

Ikuno believed her, in a sense that a person like Kokoro would pick up on people's nature fast, but she couldn't shake off this strange feeling that there was a reason for his isolation. From what she gathered, he wasn't a violent person, he talked to people but never opened himself to anyone, almost like he wasn't interested in personal contact…

Ikuno grumbles and keeps descending the stairs…

Wait, what about his squad?

"Not really, I don't think he even has a squad to be honest." A passing Pistil tells Ikuno, being blocked by her.

"…What, how can a Parasite not have a squad?"

"No, I mean that… many lost their squad in those months. I lost three teammates myself, about the time when that Lehman charged between the Plantations…"

"Ah… I'm sorry." Ikuno apologises for her accidental intrusion.

"Don't worry... We were all down there. I'm just… extremely pissed that they died for… nothing." The Pistil smiles ironically, but in her eyes sparks of hate lit up. "-AH"

She cringes in pain out of the blue.

"Are you OK?"

"Sorry. I'm having this headaches all the time when I get mad."

"When you get mad…?"

"Yeah, it's like something banging on my head whenever I laugh, I'm sad or… whatever. It's really annoying!"

"I see… Does it happen often?"

"Yes, and it's not me either, even my Stamen has this strange thing. I just want us to be left alone…" The Pistil says forlorn.

Ikuno thinks this might be related to the 'illness' that 013 was talking about.

"I hope it's just a passing thing. Thanks for the help."

"You're welcome. See you next time." The Pistil bows to her.

Ikuno wanders her gaze towards the central plaza descending the stairs, having reached the bottom. There was a limit in how many people she could poll and get useful info, given how less Code 121 interacted with people, so she stops polling people. Instead, walks over to the east dormitory wanting to link up with Futoshi and Kokoro to tell them her recent findings, what she found in Code 723's picture book and what the people think about her and his Stamen.

She can't just process how strange a guy he is: he's a complete shut in and never interacts with people unless strictly necessary. He's unapproachable, but very caring to his Pistil, that in turn adores him. He lets her outside to play with others very frequently but drives others away when she's not well.

To her, seems very unlikely at this point that he'd be the responsible of the girl's injury… If, again, it was really the girl that was injured, because up to this point, she can't see how the injury was made or who was even injured, because to be honest, the teddy bear could be even touched by the Stamen, since he would have played with her. Being injured himself, then for his distrust of people he isolated himself…

This is really hard!

She had read some mystery novels before, but this is another level altogether. That's easy being the reader and having an external viewpoint, witnessing each scene with detach- oh.

Ikuno forgot about Hachi and the cameras.

Didn't he tell her he would be contacting her back? How much time she's supposed to wait, aren't those just video recordings?

She goes into the plaza descending the straight stairs connecting it to the north dormitory, gets herself into a solitary corner and flicks out her communicator to call Hachi. The tone rings clear, so she waits in anticipation for him to pick up the call.

"Sorry, 196. I was reviewing some data."

"Did you find anything in the cameras… sir?"

"Yes. Something quite not good. The Stamen is not to be approached in any circumstance."

"What…?"

"I found out the Stamen is not… emotionally stable and he's dangerous, maybe armed."

"What does it mean…?"

"It means he's not to be interacted with."

"Why…? What does really mean 'emotionally unstable'?"

"Based on what I gathered from the recordings, he lead his Pistil out of the Sphere to bring her in a camera blind spot area made by him. I'm very positive he allegedly hurts her Pistil in a regular manner."

A jolt traverses Ikuno's spine as he slumps her shoulders at his meaningless statements.

"I'd require you to call off the search now."

"W-what?!"

"I call off the search. You may return to your previous work…"

Ikuno feels her rage mounting like a volcano. How could he just call off her work like that? There's no way she would be OK with disregarding everything, after all she'd discovered about those two. She knows something traumatic happened, and she believes the Stamen is not a violent person toward the Pistil or anyone else, so why did Hachi thinks he's a psycho?

"Sir, no way! I've polled some of his neighbours and he's not a violent person! At the contrary, he's not talkative, but…"

Hachi interrupts her.

"No one ordered you to do so. I told you to stand by until I reviewed the camera footage. Now there are people that know we're after him. That's a grave mistake."

"Grave mistake…?"

Ikuno startles. After him?

"Wait, why are we 'after him'? Didn't we just wanted to review what happened to them?"

"The situation changed. I saw what happened and the Stamen is to be considered a threat."

Ikuno opens her mouth in pure disbelief. He's a threat?

"Hachi, sir, without offense, but nothing's changed! They are still unable to be found, no one in the Sphere has seen them and they are most likely not well themselves! Why we're hunting them down now?"

Ikuno's voice gets louder as her disbelief increases. Was she lied to all the time, from the very start of this search? Were they just helping Hachi in hunting down the Parasites he deemed unfit by him? Why?

"Please believe me when I say he's not to be approached." Hachi disregards Ikuno's questions.

"HOW CAN I BELIEVE YOU IF YOU DON'T TRUST ME!" Ikuno bursts like a lion. The Parasites gravitating around the bell cart parked in the center of the plaza turn around, startled by her yelling.

"Why did you lie to us and keep us from knowing things, do you think we're just pawns to use like you please? I'm here to help others realize we can go on without Papa and his rules, living all together in peace, but instead I'm hunting down the same people we're trying to help because of some made up reason! I-REFUSE-TO-LET-THIS-GO!"

"No… that's not it. I'm trying to protect you."

"That's not how you protect people!"

"…Please, I'll resolve this matter myself."

"You don't know anything happening here, sir. I'm sorry again, but I'm not leaving this be."

"…196."

"My name is Ikuno. And now I'm not going to become an Adult like you."

"…" Hachi's voice immediately silences.

"Over and out." Ikuno closes the communicator.

That Code 013 was right all along. About him, and about them, too.

…

…

Futoshi, having almost reached the first floor, slows down his pace in descending the stairs. His guilt now resurfaces knowing he just ditched Kokoro on the spot, but he knows that him staying up there could have only worsened the situation on both sides.

Futoshi wants her to be happy, and his attentions are not what makes her happy.

In fact, she's repulsed by him. She prefers another one to him, and there's nothing he can do about it. Futoshi doesn't feel resentful towards Kokoro at all, instead he acknowledges his mistakes at that time. But even if he then fixes himself, he still can't change the fact he isn't Mitsuru to begin with. So, that day, when she returned with her memories erased, he pushed her away because he knew for a fact her happiness wasn't being with him, but with who she loved instead.

It's extremely painful, but he knows his pain is very insignificant compared to her happiness, which is very important to him. He was prepared to throw away everything: he even staged at her wedding as the person that would have sealed their vows of love.

Even after that, he still loves her.

Even after the painful refusal he experienced from her when she disregarded that promise... He wanted to protect that smile, even by sacrificing his own. That promise really didn't matter to him anymore, because he reasoned that it was taken off her on the spot, selfishly and without consideration. He begged her to be with him forever because he strongly wanted someone… like her. A beautiful angel that comforted him, that filled with her presence and her gentle voice that gigantic chasm in his soul.

Because, for all his life, he felt empty inside.

Directionless, in apathy.

Something he came to realize not so long ago, just before being admitted in being a Parasite. Nothing was able to quell his uneasiness and his nervous self, so he would overeat to fill that missing piece he felt he had in himself. He gained weight, but he didn't care at all, because that gaping hole had to be filled one way or another. All his friends were gone, spirited by the Adults, and everyone else was looking at him like a stranger. No surprise, since no one would want to be close to the derelict that he felt he was.

Then, after getting a Plantation of his own, he encountered her. He didn't even fathom how lucky he was. He continued to overeat, although way less than before - bread was really tasty back then. For once since a long time he stopped feeling the dread that plagued him, and for the first time in his life, he felt happy.

Just happy.

He didn't ask much at life. Killing some Klaxxosaurs? Sure! For how much the Adults wanted!

Then his life turned around very quickly… in a direction he never anticipated.

And there he was, descending the stairs. Slowing down to a crawl, absorbed in his thoughts, Futoshi leans on the railing of the u-bend overlooking the plaza and sighs, lonesome.

Then, rapid steps descending the stairwell grabs his attention.

That couldn't be.

Is she…?

"Wait, please! Futoshi!"

Kokoro almost slides onto the steps around the bend and charges head on into him, panting, stepping rapidly to grab his arm. Futoshi immediately reacts, trying to escape further, just to be stopped by her pulling him back.

"Stop, please! I want to talk!"

"Ko-Kokoro, I'm…" Futoshi avoids looking directly in her eyes.

"Why…! Why do you always look at me like that! Why are you running away from me!" She utters in desperation, clinging to his arm. "Why do you hate me!" She asks again with a wet voice.

"I don't hate you!" Futoshi this time stares at her teary blue eyes with an intensity never shown before.

"That's not true! Why do you always avoid me? Why is that when you look at me, you're in pain?" She unsteadily shakes his arm, like trying to shake him off long due answers. "Why did you refuse to be my Stamen?"

"It's that…"

"Please! Don't hate me! What have I done to…" She looks down, and tears start streaming down her cheeks. "What have… -hic- I done to you… that you stopped talking to -hic- me…? Please…"

She starts to tremble while she bends forward, still attached to his arm, shuddering. A rain of tears starts to descend from her contrived face, spotting the floor beneath her.

"I don't want -hic- this… -hic- It's too -hic- painful… Pleas -hic-" She starts to hic uncontrollably.

Futoshi looks at her completely aghast and grabs her shoulders to get her upright and stable on her feet. Then he looks down past her long blond-grayish hair, hiding her like a curtain, to be met with her painfully red, crying face.

Futoshi feels the world collapsing.

He just made her cry.

Why…?

Didn't he swear to protect her smile…?

"I… I… listen…"

Futoshi fumbles in pain and worry. He must clear this thing immediately, else he's gonna break down crying as well.

"You… we parted as a Parasite couple… You had found a better partner with Mitsuru… and started… piloting with him."

"I didn't‼ We… didn't…" Kokoro tries to deny the facts.

Futoshi horribly startles as he releases her shoulders from his stabilizing grip.

"But you…!"

"NO! STOP!"

For the very first time in her life, an angry and distraught Kokoro was exchanging gazes with Futoshi. Fists clasped shut along her slender body tensed by her animosity, she shouts her lungs out.

"THAT PERSON WASN'T ME! I DON'T REMEMBER, I DON'T WANT THIS!"

Futoshi recoils backwards at her shouting and leans against the railing barrier of the stairs.

Kokoro then realizes her outburst and covers her mouth in between her frantic breaths.

"Please… don't abandon me…"

She recomposes herself, stifling her cry and drying her tears off her cheeks, then explains herself further.

"It's true. I can't accept this. Those are… not my memories. They don't belong to me…" She brazenly declares, not without a touch of insecurity.

"Kokoro, you were brainwashed by Papa and his lackeys! Your memories were altered!"

"I don't care, I said! It wasn't me! Those are not my actions… the person you have now in front of you isn't the same one!"

"That's…" Futoshi looks at her completely dispossessed of his thoughts. Why would she think like that?

"I don't want to be treated like I'm not myself anymore! Why… Why everyone has to… force me to… be as they please? I never took that decision! I never….!"

Kokoro starts sobbing again.

"Kokoro… I… it's that…"

Futoshi knows perfectly what Kokoro is trying to say.

It's like being accused of something you don't remember doing. Of course, you'd distance yourself from it and even at receiving proof of it you'd be extremely hostile to it regardless. Because… you'd refuse to lose grip with your sense of reality and admit that your… very being is fundamentally wrong.

Even worse if one day, when you wake up, the reality that you know is completely subverted. Past, present, people… and on top of that, everyone around you start questioning your actions because they're not in touch with your reality. The most horrible thing is to be branded as an ill-crazy person, incapable of living and in need of constant aid, then derided and abandoned for the things you consider normality.

And she was fighting against that. An incredibly uphill battle… The Kokoro she knew never would had challenged the world on her own. She really changed on her own.

Futoshi can imagine her pain… but there isn't just one reality.

"…You're right. But you can't expect me to just ignore completely all I had gone through, either."

He wants to make sense of his pain, to channel it in a direction, towards something that made sense of his life. He can't discard his own reality, and with it, the pain that drove him forward.

…

But if she's in pain because of that…

…

Is this really the way to go? Does he have to disregard everything and return to her side?

…

But in the end, she won't be happy with him…

…

That's it. He must protect her happiness and show her the way she can obtain that, to make her smile beautifully out from her heart once again.

Like that day of the wedding.

"I know, because of what happened in those days. I learned that you won't be ever happy with me." Futoshi explains.

"No! No one ever said that…!"

"You might not have said it, but… I think the Kokoro I talked with all this months was the real Kokoro, not a fake."

The girl shakes her head vigorously.

"What does it matter? It might… be true that some things about you were a bit… wrong and… untactful, like that time that you've… appreciated me in front of everyone…"

Kokoro makes a brief pause as her cheeks slightly go on fire.

"…A-Anyway! You might have been a creep sometimes, a-and too much clingy, and ate too much - and that might have been my fault too - but I know you didn't do it out of being a bad person! But then…"

She ponders her words attentively.

"You changed completely. I see you a different person now… sure of yourself, more kind, more… focused…"

Kokoro starts playing with her hair frills, still a bit red.

"I changed because of the promise you broke." Futoshi retorts.

Kokoro disenchants herself and looks him in the eyes with a sorry expression.

"That time I learned my lesson. And that my happiness didn't mean your happiness."

"Why…?"

"You… that day, you chose Mitsuru over me as your FranXX partner."

A lonesome smile blossoms on Futoshi as he explains on.

"From that day on, you had a smile that you never had with me. That smile was everything to me… I vowed to myself that I would make your happiness come true, instead of mine. So, I decided to let you go… because I wanted to see that smile once again, forever."

Kokoro widens her eyes as her lips part in complete surprise.

"My… happiness…"

She blinks her eyes several times.

"Why would you… go such lengths… for my happiness?"

Futoshi had no doubts of the answer.

"Because I love you."

She freezes on the spot.

Her lips move without sound, first repeating Futoshi last words, then erratically moving on their own as her eyes go off focus and her hands feel her chest, where her heart was beating uncontrollably. She suddenly deeply gasps to fill her lungs, having forgot how to breathe properly, then the mist on her eyes disappears and her face goes on fire violently.

"Love…"

She looks down to her feet, in thought.

"It's a very familiar word. But I don't know, or remember, what it means…"

She slowly walks up to him, then rises her head with a smile. A deeply beautiful smile, accompanied by her shining blue eyes.

"It looks extremely painful, but my heart tells me… it's also extremely beautiful."

She closes to him and takes his hand.

"I think… discovering what 'love' is about… will bring me happiness."

Her eyes once again feel with tears, but ones of joy.

"Could you help me… discover what 'love' means?"

Futoshi caresses her cheek with the other hand left free. Kokoro lightly recoils in surprised by his gesture, but after discovering its tenderness, she lets herself being caressed.

He was so… so much glad.

In fact, he felt his heart pounding so much it seemed it wanted to burst out of his ribcage from the happiness, and his eyes were about to cry as well.

He was given another chance. He didn't need to kill his own heart to make her happy. Even if it didn't feel right because she had lost her memories, now it doesn't matter anymore.

"Yes…!"

Futoshi, gently leading her by her shoulder and her flank. Slowly, he hugs Kokoro as her delicate body presses against his chest and his arms tenderly encloses her. Kokoro is surprised but smiles and starts caressing his back when she notices Futoshi's sobbing and shaking.

A very long hug, in which Futoshi keeps weeping on Kokoro's shoulder, and she keeps caressing his big back and head,

After they part, looking each other in their teary eyes, wet by their sheer emotion liberated by their reconciliation.

Suddenly, the sound of hands clapping ensues.

Both Futoshi and Kokoro look around, and they find themselves being observed by a quite large crowd of cheering people returning from the garbage collection, all gathered at the base of the stairs. The scene that Kokoro and Futoshi made was being watched by everyone: they stopped talking on the bend of the stairwell facing the front of the open building, so it was almost as they quarrelled, confessed to and hugged on a pulpit.

Surprised, touched, happy, curious, and laughing faces, all watching them cuddle…

Both part in embarrassment, trying to hide their emotion, and the crowd starts whistling and hollering at the rhythm of the clapping.

"More! More! More!"

"A-are they thinking this was theatrics, now…?" Kokoro worriedly asks. Futoshi, instead, smiles at the crowd and starts waving his hand in salute.

"Heheh…" She laughs at his nonchalance.

Futoshi notices an arm-crossed Ikuno in the crowd, highlighted by her blue overalls and cap. He looks at her, and she lifts her cap to show her amused and ironic smile, nodding in an exaggerated way. Then, her arm launches upwards into an equally exaggerated thumbs up.

Futoshi smiles at her full teeth, happy like a child, while Kokoro can't keep her eyes off him.

…

…

White latex-gloved hands open the white curtain of Code 121 and Code 723's room. Hisui's face peeks from it, and not even half way into the room his nostrils contract violently and he recoils back outside. He then turns his head to the side towards his bored assistant, cringing.

"I can't do this." Hisui says horrified.

"Whaaat? Aren't you a doctor?"

"Well, I never got out of training, so…" He shrugs.

"That's bullshit! Clench you nose, sweetie!"

The violet-haired girl pinches his nose between her thumb and index finger and pulls him back inside.

"Aoaoaoaoao!" Hisui protests feeling the cartilage of his nose being torn aside.

"You're more precious than MY practitioners at their first diaper change!"

"I got it, I got it!"

Hisui steps inside in darkness, hands in the air, and the girl releases his nose. He sneers once again for the smell, but shakes his head to convince himself to pull through.

"The only smell I'm partial of is that of formaldehyde."

"Gross!"

"That's the stuff."

The Pistil assistant enters behind Hisui and hands him the medical bag she carried all the way and flicks open the room lights, both of them dazzled and squirming their eyes at the sudden glare of the ceiling light. After using his hands as shade to give relief to his retinae, Hisui walks semi-blindly towards the center of the room only to briefly trip on the covers of the bed scattered about.

"What a mess!" He protests.

Finding everything scattered as Futoshi left it previously, both cringe in a horror, one for the smell and the other for the state the room was left in.

"This would mean a hard scolding." The girl remarks.

"Maybe Ikuno searched the room."

"Hm-hm. I was referring especially to her."

"Whoa, I left you a very laid-back person back then, now would you look at yourself… well, gonna start working here."

"Same. There's the drawing book."

"Where?

"Right here." She picks it up off the plushie that was placed on it, finding close by the little girl's