(っ－＿－)っAM N. NOT.
The two took their time tasting each other and marking their own possession.
Nemuri was still breathing heavily, but in her eyes there was mischievousness as she thought of many absurd ideas.
Tsunade and Maki slowly pulled their heads back. Tsunade smiled at him and said, "Danna… you taste really sweet."
Maki looked at her. "Hmm. Really?" He didn't feel it, though.
Nemuri then said, "Yeah, you taste like some kind of fruit."
Maki tilted his head to the side, and as he did, his hair followed the movement along with his golden serpent earrings.
Tsunade had been touching them so many times, even using her arms while hugging him, but clearly she couldn't touch them at all.
Then Tsunade asked, "Danna, can I ask you a question?"
Maki was still deep in thought, but he replied, "Oh, what is it?"
Tsunade raised her right hand again to touch the earrings. Her fingers approached them, but when she tried to grab the earring, her hand passed through it.
She looked at him and said, "Where did you get this?"
Maki watched her and said, "Cool, right? It's a reward."
"Reward?" Tsunade repeated. Then she asked, "A reward from where? And what did you do to get this as a reward?"
"From the ****************!"
Nemuri and Tsunade stared at him in confusion. His voice suddenly glitched, creaking and hoarse, turning into a creepy whisper. While he was speaking, an eerie sound was produced. Nemuri and Tsunade, hearing it, suddenly felt their eardrums being stabbed by many needles, vibrating violently inside their heads and making their brains shake.
They put their hands over their ears, trying to block the sound, but nothing happened. It only got worse every second.
"Ughhhhh…" Tsunade gritted her teeth.
"Aaaaahhhhhh…!" Nemuri cried out, still not fully recovered, wailing in pain.
Maki saw this and immediately stopped talking. When he spoke again, his voice returned to normal.
"What happened, Tsuna? Nem-nem? What's wrong?" he asked.
But Tsunade didn't answer. Instead, she hurriedly healed herself, and without waiting a second, she also healed Nemuri, who was still shaking and badly hurt.
Maki saw this and was about to stand to help, but Tsunade stopped him with her eyes. She looked at him and signaled that it was fine.
Maki didn't argue because she somehow looked angry at something.
He just nodded and asked himself if it was his fault.
He had only been answering her question about where he got the reward, but suddenly he saw their eyes widen. They covered their ears and screamed in pain. What happened? he asked himself.
Tsunade continued healing Nemuri, and slowly Nemuri felt the pain fading away. But they stayed silent. They weren't stupid. They knew exactly what was going on. There was no need to elaborate or repeat the process and pretend they didn't notice it.
It was clear as day.
They didn't need any nonsense to support what they were thinking or what they had already concluded. Tsunade asked a question. He answered casually. And then it happened. The deduction was simple common sense.
No matter what it was, or whether it was Maki himself doing it, one thing was certain. They didn't have the right to know.
As their eyes scanned his reaction, it was the same as always. He looked worried about them. That alone said everything. He didn't know what had happened just now.
That was why Tsunade was angry. She didn't understand what was happening at all.
Nemuri was now fully healed, but her eyes still lingered on Maki's bewildered face while he looked back at them.
Then she whispered, "Seems like I don't really know you."
Which was correct.
The first time she met him, she was only planning to take care of him while he was still a child and support him as he grew up. But she grew fond of him, like she was witnessing youthfulness blooming.
She didn't pry into anything about him because when she saw how responsive he was with cooking, cleaning, and doing chores, she thought he just wanted to repay her.
As the days passed, she started feeling like she was the one being taken care of. She had asked him many questions about himself, but he stayed silent, like he didn't want to open up to her, like she was still just a stranger.
So she stopped prying.
The truth was she had tried to search for anything, any clues, while observing him, but there was nothing at all. Even the doctors who came to check him felt that something about him was off.
Nemuri tried many ways just to get closer to him and slowly unravel everything about him. He had told her many things, but it still felt like he wasn't saying everything.
She tried to put him in school and let him go outside, but he didn't. Not a single day did she see him leave.
Even school had become a joke now. Who the hell needed to study if you might be killed by Anomalies or Hollows tomorrow?
That was why education had greatly declined in this era. Only academies like UA, which trained the future phylaxes, were considered real standards of education.
Even the main subjects from before, such as English, math, and many others, were now considered secondary subjects at UA. They were unimportant in this era full of turmoil, a world slowly crawling toward apocalypse.
That was why it was easy for Nemuri to pull some strings and have Maki receive a diploma.
The truth was she didn't even need to pull strings. Who the hell cared about a diploma in this era?
But she still did it, just to make sure he had it in case of emergency.
Even nowadays, what schools taught wasn't the same anymore. The focus had shifted toward studying threats. That explained why Nezu once said that Maki couldn't answer simple questions that even elementary kids knew.
Nemuri did everything she could just to make sure he had a place where he could stay. She felt like he might disappear at any moment.
So she let him do whatever he wanted. She didn't question him anymore and stopped prying. The more she asked questions, the more distance she felt growing between them.
She saw that he didn't want to interact with the outside world. It wasn't simple introversion. It was clear isolation, like he was erasing his own existence.
But she also saw that he didn't seem to care about anything at the same time. She didn't understand him from the beginning, but she pushed those thoughts aside and grew fond of him anyway.
She saw everything she needed in a man she was looking for. So she let herself be dragged along by the flow.
In a world where everyone could die the next morning, why bother with so much nonsense?
She wanted to feel her youth once again. And he entered her life, falling onto her car like some ridiculous coincidence.
But the truth was she didn't fully know him yet.
It felt like every single day she was meeting him for the first time again. That was what Nemuri was feeling.
But she never doubted her heart. Not once.
Even if he hid something deeper, what could a kid who literally fell from the sky be hiding that looked like some world-destroying secret? That was bullshit.
So for Nemuri, she didn't care, as long as he was there.
But it still stung a little when you didn't truly know who or what he really was.
And the most irritating part was that he himself didn't seem to know anything about himself.
"Really ignorant about everything," she whispered.
AM N. NOT.(っ－＿－)っ