#vswgreen

   Ryoken may have held Yusaku’s hand as he led him to the trap that was the lost Incident, but Spectre sat side by side with Yusaku many times in that kindergarten classroom. Spectre’s heart thudded in his chest as he recalled that missed connection.

   The pecking order of the orphanage that he had once belonged to was brutal. Inescapable. Even at school. The older children would make sure that the children who had parents and regular family lives and homes would know to avoid him. Bully him. Keep him at the very bottom of that chain that kept him tethered and, well, weird.

   Spectre didn’t mind, of course. He would have avoided the new children that he mixed with at the public kindergarten and elementary school the orphanage enrolled some of their wards to anyway, by his own volition. But then there was that other boy he met by some chance of bureaucracy. Some administrator deciding that the new, transient kid could go into the same kindergarten class as he and he had the same problem as Spectre. Something about him… It just made the other children turn on him, but at least Spectre was outwardly off-putting. He couldn’t see a fault in that boy’s green eyes.

   Or maybe that was just retroactive bias. At first, Spectre had been vehement on disliking this boy. He avoided him just like he avoided the other children and seeing he was being purposefully ignored, the boy tried to socialise with other children but the other children were uninterested, even outright cruel to him.

   Then someone had a very bright idea of attempting to the pit the two, socially awkward boys at the bottom of the pecking order against them. It didn’t work, of course. Spectre saw right through the deception but poor Yusaku, he didn’t.

   “My name is Fujiki Yusaku,” he introduced himself in a great, big gust of breath, gawky and flustered, “and they told me to be your friend.”

   Yusaku pointed to a crowd of other children. They snickered and cackled, Yusaku didn’t know what was so funny. Spectre did, however, and he promptly ignored Yusaku. He stared, dull-eyed, at Yusaku for a moment and then returned to what he had been doing before: colouring in the drawing that he had made.

   Yusaku stood by Spectre’s desk for a moment. He felt caught in between two worlds. The other children were still laughing and it was really starting to make his skin crawl since he still didn’t know what was so funny. But Spectre, however, in front of him, seemed entirely uninterested in Yusaku but Yusaku’s eyes were going wide. He could see what Spectre was drawing.

   “That’s so good.” Yusaku gasped and he sat down next to Spectre.

   Spectre was unnerved by how genuine and excited Yusaku sounded. He stopped what he was doing and clenched very tightly onto the green oil pastel he had been smearing on the paper. Yusaku continued to stick his head very close to Spectre so he could see more of the drawing.

    “Did you draw that?” Yusaku asked.

   Grumpily, Spectre replied, “Yes.”

   “It's so good!” Yusaku praised him again. “Is it a tree?”

   “It’s my Mother.” Spectre said in a very quiet voice. He had been roughhouse before, many times before, whenever he tried to talk about his Mother because yes, she was a tree but she was still so much more than that to him. She was alive, she was his world.

   “But you're not a tree?” Yusaku asked, puzzled. “So how can your Mother be a tree?”

   “She just is.” Spectre replied, getting annoyed but he tried to zone Yusaku out, still colouring in the foliage of his Mother whom he had drawn.

   “I see.” Yusaku replied. “That’s cool.”

   Spectre felt his ears twitch. That’s… cool. He had never been agreed with before. Or at the very least, not verbally attacked for being strange and unusual for thinking a tree to be his mother. He took another look at Yusaku and his eyes were very green, very verdant, and even his name was as it was wreathed in wisteria. It almost made Spectre jealous, it was a lot prettier a name than the one that the orphanage had given him.

   “Thank you…” Spectre murmured as he kept colouring in, smearing green on the paper and as much as he did on the side of his small, pudgy hand.

   He thought Yusaku was going to leave. He’d been entwined in a very poor practical joke and that should have been enough. He didn’t, though. Instead, he pestered Spectre with questions about his ideas for the world, about again, how his Mother could be a tree, if he wasn’t and such like that. And for once, Spectre didn’t mind as these questions were coming from a place of good faith, he wasn’t being asked to be mocked. And so, Yusaku listened, enraptured by the theology that his fellow five year old preached.

   But such friendship was not fated to last. Yusaku’s family moved around a lot. He never told Spectre why. This stint at this particular kindergarten was only meant for a month and by the end of it, they had to say goodbye but Spectre wanted to remember the kindness that Yusaku had shown him. He was such a happy, friendly child, starkly different to the grumpy demeanour Spectre held himself with but what little they had shared together truly did mean the world to Spectre.

   Who would have thought the children they had both been would both endure the same Incident. Spectre had enjoyed it. Yusaku had endured it. Spectre could forget the harsh memories he had of the outside world in those white walls that confined him. Yusaku was made to forget them, the trauma genuinely erasing his memories. Spectre was accepted after the Incident, by the very scientists who had orchestrated it but Yusaku was abandoned afterwards.

   Spectre couldn’t even take relish in knowing he had been right. That Yusaku had been loved and cherished prior to the Incident, Spectre recalled how Yusaku had spoken of his very busy and very industrious parents but despite their work, he had never felt secondary to it. What a very rare blessing with an unfortunate end, Spectre mused.