Hunters X and X Heroes

If X Empty, X Climb

   To understand the nature of Rukei's behavior, Rukei, the young, brown-haired girl who is standing in front of that door blankly, desperately wishing to step forward and desperately wanting to walk away, both compelled by the exact same aspect of this nature and unable to do either, this chapter must begin at her early childhood.

   Rukei loved her parents.

   She remembers (of course, she remembers) all their conversations, what her father cooked for dinner, every single answer in the newspaper's crossword puzzle her mom would solve with her.

   It was always difficult to pick a favorite memory, because she remembers everything, and everything is a lot to sort through, but a particularly warm one might be when during a very rough thunderstorm, one that had chased Rukei underneath the covers in fright, her mother sat beside her and told her that she was a lot like her father when he was younger. At that point, the brown-haired man burst into the room and insisted that wasn't true and he wasn't scared while her mother would roll her eyes.

   A cold one was after Rukei completed the blank, six-hundred piece puzzle. She reported so to her parents proudly with a wide grin, and though that grin stayed after her parents commended her, it was filled with the same unease and disappointment reflected in her parents' eyes. Their words were empty praise, and the sound itself was hollowing. 

   Why weren't they proud? What was wrong with Rukei?

   "Rinslet, do you know where the keys to the back shed are?" Her father called, one hand rummaging through a cabinet, the other running through light brown hair, "It was on the counter last time I saw it..."

   Rinslet looked up from her daughter and the drawing in the child's hands, asking her to wait for a moment while she joined him in his search,  "No, I haven't. Be more careful with your things. Please, Tei, this is getting old. When was the 'last time'?"

   Tei smiled nervously, avoiding the gaze of his wife, "About a week ago, maybe?"

   "'A week ago'?" She repeated tiredly, "Of course, it'd be gone, Tei-"

   "It's on the window sill by the table."

   Her father looked where the child had instructed him too, and gave an enthusiastic 'aha!' upon finding the lost- he stopped however when he realized what the girl had told him. "Wait, how'd you know that, Rukei?"

   "On Tuesday, you were playing with the keys while you were talking on the phone," the brunette stated evenly, demonstrating the best she could, though she was too short to reach object, "And then you set it down on the sill while you were leaning back and left it there."

   It was cold again.

   They had suspected it for a while, but they were never sure. The mundane, minuscule, and the insignificant: Rukei remarked on them often, and they hoped that it was only the curiosity and observance of a child that led her to remember such things. But when Rukei recollected numbers, the ones flashed across a TV screen in a commercial, the license plates of cars passing underneath their windows, they knew- when Rukei never needed to look at the finished puzzle more than once to complete it, they were sure.

   Rukei's memory hit something very close to perfect.

   Her parents exchanged a long, silent look, before Tei crouched down to look her in the eye. He was smiling. He was smiling at her in that vacant way again. "Wow, Rukei. Your memory is really good."

    Rukei wasn't proud.

   "You can't tell anyone else about this, okay?"

   The child was hesitant and confused. "I don't get to meet anyone else anyways. And I'm not allowed to go outside-"