I.

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It was the moment the sun began to set when she had emerged from the shadows by Tsurumi river. The little girl, along with one of the four papers boats she had created during her time on the void, went over to the unattended bank of the river, however stopped at once seeing a young boy no older than the age of twenty. Her left hand dropped itself to her side, and her lips made a thin line.

"You are not new to this place," the small girl started, taking a few steps towards where stood Atsushi, "are you?"

Upon hearing the voice, he turned his head to the source of interruption, discovering a girl about the age of six.

"Oh..." he trailed, "I'm not."

"That I can tell, because you seem to reminisce on things that you shouldn't."

"That I shouldn't?"

"Well," she said, bending down only a few inches from the water, and dipping a hand on the surface, "how many bodies do you think have gotten along with the torrent of this river?"

His motion halted, and his eyes wandered over to the girl preparing the folded paper to set sail across the current of Tsurumi river. Promptly, she let go of the tip of the boat, with eyes that held mild sadness, and grew sadder the more the form of the boat went farther away.

"What are you doing?" He asked, bending down beside her.

"That," she pointed at the straying paper boat, "is the snake. I have to let go of it, as it won't do any good to me."

"...okay?" Atsushi said, simply. Children could sometimes be quite confusing, it was bothersome. "What bad did it do?"

"It didn't do bad, it just won't do any good." She explained. "If I want to continue benefitting from this world, then I should save the special slots in my heart for those who really grant me nice things. The snake just happened to be someone I thought would do just that." She stopped to glance one more time at the traced form of the boat on the horizon, then added a little later, "That's what adults think, I think,"

"I see." Atsushi replied. "Well, it is a snake, what did you expect?"

"Mhm, it even made an attempt to bite me! Like this!" Naïvely, she took his hand in hers and weakly pinched his flesh, though in her eyes she thought she inflicted a pain so drastic it had him paralyzed. "Did it hurt?"

"Yeah, kind of." He answered. "You must have been in a lot of pain, then. What happened after?"

"A friend hit the snake and told it to get lost."

"It... still had a special slot in your heart?"

"Until now." The girl looked down, her fingers fidgeting with the worn-out edges of her banal dress. "But it's already with the flow of the river. You are a witness."

In her hues of (e/c) glossed a familiarly foreign remorse she had had for the first time in a while. Atsushi figured the stars in her eyes mattered more than the stars above ever did, as there was a heaven marred by the burden of her indecipherable emotions. At that evening did he catch the importance of a child's oblivion.

And at that evening, he came in terms with something he would swear to protect the most.

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