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"I'm sorry." the boy said softly.
"For what?" the lonely sounding girl replied, looking down at the small boy laying down in her lap.
'I-I forget." the boy laughs lightly, "It's easy to forget things when you're here."
The young girl laughs with him, only a touch of lonliness escapes from her mouth.
"You're always like this you know? How are you going to manage without me?' She asks.

A light breeze blows past them, and continues past the trees, and over the hills. City lights can be seen in the distance, and the kids follow the breeze with their eyes by looking at the flowing grass lit by the full moon. The breeze suddenly gets stronger and carries a light mist from the forest behind them, causing the kids to get closer to each other for warmth. When the wind stopped, their eyes fell on the city. The home they were born in and the memories that it holds.

Fun summers, chilly autumns, restless winters, and energetic springs. Days in the park hunting cicadas, sleeping in front of the fireplace with a blanket covering them both during the winter, picking fights with other kids that bullied either of them, always with each other no matter where they were. They always acted like brother and sister, scolding each other, defending each other and sharing treats whenever they get them with each other and their friends.

They were always teased by their friends, but nothing harmful was ever meant from their words and actually helped strengthen their bonds with the entire group.

Right now, it was just those two, on a small hill, about to part one another for who knows how long. The boy had said goodbye to all of his friends and they all cried and had to be carried off by their parents, making promises that they would all meet again. But he felt that he had to make a special occasion with his friend that was with him for most of his life. He asked her parents for permission for her to stay over his house then snuck her out of his house out through the window in his room.

"What are you saying? You were always there with me whenever there was trouble! You know I can take care of myself." The boy replies.

The young girl giggles, "I remember one time, you ran off to fight a pack of bullies that were picking on Tariru and Talel by yourself. By the time that I got there, you were flat on your face while they were still kicking your sides."

The boy jerks upward and looks at the girl, who is now laughing at his reaction.

His expression softens as he watches her laugh and starts to rub the back of his head with his hand, "Well, I forgot about that. But you don't have to worry anymore! I'll be sure to keep out of trouble so I don't worry you. I can promise you that."

With those words she looks at him with an expression of sadness.

The boy stares back into her bright eyes that were changing colors from the light of the moon.

"Come on, you don't have to look so sad, I can always come back if I don't like it there. But my parents have to move somewhere else because of their jobs, and they don't have any relatives that live here to look after me.'

"But why can't you live with me and my parents? I could ask them to look after you! They know you since you've been over there for more days than I can count. They like you, I know they do!"

"I know that they like me, but it's not a matter of liking each other." The boy said, "It's not that I don't like your parents, they're nice! But I don't want to upset my own parents you know?"

"Can't I be selfish just once more?" The girl said on the verge of tears.

"You're always selfish and I always let you have your way." The boy smiles, making it harder for the girl to start crying.

He places a hand on her head and starts petting her. She didn't like it when other people did it, but he was an exception. She could tell her face was red, and she lowered her head so he wouldn't notice.

He kept petting her head over and over but his mind was off somewhere else. He kept wishing that things could keep on going the way they were going. Being together with her was lots of fun. He didn't want to miss a single moment of being with her. But what can a, recently turned, 10 year old do against his own parents? He bought extra time using his birthday as an excuse, but it was only 3 days and the time just seemed to fly by. Now his birthday had ended today and he was going to have to leave tomorrow morning with his parents. The time he bought was nowhere near enough to be with everyone. He wasn't ready to leave them behind, he never wanted to leave them behind---

As she was looking down she saw something clear fall onto her hand, it was warm. She stole a glance upward and was surprised to see her friend crying while petting her head. With tears dripping past his chin, he kept looking straight to avoid looking directly at her eyes. Feeling ashamed that she had only thought about herself, that she never thought about how he was feeling. This sudden realization, mixed with the fact that her friend crying right in front of her, released a dam of emotions. She tried to hold back the tears, but nothing would do. She fell limp, then suddenly hugged the boy with all of her might.---

The boy was stunned, but only momentarily as they both started to cry harder and harder. They were saying goodbye to each other after knowing each other for so long, after being together for so long. Thinking that they would be together forever.

The boy hugged her as well and cried harder because of it, the cracks in his heart beginning to erupt from the pressure. He cried so hard that he felt himself shaking, and after a long minute he opened his eyes.

He stared at his most precious friend for a long while and she had her head buried in his clothes, shaking slightly. He still had tears in his eyes, but he willed himself to stop crying.

He didn't want to be crying while saying what he wanted to say. He promised this to himself.

"Hey, come on. It's not like I'm moving to a completely different world, right?" He said with a forced smile, " I can always come back when I want and it's always a choice."

The boy pauses and looks towards the moon, feeling the tears coming back to his eyes.

"You should already know this, but I don't want to leave you here. If I could do anything to stop it and stay here, I would have already done it."

"But you can stay with me and my family! You can ask your parents---..."

The girl stopped her sentence, confused. She looked up to the boy who suddenly started laughing. Why did he suddenly start laughing?

"Yeah..." The boy looked back down at the girl with fresh tears streaming down his face, "I used that same excuse too."

He cursed himself for being so weak, cursed himself for crying in front of the girl he was trying to make feel better. He told himself that this was not the end, that he could definitely see her again in the future. But the hole in his heart was growing larger and larger each time he thought this. He would not be able to face the girl again.

"..........." The girl went quiet, and silence overcame them.

"..........." The only things that could be heard, was the boy trying to force the tears back and the rustle of leaves of the forest behind them.

Then the girl slowly reached out and pulled his head back onto her lap.

The boy flinched from sudden contact, but thought better of it and followed her hand without looking towards her, still trying to force the tears back.

When the boy was lying down using her lap as a pillow, she began stroking his head while humming a lullaby that her mom used to sing to her. The boy immediately recognized the little medley.

He was ashamed that he was the one now being calmed, when he had wanted to calm the girl instead. But he felt that this was alright, they were both calm now and the boy was in no position to complain. The boy felt soothed, and wished that times like this would last forever.

The girl continued to hum the eloquent sounding song and rested her hand on his head.

"This time." The boy thought, "this time,for sure."

The boy turned around while laying on her lap and looked up towards the girl's face.

The movement caused the girl to look down towards the boy who had finished crying.

"Thank you." The boy said, then wrapped both of his arms around her waist and buried his face in her clothes and her stomach.

The girl was surprised and slightly ticklish, but soon mimicked his actions, by lightly hugging his head with both of her arms, so she wouldn't suffocate him.

This went on for what felt like several minutes.

"I will definitely come back to see you." He said in a clear, quiet voice, even though his mouth should have been muffled by her clothes.

"Hm?" The girl mumbled, being broken out of her trance from the boys words.

The boy moved his head sideways, so that his mouth and one of his eyes were uncovered, but would still be able to hold her like before.

When she looked at him, he smiled with all of his might and repeated, "I will definitely come back to see you. No matter what." and started laughing.

The girls eyes widened, but after a while she smiled and said, "Of course!". She could only stare at the boy after that. She knew he was trying to keep the mood light by smiling and laughing, but she knew that beneath it all, there was a kind of seriousness in those words. She believed him with all of her being. She began smiling and laughing along with him. unable to resist the feelings swirling in her heart.

Hearing her laugh and watching her smile, the boy felt at ease. He finally released his hold on her waist, even though he wanted to hug her for much longer and began to stand.---

---The girl felt the boy release his grasp and began to move to make him stop, but suppressed the urge to. The girl wanted to hold him for much longer, but tried to stand with him.

The boy turned around and held out his hand to the girl, and she took it into her own. She stood with his help and they looked at each other. The boy then walked toward the slope of the hill and looked back towards the city.---

---The girl followed the boy's gaze, but looked back at him with a puzzled expression. She kept looking at him as he put his other hand up to his mouth as if meaning to shout. Then he took a deep breath and shouted as loud as he could.

".......................!"

!-!-!-!-!

The girl froze as the words came out of his mouth, listening, but not quite understanding. The boys words kept replaying in her mind, his mouth moving slower so she could have an easier time reading them.

"I.... Love.... You... Huh?" She slowly repeated them out loud. Her eyes widening upon recognition of the words.

"Yup! I love you, Yuzuha." The boy said smiling like a goof while his face was burning red.

The girl appeared to be frozen, looking straight at the boy with a face of pure shock. The girl didn't seem to be breathing. She was so still.

He saw her reaction and started laughing to loosen the mood, not really sure what to do next.

The boy thought about it, then went up to her and grabbed her hand.

"Come on, we should go back." and he waited for her to start moving.

He looked her in the eye, but she didn't move or even blink.

As if understanding her reaction, he tried leading her forward. But instead, something caught him and he fell backward. He looked back to see that the girl had not moved an inch.

"Yuzuha? What's wrong?" The boy let go of her hand, stood up, and put his hands on her shoulders, but as he touched her he felt a shocking sensation on his fingers that made him fly backwards.

Feeling numb, the boy slowly got up from where he landed. His eyes were blurry and had a hard time focusing on one thing. He made his way back to where the frozen Yuzuha stood and once again put his hands on her shoulders.

What happened next, he could not believe.

As his hands made contact, her entire body started to turn to dust and fly away. The boy stepped backwards, frightened from what he was witnessing.

His best friend was slowly turning to dust and disappearing. He frantically tried to keep her intact, but wherever he placed his hands, her body turned to dust.

Unable to think and only able to act, the boy started screaming out for help as loudly as he could. The more he screamed the more frantic he became and he began to grab for the dust that continually left from her body and tried to put them back on what was left of her.

Soon all that remained of her body was her legs and the boy fell to his knees, not being able to believe anything that he was witnessing. He could only watch helplessly as the rest of his friend quickly dissipated into the air.

There was no way that this could be real. There was no way that any of this could possibly be happening. There was no way that the girl that was with him his entire life was disappearing right before his eyes. There was no way that he was just letting this happen without him doing anything.

But what could he do? He racked his brain for ideas, but he couldn't think of anything, nor did he have enough time to think of anything until all that was left of the girl was her feet.

With wide eyes, the boy watched the last bit of the girl he loved, vanish. His eyes followed the final specks of dust in a trance.

He slowly moved his hand to grab the piece he was following, and caught it in his hands.

He slowly opened his hands to find that the speck had disappeared, as if he had never caught it in the first place.

The precious person he was holding seconds ago was no longer there.

The girl named Yuzuha, no longer existed.

The world went black, and the boy understood nothing of what just happened. He looked at his hands, that seemed to have caused the vanishing of his friend, with hatred. He pounded his fists into the ground with all of his might, hoping that his hands would just fall off. Over and over again; all that could be heard was the dull thud of hands hitting a forest floor and the deranged screams of a 10 year old boy.

His fingers started to bleed, but the boy just closed his eyes and continued, allowing his rage to take over, to continue to mutilate himself. A low buzzing could be heard in the back of his mind, but he ignored it, instead focusing on breaking himself, little by little.

The low buzzing sound turned into a loud humming noise. The noise finally caught the attention of the boy and he turned around, his rage subsiding, and curiosity and intense pain filling in the space left by his anger.

As if something had sensed his curiosity, a bright light flashed beneath the boy's feet and he closed his eyes in reflex and waited for the intense light to subside. When he could finally open his eyes, what he saw only confused him.

The world around him was gone. Instead he was surrounded by seemingly endless darkness.

A light on the floor caught his eye. He looked down to see that he was in the middle of a glowing blue circle with strange markings bordering it. The ground vibrated slightly and a strange humming noise was coming from somewhere, but the boy couldn't figure out where.

Was it the circle?

Wanting to get away from it, the boy pushed his curiosity down and hesitantly left the boundaries of the circle and set out towards the dark. Never looking back, he kept heading in what seemed like a straight path, but it was hard to tell if he was indeed, going straight. The darkness didn't help with his sense of direction in any way and only confused him more the further he went.

Walking through the darkness made time seem to stop. The boy couldn't tell how long it was since he had started walking, but he was sure that it was at least a good minute.

He stopped at one point and looked at the vast emptiness surrounding him.

A light at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and to his despair, he saw that it was the same circle that he had left. He was sure that he was heading in a mostly straightforward direction. There was no way that he could have possibly turned completely around.

But the circle was right there in front of him. He could feel his own curiosity being drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

Unable to suppress his growing interest in the circle he headed towards it.

The boy walked over to the edge of the circle and sat on his legs, curiosity controlling the better of him, and touched the circle.

As if reacting to his touch, the circle began humming louder, grew brighter, and began to grow in size. Lines had begun forming in the middle of the circle and intricate shapes were created. The boy stood with a start and watched as the process took place.

The boy stood breathless as he saw the circle transform around him. The ground vibrated uncontrollably, causing the boy to fall to the floor. Lines started appearing from the border of the circle and created shapes in a rhythmic pattern

The finished design looked like a large circle, bordered with strange symbols, with 2 large hexagons crossing each other that had 3 triangles overlapping each other, creating a star. 2 smaller circles appeared in the middle of the star; the circle in the center of the design protrudes out from the floor and is smaller than the others.

The boy got up from the floor and simply stared at the floor.

The better part of him told him not to go anywhere near the circle. But then he thought that there could be no other place to go, and he figured that if he kept walking aimlessly again, he would somehow end up back here at the circle. He scratched his head trying to think of a different solution to his problem.

Unable to think of a different method to getting out of the strange, dark world, the boy approached the circle.

He tried touching the circle's edge again, but the circle didn't seem to respond like it did before. He looked up to see the circle floating in the center, faintly pulsating with light and figured it was special. He hesitantly walked onto the circle, and seeing that it didn't react, he continued towards the center.

He knelt down and looked at it for a second, and touched it tentatively.

The boy was surprised that the light was actually a solid object. The floating circle bounced a little from the touch, but otherwise didn't change.

He touched it again, but added a little more strength to his push, and saw that the circle was meant to be pushed down like a button.

Not really sure what this meant, or what it would do, the boy saw little choice in his current situation. Either stay in this world and die of starvation, or push the button and probably make it out alive.

There was a slimmer of hope in the latter choice, so he opted to take that one.

Without hesitation he pressed the circle all the way down to the floor and the entire world vibrated. The world just seemed to shake, whether in anger or excitement, he could not tell. Three other circles seemed to split from the original and took positions an even distance from each other while sticking to the border of the original. The light grew brighter and brighter with each passing second. The boy was frightened and tried to run away, but tripped on something, or rather, something seemed to have tripped him

Invisible hands gripped his limbs and locked him down to the floor, immobilizing him. Cursing in his mind, he could only struggle in futility to get the invisible things off of him, but another hand clamped down on his head, almost causing him to pass out. Dazed, he tried to struggle once more, but found that his body was unresponsive.

He could start to taste blood in his mouth.

Surrenduring to his fate, he stopped struggling and wished for this ordeal to end, for him to wake up from this vivid nightmare and return to the hilltop with his best friend and forget that this ever happened.

!-!-!

The image of Yuzuha turning to dust and dissipating shot through his mind.

...

"That's right..." The boy thought, "She's gone... She's no longer with me."

The hands kept constant pressure on the boys limbs, making sure that he would not escape.

"There's no point in living if she isn't here with me... Is there?" The boy kept thinking. "There's no point in continuing if she isn't there by my side."

Sensing the boy's will to live being exhausted, the hands slowly loosen their grip.

"There's no point in living... No point at all... anymore."

The hands slowly loosen their grip and start to leave, sensing that the boy wouldn't try to flee anymore.

"There's no point... No point... No point!" The boy repeating in his head and started to cry. If Yuzuha would've seen him in his sorry state, she would've punched him hard on the shoulder, telling him to man up.

"I'm sorry Yuzuha! I didn't mean to do that! I didn't mean to kill you!" The boy said quietly. He wasn't even sure if he had even done it, but no one else was there and the last person that was with her was him.

There was no one else to blame, but himself.

The circle's light had reached it's peak and grew no brighter. The boy at the center of the light was crying with his arm over his eyes.

"Yuzuha... Yuzuha, I'm so sorry." He said. Memories of them together kept popping in his head. He didn't want to remember them. He felt that he didn't deserve to remember such happy memories.

'You have to live your life to the fullest!'

!-!-!

Those were her words, he remembered the day when she told him that.

Yuzuha pointed her finger towards the boy and yelled at him to live his life to the fullest.

"You have to live your life to the fullest!" she yelled this at him, while the boy petted the head of Selgri, his abnormally huge Siberian Husky.

"Hey, you have to be easy on Selgri, he just lost a sparring match with you just now." the boy says as Selgri's head buries deeper in the boy's lap.

"I'm talking to the both of you!" she retorts.

"Wait why are you saying that to me?"

"So you don't forget!"

"Forget what?"

The girl stutters, "F-forget about what, you say? ME! So you don't forget about ME!"

"Um, you aren't making much sense..."

"I'll say it slowly so you understand... I can live my life to the fullest, because I care about you." she said that while blushing slightly.

"Wait, what are you saying?"

"Get it through your thick skull! If you live your life to the fullest, that means you can care about others as well as care about your own life! No one who cares about anything can live like that! So... I care about you, a lot."

'Ah, I finally get it' he thought,"Well, I guess that means I live my life to the fullest too."

"Oh? What makes you say that? I'm interested in what you're thinking." she asked inquisitively.

"Because I care about you the most in the world, and for me to care about you I have to live, so I have to take care of myself, right? I'm not going to forget you, it'd be impossible."

As the boy remembered this a surge of anger rose through him and gave him energy to stand.

The invisible hands returned after sensing his will to live returning and gripped him back down to the floor. He struggled to fight them, to get loose and get out of the circle, but they would not let go and continued to pin him to the ground. He kept fighting while flashbacks of his past played through his head.

Yuzuha gasped a little but recomposed herself. "O-of course!" She crosses her arms and turns around and continues, You can't forget about me right? It's because I am just that amazing. One cannot simply forget about me." She looked at the boy from the corner of her one open eye to judge his reaction.

The boy was still petting Selgri's head, but he was smiling at Yuzuha.

"So I will keep living and keep caring about others. Is that alright?" He said.

Yuzuha couldn't help but smile and said, "Yup! It's a promise! We must both live our lives to the fullest!"

"I made that promise to her." He said while struggling to get the hands off, "I can't let these things hold me here, I can't let them kill me."

The hands still had a steel grip on his limbs.

"I have to live for her! I have to stay alive. I want to see her again! She can't be gone! Do you hear me! SHE CAN"T BE GONE!"

From somewhere in the darkness a person smiles and finishes an incantation. She has a clear view of the boy being subdued by humanoid monsters. She waits for a minute before saying, "Good luck in the new world you are about enter." and turns around and walks into the dark and disappears.

The boy kept struggling, but then the circle dimmed and disappeared.

He could feel the hands that restrained him let him go from their grasp.

He laid there, in the sudden dark, wondering what would happen next. He closed his eye since they were no longer of any use.

Then the pitch black world around him literally shattered from underneath him, and the dark world disappeared.

He opened his eyes suddenly aware that he was falling.

The sun?

He stared at it blankly. The sun seemed to be in the right spot, but why was the ocean where the sky was supposed to be.

...?

"Wait what?" The boy thought, "What's going on here?"

He looked up to see trees rapidly growing in size above him. Then something clicked, his sense of falling, the ocean and the trees being where the sky should be.

"I'm an idiot... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" the boy screamed.

He flailed his arms, kicked his legs, and even opened his mouth at some desperate attempt to turn it into a drooling parachute. But nothing that he could do would ever defeat gravity.

"DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT!" The boy repeated screaming.

Before his body hit the ground, he screamed out the name of the young girl that he was seperated with.

"YUZUHAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

And the world turned black once more.

!-!-!

The young girl woke with a start, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Not sure how she fell asleep she looked down towards her lap, expecting to see the familiar face of her beloved friend. Except he was no longer there. She looked down the hill thinking that he had dozed off as well and had somehow managed to roll down, but he was nowhere in sight.

"Etero?" She said. "Etero where are you?"

No response.

"Come on out Etero, this isn't funny. I know you are here somewhere!"

No response.

"Etero, you'd come out now!" This time with anger clear in her voice, knowing that he doesn't like it when she gets angry.

Still no response

She waited for what felt like an eternity, listening for any kind of sound that remotely sounded like Etero's voice, before saying anything else.

"Etero?" she said softly, "Etero?"

"Etero? Etero? Etero!? ETERO!" Each time she repeated his name panic creeped into her voice.

She started to run toward the forest, thinking something terrible had happened while she was asleep. Thinking that it was a prank gone wrong and that he was now lost within the forest, she set out determined to find him. Horrible images of him in dire situations kept popping into her mind; falling off of a unseen cliff, breaking his leg, or getting attacked by wildlife. The more she thought, the faster she ran in the hopes of finding him before he gets hurt.

Before she knew it, the sun had started coming up over the mountains overshadowing the city. She had cuts and scrapes all over her and her clothes had holes in them. She had leaves and sticks in her long, black ponytail, and she didn't remember when she had lost her baseball cap. Neither her appearance or her loss of items during her rampage in the forest affected her. She couldn't care less about materialistic things that she'd lost. The only thing that was on her mind that she cared about, was that her most beloved friend was definitely, and truly...

...missing.