"Mom and Kiritsugu never came back..."
She was left alone. Neither her mother nor her father were there to see her grow up. Though it was ironic since she didn't grow up. Now she was surrounded by these four elegant walls, being part of this magus family.
"Hm..."
On the back of her right hand was a red mark, showing her participation in the next Holy Grail war to be held in a few weeks.
"I can't hear it anymore", she refers to the voice of the boy who usually comes shouting and beating all the homunculi in the mansion. It has been a long time since he last came.
At that moment, the light of dawn caressed the curtain and made this girl-like girl look in that direction.
Her name is Illyasviel von Einzbern....
"Onii-chan..."
-London, United Kingdom-
There is always tragedy wherever Toru goes. That was already a normal thing for Toru. It was always that way and sadly he had already gotten used to it. Now he's always bored because he already knows that everything is always going to go wrong. It's kind of stupid, but at the end of it all tragedy is the truth of life.
"Anyway...", he looked at Gray. "Recently I've been reading some things regarding necromancy. Since I've been involved with human souls in my past, I thought it would be a good topic to remember."
Gray sighed in disappointment at the sudden change of subject, but since this was Toru, it was something she had already expected. She sat down next to Toru to continue talking.
"Well... I'm not the best on the subject. Besides, you're a spirit. Shouldn't you know more about such things than I do?"
Toru nodded. "At first I thought so, but after taking some references from Waver-sensei's classes and some books, I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be enough. Necromancy is not only about dead bodies, but also about the souls that inhabit them. You're a grave keeper, being related to that kind of subject, I thought you might be able to give me some different point of view than mine."
"I understand...", inwardly, Gray thought of something. Although she is not the best in the subject, thinking about how Toru willingly approaches her to learn made her feel happy.
Again she looked at Toru's silver eyes and nodded.
"Tonight is going to be longer than it should be", she was confident she could handle this situation.
***
She opened her eyes the next morning, which caused her Mystic Code to wake up accordingly. Gray felt her eyes heavy, which is normal considering she was awake until a few hours ago.
Realizing that what happened yesterday wasn't a dream, she smiled gently looking at the door.
"When he's interested in something he talks a lot..."
Yesterday Toru brought up too many topics and asked too many questions. Every moment the two shared was precious, but more so for Gray, that she felt more human than ever.
"Gray is alive... here and now..."
She'd like to say that the past and future don't matter, but that would be telling a blatant lie. All her life she has been lying to herself. She still feels the fear of her own thoughts, but by thinking deeply about it, she came to the conclusion that she wanted to keep moving forward.
Fear will still be ingrained in her heart, and sadness will force her to stumble many times, but with all those wonderful people around her, she felt that the road to the end won't be so depressing.
"I..."
She wanted to be like everyone else.
A normal girl, and that somehow is going to happen.
With so many ideas and moments in mind, she got out of bed and took off her clothes. Before that, she made sure she didn't feel Assassin nearby, for knowing that Assassin can walk through walls, she was dismayed to imagine Toru seeing her naked.
When Gray opened the clothes trunk, the first thing that entered her field of vision was that sexy black underwear set. Now that she is alone she could take the opportunity to put this underwear back on, but she was still embarrassed.
However...
A few seconds after she had looked in the trunk, Gray already had the lingerie on.
Her face was alight in crimson. Her white skin contrasted nicely with the black color of the lingerie.
"He's cute...or so I think..."
She never gave herself a chance to see herself with different eyes. While her face and body are not her own, just thinking about the owner of this appearance made her sad.
"I wonder if I would have been just as pretty if my appearance had never changed."
Certainly her face and body are beautiful, but the sad part of the situation is that this appearance does not belong to her.
"I wonder if Toru would have kissed me if I didn't have this face..."
Maybe she thought about that too much, for even though she had woken up in good spirits, Gray was already getting depressed again.
"Appearance is only the shell of a human being", Add said, quoting Toru's words. He was in his cage on the bedside table, watching Gray silently. "Are you going to forget those romantic words?"
Those words had had a great impact on her. When Add reminded her, Gray ducked her gaze. She looked down at herself and closed her eyes.
"Toru doesn't seem to care what people look like."
"And you're just now realizing that? Listen to me, child. While you were making out with Assassin boy, he made his intentions with you very clear. He doesn't care how you look, but how you are in life. If you keep getting depressed about it, he'll leave you one day. You...do you want the first man who sets his eyes on you because of who you are and not how you look to walk away?"
Gray had nothing to answer. She felt like she was being scolded by a grumpy parent. As far as what Add was referring to, Gray could understand it pretty well. At some point, how she felt about Toru changed. Now the thought of him walking away sent her into an abyss of uncertainty that made her sadness increase.
"If you understand what I'm saying, put on your clothes and go talk to the boy. Get close to him and make him get to know you, just as at some point he will want you to get to know him."
Relationships between human beings are not that complicated. You meet someone, that someone gets to know you, and so a relationship develops.
"I suppose I could give it a try."
"You tend to get sad very easily. You had the courage to give your first kiss to the right person, that means that, from now on, you can do anything for yourself and for others."
That certainly lifted Gray's spirits a little so she looked down at her body again, touched her face and then dropped her arms surrendering to what Add had told her.
"I'm going to try."
"That's the spirit, girl. You're getting what this is all about. And lastly, put those underwear away. You're going to need it at some point."
"Huh? What?"
***
She walked out of her room closing the door very shyly. She tried to make her skirt not move so much thinking it might show what's down there.
'I shouldn't have listened to him'
Gray knew that most things Add says only exist to annoy her. Even though she heard good advice from Add before, she now knew that the Mystic Code wanted to come to this.
As she climbed the stairs, Gray thought about how Toru would react. 'What would he say if he saw me like this', but she soon realized that her thoughts were straying from the main objective. She crouched down covering her face with both hands. 'What the hell am I thinking about? I don't want to show this to anyone'
Add seemed to chuckle. He was obviously having fun with this.
So, after a few more minutes of embarrassing himself, Gray chastised Add the only way she knows how.
***
Being here was already a habit. Looking at the girl lying on the bed was already becoming a daily occurrence. For him there are many things that are becoming nostalgic, as if he really had memories of what happened ten years ago, but in the end they only became empty emotions.
"Huh... you guys are never going to shut up. Especially you..."
In an endless ocean of blood filled with lamentation and pain, souls whisper in his ear for all eternity. The souls don't really say anything, but he can tell what they are thinking.
In front of him was the soul of that woman.
"You will never be silent, will you, mother?"
[There will be no silence as long as the monster lives.]
"Huh..."
It was funny to him. To know that this woman considers him a monster is the epitome of hypocrisy.
"I guess I got that hypocrite thing from you. I have no other explanation."
"Assassin?", Gray's voice suddenly broke out. It snapped Toru out of his thoughts and brought him back to reality.
"What...?"
Seeing the girl's face, a nostalgic feeling invaded his heart, but as usual for him, he hid all his emotions behind that expressionless mask.
"Ah, nothing..."
"..."
"..."
It was awkward.
"Oh, that's not true. I was coming to help Sakura this morning."
"Hm... Go ahead", he said in a curt voice and walked over to the window. As usual, he looked outside without changing the expression on his face one bit.
Gray looked at him for a second. She could have sworn she heard Toru talking to himself, but since Toru didn't seem to notice that, Gray just walked over to Sakura with a wet towel to wipe the sweat from her face.
While Gray was doing this, suddenly....
"To...ru..."
Sakura's weak voice.
"Sakura?", Gray was puzzled. She thought Sakura had woken up so she grabbed her hand, but she was just talking in her sleep.
"That's a sign that her brain is already recovering", Toru said without looking away from the window. "I hope the time it takes Sakura-sama to wake up is short."
Gray understood, but at the thought of Sakura waking up, she ducked her gaze. If Sakura wakes up that means Toru will no longer need her help and that, in turn, means the end of her relationship with the servant.
What Toru said next only reinforced that feeling of loss.
"Maybe he'll wake up before the war."
It's a war to the death between seven magus and seven servants. If Sakura and Toru lose, both will never return.
"The Holy Grail grants a wish to the winner."
It was something she wanted to know and the mention of the Holy Grail wish attracted Toru's attention.
"If you win, what wish would you make to the grail?"
"..."
Toru was slow to respond. In the end, it was a casual thing for him.
"I have no wish to fulfill."
Gray looked at him, looked into those empty eyes and verified that what Toru was saying was the truth. In him there was no feeling of wish. Looking at him she only felt an expressionless emptiness.
"There's nothing, are you sure?"
Toru denied. "There is nothing I want to fulfill. But I will still fight to win the Holy Grail."
That made no sense.
"But if you don't have a wish to fulfill, why would you fight for something you don't want?"
"I have a simple answer for that. I'm simply bored. If my Master wants to fight the war, then I must follow her without complaint. In the end I am just a tool for the magus. Accepting that is not bad at all. It doesn't bother me, and it doesn't make me miserable either. Besides, you should remember that."
"Remember what?"
"I'm already dead. Whatever I want doesn't matter anymore. My chance to fulfill my dreams ended long ago. Now there remains only what you see in front of you, the shadow of a soul who died in war."
Heroes who are remembered by the whole world, heroic spirits. The detail here lies in the fact that Toru is not a hero remembered by this World. He is not a servant, he is just a soul who was torn from his World, used as a plaything for the simple fact of being different from the existences of the vast dark cloak filled Worlds.
"So don't feel dismayed. That's what I got at the end of the story."
What Toru said made her think that this same boy is nothing more than the amalgamation of a story full of regret. But even then that wouldn't make sense. Someone with so much regret would have, no matter how minimal, the desire to fix what he did wrong, but, however, Toru is not that way.
From the day she met him there was always something off about Toru.
'I see...', she returned her gaze to Sakura. 'I think I understand what Add was referring to earlier...'
Let him get to know you, so you can get to know him. That's what human relationships are all about.
"But still, if you could ask for something, no matter how insignificant, what would you ask for?"
There must have been something Toru wished for. No matter if it was a trivial wish, there should be something that Toru could want.
"If I could ask for something? Hm... I don't know. I said I don't have any wishes. Even if I think about it, nothing comes to mind."
"But something like that is..."
"Wait, I think I already have something. If I could ask for something, I'd like to be able to eat a bread with fruit filling."
"Food?", that was ridiculous to Gray.
Toru just kept casually replying.
"There's nothing else I can think of. In the village I lived in there was a bakery. The owner of the bakery was an elderly man, but everything his hands baked was always perfect. Okaa-sama used to shop there a lot."
"Okaa? Your mother?"
"Uh, yes. She was very fond of sweets. I never knew how she didn't develop diabetes after eating so much sweet for years."
It was a brief story from Toru's past, but that was enough to get Gray much more interested in him. Toru mentioned his mother with a very calm expression.
"What was your mom like, what was her name?", even though he's never going to show it, she's dying to hear this story.
"Uh. Her name was Kyoko. People said I looked a lot like her."
With that description, Gray could already imagine what Toru's mother looked like.
"She always had a silly grin on her face and used to get very angry when I left the house without telling her. Also, she was extremely cloying. She was always clinging to me as if I was some kind of huggable stuffed animal. It was very annoying."
Toru's expression changed. As he looked at Sakura wistfully, almost with a whisper he said to her:
"I would have really liked that annoyance to last a little longer", a lock of hair fell in front of his eye. He arranged his hair by pulling his hood back, which gave Gray a better view of his appearance and the expression on his face.
After that Gray felt the atmosphere become heavier and gloomy. Although Gray could no longer feel Toru's emotions, she already knew how this boy felt.
If Toru's way of acting changed radically, that meant that the memory of that woman hurt Toru.
'I... I shouldn't have asked...', she regretted it. But still, deep down, she wished she knew more. If there was anything Gray could help with, she would surely be willing to do so. So, despite the very gray moment they were having, Gray asked, "What happened to her?"
"Uh... What happens to any shinobi over time."
"..."
Seeing that Gray didn't react, Toru finally said it, "Someone killed her."
"Oh..."
Gray didn't want to admit that he somehow already expected that answer. Worst of all, this part of Toru's past is only the tip of the iceberg. While it is one of the sources of Toru's traumas, there was still more tragedy in his life that tore his heart and soul apart.
"Maybe it's something you wanted to know. You told me how you felt, I told you something about my past."
That felt like an obligation rather than a revelation from the heart. If Toru felt an obligation to say something, that would be something Gray would not like at all.
"Why do you insist on hiding who you are?", a question suddenly came out. As the darkness took over the expression on her face, Gray looked Toru in the eye.
The answer to that was something Gray had already had for a long time now. There was no need to ask, but she still wanted Toru to tell her straight up.
"Why? ...I don't know. I really don't know."
He got into the habit of silencing his crying.
"If I think about it carefully, I can't think of anything."
He got used to hiding his true self.
"But still my answer won't leave you satisfied. Here's the thing. Maybe I just don't like people knowing about me, or maybe I'm afraid of what others might think of me. It's even likely that this is because of everything I've been through; maybe I'm embarrassed to be the master of my own story. The only conclusion I can come to is that I don't know. I'm sure you can understand that even if you dislike my answer."
The expressionlessness in his face had returned. That monotonously muffled voice echoed off the four walls and gave Gray one more reason to want to know, but....
"I won't ask any more. I'm sorry."
"No need to apologize. I brought it up, it's my responsibility that the conversation went the wrong way."
From the very beginning there was something wrong with Toru. Now Gray understood; she understands the reason behind Toru's words that time. A boy whose life was mirrored in Gray's life.
There was still a little more to go before this dilemma would have a resolution.
To be continued...