Our Worlds - Last Part

“Besides, it was supposed to be me cooking in our deal, right?”

“Our deal?”

“Yes, when I asked to come with you… With my brother.”

“Ah! This time…”

“Sorry… I was still angry, I thought you were hiding something from me.”

“So… That was the best solution I had found at the time.”

“You could have asked me to be your slave.”

Slave?!

“Are you going to stop with this?! You’re a masochist, too!”

“No! And I told you my dad wasn’t like that.”

Like father, like son.

Hiko is going to become a suicidal dredger…

“Stop talking nonsense. I will seek to take resources. Don’t move from the apartment.”

“Okay.”

*Clack*

Ah. Peace finally.

With these last days, we are permanently together. We live together. We fight together. Things are pretty… close between us.

But it’s true that this way I learn to understand Hiko.

And he teaches me about the world he knows.

It’s true that… I know a lot of things, thanks to the books in mom’s library. But everything is theoretical. I have never been able to put most of this knowledge into practice.

All that you need to know… On social interactions and the male species.

By the way, that’s not the word… I think we mean the opposite sex.

Mom was strictly against the fact than I read these kinds of books.

But I manage to read some.

Pasta? It shouldn’t have gone bad and it’s good for sport.

Canned vegetables? Good vitamins for the day.

… I still have to take care of my plants.

I will take the opportunity to take some of their flowers.

The soil is wet, Hiko must have watered them when I was sick.

It’s very nice to have thought of them…

Even so, that’s not exactly how to deal with it.

First, each of them has a specific need of water.

You must already check the condition of the soil, as well as know the plant.

For example, lavender cannot stand excess water.

You have to check how much it has absorbed between two watering, and the decide. Better to give it to her when the ground is dry.

Too much water and she will suffer.

A bit like humans, when they leave their hands in the water for too long.

I will cut ones that have affected flowers or stems. I would reuse them for cooking.

…

…

…

I changed the earth from the flowers that needed it, I put water in the sun to separate the chlorine and limestone.

I put more on the terrace. They were starting to run out of sun.

With the sun, no more depression. They start to look at the horizon again.

For cooking, pasta with tomato sauce, returned to the pan.

I’ll add the rest when Hiko returns.

Nothing complicated.

Just put my secret ingredient in it…

And it’s won!

I often had fun with mom, we tried to guess the composition of each other’s dishes.

But she was much stronger than me… She was used to finding whatever I cooked.

“Do you think you got me with that? You’re twenty years late!”

Ah…

It was so frustrating…

…

Will I be able to find her?

… If she’s already dead…

I will have to decide what to do with my life.

… I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

Heroes are the first to die.

Cowards will be the lasts.

But, it’s not bad in itself to be a coward.

What’s wrong is being determined to abandoned someone of his own kind.

…

Who said that? Who’s there?

“… Where are you?”

“Where are you hiding?!”

…

I hear voices?

… I think fatigue is playing tricks on me.

“Hey! Do you want to attract other monsters? With such a smell, we’re good to spend it a day.”

“Eh?! They can smell it?! Ah! Sorry, I will immediately…”

“No! Just kidding, that was an expression… Sorry.”

Ah…

“… Excuse me for not understanding.”

“Why are you apologizing? We’re not going to get through this if we apologize all the time, to each other.”

“But if you wan to apologize so much, tell me about the life of your parents… With your mother.”

My mother?

… I have too much to talk about her.

“Just tell me about how your relationship was going, and your daily lives.”

…

My mom, she was…

She’s so enthusiastic.

But yet, so withdrawn…

“She’s quite a special person. She’s my idol, the one I seek to be.”

“Always focused on her work, when I look at her discreetly, and when I walk into the same room as her, the air becomes lighter. She was almost a different person.”

“But an example will be easier to tell…”

“When I was little, I used to go out to try my powers. My mom forced me not to use them indoors.”

“She said it was dangerous.”

“While she spent her days in her labs.”

“Days and nights.”

“Sometimes, she came to see me, to play or to see how it was going.”

“When I was depressed, she would talk to me until she knew the cause.”

“When I was sick, she stayed with me until I recovered.”

“We washed together, ate together, played together.”

“Gradually, I started to squat more and more in this laboratory.”

“It was filled with plants and books.”

“Since I didn’t want to disturb her research, I started reading.”

“… I had a hard time at first, I didn’t understand what was written.”

“Surely having noticed it, she spent two days teaching me their meaning, pronunciation and where we use these words.”

“… Two days?!”

“Yes.”

“To learn to read?”

“Not only that, she also taught me particular words, which had to be pronounced in a different way.”

“… Your mother is the miracle solution for mankind.”

“Why?”

“… It’s inhuman to learn so quickly, to a child, to read.”

“How old were you?”

“Two years old.”

“… Unless it’s you who’re so inhuman.”

“It doesn’t sound like, but you’re smarter than you look.”

“Hey! It’s mean. I try to pay attention to my physique, Mom taught me to use lots of different lotions…”

But I never understood the point…

Why should I try to change physically?

If still, it was training…

“… Well, luckily she was there. You’d be in big trouble otherwise.”

“You have a way of thinking that’s good but you don’t take others into consideration.”

“She did it for you, so that you could live and communication easily.”

“Although I wonder why she was preventing you from going out…”

“… Your power?”

…

“Yes, I think she was afraid of my power.”

“I think something happened… Something that I have trouble remembering.”

“Sometimes I have visions of this moment… But it’s extremely blurry.”

“… Coming back to her, she was a pretty caring person.”

“But she’s the only person I’ve known until then.”

“Sometimes she would leave the house, so I was left alone…”

“So, I was training my power, and I was practicing taking care of the plants in the house.”

“My life was globally an unfolding of these events, in a loop.”

“I loved this life, but the exterior always intrigued me…”

“So, I started reading books about the outside world.”

“Rivers, mountains, oceans, space.”

“People, personalities, standards.”

“Besides… I found it pretty silly in a way.”

“People no longer realized what they were surrounding them in my reading.”

“They seemed to forget what they had acquired.”

“This world in which they live, as well as the horizons.”

“I concluded that the human being is self-centered.”

“But I never felt that urge from my mother.”

“All that mattered was the plants and me…”

“She didn’t seem to be interested in anything else.”

“But all those books… She read them.”

“She must have known… But however, she continued.”

“I learned later that she was actually working for a group that united their research based on the theses of the phenomena of certain plants, to cure certain diseases and to find a way to increase life expectancy, thanks to these latter…”

If only I had remembered the address of the laboratory…

“Her passion… I didn’t understand what fueled her, or even why.”

“I began to admire the dream she seemed to aspire to.”

“I tried to understand how a plant grows and forms, why it takes such and such shapes, why it lives in such and such environment. And I started to use them with my power.”

“The structure of plants is more complex than that of basic herbs, it’s more complicated to visualize…”

“I was trying to develop my power, and make sure that one day it would be used to help others.”

Well, I imagine mom would have kept me away from the outside world for a long time yet if all this hadn’t happened…

“I confided some of these results to my mother when she seemed to be struggling with her research.”

“It was my way of thanking her for everything she gave me…”

“The years passed and her research was less and less consistent.”

“Her sleep schedules were more regular.”

“And then, one day…”

“She suddenly stopped the research, and took care of the plants in her own right.”

“From that day on, I spent a lot more time… discovering her. The one she was, when she wasn’t wrapped up in her papers.”

“It was almost a shock. She was a different person, almost unknown. Jovial and full of interests, she radiated her will to live.”

“The days were funnier from there, and I learned to use my power with someone around.”

“If one day you’re taken out, do not use this power near others.”

“I broke that first rule when I met you…”

Certainly, the reason why I ended up with such an injury…

“When this apocalypse came, almost a month ago, she had left the day before, for work.”

“But having no idea how to use these death devices, which you used to call ‘Car’, I had to continue on foot.”

And anyway, I wouldn’t have used it.

The smell of this cursed box gives me a headache…

“…”

“…”

“Hey! You listened to me while you ate, I hope!”

“…”

“Y-Yes! I just found this delicious.”

“…”

Ah…

This feeling, again.

“So, from what I understood, she was a pretty hard worker and particularly intelligent. I think you can say like mother, like daughter for that…”

“She taught you the basics of life without taking you out of the family home. It sounds pretty impressive from my point of view.”

“… Even though you still seem to be having a hard time, as far as interactions are concerned.”

“I’m fine! I just don’t understand your wrong logic.”

“… If you say so.”

*sigh*

“I would like to see her again.”

“I’ll finally talk to her about things that might surprise her.”

“The subjects of the books didn’t impress her. She had no trouble answering me.”

“So that with this adventure… I will be able to discover new facets of his personality!”

“We will find her. I’m sure.”

“But we have to prepare for the future.”

“And above all, you have to recover.”

“We’re not leaving this place until you’re fully recovered

“I’m well! So, we can go!”

“… So, the three times you almost fell in the kitchen, was it on purpose?”

“…”

“I…”

“No need to hide it from me, I’m reading your thoughts.”

“When you’re healed, we’ll go. So, manage to get well as quickly as possible.”

“… Okay!”

I can’t wait to tell you about all of this, mom.

I’m sure you will find my story fascinating!