1.6 They're Too Small to Make Any Difference

The first time Akiha confessed his love, he did so with the customary love of his age range and maturity level, so he kicked Haku's balls. He was eight. To be fair, he'd thought Haku was a girl at first. (Or did that make it worse?)

Years later, through Haku, Akiha would find that puberty was disproportionately kind to some people. Haku didn't look like a girl anymore, and Akiha had long since moved on. He'd had approximately ten crushes and two boyfriends and a half (it was complicated). Haku, as far as he knew, had gone off to become some sorcerer's apprentice.

Like any self-respecting apprentice, Akiha entered his local magic academy at eighteen. Sorcerers were for rich kids and/or people who wouldn't get accepted into academies. Akiha lived on, minding his business, until a day came when he came upon a very familiar face attached to a very unfamiliar body, and his salivary glands stopped working completely.

Shiou people were known for their beauty. Akiha humblebragged about it all the time—all of them did. Even the uglier ones could at least be considered good-looking by the general society's standards. Someone like Haku, considered beautiful even among the Shiou was, well...

Anyway, Akiha kicked his balls.

It happened too suddenly for him to think about it better. When he came to, a boy he'd hardly had time to assimilate writhed on the floor, and a tall, olive-skinned girl rushed towards them. Akiha might have been trained on many, many things, but dodging punches wasn't one of them. When he came to he, too, writhed on the floor. Other students walked past them, talked past them, pretended they saw nothing.

"Haku! Haku, darling, are you okay?" The girl knelt next to him. "Oh no, oh no. Do you think it might stand up again? Because—mph!"

As if though locked by an invisible zipper, her lips closed and refused to budge. Akiha didn't take long to notice Haku had made a zipping motion with his hand. Akiha sat up immediately. Busted lips weren't that painful anyway. "Oh! How did you—mph!"

Haku sat up, too. He'd used the other hand to zip him. "What is wrong with you?" He snapped.

Akiha didn't reply because he'd been zipped, so Haku unzipped him. "Where did you learn bodymancing? With all the regulations, it's so hard to... oh, you must not recognize me."

"Oh, shut up. You're crying Akiha."

Akiha wiped the blood off his lip with a handkerchief. "I... yes, but I did not cry that much."

The girl unzipped herself. Akiha should’ve done that before. "So this is crying Akiha," she noted.

"I didn't cry that much dammit."

"You did." Haku stood up. His long, black hair and matching eyes constrasted perfectly against his skin. He held out a hand for the girl, which she took, and then, shockingly, to Akiha. As he did this, they locked gazes. "Unorthodox welcome gift, but I'll accept it. Hua, this is crying Akiha. Crying Akiha, this is Hua, my girlfriend."

"...oh."

"Yes," she said. "Pleasure to meet you, despite... everything. Were it not revenge for potentially rendering Haku infertile, and I'd apologize for punching you."

Haku swatted the back of her head, prompting Hua to giggle. "Don't start."

Charming. Akiha supposed some things never changed.

***

A bump on the road woke Akiha up. How even...? Weren't they on sand...? Oh, well. 

Of course this happened the one time he had a pleasant dream...

Did the new Haku dream about Hua? 

Did he remember her? 

Did he remember Akiha?

Akiha liked the midlands a lot. When the night fell, the desert became a sea. He'd read that, due to certain anomalies in the region, the stars appeared to shine in the colors of the rainbow. Hua would've liked that. Every now and then, the wagon would swerve past a cluster of tiny, yellow dots.

A passing glow startled him at first. Expecting this, the driver explained, "Sand flies. Don't worry, they're harmless."

These glowing balls had the wings of a dragonfly and a long, wispy tail dancing to an imaginary breeze. Despite the driver's assertions, them gathering around the wagon made Akiha's pulse race.

As though expecting this, the driver said, "We'll be fiiine."

"Why have they decided to gather around us?"

"Why not? I don't know, man, do I seem like a biologist to you?"

Snail's... guardian? Had remained still for such a long time Akiha had fancied him unconscious. He mumbled, "They're eating dreams." The driver and Akiha exchanged glances. "They live in a wasteland. There's nothing to eat but dreams and themselves. You don't have to be a biologist to know that."

For a torturous couple minutes, there was silence. Akiha couldn't help but murder it. "But... is that not a bad thing, getting your dreams eaten? Should I wake them up?"

"They're too small to make any difference."

"...our guys or the flies?"

"Both."

That shut him up for a long, long while. Used to working shifts of this ilk, the driver went on, undeterred, with her hands on the lizards' leashes and her eyes focused on the oceans, above and below. Snail had been the first to fall asleep. Mish rested against her, shameless. Two-Rabbit curled into a fluff at the corner. Akiha had been there, too, just a few minutes ago, feeding sand flies. He couldn't say he felt any weaker. "I think," he replied, "there's just not enough of them to make a difference."

Not that they'd known each other for long, let alone interacted, but this one fit a 'for the first time' moment to a T. For one, Cérise glanced at him, if only from the corners of his eyes. For two, it wasn't hostile. "Are you that delusional?" he asked. (Never mind.)

"It's not delusional. It's being a dreamer."

"Same thing."

"It's not." The deja vú drove him dizzy. "It's not, Hak—" It drove him stupid, too. "—Cérise."

Cérise's expression didn't change, nor did he look away. "I see."

If he had indeed caught on the Froidian (2239 C.E - 2300 C.E, great within his field, terrible at everything else) slip, then it meant he'd been listening back at the restaurant. At the very least, he recognized Haku within the context of their circumstances—the villain, the source of evil, the enemy to defeat. "Well," Akiha replied, "I hope you do."

Cérise had the sort of stare that'd make criminals confess when nothing else worked. It wasn't a glare, not really. Those took effort. Could he be cursed? "Is it revenge?" Cérise asked. "Is that what you want?"

"What? No."

"You can't do it on your own, so you're gathering a swarm."

"That's not..."

Cérise turned back to the passing view.

"That's not it. If you think so poorly of me... of us... then why did you help earlier?"

Akiha didn't expect a response, but Cérise shrugged.

From what the driver had told them, they'd reach the town somewhere around six past midnight. For the remainder of the voyage, until daylight took the sand flies away, neither Cérise nor Akiha fed them.