Chapter 28: Yuffie the Tower Toppler…. and Other Loose Ends.
“And we have…. another square cave.”
“What are we? Spelunkers Incorporated now?”
“Corporates fix everything.”
“………”
“Too soon?”
“Too soon.”
“Oh hey. We can swap our HP and MP now.”
“Just in case we’d ever want a permanent three-digit HP.”
“Well, if we don’t mind a whole lot of swapping, we might have an infinite MP pool with that one. Like… heal yourself up completely, swap it and get 9999MP, heal up again so you’ll get 999 MP when you swap back. Or close to that. It’s cumbersome, yeah, but when you’re in a pinch…”
“Oh, now that’s thinking outside the box.”
“Anyway, we have another stop to make, and… you might want to sit this one out, Nanaki. It’s…. not going to be very fun.”
“Are you sure? You do know that I wouldn’t dream on ditching you for whatever perils we face, right?”
“Well, you see… our next stop is… hey, Vincent? This next stop is you dealing with your past.”
“……I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.”
“My hero.”
“You called?”
“And you want me to come along for this?”
“Yeah, well… we’re dealing with the results of another woman’s… bizarre decisions. I’d love your input on that.”
“Are you going to hold them against me?”
“Of course not. Why’d I want to do that?”
“I…. still think you’re going to get a lot more amusement out of this than I am.”
“I plead the fifth.”
“Uuuurgh! Do I have to do this?”
“No, you can skip out any time you want.”
“And if I did, you’d never let me live it down.”
“I’ve learned from the best.”
“Hey, I think I was rather nice during our little dive into your past.”
“Just evening out the odds.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“Oh, this is going to be good.”
“Uuuuurgh!”
“Oh, Lucrecia. How could you choose Hojo over me?”
“If that had been anyone except Hojo, I could probably come up with a hundred reasons, but…. Hojo. Hojo!”
“I just… hee hee… can’t compute the absolute absurdity of the situation. It’s like when we met Hojo on the beach back in Costa del Sol.”
“Ooof. Tell me about it. And the worst part is; he had all those beach bimbos attracted to him, but he’d rather see a lion boink a country waif.”
“And yet, Lucrecia went for that. That’s… fishing for some low standards.”
“I can hear you both, you know.”
“We are like made for each other.”
“Our love shall always science.”
“We shall make the child of the future.”
“Urrrrrrgh!”
“What’s the problem? We’re only experimenting on our baby.”
“Yes, Vincent. Our child shall be the perfect marriage of love and science.”
“She wouldn’t go along with the idea of having a threesome with a Tonberry so I could genetically incorporate their grudge ability, though.”
“Oh, my husband so silly. No, my bed is only for you.”
“Uuuuuurgh!”
“Wow, I’m… actually starting to feel kind of bad for witnessing this.”
“It’s… not entirely unheard of that a woman might care about a potential partner’s… standing, but there’s a limit to how much creepiness we’re willing to endure because of that. And Hojo shot past that, sitting on a rocket and shouting ‘YEEE HAW’ while waving around his cowboy hat.”
“Although trying to mentally imagine that…..”
“I have an easier time with that than imagining Hojo as happily married, but the latter actually happened.”
“It boggles the mind. And poisons it from the inside.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuurgh!”
“And well, we all know how that turned out, didn’t we?”
“The first time I met him, I never woulda guessed, to be honest. Before… well, the incident… Sephiroth was actually quite well balanced. Admirable, even.”
“And then, he burned a whole village down.”
“And now he wants to smash a giant rock into our planet.”
“I’m… kind of glad I didn’t contribute to that, but…”
“Lost for words there, buddy?”
“….yes. It sucks!”
“You… watched them?”
“And Lucrecia was fine with that?”
“…..yes.”
“Is that woman the devil?”
“The worst part is that she never knew my feelings for her. She just assumed I was happy for them.”
“Cluelessness really is the most terrifying power in this world. The harm it can do borders on the insane.”
“Well, once you throw your lot in with Hojo…..”
“Enough, Cloud. Please. I promise I won’t ever compare you to anyone, or hold the actions of… lesser men… against you for gender purposes.”
“Seriously, Hojo was… like, the head of research of Shinra, and even that… wait, that did work in his favor, didn’t it?”
“Uuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrgh!”
“Well, for one thing, you coulda picked a better father.”
“Like me?”
“Um…. sure.”
“You don’t show much confidence about that.”
“Well… you would be a better choice than Hojo.”
“Anyone would be a better choice than Hojo. Right?”
“Hmmmm.”
“Aside from the huge jab to my pride, I have been a bit out of the loop lately. Who else might compete with Hojo for female appeal?”
“Or lack thereof.”
“Rufus aside — he is kind of handsome despite his… unsettling nihilism — I guess Heidegger would be kind of offputting to think of as a partner. And Palmer.”
“You don’t want any lard in the relationship, huh?”
“Um… what about Cid?”
“Oof, that’s a tough one. He’s a bit ouside of my age range, and he’s such a cranky old man on top of it all, but… I have to say him being so into his dream of going into space is… appealing?”
“Which is kind of the reason why I sent myself flying in Shinra’s direction.”
“Ha ha yeah, that kinda backfired for the both of us, huh?”
“Well, I was the one who did that to impress women.”
“You’re making me feel like I’m complicit in this.”
“Better than being complacent, I guess.”
“You two make no sense anymore.”
“Cloud, can I… punch her in the face? Please?”
“Punch?”
“Yes.”
“Wow, punch, huh? Even Scarlet got nothing more than a slap across the cheek.”
“Scarlet was just annoying. I mean… yeah, she did put me in the gas chamber and wanted to televise our deaths, but this woman… this… this woman…. I have no words for how much she makes me angry. And I can’t even say it’s for Vincent’s sake either, because I find him kinda intolerable too. But this woman here… I must end her before her stupidity spreads.”
“Haha, wow, Vincent. Short, direct and cruel. Gotten over her, have we?”
“I’m… I’m going cold turkey on this. No more pain.”
“Why you didn’t do that before you let Hojo turn you into Dracula’s wankier cousin, I have no idea.”
“I didn’t let them. It was… my punishment.”
“There you go again. You want me to slap you in the back of your head when you start waxing angstological again?”
“Please do.”
“Wowza. With my sword? The flat edge, I promise.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Well, anyway, let’s have a change of scenery for a bit.”
“Um… meteor? Cloud, we wasted so much time breeding chocobos.”
“That was no waste. We got the awesomest of materia, and we can even copy its effect now.”
“Alright, so… we’re hunting for more stuff to help us in our fight against Sephiroth, then?”
“You got it. I think it’s safe to say we’ll be needing all the help we can get here.”
“Mushrooms?”
“More importantly, what’s with the tongue plant? Or the big flytrap thing right below it? Are they competitors or do they cooperate?”
“Maybe the tongue plant is a messy eater, so the plant below it will feed on the leftover crumbs.”
“Yeah, makes sense.”
“I’ve just returned to your party, and you’re already weirding me out here. Was the ‘Vincent’s EX’ visit that bad?”
“She wasn’t his EX, since they were never in a relationship, but….. uuuuuurrrrgh!”
“Yeah, I thought it was going to be more entertaining than it really was.”
“This one is for you, Tifa.”
“OK… one: I’m not big on slashfics. That was Aeris’s thing, and two: I don’t use a sword. That’s not my thing.”
“OK, if you don’t want it, but ‘slash-all’ is just a name. I’m sure it works just as fine as a ‘punch-all’, and I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing you punch, and then everyone would reel from it.”
“Hmmm…. sounds fun, actually.”
“As for the slash thing you mentioned, that’s… on you.”
“Uh… yeah, forget I ever said that.”
“Oh, that’s lovely.”
“The pitcher-plant jumping route paid off.”
“Don’t make this sound weird.”
“Oh, it’s a little too late for that.”
“I don’t want to hear that from someone who skipped out on the Lucrecia saga.”
“Yeah, I was only nearly an entry in Hojo’s porn collection. Nothing to speak of.”
“Grrr. Touché. You win this one, cat!”
“Oh, there we go. Typhon materia.”
“Summon the wind like the wind.”
“Well, the summons we’ve seen so far have been pretty cool-looking. I’m sure this one will be even better.”
“Well, time to grind down some tongue-vine and hit the root of this problem.”
“And this is somehow less weird than the Lucrecia saga?”
“Well… maybe it’s not less weird. Just a whole lot less offputting.”
“Yeah, it’s like… Hojo science is when you take all common courtesy out of it, and completely lean on ‘results over everything‘, and then slather ‘anything goes’ on the ‘results’ scales.”
“Why do I get the feeling that Hojo was all about mashing stuff together to see what would happen? Like… his first experiment was probably just mixing together a little bit of everything found in the kitchen and drinking it.”
“We have received the apocalypse.”
“Nice. Shall we unleash it right away, or are we saving it for a later occasion.”
“Uh… have you been infected by Sephirothitis or something?”
“Let’s unleash it on Sephiroth.”
“I can live with that.”
“You always have the limit break active on your vengeance stat, huh?”
“Welp, apocalypse is still there, waiting to happen.”
“Let’s hijack it and turn it around.”
“Tifa, power slam it.”
“…..”
“I almost said power SLAP there a second.”
“Oh, I gave all my power slaps to Scarlet. She probably looks like she’s got the worst case of the mumps right now. That stupid woman thought trying to make me use the flat of my hand would save her. She was wrong.”
“And weirdly enough, despite knowing this, I don’t feel the least bit sorry for her.”
“How could any of you know the meaning of suffering.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s enough outta you.”
“Not quite. There’s one thing I must do.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Vincent, why are we back in this place?”
“Yeah, we’ve already established that Lucrecia was kind of a terrible person. See, she even left you ‘Death Penalty’ and ‘Chaos’ just because you told her Sephiroth was dead.”
“………”
“I already hate the whole ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ expression enough as it is, so to hear it from a woman who was the one to do the actual scorning and being too big of an idiot to understand it, I just…. uuuuurgh!”
“Fair enough. Vincent, grab your Death Penalty and Chaos and let’s go.”
“Death Penalty is a gun, Cloud. She gave me a gun. And my final form.”
“There you go with your chuni nonsense again.”
“No, it’s an actual gun. See? It’s all rifle-like and stuff.”
“Oh. Well… OK, then.”
“So… in our last lootin’ run, let’s make sure we go through as many places as we can. What’cha got for us, Nanaki’s home town?”
“I’m so glad you thought of us, Cloud.”
“….he said with a completely deadpan voice.”
“Full Cure and… Fourth Bracelet?”
“But we never found the first, second and third bracelet.”
“Clearly, we haven’t looted hard enough.”
“We have shamed our generation of RPG adventurers.”
“Hey, I got a suggestion for how to deal with that shame.”
“You do?”
“Yep. You’re gonna love it.”
“Oh, the tower. I remember something about climbing pagodas or something. We gonna do that?”
“Well, we all are. That is to say, your contributions to this will be walking stairs.”
“Oh. Well, that’s… uh, great.”
“It’s a task of great importance.”
“Yyyeah, you don’t have to do the condescending overselling child-talking to me, Yuffie. I’ll walk the damn stairs to see where we’re going with this.”
“Yuffie, you know… for this to be a super-duper important quest and challenge to undertake, why are we being greeted as if we’re going shopping at a mall?”
*sigh* “You remember how I got all angry because they treated this town like a tourist trap? Well… learned responses and all that.”
“I… see.”
“So yes, from what I heard, we used to drama up this challenge with loud, bombastic lines, and I was hoping to take part in that fun. But nope, we’re going to complete this, and they’ll be all ‘thank you for climbing our stairs. Please come back.’ Stupid, huh?”
“Oof.”
“What’s next? Customer feedback? Because they care?”
“Nanaki, please don’t give them any ideas.”
“Oh, look. ‘Sacred’ Gorky now look like a demon. Kinda.”
“Thou shalt not judge by looks, prettyboy.”
“Touché, I guess.”
“Hey, I won over here. How about you being happy for me?”
“Oh. Congrats.”
“Yes, very congratulations.”
“Many congratulations for you.”
*sigh* “Could you at least sound like you mean it?”
“Uh…. aren’t you a girl? Where do you get off telling me I ‘fight well for a girl’?”
“I’m not a girl. I just know how to look pretty.”
“So, you’re basically just your average garden variety jerk. Got it.”
“Maybe, but I’m still a jerk you have to defeat. If you think you can.”
“So, just because you don’t get angry, that makes you think you have the right to be a complete jerk?”
“But of course.”
“You’re just a little troll, that’s what you are. And you are going down.”
“In your dreams.”
*sigh* “Let’s just start.”
“Yes yes, still not in a position to judge.”
“I thought when she stole all our materia was a pretty good troll move, though.”
“It was.”
“H-hey! Don’t forget that Don Cornholio wanted to make me his bride. That sucked so bad!”
“Well, at least you didn’t have to crossdress for it.”
“She’s already dressed like a boy, though. And a brat.”
“Cloud, sometimes it’s not worth the trouble going up against someone who has specialized in pushing people’s buttons. He has challenged me to a fight, so you better believe I’m going to enjoy the heck out of that instead.”
“So, you’re the kind to beat up people who hurt your widdle feelings?”
“Just the ones who challenge me to a fight.”
“Hey, she hasn’t even fought you yet.”
“Yes, well… you just lost, didn’t you? And you know what that means, right?”
“…..oh.”
“You do everything quickly, don’t you? Even your screwups and your mental farts.”
“Oh, shut up, or I’ll… um….”
“Yeah, you baited me into that, and I paid dividends. So now the ball is in your court, little man.”
“Man, Yuffie’s really enjoying her victory, isn’t she?”
“As if you wouldn’t.”
“Heh. Well played, tomboy. Now get your ass to those stairs and get a-climbin’.”
“Look, I know I was kidnapped by a porky doofus who likes their girls a little… young… but I can totally defeat you.”
“Ho ho ho. Chekhov, I think she’s trying to make you underestimate her.”
“Oh, I knooooow. She’s got insurance, and if that’s not a sick burn, I don’t know what is.”
“OK, I coulda come up with something better, but I’m here to fight, not crack jokes. Shaddup!”
“….um, why would you think tiny radish form would pose a bigger challenge than flying devil man?”
“You’ve clearly never met a Tonberry, or you wouldn’t be as high and mighty.”
“No, I haven’t. Why?”
“Because they are maybe the most adorable beings you’ve ever seen when you meet them, but they can shank you in ways only bosses’ ultimate attacks can. That’s why.”
“I’ll take your word for it. In fact, I shall ponder this as I ascend the stairs once more.”
“Oh. Wait, I just lost, didn’t I?”
“And you didn’t even notice. WHO’S THE NINJA?! TELL ME AGAIN: WHO IS THE NINJA?!”
“So… are there times when you don’t use your full power? Like… do you have off days where you don’t feel like giving it your all?”
“Um… no? I was just trying to intimidate you, you know. Like… ‘if you had chosen any other day, I’d be more laisses faire about this, but not today, sistah!‘ I guess that was kind of redundant, huh?”
“Well, I sorta expected you to go ‘I have to take this fight seriously’ in the middle of the fight or something, and then I’d start losing rather badly.”
“This isn’t a tedious, long-winded shounen fightfest, Yuffie. Or do you want this fight to last for hours and hours and hours?”
“I’d rather not if that’s OK.”
“Swingin’ your ball there, Stan?”
“I got some to spare.”
“I… that joke backfired on me, didn’t it?”
“Yes, Yuffie. Yes, it did.”
“Now, never joke about his balls again.”
“Gotcha. I’ll just kick his ass instead.”
“……”
“I can joke about his ass, right? His ass is safe, right?”
“That… remains to be seen.”
“OK, fine. Kick now, joke later.”
“Oh hey, the troll is back.”
“Who cares? You have improved, whatever that means.”
“I have levelled? Many, many levels? Of course my stats would improve if that happened.”
“Uh… why do you overemphasize ‘HIM’ so much? Oh dear lord, please don’t tell me….”
“Dad, I… can’t believe I’m saying this, but this reveal is weirding me out so much, I’m almost wishing you were back to that perpetually half-asleep weirdo who kept shouting random words as he pleased.”
“COME AT ME GIRL! HOLD NOTHING BACK! KILL, KILL, KILL!”
“….and now you’re just a weirdo who’s very much awake and shouting really awkward, creepy things.”
“Omni? I can’t deal with Omni. Are you going to turn into a giant ball? I ran out of ball jokes already.”
“Uh… that’s OZMA!”
“Oh. Well… no ball jokes then.”
“No need to flip out over it.”
“Heh, that’s a fun image. Well, time to win a fight.”
“KILL! KILL! KIIIIIILLLLLLL!”
“Dad, please… I love you and all, but…. shut up!”
“Did they kill each other?”
“I can hear them heaving, so… I guess not?”
“This is the weirdest standup show I’ve ever seen.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Really? You have this amazing battle materia, and you can only keep it here in the tower? What do you use it for? The yearly spring cleaning? Flushing your favorite toilet?”
“Toys are the most fun when they’re stored away, huh?”
“Well, we shouldn’t treat summon materia as a toy, but I see your point. I always have.”
“Yep. That’s why I’m giving it for you to take outside. Waterbomb the world, Yuffie. Leave the mark of Wutai on everyone. Make them all wet.”
“Uh…..”
“Um… just ignore that. Dad’s a bit…. behind on the innuendo train.”
“Yes.”
“Um….. I didn’t expect you to be so… singleminded. I have no rebuttal to this.”
“Thought so.”
“Except this: eat me. Maybe if you were all to fight me at the same time, right now, you might win.”
“And one of those tourists kidnappened me and trussed me up as an eye of a statue. Could you even imagine that humiliation?”
“Uh… I’d rather not.”
“But when I drop by to climb the tower, THEN you appear?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t ever start making any sense, you old fart.”
“….can I go now? Please?”
“Beating enemies.”
“Beating enemies.”
“Definitely beating enemies.”
“I guess the jury’s still out on this one.”
“OK, fine, I’ll beat some more enemies. I thought showing off would lead to less bloodshed, but of course I had to be right about that, and right is boring.”
“Blah blah blah blah zen talk. People only care about kicking ass. And being on the right side. We just need to make sure to be on the winning side, because only those get to write our history.”
“It sounds kind of sinister when you put it like that.”
“Then you get to do it for the rest of your days, or until you have kids yourself.”
“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, huh?”
“Nice callback on the tsundere ‘sure, we’ll take her along, but only because we’ve got nothing better to do’ thing there, Cloud.”
“Oh, shaddup.”
“Ohoho, now you’re on my wavelength, dad.”
“Better late than never.”
“Um…. I don’t see how, but whatever. I just want to go now, so I’ll agree with anything you say so you’ll let me leave.”
“Yeah, sure, pray away. I’m going to go out and defeat enemies, for it is the way.”
“Ninja zen. It involves lots of asskicking.”
“That’s how it has always been and must always be.”
“Sometimes, the smallest feet can lead to the largest bruises.”
“OK, we should go before you all catch ninjaitis.”
“Wait, is this… the mime materia we referred to earlier?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
“We just broke time, didn’t we?”
“Hey, I’m old. Shut up!”
“Yes, well… we all knew how that went, don’t we?”
“So… to get this message, I had to play a piano — which I can’t, by the way; I never took lessons — and then somehow, I was supposed to find it in the music sheet.”
“Erm… so why is there a piano in your room anyway?”
“My parents were hoping I’d find something more interesting to do than martial arts. Something more… feminine, I guess.”
“Well, it’s not like girls with more boyish interests are… unappealing to boys. Rather the opposite, in fact.”
“Thaaaaaat might be part of the reason too.”
“It’s nice to know that boys that are interested in girls are really evil deep inside. That’s exactly the kind of demonizing we need.”
“It sucks for both parties, doesn’t it?”
“At least you had the chance to know my tender feelings.”
“Screw everyone else, I guess. I mean… I only had a sword through my chest, so why wouldn’t he just put us in tanks and infect us with Jenova. Your master saved you, and that’s what’s important.”
“So, you’re saying you cared about anyone not me when you returned to throw Sephiroth down a giant hole?”
“Uh…. yes, of course.”
“Uh… so… yes, good to know. I mean… good that he did all that, given that he didn’t like the city and he sucked at healing magic.”
“He was a bit of a strange master. If it didn’t revolve around punching or kicking, he wasn’t very good at it.”
“That’s… specializing to a rather disturbing degree. Though I’m not in a position to judge, I guess.”
“Especially not when you’re unconscious in a tank.”
“So… he came back to this town, and hid this letter in a piano that might not actually have existed in your original room?”
“Well… honestly, it doesn’t really matter whether it did. We only really had to come here again to find it, which is amazing enough as it is, given that most people wouldn’t want to return to a place where their lives were basically ruined.”
“And then hide it behind an obscure melody that we have to play… well, not perfectly, at least.”
“Yay for small blessings.”
“…….”
“What?”
“I plead the fifth.”
“If Aeris was still around, she’d be mad at you for saying that.”
“Yyyyeah, she’d be mad at me any time I referred to the size of anything with the words ‘large’ or ‘small’, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m none too upset at something that’s basically out of my control.”
“Well, if by saying ‘the town reeks of Shinra’, they really mean ‘the town turned really, really creepy’, then… yes, definitely.”
“Yeah, remember when we came back here and everyone was all nice and ‘I’ve lived here all my life’. Which sounds nice enough to anyone who hasn’t spent their childhood here!”
“Especially if it’s spearheaded by the organisation that created mr. ‘Your Life Is A Lie, And I’m Going To Prove It By Trolling You Into Submission’.”
“I lament his ability to jump. That is very important for a martial artist. Those jumping spin kicks don’t just happen by themselves.”
“I… don’t think I’ve ever seen you jump, though.”
“Um….. yeah, I did that once in a martial arts tournament, after which it looked like someone had blazed in and glued googly-eyes on every audience member, so… yeah. I’m careful about jumping now.”
“Oh. Uh… sorry, I shoulda seen that coming.”
“…..”
“As you can probably tell, I haven’t been around girls much.
“Well, I guess it’s time to move on.”
“And that leads us back to the city of bones? Well… more like camp of bones.”
“I think if we’re going to do side stuff, it’s probably best to get the most unpleasant one out of the way as soon as we can.”
“Wh…. what kind of selection of anwers is that?! Am I going to run away? Again? What am I doing? What are you doing? What are we all doing?”
“Um… that’s the answers you are giving.”
“I know. And that’s why I’m upset. Give me some normal answers, damn it!”
“Yeah well, it’s not gonna be the end of the planet if I have anything to say about it.”
“Yeah, you go, girlfr… er, I mean boyfrieeeeend.”
“…..”
“I wish.”
“Urgh, the key to sector 5. This will not be fun. Anyway, were you saying something, Tifa?”
“Uh… nothing important.”
“No, just a declaration of OOF!”
“A declaration of ‘oof’?”
“It was nothing.”
“Well, you can certainly still jump.”
“I’ve probably said it before, but now that I’m on the outside looking in, I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to live there… unless they’re filthy stinking rich.”
“Even then…. wouldn’t Shinra just take all their money? Like… through taxes?”
“The old president, probably. Rufus seems to be fine with terror, which isn’t neccesarily expensive to produce.”
“Sure, if you look past the human lives it takes. You know, like how they just dropped a whole city block on another city block and probably killed almost everyone in the process. And then also had anyone who knew about the plan killed to make sure they wouldn’t squeal.”
“Nice city block you have here. Would be a shame if anything happened to it. And the one above you.”
“Oh, way ahead of you, pal. We already went and dug it up.”
“That’s foresight for ya.”
“So… anyway, what are we doing in here?”
“Yeah, I’m curious too.”
“…oh.”
“A little remainder of the past, a church in the ruins of overambition and corporate greed, with no mind and thought of consequences. What symbol remains of the purity of the light, the goodness in people? What existential crises are too big for the human heart to handle? But more importantly, can I have my Academy Art statue now?”
“She ded.”
“Cloud!”
“Well, they’re crying now.”
“Good job, you insensitive jerk.”
“I was just trying to not be so down about it.”
“There is a fine line between bringing someone down gently and being completely goddamned ridiculous about it, and I think I know which side you are on there.”
“OK, children, listen to me for a little bit. Aeris… well, she isn’t with us anymore, and I know that really hurts. It’s OK. That’s what separation does, and you’re not wrong to feel sad about it. But she died trying her best to protect the whole world from an evil, evil man, and now she’s become one with the lifestream, where she’ll look out for all of us. And Aeris loved flowers, because she always thought our world could use more pretty colors. That’s why I hope I can ask you two to keep an eye on these flowers in her absence. The area outside her home was full of flowers, but this place was always her favorite, so can you two do that? Could you do it for her?”
“……”
“W-what the heck?! That was beautiful! Why was that not your plan A? I just… I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“I’m… I’m not crying. It’s just… pollen in my eyes. Yeah, that’s it. Just allergies.”