“The chaos from earlier has somewhat calmed down,” announced Murayama with a tired sigh as he opened the access door to the building’s rooftop. He quickly dashed towards Rei, sat down as usual in the short wall around the roof. “I’m always making you wait for me here. Sorry about that.”

“Thank you for your hard work,” acknowledged Rei, turning his head slightly to the left to observe the soldier drawing closer to him. “But I’m sorry, Murayama-san. I won’t have any more ‘human lessons’ from you from today onwards.”

“Huh?” interjected Murayama, deeply surprised with that out of the blue refusal. As far as he recalled, they had arranged to meet at the usual spot in the rooftop the previous night, like they would do whenever Murayama wasn’t too busy with his commander functions. If anything, being cut off cold turkey was weird. “Did something happen?”

“No, I just want to spend more time with Iru-kun,” said Rei, his gaze returning to the far-away distance he had been at earlier in the day. “We have mutually agreed to stop sulking, or so he calls it. We also have the new books we got from the bookstore to read, as well as preparations for the lab elimination. I think you’ll be even busier than usual from now on, Murayama-san.”

“Oh, I see…” acknowledged Murayama, awkwardly scratching the back of his head as he thought more closely about it. Should he… or not? “So there won’t be any more meetings to acquire answers to your questions?”

“That’s right,” said Rei, accompanied by a small nod of his head.

“Can you answer my questions now, then?” asked Murayama, crossing his arms over his chest while leaning his lower back on the short wall.

“...?” Rei cocked his head at hearing that. Slowly, he adjusted his sitting position of the short wall so he could more easily talk and observe Murayama. “Questions for me? Why?”

“I’m sure there are things only you know and questions only you can answer,” explained Murayama, one of his hands slipping from his chest area to briefly point at his head and then chest area once again. “Especially when it comes to the things in here and here.”

“My brain and heart?” inquired Rei, tilting his head slightly more.

“Yes and no,” chuckled Murayama. From a super soldier’s point of view, he was just pointing at two organs. But from a human’s point of view, he was aiming for ‘thoughts’ and ‘emotions’. “We might have read all of the documents and information stored inside of the external hard drive, but those were all written from the scientists’ perspective, right? We don’t know your side of the story, just that you rebelled against The Union because you couldn’t agree with them. It’s those kinds of questions.”

“Is this like how two characters in a novel can have a different story to tell about the same events they witnesses because they were placed in different sides of it?” asked Rei, suddenly straightening his sitting position and inching slightly closer to Murayama.

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” acknowledged Murayama. Albeit his words had been as messy and awkward as usual, Rei had managed to hit the nail in the head once again. Having him read more novels, maybe even some manga (only some or he would end up like Atsumu), would probably teach him how to have a more proper speech pattern and become easily understood by others. “Can I ask you some things until Iru shows up to get you away from me?”

“Okay,” nonchalantly acknowledged Rei with a nod of his head.

“You never went outside of the lab?” asked Murayama for starters. Even he didn’t have the guts to go straight to the point - especially with Iru’s possible arrival at any moment, without any prior warning.

“No, I was always in the underground area and was never brought to the outside like they were,” said Rei, lightly shaking his head in denial.

“But even stuck in the underground area, you had access to the other floors, right?” continued Murayama. “That’s how you six were exchanging secret letters between yourselves throughout those years.”

“Yes,” acknowledged Rei this time. “My floor didn’t have anything but my cell and the training grounds. The scientists would bring me to their floors whenever they needed to do anything to me.”

“Is that how you met Iru?” asked Murayama next. He arched one of his eyebrows when he saw Rei nod in acknowledgement but then deny it with a shake of his head right afterwards. “Huh? Was it or wasn’t it?”

“We passed by one another in the corridors sometimes,” explained Rei, returning his gaze to the far-away metropolis. “But we couldn’t talk with one another. The scientists would get angry at us if we did. He also never saw me. The scientists always made him wear a blindfold inside of the lab, even while he was in his cell. They didn’t want him to see what was happening there because he had the habit of using it against the scientists later on. Especially to deactivate the bombs in his cells.”

That’s so like Iru…, inwardly sighed Murayama, releasing a soft snort at the answer behind the blindfold mystery. Now onto the next one. “But if you couldn’t talk with one another, how did he teach you to write and read?”

“The first letter he gave me was a crumpled page he ripped out of a book,” said Rei, his expressionless softening a little bit as he recalled those events. “I think it was from the textbook the scientists had used to teach him how to write and read. It had all katakana and hiragana written in it. Every day, while inside his cell, he would purposedly recite them out loud, each day a different one. That’s how I learned how to read. But the scientists caught him so he could only teach me up to that point. From then on, we placed the letters in secret places and I would copy what he wrote there before giving him my reply. That’s how I learned to write.”

“How many letters could you exchange per month?” asked Murayama, a small frown installing itself in his features. It probably took them months to be able to properly communicate in such a secretive way. Having Rei copy Iru’s letters all the time also resulted in them having identical handwriting. However, the fact that the plan had worked in the long run was amazing in itself. A single mistake could have completely ruined it and there was always the possibility of someone accidentally finding one of the letters - patience and strategising, so much patience and strategising had been invested in it.

“One per month,” answered Rei. “I was only taken to their floors once a month.”

“Did you feel happy whenever you received a new letter from him or see him in the corridors?”

“Happy?” repeated Rei, once again cocking his head to the left. “Everything remains the same if I’m with Iru-kun. Even if I’m in a different room or floor from him, he’s still with me. Even if he goes to a place where I can’t see him, he’s still with me. I don’t know if that’s me being ‘happy’ or not, but I want Iru-kun to stay with me so things can remain the same. I want things to remain the same so Iru-kun can stay with me. I don’t need letters. I don’t need questions or answers. I don’t need ‘happy’. I don’t even need the same. Having Iru-kun only is enough.”

“Because you’re twins?” asked Murayama, his brows becoming slightly more creased. “Would you think differently about him if you weren’t siblings?”

“...Maybe it is,” said Rei after a brief pause. “One plus zero can only be one. Even if we’re two, we’re still one. And nothing can ever change that, not even us. If I wasn’t me, who would I be? If Iru-kun wasn’t Iru-kun, who would he be? I think even if I wasn’t me and Iru-kun wasn’t Iru-kun, I would still be me and Iru-kun would still be Iru-kun. Maybe it isn’t because we’re twins. Maybe we’re just who we are. And because I am me, I won’t ever come to hate Iru-kun, even if he stops loving me one day. Being twins doesn’t change my love for him.”

“But you see, Rei… There are different types of love,” Murayama tried to explain. After a small pause, he opened his mouth to talk once again but ended up closing it without saying a single thing more. How could he explain the differences between the several types of love when they couldn’t even understand why cars were called by different names depending on utility and design? “Um… Twins are family. Family members always love each other, or at least, are supposed and expected to love each other. They grow up together, eat together, live together, sometimes share the same room. It’s a type of love that makes us happy. The type of love that gives us a warm place to go back to. Love between family members is very important and it teaches us how to connect with other people in the future. And by family, I mean people who are blood-related to you or share family ties, like marriage. But familial love is different from, let’s say, romantic love. Romantic love only happens with people who are not your family. Romantic love also makes us happy. It also gives us a warm place to go to and it can even become family eventually. Romantic love and familial love seem the same but are different. You can love a sibling very, very much, but not love them in a romantic sense. For as much as you love a sibling, you can’t romantically kiss them. Romantic love is when you first have nothing with that other person but grow to always want them nearby. You’ll want to share your past, present and future with them. You’ll want to kiss and touch them. Then one day, you’ll want to marry that person and become a family with them. Whether the family stays as just two or it grows bigger, you’ll want to spend the rest of your life with them. That’s why when you say you love Iru, when you two stick very close to one another or when you kiss, it’s you making a wrong interpretation of that love. You’re mistaking familial love with romanti-”

“Murayama-san, even if it’s a mistake or a misunderstanding, it has nothing to do with you.” Rei’s words were so abrupt and sudden, Murayama was shocked still in place, his words immediately coming to a halt. He was staring straight to the soldier’s surprised eyes, his facial expression as blank as it usually was, despite the coldness in his voice. “You don’t have the right to say my feelings for Iru-kun are right or wrong. Even if you get the answers to what is inside of my brain and heart, you’ll never be able to completely understand them. You’re not me. You’re not Iru-kun. You’re not one of us. You’re just a weird human.”

“...Does that mean you hate me and the soldiers looking after you every day just as much as you hate the humans you were designed to kill?” asked Murayama after having swallowed the large lump that had appeared in his throat. He knew he wasn’t being fair with that question. He was aware he was guilt-tripping and manipulating Rei with those words. But being so blatantly pushed away by Rei had hurt him more than he thought a ‘mind your own business’ ever could.

“I don’t hate you,” denied Rei, his gaze returning once again to the far-away city. “You just happen to be here.”

So that’s how it is. You don’t hate us, we’re just completely indifferent to you, much like the pebbles in the ground are.

“Okay,” was everything Murayama could mumble. Between the pain of being pushed away and the pain of indifference, he would have gladly welcomed rejection. Nevertheless, he had somehow managed to withstand and survive the mixture of the two. “W-Well, Iru’s probably about to get here so I’ll go back inside for today. Don’t frolic around too much here or you two might catch a cold.”

“Murayama-san.”

“Hm?” As Murayama was walking towards the access door, his name was suddenly called. He glanced over his shoulder, hesitation making his movements seem almost slow motion in his eyes.

“I had a lot of fun talking with you here every night,” said Rei, a gentle, satisfied smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he looked straight to the soldier. “It truly is a pity that it’s going to end today.”

“Yes… It is…”

That smile made Murayama realise his earlier depiction of romantic love was his own thoughts and emotions towards Rei.