“...I’ll…I’ll tell my brother to give you the NanoCore Cells, but not because I want to give you it, it’s because I need to give you it so that I won’t hurt any more people, if there weren’t any civilians in this city, I would have still fought you until you gave up or died.” She said, finally giving in.

The silence between us was deafening and was kept that way for a minute until I spoke up.

“Yeah, thanks.”

She nodded and went away, disappearing again. I was left with fire crackling, stone and bricks crumbling down onto the ground, and dust and ashes in the air. This part of Seoul is tarnished.

“Chikou, can you heal wounds?”

“I have an antidote that could heal injuries many times the speed of normal humans, but that is it.”

“That’s fine.”

***

Mei was outside the hotel. Her clothes were a little dirty, but it was fine.

She jumped high up and went inside the open window that she and Cinnabar jumped out of. When she jumped, she barely made any sound, like a water drop dripping down onto the floor, almost no sound at all.

She stood up, looking around to see if her older brother was here. He was sleeping on the bed, snoring soundly; every part of his body except his neck and head was under the blanket. He still wore his bright red robe, but he had taken off his shoes. He was on his side, sleeping.

Mei sighed and walked up to the bed, ready to wake him up.

“By the way, I heard everything,” Cinnabar mumbled. “And I don’t really care that much anymore. He can have it. I’m gonna go back to sleep…” he then went back to snoring soundly.

Mei sighed in relief as she didn't have to hurt any more civilians. She took the NanoCore Cells from Cinnabar’s pocket and went back outside to give them to Rei.

She sped past many hundreds of meters and arrived at the place where she and Rei fought. She looked around and saw him sitting down on a boulder, waiting and healing himself.

***

I saw Mei arrive with the NanoCore Cells at hand. I sat on a boulder that crushed a person's body in a bloody mess. Chikou is healing me with the antidote. My internal and external injuries were healing just fine.

“Oh, you’re back with the ingredient.” I stood up.

“Yeah, here you go, just leave this place.”

“In two days, I will.”

She nodded and teleported back to her hotel, or maybe that’s her speed; it's most likely her speed, though. She probably doesn’t know how to teleport like me. But now, I have to go back to Ai. I wonder what she is doing now.

10 minutes later, Chikou finished healing my injuries, so it teleported me to Ai, back in our hotel.

I was met with colourful balloons and clean furniture, as well as clean floors, too. There were thick pink and blue strings with yellow stripes on them. The table in front of the TV had a giant cake.

The cake had white icing spread out over the three layers, each layer was thinner and smaller than the last, but it stood tall. There were 3 candles on top of the third layer, and decorations on the cake that were chocolate or plastic.

Then, a person jumped from the shadows, holding a confetti cannon popper at hand, and shooting confetti all over my body; it was Ai.

“Happy birthday, Rei!” She tried to jump on me, but I moved out of the way, making her land on her face on the ground. “Gah!”

“How did you remember my birthday?”

“At the military lab, they keep files of every patient who received the CDNAS. I still remember even the deceased patients, so of course I would have remembered yours,” she said as she got up from the floor. “Well? How do you like my decorations?”

She seemed pretty proud of herself just because she hung up some colourful balloons and strings around this small space. She also bought a ton of food… with my money.

“It is decent, I guess, I just wish that you didn’t use my money to buy all of this.”

“Uh, well… I just don’t have money, I kind of forgot to bring it when we came to these countries. Sorry?”

“Let’s just eat the cake.” I sighed at her.

She went to the kitchen to grab the kitchen knife. She sharpened the knife with the kitchen knife sharpener she bought at the store. She also bought the kitchen knife at the store.

The knife was silver coloured and a little white at the edges, with the light bouncing off the knife’s clean blade sides, making it shine brightly.

She smiled softly as she cut into the cake gently and slowly, making sure the cake was sliced into 6 pieces. She wiped some of the crumbs and icing on the knife and sucked on her finger.

“It tastes very good,” she said with a surprised voice. “I knew it would be good, but I didn't know it would be this good,” she said, the taste of the cake still in her taste buds. “Alright, I’ll sing happy birthday, I’ll light the candles, and you make a wish!” she said happily.

“I’m not making a wish.”

“Wait, but why?” She looked at me, confused.

“Making a wish is a waste of time; what's more, it is completely childish and stupid.”

Ai sighed at me with a look of pretend hurt and sadness. She wasn’t insulted by my statement, but she still thought I was a little too harsh.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said as she put the cake on her paper plate, ready to eat, with her mouth a little watery, drool dripping down her chin a little. She had star-shaped pupils as she drooled, from excitement and her long-awaited dessert.

She wiped her saliva on her chin with her sleeve, making her sleeve wet and sticky. Then she looked to her side to see me eating the cake already. I am crossing my legs and eating the cake with my silver metal fork.

“Well, I can’t taste anything, though, if I were still a human, I would probably think this cake would be delicious.”

“Do we finally go back to my basement to get you stronger?”

“Tomorrow, for now, get some rest.”

She nodded, and we ate 6 slices of cake in 10 minutes, or rather, Ai ate 5 slices, and I ate 1 slice because I was a pretty slow eater, even when I was a human, I was pretty slow at eating. May always made fun of me because of that.

I also took down the decorations because we didn't need them now since we already celebrated my birthday.