This has to be interference by the forest somehow right, his experience in the forest and mine have been completely different.

I don't want to have to place suspicion on Elfen but If I cant think of any conclusions to the forest's behavior then he stands out as a possibility.

"Big bro let's head this way!"

"Oh yeah okay."

Elfen stood in front of a large open area of grass with large logs around the patch. The disposition of surrounding trees created a natural opening of sunlight through the leaves above.

"Doesn't this look like a good spot to play and rest a bit?"

"I don't know, we haven't been walking that long but this does seem pretty perfect."

This is the first time I've seen sunlight within the forest, It might good to let Elfen play a bit too.

"Alright we can rest a bit here, but we will get moving again in a bit."

Almost hanging on his words, Elfen waited for the confirmation right before collapsing back into the field of grass,

"Haa~"

"thump"

"Big bro, will you play with me?"

He is a kid before anything else,

"Sure, what did you have in mind?"

"Tamahaire!"

He does look about that age, although even at his age I never got to play games like that with other kids.

"Ball pass huh...Alright, I'll play, but we don't have a ball or bean sack."

"There are rocks all over the place aren't there, we can use those."

"You might get hurt though, maybe we should-"

"No, I want...I want to play, I can handle it..."

He's really desperate, he doesn't have any friends either...

"Alright then. How about this as the rules, we toss to each other and the one who cant catch loses."

Aiming and control of strength have become natural to me at this point, meaning I can control the outcome of the game by aiming straight at his hand.

"Don't expect me to go easy on you big bro!"

Elfen grabbed the stone closest to his foot and hurled the stone straight towards Kiramaru,

"tap"

Not bad, it was decent seeing as he isn't very close to me but still managed to get it all the way here.

"Pretty good job, but let's see how you catch."

I don't know how good he could be so I should start off rather slow,

Kiramaru tossed the stone straight to Elfens face and as his hands raised into position the stone easily flew straight past both hands.

"Smack"

"Uuuuggghhh!"

The first one!?

"Elfen are you ok?"

I didn't throw with much force at all, he definitely saw it coming, but his hands...

"I'm fine, just a small bruise..."

"Have you. Have you ever caught something before?"

The smile he was barely able to hold fell instantly into an embarrassed look,

"Nooo!!"

He held his hands covering his bright red face,

"I don't have friends to play with-"

"Neither did I."

"What? You didn't have friends either, but you caught it so easily."

"My sister and I were bullied quite a lot and It made it hard to get friends so she would play with me whenever she had time."

"All you need is practice, and I don't mind showing you."

Elfen's face lit up with the smile he tried to desperately hide, which shone through the tears and bright red on his cheeks.

-

"The sunlight has nearly disappeared, I guess we have been playing for a while now."

Laying in the grass was Elfen completely asleep with all limbs spread out, covered in bruises and scratches.

"That look he had the entire time, no matter how often he missed or couldn't do what he wanted. Even now as he sleeps, he's smiling."

Today was a lot of fun but I wish we could progress as much as we-

"I see."

-

After 2 weeks of meeting with Elfen, they had made little to no progress, with no demon sightings and the fog had not once disappeared again.

"Big bro today's the day I think I beat you!"

"Huuuh? You sound really confident for someone who can never make me break a sweat."

"Haven't you seen how far I have come in such a short time, I don't even get hit in the face anymore."

Elfen grinned looking up at Kiramaru as they walked,

"I am sure of it, It's only natural I would catch up to you eventually but even so I think you have some crazy moves sometimes."

I feel it coming up ahead, this proves it I guess.

"We should get some food in today, see anything nearby we could use?"

"We passed the last river yesterday, I don't see anything ahead of us or around either."

"That's no problem, we can just have what's leftover from what we caught yesterday. Just in case though I will pick some mushrooms."

This will be the last confirmation,

"Not that way, let's go this way instead. I have to make sure of something."

"That way, but that leads to a... an uh-"

"Don't worry about it, you can trust in me."

Please don't let me be right about this.

Kiramaru walked up ahead and eventually came face to face with a river,

"Ssshhhh"

"So it is true...This babbling stream of water is the river we have visited before."

"Big bro, this is-"

"You don't have to try and lie to me, I already know Elfen. I have suspected for a long time, since day one in fact."

"I realized that day we started playing that game. I started infusing mana into the footprints which would cancel out traces of the fog creating trackable points in the fog. Normally It would be too risky keeping that up for this long with the possibility of demon but in this case, I knew I could.

This way I could map out the forest myself and found out that you had to lead us in circles."

The mortified face Elfen wore had no effect on the cold, sullen look Kiramaru had developed,

"I constantly thought to myself why my progress stopped here in the forest, why things were different for you; the answers were all you Elfen.

Every time I would move forward you distracted me and took me steps back until I asked myself when did it all stop in place."

"don't..."

"The reason the forest has been different around you."

"please don't..."

"The reason I haven't seen any demon or what I have been searching for-"

"Stop! It's me, big bro, I'm your friend right...We were friends right...Please don't say it..."

"Maybe you didn't realize it yourself in the beginning, but there's no doubt about it. You're the one creating the fog."