“Be strong, Rei…”

Father and mother stood in front of me, smiling gently from the distance in the darkness.

“Pa… ma…!” I called out to them from where I stood in the light. I tried desperately to take a step forward, to go to my mother and father, but I was unable to, “Don’t leave me here alone…!”

“I love you so much, baby…” Mother said to me.

“Ma…” I croaked, seeing their figures moving further and further away, “Please… I can’t live without you two…”

Their figures disappeared, leaving me all alone in the light.

My eyes snapped open, and I found himself heaving and sweating, excruciating pain all over my body. I couldn’t move a single muscle from my head down, and I seemed to be lying atop a bed inside a dimly lit hut.

Using all of my strength to lift my head up slightly to look down at my body, I saw that my body was covered all over in blood soaked bandages, but through the gaps where the bandages wasn’t able to cover, I could see ghastly burns, skin missing with exposed flesh.

Then, I noticed warmth coming from the side of the room and I glanced over, seeing a small fireplace set up in the middle of the hut. Staring at the fire, I felt my breath quickening, hearing the screams of the villagers being burnt alive inside my mind.

That was when a figure stepped inside the hut, dropping something on the ground with a thud, before taking a brief look at me and walking over to the fireplace to douse the fire. 

The figure was silent whilst they put out the fire, and I turned my head weakly to try to get a better look at the figure.

It was the girl that had saved me.

Long flowing silver hair fell to her back, a pair of vivid scarlet red eyes, and a beautiful moonlit face with slender features. Covering the girl and hiding her clothes was a worn out white cloak that had since turned a mix between grey and white from presumably frequent travels across the lands.

An air of quiet and grace emitted from the girl's motion and I felt a strange ease washing over me as I watched the girl put out the fire. Judging from her appearance, she looked about eighteen years old so perhaps seven years or so older than me. 

In my mind, the memory of the girl dancing in the air, slicing blood out of the bandits flashed for a brief second, and I thought back to how beautiful she had looked then.

“T, thank you…” I managed to croak in a hoarse voice to the girl, feeling my dry throat and breaking the silence, “for saving me…”

The girl continued to put out the fire quietly, mixing the wet wood with the remaining ashes of the fire.

“My name is Rei,” I said weakly, “What is your name…?”

The girl didn’t respond, and for a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to speak to me at all.

“Zilver.” The girl said simply, her voice was soft and gentle, but with a clear firmness underneath, matching her elegant appearance. 

I waited to see if the girl would say anything more, but she didn’t, and I spoke again.

“I… I lost everything because of those bandits…” I said, looking up at the ceiling of the hut, “my village…” I paused, “my parents…” Then, I turned my head to look at Zilver again, “Thank you for killing those bandits and saving me…”

Zilver was quietly prodding at the ashes with a stick before she dropped it, and rose to her feet, glancing down at Rei with her scarlet eyes that reminded him of blood.

"You're mistaken." Zilver said in a soft voice. 

"...?"

“I didn’t kill those bandits to save you.” Zilver said calmly, her scarlet eyes held an impassive gleam to them alongside her expressionless face despite her beauty. “They were marked for dead as part of a contract, I fulfilled my duties, and you simply happened to be there. That is all there is to it.”

Zilver turned away from me, walking to the side of the hut where she had dropped something down from earlier.

“What did you mean by contract? What do you do?” I asked.

"A child should not ask too many questions."

"I-I'm not a child..." I felt my face grow red at that but she ignored me. She was only older than me by seven or eight years, judging from her appearance.

I heard the sound of something ripping, and Zilver picked herself up from the ground. She walked over to me and stared down at me whilst holding the raw meat of something in one hand, blood dripping from her hands. I mustered my strength to push myself up to see the carcass of a boar in the middle of the floor. So that was what she had brought into the hut. 

"Rei..." Zilver said softly, looking straight down into my eyes with those emotionless scarlet eyes of hers.

That was the first time she called me by my name. I glanced back up at her and waited for her to speak. 

“If those bandits had not been my targets, I would had let them kill you." Zilver said, and I realised that her voice almost always seemed to hold a calm tone. "That is the only reason you're alive right now. So don’t take kindly to me.”

“…”

I fell silent for a moment.

“But... you still saved me.” I said, “That’s why you bandaged me. I’m alive because of you...”

Zilver didn't say anything for a second, then she tossed the raw meat next to my head on the bed. It splattered some blood across the pillow sheet and a few drops hit my face as the hunk of meat rolled down near my mouth. She turned away from me, heading for the door of the hut and stopping.

“Eat up,” She said, “No one will take in a child of your age with such severe wounds. So, I shall nurse you until you recover from those wounds. Once you have recovered, I will take you to a nearby village that will take you in.”

“…”

“However, during the time you are here, if you do not listen to me, do not think that I will hesitate to kill you.” Zilver said. “Under my care, you obey by my rules. If you don’t like it, then you are free to leave on your own.”

Then the door closed, leaving me alone in the hut.

~x~

Despite Zilver’s apparent coldness and indifference towards me, she continued to look after and nurse me to health, changing my bandages, washing my wounds and body, giving me food and water, starting a fire to keep me warm at night. She did all this without speaking more than what is needed to me, usually being just to answer my persistent questions.

Sometimes she would disappear for days, even once going away for an entire week, leaving enough food and water inside the hut for me to survive, but always without fail Zilver would return to the hut to look after me again.

After seven months had passed, I was finally able to walk on my own again with my movement impaired by the severity of my wounds that were still healing.

Zilver had disappeared without a word for three days now, and I had been practicing walking again, going back and forth from the bed to the door inside the hut.

Then, I heard the sound of quiet footsteps on snow that I had been listening carefully for, and I grabbed my father’s sword that Zilver had laid on the side of my bed before rushing out the door.

Glancing around at the snowy forest that surrounded the hut, I saw Zilver trudging her way towards the hut, wearing her traveller’s cloak as usual, the hood covering her head.

“Zilver!” I called out, then walked a circle in the snow, “Look, I can walk again!”

Zilver walked up to me, stopping to watch me for a moment, and for the first time, I saw the faintest of smile lighting up the ends of her petite lips on her moonlit face.

“Y, you smiled…!” I stopped, glancing at Zilver in surprise.

The smile disappeared, replaced by a frown on Zilver’s face, “It’s not polite to stare at one’s face, Rei. Do you not remember me teaching you that?”

I was still stunned by Zilver’s smile from earlier.

Zilver’s eyes moved down to the sword that I was holding with both my hands and a conflicted expression crossed her eyes, “That sword..."

I followed Zilver’s eyes down to my father’s sword. I was almost twelve years old now but the sword was still way too big for me to carry normally. I guess it would take a few more years before then. Despite that, I always kept the sword close to me everywhere I went. 

"Oh, this? It's my father's sword." I explained to Zilver, then grimaced. "He... he gave it to me on that night he died."

Zilver stared down at me quietly with her usual expressionless face. Zilver wasn't really tall for a girl her age, but she was still considerably taller than me due to our age differences.

"Was your father a soldier?" Zilver asked.

"I... I don't know..." I said slowly. "We lived a normal life in the village for as long as I could remember, and my dad had never mentioned anything about being a soldier or anything..."

"I see..."

"Anyways, this is all I have left from my parents." I smiled bitterly down at the sword. "And I plan to use this sword to avenge their deaths."

"...Avenge?"

"Yeah, you see..." I started and my chest grew heavy, thinking about the memories again. "On the night you saved me, those bandits had a leader. The one in a red plated armour, but he wasn't amongst the ones that you had killed... Do... do you remember...?"

"Yes."

"Then, did you...?"

Zilver shook her head. "He wasn't part of the contract. So I had let him go on that night... do you blame me?" 

"You saved my life, Zilver." I said solemnly. "There's no way I would ever blame you. I know it wasn't your responsibility. That's why..."

I raised my father's sword up slowly, holding it steadily out in front of me to stare at the edge of the blade that was still deadly sharp.

“I've decided. I will avenge my parents, Zilver.” I said, staring at my own reflection on the scarred blade. “Even now, I still hear their screams every night in my dreams, asking me why I haven't avenged them yet and to kill that bastard in the red plated armour so that they can rest in peace.”

Zilver was silent for a while, until she softly spoke, "Dreams can be deceiving, Rei. Do not mistake them for reality."

"That's..." I faltered slightly, but couldn't find the words to refute her.

"Let us go back inside." Zilver said, walking past me. I stared at the petite trailing footsteps she left behind in the snow.

"You're an assassin, aren't you, Zilver?" 

She stopped next to me.

“You went and killed another person just then, right?” I asked her, glancing to my side at her expressionless face, “That’s why you keep disappearing all the time for days without saying anything... I... I always knew... I'm not that naive, Zilver...”

"..."

“Can't you..." I felt the words at my throat, "teach me how to fight... how to kill...?" 

I clenched my eyes and waited for her answer.

"No."

Zilver's response was firm and resolute and I heard her continuing to walk in the snow besides me, heading back for the hut.

"B-but...!" I opened my eyes and protested, staring at her back.

"I said no." Zilver said, without even sparing me a glance. "I already stated this from the start, Rei. You are only under my care until your wounds have recovered. Once you have recovered, I will take you to a village nearby that will take you in."

"P-please, Zilver...!" I stammered, feeling frantic, "I-I'm begging yo--"

I had ran forward and tried to grab Zilver's hand to stop her from walking away but immediately lost all air in my stomach and was thrown into a tree several feet away from her.  

Blood dripped from my cracked lips and the pain on my back was excruciating. I could hardly even breathe. What even happened?

"Do not touch me, Rei." 

I glanced up weakly from the ground and saw Zilver standing in front of me, staring down at me coldly with her scarlet eyes. 

It was the first time that Zilver had ever hit me. Even though she had always threatened to kill me if I disobeyed her, she never actually even hurt me up until this point. However, the pain was numb compared to what I felt inside.

“Everything… and everyone I loved and knew… are dead…” I said, “I... I have nothing left, Zilver... I have no home... no family... no friends... E-even you don't want me, Zilver... W-why am I even alive...? What's the point of me living...?!"

Before I knew it, tears had already started flowing down my face uncontrollably. 

"A-all I've ever done this whole time is cause you trouble and waste your time in looking after me..." My shaky voice continued, "I-I'm nothing but a burden to you. I-I shouldn't even be alive actually. I-I should had just died along with my--"

Zilver moved towards me and hugged me before I could finish my sentence.

The warmth of her body pressed up against mine amidst the coldness of our surroundings. My head was on her shoulder and her head was next to mine, her silky silver hair tickling the side of my face. She smelled really nice like a mix of lilies and sandalwood. 

"..."

I was too stunned to speak.  

"Don't say that..." Zilver whispered into my ear and for the first time ever, I heard sadness and pain in Zilver's voice.

"I..." I didn't know what to say. All I knew was that I didn't ever want to hear Zilver's voice like that again. 

"I... I'm sorry, Zilver..." I said. "I... I just really want to stay with you, Zilver... S-so... could you please not send me away...?"

Zilver was quiet for a moment, and all I could hear was the sound of the cold wind blowing through the snowy forest. 

"If you truly find me acceptable..." Zilver spoke quietly. "Then... I shall take you in."

My response was immediate.

"Y-yes...!"