...

Mom... Dad...
Is it okay to help someone
even if they don't want it?
Even when they need it?
...
Is it okay to try
even if I think I'll fail?
Even when I think I don't deserve it?
Am I allowed to try, despite my past?

...

"Happy Mother's Day!" the four kids exclaim that morning, catching Mabel off guard.

"Oh! Thank you!" she responds happily, gathering them all in a large group hug.

While he's been hugged by Mabel a few times since arriving here last month, this is the first time Niel's been in not just a group hug, but in such close proximity to the others as well. Once they all let go, Gabriel gives his wife a hug and a kiss as well.

"Happy Mother's Day," he echoes.

"Thank you, dear!"

"And we have something for you!" Reed cheers.

From an inconspicuous hiding place in the corner of the living room, Lydia and Illia retrieve a bland cardboard box and give it to Gabriel, who then removes a slightly smaller gift-wrapped box from within and hands it to Mabel. Her face is one of curious delight as she delicately removes the wrapping, and then one of joy when she pulls out a fluffy pink robe.

"Ooo! It's so soft!" Mabel chirps in glee as she rubs the fabric against her cheek. "Thank you!"

"Now where's my gift?" Poppy jokes from the other side of the kitchen.

"When you have kids of your own," Mabel teases back.

The family of six all spend the rest of their Sunday relaxing together and watching Mabel open gifts from children who have since grown up and moved out of the home. And despite what Mabel said earlier, Poppy gets a new set of modern cooking utensils as a gift. Among the peace and tranquility near the end of the day, Lydia realizes something.

"My throat kind of hurts," she admits. Reed refrains from turning that statement into a naughty joke.

"Have you been drinking enough today?" Gabriel questions.

"Yeah. It doesn't hurt a lot, but it's there when I swallow."

"You better not be getting sick," Reed says.

"I hope not."

"Let us know if it gets any worse," Gabriel says.

"I will."

Nothing of note happens for the rest of the night, and Niel has a sound sleep. However, when he wakes up the next morning, he also feels a soreness in his throat, especially when he swallows. Since Gabriel told Lydia the previous night to report any updates on her condition, he decides to do the same and tell his guardians about how he feels. He finds them at their usual place this early in the morning: at the kitchen table.

"That's not good," Gabriel says.

"Something must be going around, then," Mabel adds.

"If a bug's going around, I'll have to be more careful. I don't want to give you anything through your food," Poppy says as she cooks.

"Have you been coughing at all or have a runny nose?" Gabriel questions.

"No. I just woke up with a mild sore throat," Niel reports.

"I'll have to see how Lydia is feeling when she wakes up," Mabel says. "If she feels worse than yesterday, she'll have to stay home."

"How come?" Niel questions.

"If she goes to school sick, she could give it to other people," Mabel explains.

"Oh. Right."

Gabriel wants to ask if Niel was forced to act in the lab even if he was ill, but he doesn't want to reopen that wound again.

After an hour of waiting, Mabel personally goes upstairs to check on Lydia. She returns with Reed, and Illia, but Lydia is nowhere to be seen.

"Is she sick?" Gabriel asks Mabel.

"Yes. She says she's been coughing all night," Mabel says.

"I heard her a few times last night through the wall," Reed adds.

"And how have you been feeling?" Gabriel asks Reed.

"I'm fine. No sore throat, no cough."

"How are you feeling Illia?" Mabel asks.

Illia gives a thumbs up; all clear.

"Do you feel sick?" Reed asks Niel.

"Mild sore throat."

"Ooooh my God it's spreading," Reed says, feigning fear as he takes a step back. Illia is alarmed by Reed's reaction and takes a fearful step away from Niel as well.

"Reed, you're scaring Illia," Mabel protests.

Illia now realizes that Reed was only messing around, and she relaxes a bit.

Lydia strolls down the stairs a few hours after classes begin, coughing as she comes. She doesn't look well, with her slouched over in fatigue and her normally perfect hair a mess. She watches Niel and Illia from afar, and as the day goes on, each cough that escapes her throat makes them feel the urge to follow suit as well. Eventually, Mabel ushers her back upstairs to rest while Louise continues to teach. Reed soon returns home when everything quiets down.

"Yeah, there's a flu bug going around," Reed confirms to Mabel. "I'm guessing Lydia was one of the first to get it from school."

Niel heard Poppy mention a bug this morning. "An insect is to blame for this?"

Mabel can't help but chuckle upon hearing Niel's naïvety. Reed full-on laughs at him.

"No, no. It's just an expression meaning that an illness is spreading between people," Mabel clarifies, all with an entertained smile.

Reed slowly but surely regains his composure. "Yeah, it's not an actual bug making people sick."

The longer the day goes on, the more the thought of being sick wears on Niel's mind—and the more it wears on his mind, the worse he feels. It feels like his throat is becoming sorer and sorer, and he has been taking frequent trips to the bathroom to blow his nose. Lydia's condition worsened overnight—how will he fare?

Niel lays awake that night, unable to sleep; his mind flickers between Lydia's symptoms and the thought of becoming sick. The lab worked extensively to keep him from catching any illnesses or diseases, so outside of Dust encumberment, he doesn't know what it's like to become sick.

As he harps on those thoughts, he discovers an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, and it's growing fast. He tries sitting up, but it does little to quell the worsening sensation. He feels his face start to droop as his breathing becomes laboured, and then he retches. He's only barely fast enough to form a bucket of Dust to catch his vomit in. Heaving and heaving into the darkness, he ejects both his supper and the nausea into the makeshift container. He sits there in silence once he finally calms down, completely unaware of the quick footsteps approaching his room door. Mabel makes a hasty entrance.

"Niel!" is all she can exclaim as she runs to his bedside. It's the first time she's seen him even remotely ill, and while she's dealt with Reed and Lydia sick before, she isn't sure how Niel will fare. Right behind her is Gabriel, and Illia stands in the doorway.

Niel doesn't even try to croak out any words. He just hangs his head over the bucket with his eyes closed so he doesn't look at the contents. Bile and mucus drip from his nostrils while a thin line of tainted saliva dribbles from his mouth. His throat burns with each exhausted breath.

"Let's go to the bathroom," Mabel says, and she helps him out of bed. She also tries to take the bucket off of his hands, but she nearly drops it due to its surprising weight, so Niel floats it in front of himself.

Niel drops the whole bucket into the toilet and dispels it, leaving only the disgusting contents behind to be flushed. He blows the chunks and green slime within his nasal passages into a tissue while Mabel prepares a cup of mouthwash for him, and Gabriel fetches anti-nausea medication for him to take. After taking the medicine, he finally notices that Illia is awake and is watching him.

"Did I wake you up again?" Niel questions.

Illia nods.

"She heard you throwing up and came down to get us," Gabriel explains.

"Oh. Thank you..."

Illia nods again in recognition.

"Was it something you ate that made you feel sick?" Gabriel asks Niel.

Niel blows his nose again before answering. "I don't know..."

"How do you feel now?" Mabel questions.

"Not bad enough to throw up again."

"What about your sore throat? Has it been getting worse since this morning?"

"Yes. My nose has also become runny," Niel says with a sniffle.

"Yeah, you sound sicker," Gabriel observes. "Maybe the reason why you threw up is because you've got a stomach bug."

"But Lydia hasn't been feeling sick to her stomach," Mabel says.

"It could just be the way his body is reacting to it. Different people react differently."

"Maybe..."

"Anyways, let's get you back to bed," Gabriel says to Niel. As the two of them go back to Niel's room, Mabel escorts Illia back to hers. Gabriel tucks Niel in, and he places a cold, damp cloth over the sick boy's forehead. "Come and get us if you're feeling sick again, okay? Even if you just knock on our door with your Dust."

"Okay, I will."

"Good night, Niel."

"Good night."

"Try to get some rest, okay?" Mabel requests. "You can sleep in. I'll let Louise know you aren't feeling well."

"Okay."

Gabriel and Mabel return to their room as Niel tries to relax with a burning throat, but down the hall, Illia is now the one worrying. Is Niel going to be okay? And if Niel is this sick, can she catch what he has? It would be better if he wasn't sick in the first place, but she knows it's never as simple as she wishes it was. She hopes he'll be alright.

Come the morning, Niel finds that his throat is now significantly sorer than yesterday, to the point where it hurts to swallow. His nose is running about the same as it was yesterday, but now an itch in his lungs is making him cough. He sits up to get out of bed, but he wonders if he should do so since he was told he could sleep in. While his room is still dark, the sunlight piercing the curtains makes him want to get up. He sends a scan down to the first floor and, to his surprise, only Gabriel is up. Perhaps he should investigate.

But as soon as he gets out of bed, he's racked by that same sour feeling in his stomach as last night. He hunches over slightly as he puts a hand on his belly, but as soon as the first gag-cough leaves his throat, he knows what's coming next. Another bucket is formed as he drops to his knees and lurches, but instead of a geyser of rancidness, all that leaves him is a teaspoon of yellow acidic bile. This repeats four more times—each with less and less coming up,—until he lies exhausted on the floor. His throat is killing him now after that. Perhaps instead, he shouldn't have gotten up.

Rather than using his arms and legs to carry himself back to bed, he conjures black chains to lift himself off of the floor completely and place him on his bed. He sends the bucket to be flushed down the toilet afterwards, then forms an arrow downstairs within Gabriel's field of view to attract him up. Gabriel gets the message, and Niel watches him ascend the stairs through his Dust.

"Everything okay?" Gabriel asks as soon as he opens Niel's room door.

"I threw up again..." Niel admits dishearteningly.

"Aw, throwing up's no fun," Gabriel says, honestly unsure of what to say at the moment. He sits on the edge of Niel's bed. "Seems like you do have a stomach bug."

"Where's Mabel?" Niel asks.

"In bed. She's sick now too, and I'm starting to feel achy as well."

"So everyone's getting sick?"

Gabriel can hear the hopelessness in Niel's ailed voice. "I don't know about Reed and Illia, but even if we all get sick, we'll get better soon." He drags a gentle thumb over Niel's forehead to calm and reassure him. "I'll go get you some water and something to eat, and another cold cloth."

"Thank you..."

Niel lays back and tries to relax again as he waits, to the point that with his exhaustion and his waking up only recently, he's almost asleep again by the time Gabriel returns. The cold cloth is placed around the back of Niel's neck when he sits up, and he attempts to eat a single slice of lightly buttered toast. His appetite is below the floorboards, however, and he isn't able to eat even half of it. He also sips on a glass of icy water as he takes more medicine, careful to not upset his stomach any more than it already is.

"You don't have to worry about classes today, so just lay back and take it easy," Gabriel says.

"Okay..."

Despite his fatigue earlier, Niel isn't able to fall back asleep after Gabriel leaves. He just languishes in his bed with nothing to do except wait for this peace to be broken, and break it soon does. He's able to keep his stomach together for roughly half an hour, but the illness demands that he throw up again, and again, and again. At least it's a reason to spend his near-overflowing Dust. Gabriel and Mabel come to check in on him now and again and get him whatever he needs, but later into the afternoon, he receives a surprise visit from Reed.

"You look like shit," he says to Niel, even though he can barely see in the shaded room.

"I feel like shit," Niel responds, devoid of energy. "How are you feeling?"

"I've got it now as well. My nose has been running all day. Mavrick's sick now, too."

"So everyone's catching it..."

"It'll blow past. Once we recover, we won't have to worry about it for a while," Reed says to cheer Niel up. He examines with his eyes a small plastic bowl of half-eaten crackers and a glass of room-temperature water sitting on a folding wooden table. "Have you been doing much today? Other than, you know, suffering?"

"No."

"You could go on your phone or something. It'll get your mind off of things, at least."

"My phone?"

"Yeah. Watch videos or something. I do it all the time."

Reed commandeers Niel's phone (and gets him to punch in his password) so he can show him how to watch videos. As an example, he brings up tournament footage of a gory fighting game that Reed's shown Niel before. The matches are so fast-paced that Niel can barely keep up with them.

"This looks a lot different from how you played," Niel observes.

"Yeah, these guys are pros. If I played against them, they'd absolutely rock my shit," Reed explains. "To get as good as them, you need to play almost constantly every single day, experiment with the characters and the game, learn new tech, practice against players of similar skill playing different characters to learn matchups, and so on."

"Sounds like a hassle."

"It can be, but they do it because they love the game."

Niel follows Reed's recommendation to watch videos, and as the videos go past, so does the time. Slowly he relaxes as his eyes stay glued to the screen, but it all becomes a blur as his exhaustion catches up with him again...

He opens his eyes again to find that nearly an hour has gone by, and on his screen is someone teaching how to fold paper boats. It's certainly a far cry from the tournament footage he was watching before. How did he get to this? Niel decides to just shut off his phone to sleep some more.

Another hour passes and he wakes up again, but this time to the sound of his room door slowly creaking open. He jerks around with newfound gusto to find Mabel peering in.

"Oh, you're awake," she says stuffily. "Do you feel well enough to try eating something?"

"I can try," Niel says, knowing full well that he hasn't been able to keep anything down all day today.

"Okay. I'll bring you up something."

After roughly five minutes, Mabel returns with a steaming mug containing a cloudy liquid. When she sets it down, Niel finds that tiny noodles are floating within. He can barely tell what it smells like, but he isn't sure if it's because the liquid lacks a smell or if it's because of his flu. At least the steam is helping to unclog his nose.

"It's chicken noodle soup," Mabel explains.

"Doesn't look like much of a soup," Niel says as he stirs it around. The number of noodles within the mug wouldn't even be enough to feed a rat for a day.

"Yeah, it's more of a broth, isn't it? Either way, it's cheap to buy, and it's a go-to food when you're sick."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Just be careful with it—it's hot."

As Niel sips on the broth, he comes to appreciate the warmth and the inoffensive taste after all of the cold and blandness that he's eaten so far today. And after another few hours of doing nothing, he finds that he was actually able to keep it down. This inspires some energy in him so he can get up on his own and get ready for bed, but when it's time to go to bed, he's unable to sleep. Must be a downside of resting all day.

Niel gets tired of tossing and turning for hours, so he decides to get out of bed for a bit, though he doesn't know what to do. He wanders around his room, but he soon comes to a stop at his window. He pokes his head through the curtains, and he's greeted with a city rendered motionless by the night. Of course, there isn't much to see other than shadow, an empty road, dark houses, and the dim glow of the city in the near distance, but it's such a different feeling from the daytime bustle. Maybe he could sneak out one night and go for a walk, though if Mabel were to find out about this somehow, he'd be in a world of trouble.

Hopefully, he'll be well enough to go on another walk tomorrow. Lazing around is nice and all, but he likes the activity. Maybe he can go to the park with everyone and have that picnic that Illia wanted to do but never made happen. She'll probably throw more twigs into the river, and Reed will probably join her. Maybe that dog will be around again. If the weather's good, he may see the children running around and playing again. Maybe...

...

The children...

A bitter memory bubbles up in his head. A bitter thought. The children, the river,

and...

...paper boats.

...

That's what he'll do when he's well enough to leave.

>>>>>>

Vomiting can be heard from the third floor, but the source isn't Niel this time. Instead, he's the one playing caretaker as Illia empties her stomach into the toilet. The nausea has left him and gone to her. He holds her hair back with his Dust while he and Mabel prepare an empty ice cream tub and a cold cloth for her. Gabriel is also nearby. Illia calms down after a few more heaves and is brought back to bed.

"I'm not sure what's going on," Gabriel admits once they leave her room. "None of us have been sick like you two, and she's hardly had any contact with you, so the chance of her catching what you have from you is low."

"I didn't even see her at all yesterday," Niel confirms.

"Unless she got it the day before?" Mabel theorizes.

"But if she did, then wouldn't it have been the same bug that Lydia had?" Gabriel wonders.

"Maybe it's just a coincidence that it's hitting us this hard?" Niel suggests. "You did say before that different people react differently."

"I guess so..."

"How are you feeling, Niel?" Mabel asks.

"I didn't get much sleep last night, but I don't feel sick to my stomach anymore. Just a cough and a runny nose now," Niel reports.

"I think I'm coming down from it too, now."

"Lucky you two. I feel sore all over," Gabriel says.

"You've just got a man-cold, like Poppy said," Mabel teases.

"Says the one who was 'too sick' to get out of bed yesterday morning," Gabriel pokes back.

It's 7 am on a Wednesday—Niel just wants breakfast.

Eventually he gets his wish, and while the other kids are still asleep, Niel locates spare sheets of paper and disappears into his room with them. He looks up a video on how to fold paper boats and gets to work, and the end product is... alright. It's uneven and not folded well, but it's possible to tell what it's supposed to be. He unfolds it to crumple it up and try again, and after a few more attempts, he becomes satisfied with the result. He folds eight pages in half and hides them under his shirt, and after a word with Mabel, he leaves for a walk.

The weather has warmed significantly in the last month, with double-digit temperatures becoming the standard rather than a fortunate outlier. It makes him feel better, but a cough erupting from his throat reminds him why he should keep his distance from anyone else around. The rain has also slacked, much to Illia's enjoyment and Lydia's dismay. The rain doesn't bother him as much as a shower or bath does—as he was forced to get used to it while on the run—but he prefers the clear skies as well.

The walk to the river doesn't take as long as it did three weeks ago since there's no one in tow and nothing to distract him. At this hour, the only people around are the ones walking their dogs or driving to work, leaving the park virtually empty. He can do what he came here for in peace.

He kneels on the bank and brings out the paper he hid away, and one by one slowly folds them into boats. They're not yet perfect, and he forgot a few steps along the way, but they will do for his purposes. Then, with silence and a dim thought, he places each of them into the water and watches them float away.

A tribute.

Only in his mind now.

He won't forget.