Yuui Fun Bonding Time

It was a beautiful day and our reluctant heroes had camped by a lake. The sun was shining. The day was warm. The lake was filled with cute little things that would pop their heads out of the water to look at the people.

"This has to be, hands down, the most beautiful Summer day I have ever seen and somehow you still look like someone just rained on your wedding," Yuui commented to Hikari. "What's the matter, little sea cucumber?"

Hikari snorted, "sea cucumbers? You know they're gross right. Awesome, but gross." She said, not sure why of all the nicknames he had chosen that one. "I just miss home. I miss being around people who are kind only because I am of use. Except you, Yuui."

Yuui tended to use all kinds of random nicknames for hikari and her brother. He never seemed to run out of them either. "Ah but you are of use to me," Yuui disagreed. "You make me smile. And I'm learning the most interesting things about what the future is like."

Hikari rolled her eyes and nudged her shoulder into Yuui's. "You know what I mean. The future is okay, I mean, you can't see the stars often at night because of pollution..."

"Oh I wouldn't like that," Yuui said. "Why would you want to return to a place without stars to gaze upon at night? Or perhaps it's not the place but the girl? Hmmm?"

"huh?" Hikari said, she was a little bit distracted so she wasn't sure what he meant. "What do you mean? I can sometimes see the stars..."

"Nothing, nothing," Yuui said innocently. "You shouldn't fret. If anything is certain is that you will return home. But until then, when you're down just think of a pick me up story."

"Like what?" Hikari grinned, because that was an invitation she felt. He must have one that he had if he was suggesting it.

"Well those are the stories you think of when you feel down so that you realize, no, I'm good after all. I'm not that person in that moment," Yuui grinned. "Of course, we all have days which can be used at pick me ups for someone else. But for the most part each person really only has a few of those a lifetime."

"Give me an example, so I can figure it out please?" Hikari said, because she'd never thought of doing something like that. So she was curious. "I don't want to get it wrong and make it worse."

Yuui grinned. "Story time! Let start in the traditional manner. Once upon a time there was a kingdom named Valeria. And in this kingdom there were two brothers. The oldest brother became the king and despite being a tiny bit odd and overly superstitious, he was a pretty good king. Now at this point you'd expect the younger brother to be jealous and cover the throne but that wasn't at all so. He didn't want the responsibility and spent his time with his beautiful wife.

So happily the kingdom went along until the day the youngest prince was expecting a child. Everything went perfectly when his wife gave birth and the kingdom rejoiced to learn that it was a son. But then the worst thing possible happened. She gave birth a second time.

You see, in the kingdom of Valeria, the birth of twins was seen as a terrible omen for the family. And when it was the royal family, that meant doom on the whole kingdom.

Nonsense you say? Well not two days later the young prince died suddenly. Wracked with guilt and full of heartbreak, his wife took her own life. And misfortunes in the kingdom continued for years. But as the twins grew into childhood, so did their powers. They had been gifted with magic and together they were more powerful than any one else in the kingdom, even the king.

The king came to the conclusion that the only way to break the "curse" the twins had causes was to make them unhappy. So he gave them a choice: kill the other or spend eternity locked away. Neither brother could take the other's life for they loved each other far too much. And so the king locked them into a tower. Now I realize that really it's princesses that get locked in towers but this king seemed to have missed that memo. It wasn't a regular tower though so I guess that makes up for it. It was a hundred stories tall and be spelled so that neither time nor magic worked within. The eldest twin was placed at the tip and the youngest was placed at the bottom. They were condemned to remain there until the end of days.

But despite their misery, misfortune continued to befall the people of Valeria. As they died, their bodies were dumped in the tower to remind the young princes of the suffering they were causing. The youngest prince soon realized that he could use the bodies to reach his brother. If he could reach him then surely they could escape together. He spent an eternity climbing body after body but it was never enough.

In the end the king went fully mad and slaughtered the renaming citizens of his kingdom. He then took his own life in front of the youngest twin, but not before reminding him that it was their fault that this had happened.

Surrounded by the dead, the young prince tried even harder to reach his brother but to no avail. They would have stayed there forever more had a dark god not come to them. He offered them a choice: he would give one brother freedom at the cost of the other's life. The oldest twin took the deal immediately. He fell from the top of the tower to his death and ensured his brother's freedom. The youngest twin was now free of that tower but was forever alone, the sole heir to a kingdom filled with nothing but the dead."

"Hang on," Drake said and pushed himself up to look at Yuui. "What's the point of this story? To stop us being sad? Are you mad?"

"We know he is," Hikari giggled because Yuui was crazy and it was adorable. "But Drake is right, Yuui. That's so sad that story, I don't like it. It makes me feel more depressed."

"That's the case! When you're feeling down you remember that story and realize your own situation is really not that bad in comparison," Yuui said.

"I mean... I'm not really someone who says my pain is greater than someone else's, nor do I really think it's okay for someone to do that to us..." Drake said, that didn't really help him. "That's not going to work for me."

"I've not had to try and climb up corpses, but I don't think I've had it easy either I'm..." Hikari trailed off. She somewhat agreed with Drake. "To me that feels like it's making someone's pain a competition, or that I am a whiney bitch..."

"you are though." Drake said and stuck his tongue out.

"hush, you!" Hikari said and shoved her brother playfully.

Yuui sighed in an exaggerated fashion. "It's meant to put things into perspective for you. A 'my day has not been good but it wasn't this person's day so I'm doing fine' kind of deal."

"I mean, what's wrong with just making stuff up rather than bringing someone else's day into it? Like, my week has been rough but at least I haven't shit myself yet?" Drake suggested, because he felt everyone was entitled to feel and it wasn't ever less or more than someone else's problems. Equality. He liked that.

"Or!" Hikari said excitedly, liking this way of explaining it better. "I may have been dragged into the past and being used by people to save the world, but at least there's no social media to document it for me and for it to bring it up in a year or so as a memory."

"Nice," Drake laughed, because it had a tendency of bringing up the worst memories and not always the good ones.

Yuui just looked at them with a confused expression on his face. "Social what?" He asked. There was nothing similar to that in his time. "Ah, but I suppose as long as you do have a way to put things into perspective then I guess it doesn't matter how you go about it..."

"Well, it's just that I'll find ways around yours." Drake said, with a shrug as he looked at Yuui. "The story you told was obviously horrible on whoever it happened too. But so was watching my mother burn as a child, I remember the way her skin bubbled and how her hair smelled as it burned, or being alone as kids with no parents to care for us. That was equally a shitty day."

"Drake is great at avoiding confronting the problem." Hikari said and laughed, but she leaned back. "Social media is... A futuristic way of communicating, like letters but they're inside a box called a phone or computer."

"You're so gross," Yuui said and wrinkled his nose at Drake. "There aren't enough cleansing sands for you," he said and turned his attention to Hikari. "That sounds very strange but I'm sure that it works well."

"Boys are supposed to be gross," Drake said and laughed, that was just their birth right. If they weren't gross, they weren't doing it right.

"Sometimes." Hikari answered about it working well. She didn't want to go into all of the workings of it. Too complicated. "So, that story you told us... It was about you, wasn't it?"

Yuui's face went back to bring puzzled. "Why would you think that? Oh!" He exclaimed as it clicked. "It's because you think I'm crazy. That's fair," he said calmly.

"Sort of." Hikari laughed, but that wasn't really it. "You would assume I think you're crazy. But actually I think you're like me. Damaged, but that isn't a bad thing. Sorry if it sounds it. But also because I could see it in your eyes it was a personal story wasn't it?"

"You're very observant," Yuui said and nodded as a show of approval. "You'll go far with that. And now that I know you are I have something new to train you in," he said, clapping his hands together with excitement.

"Oh?" Hikari said, she got all excited. Training was good for her, it kept her focused. She was really only any good at fighting at this point in time. She didn't know it yet, but soon she'd be a lot more useful and have more gifts to bring to the table than her fists.

"Don't get too excited," Yuui said with a laugh. "I still have to figure out what I'm going to do. But we will be working on observation. So, I don't know, I'll give you a few seconds to survey a scene and blindfold you then prompt you to remember everything as vividly as possible. Or something..."