two: night

The moon sat in the sky like a Drifloon on a windless night.

The sound of waves churned around him, choppy as they crashed back against the water, and the leaves in the trees overhead didn't budge an inch as they walked.

His mind logged down everything as data; even the most useless and inconspicuous of notes counted as data in some way or another, and the human brain was enough to handle entire dictionaries of information—it would be fine.

Was it just a way to distract himself from all the things he didn't know? He wasn't quite sure of that.

"We're here," Cup said, voice low, and the carefully crafted facts he'd been contemplating fell to pieces as his concentration snapped. He had half a mind to snap at the other man for disrupting him, but most people remembered to be polite in situations like these. "This is Harbour's house."

He glanced up.

The brick hut didn't look like much—it was old-fashioned, he knew that much, but he didn't know what the fashion in the real world was supposed to look like anymore. Nevertheless, he nodded, more curious than apprehensive as the older man approached the door.

Cup knocked two times, and the hollow sound echoed off the door into the night until he was answered.

The door opened after a minute or so, and a woman stepped outside, grey eyes hazy with exhaustion as she glanced at the two of them. "Cup...?"

"Sorry I woke you up," the man replied. "He's the one from the train this month."

His tone was casual, as if they'd had the same conversation many times and he was just one more addition to the town, but for all he knew, he was.

"Ah. That's fine, then." Harbour tried to blink away the tiredness from her eyes, and she nudged the door until it was wide enough for the both of them to enter. "I'll get something for you to drink."

Cup walked in first, choosing to settle down at the sofa, and he gestured at him to take a seat at the small dining table instead of joining him. He obliged, more than a little confused by the prospect, and he slipped into one of the wooden chairs in the kitchen.

"I ran out of tea, so I hope warm water's alright with you." She gave him a gentle smile as she took her seat opposite him. "Cup, are you going to join us?"

"Nah, that's fine," he sighed. "I'll just wait for you two to finish talking and help bring him to wherever he's assigned to leave after that."

"Alright," Harbour called back, taking a sip of her own drink and turning to face him. "It must be overwhelming for you, but I'll try my best to explain the situation here. There are a lot of things none of us know or understand, but hopefully you'll be able to get a basic grasp on how things work here."

He perked up at that. Up until then, he hadn't been particularly interested in whatever the woman had to say—he had assumed that she would just give him a name and a place to stay—but the prospect of getting information was tantalising.

"So, as you may have figured out by now, the train stops by here every month." That sounded awfully familiar from him, as if he did know that much, but where had he heard it from? "The amount of people that come each month varies, but it's limited to one person per train. Multiple trains come most of the time, but it seems like you're the only one this month."

He breathed. "There's more than one train?"

"It seems so," Harbour nodded, and that was news to him—for some reason, the train had always existed in his head as some universal figure. "In fact, there's probably a specific train catered for every person here."

"So..." He trailed off, trying to piece his thoughts together into one question. "Why do you say that?"

She paused to take another sip. "Everyone that has been brought here has had a different experience of riding the train. They've all described the train in different ways when we questioned them."

"Could you give me an example?" The question seemed to take her by surprise—perhaps she was put off by how he wasn't absolutely terrified at the prospect of the whole situation. "As in, what do the others say they experienced?"

It was like interrogating someone. The question seemed cold; impersonal, but his heart was beating too fast for him to feel the same way.

Harbour breathed out. "That's certainly a question I haven't been asked before. Well, if it counts, my train was modelled after a harbour, and well, Cup..."

The blue-haired man glanced over from where he was sitting, an annoyed expression flitting across his face. "There was just a lot of cups in that damn train, alright? So many that it's a surprised I don't get haunted in my sleep."

He looked like he wanted to say more, but he decided against it.

"We don't know what prompts the trains to look the way they do," she continued, lips forming a thin line. "But since we can't remember our names, we decided to base them off what our train was like."

"Uh...is that a good method, though?" He scratched the back of his neck. "What if multiple people have similar trains or something? Wouldn't that be confusing?"

"We thought about that too," Harbour said, and her fingers glided across the surface of a thick book he hadn't taken notice of before. "But we found some old dictionaries in this town, and thought that we could just substitute those words with synonyms."

Letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, he moved to drink from his cup before the water could turn cold. "I suppose that's understandable."

"You're quite calm about this," Cup commented, and to be honest, the only part he was remotely afraid about was the fact that he'd lost his memories. "A lot of people are a lot more shaken up than you are at first."

"I..." He tried to form a sentence, and settled for a lie instead. "Maybe the shock hasn't settled in yet."

"That might be the case," Harbour smiled. "Nonetheless, life here is very peaceful, so you'll get used to it in no time."

Peaceful? He didn't care about any of that.

"Anyway, there isn't much beyond this town. We're mostly confined here, and the rest of the world doesn't really exist." Harbour set down her cup. There's a few things like some patches of grass, but there's nothing there either. There was a cave too, but it's inaccessible, so..."

He fought the urge to wrinkle his nose at that offhanded comment. There were so many holes in her explanation—for example, how did they know a cave was inaccessible. They probably hadn't tried hard enough. And the phrase some patches of grass was vague enough to make him want to cry—

"You'll get the hang of living here in time. Everything's very simple and the people are kind." Harbour gave him a smile. "Should we give you a name now?"

He nodded, doing his best to suppress a sigh. After all, he'd come to the conclusion that she wasn't going to give him any more useful information.

"About time," Cup grumbled. "So, how was it for you? What was your train like?"

It's best to get this over this so I have more time to find out things. "Mostly white. It was really plain—there was nothing much to see."

"I see." Harbour frowned, emptying her cup and picking up the thesaurus beside her. "There's not much to go off by, then. Let's see...there's already someone called White, and someone called Light. It looks like those two won't work."

"I'll go get the dictionaries in your room," Cup offered. "They're on the top shelf, right?"

"Yeah, thanks a lot." The woman continued to flip through the thesaurus idly. "Grab the one on ancient Kalosian. I don't think we've started using names from there yet, so there should be something we should be able to use."

The man disappeared into the back of the house for a while, reemerging after a minute with the book in question.

"Thanks," Harbour said, and Cup slid into one of the free seats at the small table. She thumbed through the pages as she mumbled to herself, keeping the other dictionary open as she compared words and scanned the pages deftly.

"Hey, how about Lux?" Cup pointed out, finger hovering above the word as his dark eyes pondered the name. "It's not too complicated for a foreign word and it's relatively easy to remember."

Harbour pondered the name for a moment before turning to him. "It seems alright to me. Is the name OK with you, or would you prefer something different?"

He nodded almost instantly, not caring about whatever name they'd given him, and his thoughts drifted in a constant state of absent-mindedness. He'd much rather get the whole ordeal over and done with. "Yeah, it's fine with me."

"It's settled, then. Now to figure out where you can live..." Harbour muttered her thanks as Cup slid her a folder before she could move to take it. "Cup, do you think he'd fit in better with Paint or Sweet? They're both around his age."

"Paint," the man decided. "Sweet's pretty antisocial at times. Paint's kinda weird, but at least he's friendly enough."

"I guess you're right," she sighed. "You can take him to the house and call it a day, then. We'll show him around tomorrow when we've all gotten some sleep."

Nodding, he got to his feet, stretching as he did so and motioning for him to stand as well. Harbour rose a few moments later, following them to the door and holding it open for the both of them. "Well, Lux, I hope you'll be able to get used to things soon."

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbled, stepping out of her house and watching as she closed the door behind them. His head was still foggy from the time he'd spent asleep on the train—he was sure that he would think of something to do when he next woke up.

"We're lucky Paint's place is nearby," Cup pointed out, making a left turn and continuing to walk. "Actually, it's just right at the end. My house is in the opposite direction, so would you be alright walking by yourself for the rest of the way?"

He got out a reply that must have been affirmative, because the next moment the man turned and waved goodbye, saying something about stopping by the next morning.

If he was to be honest, he was more relieved than anything when Cup disappeared behind a house. He talked too much. Harbour was the same, but they'd given him the barest lick of information so he'd let it slide.

Either way, he'd be staying at the building at the end of the street, wouldn't he? He hoped whoever Paint was wouldn't bother him too much.

Of course, it would be even better if his housemate had something more useful than what he'd been told, but after learning of the lacklustre attitude of the citizens, he'd lost a lot of hope.

—thud.

He winced as he ran into someone—he'd been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice the other person.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." He looked up to see a girl in front of him, bowing her head sheepishly as she picked up the bag she'd dropped. "I wasn't looking where I was going. Wait, are you new?"

He nodded, and her face spread into a wide smile. "I forgot it was about time! Well, see you soon and good night!"

Her brown hair bobbed in the breeze as she walked off in the opposite direction, and he didn't care enough to reply. The town was so small—he was sure that he'd end up seeing her sooner or later. Besides, the girl had looked like she was in a hurry.

He rubbed at his eyes, forcing them to stay open a while longer. The place Cup had pointed out was just metres away.

Too many things had happened that day. He'd sit down and figure out a proper plan when he was more awake.

With that thought satisfying him, he pushed open the door to his new home.

--

would you look at that i'm ALIVE

anyway, sorry for the veeeeeery long wait (thankfully not a lot of people read this) and for the rushed ending!! i told myself i absolutely had to finish this chapter by today no matter what

paint is best boy ok just you wait

thanks for all the votes and comments (even though i've been literally deAd) they mean a lot yeboi

 goodebye ™