Puzzle

Author: Seth


"Certain puzzles are best left unsolved."

No matter how many years that passed he was still a mystery to them. Sure they knew who he was, or at least who he said he was, but something was always a little… off.

They'd never really ever met them, his parents. Whenever they'd ask too meet them he'd always assure them that his parents were busy, or that they were out of town. They always assumed he kept them away from his family because he'd get in trouble for associating with them, with the immoral orphans who'd steal everything you had just as soon as look at you.

Then the Siege came, and they lost all chance of meeting the couple that had raised their 'Big brother'.

Sometimes Ryuu wondered whether or not the simultaneous death of both of his parents was just a little too convenient. They'd died at the blades of the invading rebels, he'd told them, though they had to take his word for it.

They never saw the bodies.

He still visits their graves on the anniversary of the Siege, each and every year. Graves that might be empty for all they know. Not that it really mattered. Even if they were empty, and as the years passed Ryuu grew increasingly certain the those graves were occupied, all they would find is a pair of historyless corpses.

And his unknown parents were the least of his secrets. His hats changed daily, sometimes seemingly randomly, and other times a certain cap would appear on a certain day each year without fail. And it wasn't just his headgear. More than once Ryuu caught him staring at Kuroga's zipper bandana with a small smile on his face and dead eyes.

But off all the 1st Unit's Leader's quirks, Ryuu found they way the elder boy acted around him the most unnerving. He made the oddest remarks on 'protecting that which mattered most' without any hint on what it might be that he was supposed to protect. Sometimes the other words seemed to be useless baggage, always being overshadowed my his insistence that Ryuu protect, protect, protect!

And the boy Ryuu had once looked up to as his aniki didn't limit himself to Ryuu's actions, oh no. Everything seemed to come under the elder boy's scrutiny, even his morals. What did Ryuu care about civility and chivalry, he was a thief.

And then there was the way Ryuu fought. The ginsenkei soldier didn't realize it at first, but he'd been influencing Ryuu's fighting style since the very beginning. A small word here, and offhand comment there, every single one designed to make Ryuu question, to lead him straight to an answer that he didn't know had been prepared for him.

He was a puzzle. One that they would never solve, because for every question they answered, three more would pop up, and it would only be years afterward that they would discover that the answer they had discovered wasn't an answer at all, just another question veiled in the garb of a response.