"Yo! Ishiki."

The voice cut through his thoughts like a knife through silk. Ishiki turned to see Filch stepping out onto the balcony and looked at the black pot with narrowed eyes.

Filch walked to him and put the vase besides him, curiously enough Ishiki looked inside and found that it wasn't empty.

Inside the pot, suspended in what looked like perfectly clear water, floated a single flower. Its petals were a deep crimson that caught the moonlight and transformed it into something almost warm. The stem remained green and supple, as if it had just been cut moments ago rather than sealed in an impossible prison.

Filch set the bottle down on the small table between them with a gentle clink.

"Found this," he said, fishing a cigarette from his pocket and lighting. The orange ember flared bright in the crimson darkness. "Well, Nina found it actually. In the cathedral ruins over in the Secondary Ring."

Ishiki stared at the flower, watching it sway slightly in the water as if moved by a current that didn't exist.

"There was writing underneath where she found it," Filch continued, exhaling a stream of smoke. "Carved into the stone pedestal. Said something like... 'The Everlasting Flower.' Pretty on the nose, but accurate I guess."

He settled into the chair across from Ishiki, letting his long legs stretch out in front of him. For a moment they sat in silence, two survivors in a dead city, with only the distant howls of beasts and the cold judgment of the Crimson Moon for company.

"It's impressive," Ishiki said finally, his voice flat and emotionless. "A flower that never dies."

Filch's eyes narrowed slightly behind the smoke.

"Nina and Kaori are looking for a healer," Filch said, voice deliberately casual. "For you. They've been asking around the Secondary Ring, seeing if anyone survived with healing-type vestiges or skills."

Ishiki picked up his empty cup, stared into it for a moment as if expecting water to magically appear, then set it back down.

"There's no need," he said quietly.

Filch took a long drag from his cigarette, watching the boy across from him with eyes that had seen too much suffering to be fooled by stoicism.

"Why?" he asked. "The wound in your side is healing, sure, but you're still in bad shape. A healer could—"

"I said there's no need." Ishiki's voice remained quiet, but something sharp had entered it now. Something brittle. "I'll heal on my own. Eventually."

Filch studied him for a long moment, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

"What's eating you, kid?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

Ishiki's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

"Is it because you can't fight right now?" Filch pressed. "Because you're stuck here healing while everyone else is out there trying to figure out how to survive? Is that it?"

"No."

"Then what? You think you're weak? You think—"

"I am weak!" The words burst out of Ishiki like a dam breaking, sharp and sudden and raw. His hands clenched into fists on the armrests. "I am weak. I couldn't save anyone. I couldn't save the most precious person in my life when it mattered."

His voice cracked on the last word, and he hated himself for it.

Filch didn't respond immediately. He took another drag from his cigarette, letting the silence stretch.

"Your mother," he said finally. Not a question.

Ishiki's eyes burned with sudden moisture that he refused to let fall. "She was all I had. The only reason I fought so hard to survive, to make it here, to keep going through all this hell. And I couldn't even save her."

"She was an illusion," Filch said gently. "A memory given form by—"

"I DON'T CARE!" Ishiki shouted, surging to his feet. Pain lanced through his side from the sudden movement, but he ignored it. "I don't care if she was real or fake or a goddamn projection! She was mine! She loved me and I loved her and I watched her dissolve into light because I wasn't strong enough to—to—"

His voice broke completely. He stood there, fists shaking, chest heaving with ragged breaths that hurt his healing wound.

"I'm weak," he whispered. "I'm so fucking weak."

Filch looked up at him with an expression that was impossible to read in the Crimson Moon's light. Then he did something unexpected.

He laughed.

"You think you're weak because you couldn't save your mother?" Filch said, voice soft but carrying weight. "You want to know about weak, kid?"

He stubbed out his cigarette on the armrest, grinding it down to nothing.

"Have you ever lost someone like your mother?" Ishiki demanded, anger and grief making the words sharp. "Have you ever—"

"My mother sold me."

The words dropped into the space between them like stones into still water.

Ishiki's mouth closed with an audible click.

Filch leaned back in his chair, staring up at the false sky with eyes that had gone distant, looking at something only he could see.

"I was seven years old when my father died," he said, voice eerily calm. "Worked himself to death in the factories. Three jobs, never slept more than four hours a night, all so my mother and I could eat. He dropped dead on the factory floor one night. Heart gave out. He was thirty-two."

Filch pulled out another cigarette, but didn't light it. Just rolled it between his fingers.

"My mother couldn't handle it. The debt. The bills. The rent. She tried for about six months, working two jobs herself, but it wasn't enough. Never enough."

"Filch—"

"One day she took me on a trip," Filch continued, as if Ishiki hadn't spoken. "Said we were going to visit relatives in another city. I was excited. Hadn't been outside our neighborhood in years. We took a bus to the industrial district—you know, where the warehouses are."

He finally lit the cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating the hard lines of his face.

"She sold me to a man who ran a... let's call it a 'labor acquisition business.' Enough to cover three months of rent and some groceries."

Ishiki felt something cold settle in his stomach.

"I remember her face when she handed me over," Filch said, exhaling smoke that dissipated quickly in the night air. "She was crying. Actually crying. Like she was the victim in all this. The man asked if she was sure, and you know what she said?"

He looked at Ishiki directly now, eyes hard.

"She said, 'It's for the best. He'll understand when he's older.'"

"Jesus," Ishiki breathed.

"I spent the next eleven years as a slave," Filch continued, voice still eerily calm despite the words. "Not in the dramatic sense you see in movies. No chains or whips. Just... labor. Constant, grinding labor. We lived in a warehouse dormitory—about thirty of us, all bought from desperate parents who needed quick cash. We worked construction sites during the day. Twelve, fourteen-hour shifts. If you complained, you didn't eat. If you tried to run, they found you and made an example."

He tapped ash off his cigarette, watching it drift away on the breeze.

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