When he stays silent, Jax bites her lip and nudges his arm. Sasuke lifts his head to glare at her. “What do you want?” he mutters.
Jax blinks at him. “I’m Jackson Taylor.”
“Oh. You’re the daughter.” Sasuke looks away again and puts his head down. “I remember you from the study.”
Jax scowls and puts her hands on her waist. “Mom said you might like some company your own age, for a change.”
“Tell your mom I’m not interested in whatever she’s thinking up.” He pauses to give her a skeptical look. “You don’t look all that sick.”
She smiles at him. “The drug study they were doing on us? It’s been working really well on me. Mom says it’s a miracle.”
Sasuke stares at her for a second longer before turning away again. “Good for you.”
“Hey, it’s slowed down your disease, too. Maybe you’re turning into a bunch of supercells. That’s what my mom said. She said the study helped ten percent of us.” She hesitates. Her eyes wander to the shaved stripe along the side of his head. “What are they injecting you for?”
Sasuke rests his head against his arms and closes his eyes. “Why don’t you ask your mom?” he mutters.
Jax doesn’t say anything. Her cheeks flush in apology.
When she still doesn’t reply, Sasuke looks up and sees her expression. He sighs. After a moment, he seems to take pity on her. “Trackers,” he explains. “They need it in my bloodstream. That was the injection. They said it’s preparation, for my procedures.”
“Oh.” She studies his face. “You don’t look so good.”
He goes back to closing his eyes. “Go away. My stomach hurts, and I feel sick.”
Jax stares at him as he breathes evenly in and out. After a while, she straightens to leave. “I was going to ask if you wanted to check out this hidden nook I found, up near the institute’s ceiling. And my mom doesn’t know about that.” She starts to walk away. “There’s a metal grate that’s open to the fresh air. It might make you feel better.”
As she goes, Sasuke lifts his head to look at her retreating figure. “Hang on,” he says. When she turns back around, he clears his throat, suddenly shy. “Where is it?”
Jax smiles and tilts her head. “I’ll show you.”
“I’m not supposed to leave the room.”
Jax winks at him. “No one tied you down, did they? Now, come on.” She steps out the door, and a second later, he scoots his chair back and follows her.
There are several scenes like this one, each showing the two of them hanging out in the empty study room, or in the hallways, or in the back shelves of the institute’s library. One scene is from Jax’s point of view—she’s kneeling on the tiles of a bathroom floor, gently patting Sasuke’s back as he throws up over and over again into a toilet. Another is of Sasuke making funny faces at her until she bursts out giggling.
Yet another is of them crammed into a tiny wedge of space together, over which a metal grate exposes a square of the night sky. Jax seems lost in thought, absently pointing out one constellation after another. She stops talking long enough to glance over at Sasuke, only to see him staring at her instead of the stars. He turns his head hurriedly away, but not before she catches the blush on his cheeks. She grins. Then she gets serious.
“Hey—do you know what a kiss is?” she asks him.
He shakes his head. “You mean, like a kiss from my mom?”
“No, silly, gross.” Jax laughs before steeling herself. “I mean the kind you give to someone you like,” she murmurs. “In that way.” Then she leans over and presses her lips quickly and quietly to his cheek before jerking away.
Sasuke stares wide-eyed at her, his face pink in the night. “Oh,” he says hoarsely.
“I saw it on TV,” Jax replies. She laughs nervously, a little too loud, and it makes Sasuke laugh in return. He kisses her cheek back. It makes her giggle even harder. Soon the two have dissolved into quiet laughter.
I look away to the Jax standing beside me. She nods toward her younger self. “These are my Memories,” she says to me as we continue to look on. “Taylor had them recorded and archived after the NeuroLink came out.”
In a third one, both of them look a little older. They’re sitting in front of a TV—an older model that probably dates back at least seven or eight years—and on the screen, a thirteen-year-old Hideo is walking out onto a press stage to be greeted by an avalanche of flashing lights. He looks so unsure of himself at that age, lanky and shy-eyed, his clothes baggy and ill-fitting, his demeanor little more than a passing resemblance to the man he would become. He greets the reporters with a nervous wave.
Sasuke grips Jax’s arm. For an instant, the smile on his face is a genuine one. “That’s my brother, Jax!” he exclaims, pointing at the screen. “There! He’s on TV! You see him? Look at him! He’s so much taller!” His eyes are wide-open, shiny with new tears, fixated on the TV as if terrified the broadcast will stop. “Don’t I look like him? Do you think he’s looking for me? Do you think he’s thinking about me?”
He still cared for his brother then. I tear my gaze away. It’s too hard to watch.
Beside me, Jax watches with a grim calmness. “It was part of Taylor’s study, you know, letting him watch the TV,” she says.
“Why?” I ask.
Jax only nods as the scene ends and another starts to play. “You’ll see.”
Sasuke is crouching back in the same dark bedroom in the next scene. He’s thinner this time, alarmingly so, his arms whittled down to sharp limbs and his eyes hauntingly large in his small face. How many years has it been? His illness must be eating away at him.
This time, when the door opens, he sits up straight and stares sidelong at Taylor.
“How do you feel today, Sasuke?” Taylor asks him.
Sasuke is quiet, his child eyes regarding her with a look of suspicion beyond his years. His hands are still clutching the blue scarf. Then, he says, “I’ll make a deal with you.”
These stern words coming from such a small boy makes Taylor laugh.
“Let me skip today, and I’ll eat my dinner.”
Now the woman laughs in earnest. When she finally stops, she shakes her head at Sasuke. “I’m afraid not. You can’t skip a day. You know that.”
Sasuke gives her a thoughtful look. “Let me skip, and I’ll give you my scarf.”
At that, Taylor regards him with a curious smile. “You love that scarf,” she says in a coaxing voice. “We can’t even pry it from you in your sleep. Surely you can’t be serious, giving it up just for a day off.”
“I’m serious,” Sasuke says.
I lean forward, unable to tear my attention away from the exchange.
Taylor walks over to Sasuke, stares down at him for a moment, and then holds out a hand. “The scarf,” she says.
“My free day,” Sasuke replies, his hands still tight around the cloth.
“You have my word. You won’t be at the labs today. We won’t bother you. Take your time and rest here. Tomorrow, we’ll start again.”
Sasuke stares at her. Finally, his fingers loosen on the scarf. When she takes it, I can see Sasuke’s hands visibly tremble, as if it took all of his strength not to lunge for the scarf right then and there. But he hands it over, without making so much as a sound.
Taylor looks at the scarf, then tightens her hands around it and turns to leave the room. “We’ll see you the day after tomorrow, Sasuke-kun,” she says over her shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
Sasuke doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t crouch like he did in the first video I saw of him, either. He just stares calmly, carefully, as Taylor leaves the room, closing the door softly behind her. When it clicks shut, Sasuke’s shoulders droop. His hands clutch instinctively for the scarf that is no longer around his neck. When I look closer, I realize that he’s wiping tears away. Then he jumps to his feet, walks up to the security cam, and breaks it.