In a soft, spoiled tone, she said they had called her name and she did not know these odd people. The boy with yellow tinted glasses, called Sai, patted her and stepped between the two sides. He asked Hilde if they knew Flay.
Hilde apologized and said they did not, explaining that her younger brother had rarely seen hair like that and was surprised. Sai remained doubtful but did not pursue it, whispering to Flay instead. The proud girl glanced back once more before dragging him away.
The crowd flowed between them again, and the small distance felt heavy. After standing there for a long time, Hilde stepped forward and stopped in front of Siegfried. Unsure how to begin, she slowly placed her hand on his red hair.
She said she had not meant to hide things, and that her memories were fragmented and needed triggers, like Ryoma Nagare and this place. When speaking to him, her words always came with pauses, as if both memory and language faltered. She said she only wanted to find an energy system here, make that thing move, and maybe go home, then apologized.
Siegfried lifted his head and asked if she had always wanted to go back. Her hand slipped to his forehead, cold as always. She answered that she did not know where home was, but this place told her she had to return.
To show her sincerity, she grabbed his hand and pressed both of them to her chest. Startled, Siegfried jumped back, flustered, and told her to stop. He insisted he was not a child anymore, then coughed and said he forgave her for now.
He asked her to tell him anything else she remembered, saying he was the only one like her in this world. She replied that they were not the same. He laughed it off, saying it was just a difference in gender and that their goal mattered more.
He hooked the bag with Haro back onto his shoulder and said the path might be hard, but they would take it step by step. Now that they had left that awful place, the next goal was finding a power source, and he would help her. For the first time, he called her Hilde.
This time, she took his hand first. Declaring that the target was a restaurant and that she needed to eat before working, the strange pair merged back into the crowd. Heliopolis returned to its busy state as if nothing had happened.
Inside a small hotel in Heliopolis, Siegfried had finally changed into decent clothes and was about to head out with Hilde. They had only stayed a few days, but with that smile that never seemed to fade and his boyish face, the red haired youth had already reached the point where he could get by on familiarity alone. From the owner to the staff, he knew everyone's name and preferences, and because of that, their lodging fee had been discounted again and again.
Once outside, they could not help but marvel at how far technology had come. The driverless trams that stopped on demand made travel effortless, yet ever since their last chance encounter with Flay, Siegfried had not seen a single familiar face again.
"Oh, the owner's cooking is really good, I could eat this every day and never get tired of it. Want a bite?" With the car on autopilot, Siegfried set the destination as usual, propped his feet up, and held a sandwich in one hand while chewing and offering the invitation with little sincerity.
"Haro, Haro, all you ever do is eat, just eat." Stuffed into the back seat, Haro lodged its strongest protest at such rough treatment, but the red haired boy pretended not to hear, making it flap its little ears in anger.
"I already ate. Today we go to Dawn Society. ZAFT, I do not know when they will come." Hilde ignored the food pushed toward her, and after they had settled in, the two of them had first located Dawn Society. To the outside it was only an ordinary factory, and no one yet knew what it was doing in secret. When Siegfried raised the nearly impossible problem of how to get inside, Hilde calmly said that their electronic cards had already been altered to show them as students of Orb Industrial University, leaving Siegfried to marvel that she really had arrived earlier and learned useful skills.
"But it's still tough for us. Today is the sixth day, so when are those space people finally going to start things? We keep wandering around with no result at all. And if it really starts, are we supposed to steal a Gundam? Even if we do, we cannot get away, and even if we run, we cannot go far." He went on in one breath, explaining that he had checked the routes and that their abandoned satellite Mendel was far away, with energy, oxygen, and supplies all making a return impossible.
For Siegfried, the whole SEED world had become a distant memory in his mind. It was so far away that even the main plot was hard to recall, no matter how much he forced himself over the past few days. When he asked Hilde if she remembered more, she shut down that hope at once, saying she only knew the background and a written outline, even less than he did, so in the end they could only keep showing up at Dawn Society in turns, relying on the cooperation between Orb Industrial University and the factory to move freely.
Today, because Siegfried insisted that they had not properly celebrated returning to civilization, he dragged Hilde along to visit Dawn Society again. On the way back they could also stop by the restaurant they had booked yesterday, and Hilde neither agreed nor objected, simply following him out the door.
They passed the checkpoint smoothly, and with a sandwich still in his mouth, Siegfried waved at the guard post from afar. Perhaps because they had come too often lately, even the guard nodded back at him.
"There are other things here." After getting off, because of their student identities, Siegfried and Hilde could not wander openly and could only search within permitted areas, narrowing things down step by step. Today, however, Hilde gave a different answer for the first time.
"Other things? What else could there be, five G units, one battleship, maybe some Alliance stuff like the transport that brought the Mobius in." He dismissed it quickly, saying none of it helped them, since they could not take a Gundam or the Archangel, and even if they did, they could not escape. Mid sentence, after finally swallowing the oversized sandwich the owner had stuffed into his hands, his words caught in his throat as his gaze drifted ahead.
"Did you choke?" Hilde turned back to ask what was wrong with this idiot, but when she followed his line of sight, she froze as well.
"Kira Yamato, Murrue, and her what's his name?" The sight of figures he had long forgotten stirred his mind so much that Siegfried could not even recall the name of Murrue's boyfriend.