A New Child

Chapter 3: Neighbors

Fujimura Taiga was worried. The first thing she did when coming back to school for the weekend was glomp her friend, but Neko seemed off. She remembered her being a little distraught when someone stole a large barrel of wine from the Copenhagen, but she recovered from that fairly quickly. This time, however, she seemed a lot more glum.

It only got more strange as Taiga noticed her friend space out in class. Neko was the type of girl to take meticulous notes for every class. Taiga even saw her color-coding her science notes one time. But today... today she didn't even take out her notebook.

By the time lunch rolled around, Taiga just wasn't having it anymore. They were sitting on the roof and Neko didn't seem to be listening to Taiga's rant about male idols, despite Neko being a connoisseur of culture herself.

"C'mon, Neko! What's going on?" Taiga asked. Neko snapped up from picking at the food in her bento box and looked at Taiga with a confused expression.

"What do you mean?" Neko tilted her head. She really did look like a cat when making that expression.

"You've been out of it all day! Tell me what's going on," Taiga frowned.

"It's nothing," Neko shook her head. "There's just something on my mind."

"What's up?" Taiga scooted closer. "We're friends. You can tell me stuff."

"It's just..." Neko heaved a sigh. "Did you know there were survivors in the fire?"

"There were?" Taiga's eyes widened. "But the news..."

"I know what the news said," Neko pursed her lips. Taiga put a hand on her friend's shoulder. She had never seen Neko so conflicted. "It's just... two people stopped by the bar the other day. Apparently they were caught up in the fire."

"Oh..." Taiga muttered.

"If that wasn't bad enough, Shirou couldn't have been older than seven," Neko shook her head. "It's just... I want to do something for them, but I don't know what. They've obviously been having a hard time. Tiamat, the other person, said she just moved in when she got caught up in the fire."

"Damn. That's some shit luck," Taiga replied. Neko huffed in response, but Taiga considered the small smile on her face a win.

"Yeah," Neko sighed and looked up at the clear sky.

Shirou and Tiamat, eh? Taiga thought as the two sat in silence. I'll have to ask Grandpa about them.

~A New Child~

Tiamat was content. Shirou had asked Tiamat to buy a cookbook so he could start preparing meals at home and Tiamat was more than happy to oblige. She was able to easily persuade a couple of humans to tell her where she could buy books and used some of the paper Gilgamesh had given her to purchase it.

As she walked down the street with Shirou, she noticed something. She walked towards one of the patches of grass in front of a house and knelt down.

"Mama, what are you doing?" Shirou asked. Tiamat couldn't help but smile. Shirou had recently started calling Tiamat "mama" and it had meant the world to her. She picked up a small insect with sharp teeth in its mouth.

I see someone is raising their own children, Tiamat thought with a smile. How sweet.

Tiamat then gently placed the bug back into the grass and walked back to Shirou, and took his hand.

"Nothing, little one," Tiamat smiled down at the young boy. "Come, now. Let's go home."

~A New Child~

As Taiga turned up at her house, she saw two people she didn't recognize. One of them was a beautiful woman with unnaturally long hair. Speaking of unnatural, there was no way that people were born with bright greenish hair. It was almost white for god's sake!