【SC】Endless Journey

Claude was sleeping, and vaguely heard an unusual noise.He sat up reluctantly and found that the voice came from Sephiroth's direction.

It was 04:30 in the morning, and Sephiroth was tossing in bed, muttering nonsense syllables, as if caught in a nightmare.

Claude had lived with him for nearly three years and had never seen him lose control in his sleep.So Claude crawled to Sephiroth's side, hesitating whether to shake him awake, when he suddenly heard his name.

"Claude..."

Claude froze for a second, and put his ear close to the other's lips.

At this moment, a hand firmly grasped his wrist.Claude stepped back sharply, but was pulled down by Sephiroth.

"Sephiroth!"

He tried to struggle, but the opponent deftly pushed his legs away, and then pressed his thighs to the sides with his knees.Claude thought his memory had recovered, and immediately began to resist wildly.Sephiroth quickly strangled him by the throat, so that he had to pinch the opponent's cervical spine with his backhand as a threat—as long as Sephiroth dared to exert force, he would immediately twist the opponent's neck.

At the moment when the battle was about to start, Claude raised his head inadvertently, only to find that the boy's eyes were still tightly closed.He realized that Sephiroth was just sleepwalking, and his tense nerves instantly relaxed.

Sephiroth's hands on his throat were still tightening, and Cloud's lungs began to throb from the suffocation.He tried his best to break Sephiroth's fingers without hurting the other party. Fortunately, the other party had no intention of continuing this work, but kept leaning towards him until their foreheads finally touched each other.

"……its mine……"

Warm breath puffed on his face, and there was a kind of creepy itching.Claude couldn't help turning his face away.

He couldn't hear what Sephiroth said before and after, so he could only push him away when the other party's center of gravity was unstable.The violent panting sound finally woke up Sephiroth. The other party looked at him in a daze, and suddenly sat up from the bed, rushing up to check his condition as if something terrible had happened, and didn't collapse until it was confirmed that his life was not in danger. back to the original place.

"What did I do to you just now?" Sephiroth asked, rubbing his wrists, his eyes falling on the bruises on his legs.

Claude felt that this incident was related to his nightmare, so he covered the scars on his body with a quilt. "You were talking in your sleep and called my name. What did you dream about?"

When Sephiroth heard this, a trace of complexity flashed across his face: "I don't remember."

Sephiroth rarely lied, especially such an obvious one.

Claude leaned forward a little, and saw that the other party made a similar dodge reaction.He realized that now is not a good time to inquire, so after looking at each other for a few seconds, he decided not to expose Sephiroth for the time being.

The next morning they evacuated the room before the driver woke up, and then hid again in the truck transporting the chocobo.

Sephiroth added a spell of chaos while the driver was checking the compartment, allowing the two to pass the test smoothly. In the next few days, they took this truck and made a small circle around Junon.

On the way, Claude explained the newly planned route to Sephiroth, and Sephiroth half understood it.Claude felt that he didn't really care about their destination, but he still emphasized the important things: "When you arrive at the ranch area, you will be announced to the public that you are sick, can't see the sun, and can't go out. Remember? "

Sephiroth immediately asked back: "What if someone else comes over at night?"

"You can choose not to open the door."

Sephiroth shrugged indifferently, and Claude knew it meant "I'm not interested in other people, I just want to ask a question".

He didn't know that Sephiroth liked to question others so much. Fortunately, the other party had a high position and authority in the past, otherwise this way of chatting would be really...unfortunate.

When the driver turned back, the chocobos in the car had already changed a batch.According to Claude's observation, most of these chocobos are racing birds retired from the golden disc. They traveled across the ocean and returned to the birthplace of the Eastern Continent, which can be regarded as returning home in a sense.

While Sephiroth was busy giving hints to the driver, Cloud took the opportunity to check the sex of the birds.He found that this batch of chocobos happened to be both male and female, and gradually formed a new idea.

"Retired racing birds will be very cheap because of their age, but they are very good breeding birds. The next generation of breeding birds is usually top-notch racing birds, and knowledgeable people will buy them at a high price...Maybe we You can save some money at Chocobo Farm."

Although Sephiroth didn't understand a word, Claude's eyes flashed with excitement, which made him very interesting.

"What about after saving?" He asked along the other side.

"We can buy a car later...Actually, the airship would be more convenient, but the airship needs a whole crew to operate, so the car is easier to use."

Sephiroth looked at the boy, Claude seemed to be very familiar with the outside world, as if he had lived there for many years.

"...Your brother has always known."

For some reason, Katterholm's voice sounded in his mind, and his mood suddenly sank to the bottom.

Claude noticed his strangeness and touched him lightly: "Sephiroth?"

"...It's okay." Sephiroth shook the image of the man out of his mind, and forced a smile, "I have to remind you, we don't have ID cards, so we can't buy a car."

Claude was not fooled by him, but he did not continue to ask.

"That's a legal way, and there are many illegal ways." The boy blinked, his soft blond hair shaking slightly like feathers, "As long as you have money, you can buy anything on the black market."

As the truck drove into the pasture area in the eastern part of the mainland, the scenery in the field of vision gradually changed from dense forests to endless grasslands.

In the past two hundred years, the development of the city mainly revolved around the central sea area sandwiched between the east and west continents.Midgar, Junon, Sunshine Coast, every well-known city is either on the seaside or near the coast, so the pasture area farthest from that sea area has almost never been developed.

Claude often visited here during his lifetime, most of the time to breed his chocobos.When he was traveling through mountains and rivers, there were always some places that were difficult for mechanical vehicles to reach. A good chocobo was more efficient than a car in many extreme terrains, so he was very familiar with this area.

They sneaked off the car ten kilometers away from the town where the Chocobo Farm was located, walked casually in this wilderness for two hours, and then found the only hotel in the town to check in.

The advantage of rural areas is that the identity check is very loose.Claude made up a story that he and his elder brother had to escape because of the destruction of Zhu Nong's war family. The proprietress easily accepted his rhetoric and sent them a dinner with tears in her eyes.He took the opportunity to inquire about the situation of the chocobo farm from the proprietress, and got the information that the farm was short of manpower, so he decided to try his luck tomorrow.

Claude returned to the room with two dinners. Sephiroth had finished cleaning and was sitting on the bed watching TV.

He handed Sephiroth's fried chocobo eggs with bacon to the other party, took out a piece of rye bread from the basket and sliced ​​it for him, and said lightly, "I'm going out tomorrow."

Sephiroth took the dinner and frowned slightly: "Where are you going?"

"Chocobo Farm, see if they are short of manpower."

"No matter how short they are, they can't recruit child labor." Sephiroth clearly disapproved of his decision.

"I can say that I am 13 years old, and I am already 1.5 meters tall." Claude cut the bacon and replied casually: "Actually, it is very common for children to work in the countryside. When I was a child—"

The voice stopped abruptly.

He almost said something superfluous, and hastily changed his words: "... In the movie I watched, many children in the countryside will help their families with farm work at the age of eight."

Sephiroth expressed doubts about this, but did not insist on objecting, after all, Claude among them was the one responsible for everything.

Claude didn't want to explain this issue in depth, and returned the tableware to the kitchen after Sephiroth finished eating.They didn't have a lot of cash on them, so he had to find a job as soon as possible to maintain the daily expenses of the two of them.

The next day he took the letter of recommendation written by the proprietress to the Chocobo Farm, and with the help of his clerk, he found Beard, the farmer.

The wild bearded middle-aged man scanned the contents of the letter paper, and then looked Claude up and down, as if he was not satisfied with his figure.

"Although we are short of people, the farm is full of manual work. You have to work from early morning to sunset. Can you really move those things?"

Not only can it be moved - Claude thought silently, but did not directly refute Beard.

Knowing that as a child it was not for him to go too far, he marketed himself from another angle: "I raised a lot of chocobos when I was young, and I know how to take care of them, and I know how to hatch chicks with high success rate. Fertilized eggs can be [-]% hatched."

This sentence obviously aroused Beard's interest.The man thought for a moment, and finally nodded: "You can work here for three days first, if you can adapt to this work intensity, there are some hatching eggs for you to try."

"Thank you!"

This job is like sending charcoal in a timely manner, and Claude is a little grateful from the bottom of his heart.

As Claude said, he is very familiar with the process of caring for chocobos.Every day at five o'clock in the morning, I went to the Kisar wild vegetable warehouse to shovel a cart of wild vegetables, filled the chocobo feeding trough in the corral, and then shoveled another cart to the pasture for free-range birds, scattered the wild vegetables as much as possible Open to prevent chocobos from competing for food.It was almost eight o'clock in the morning after all these tasks were completed. He had to go to the vegetable field to help harvest before the temperature rose at noon, and then returned to the corral to clean up—specifically, to sweep away the hay and grass in each corral. Guano, and then replace the breeding chocobo with new hay.

At noon and in the evening, the feeding in the morning was repeated, and the work in the chocobo stable was considered over, and the rest of the time was used by Claude to study hatching eggs.

He made his own egg incubator with heating wires, foam boxes, small electric motors and plastic tubes. He controlled the temperature and humidity of artificial hatching with his rich experience in chocobo breeding, and finally successfully hatched the first batch in the second month. young chicks.

Beard was very surprised by the results of his work, because chocobos raised loosely on the grasslands tend to lay eggs everywhere, and some eggs will be stolen by wild animals such as the Leveli moa, resulting in scattered Hatch rates for chocobos have been low.Since Claude picked up these eggs and hatched them artificially, the number of young chicks in Chocobo Farm has doubled directly. Beard was overjoyed and simply handed over this work to him.

Claude got a good salary from Beard, and rented the room they were living in from the proprietress.The room and board expenses are paid on a monthly basis, and the cleaning service that was originally included was politely declined by him.

He didn't dare to risk letting the proprietress communicate with Sephiroth too much.There are not many residents in the village, as long as one person has seen Sephiroth, the news may be leaked.This also meant that on rest days, he still had to move the clothes and sheets of the two of them downstairs to wash and dry them. Sephiroth couldn't even do these things for him, because the other party couldn't leave the room at a time when other people might see them.

Claude's work made him have to leave early and return late, and the time he could communicate with Sephiroth gradually decreased.He borrowed a lot of books and video materials for Sephiroth, allowing the other party to slowly absorb outside knowledge. After work, he would also take Sephiroth to places far away from the farm to see the scenery.But these did not improve the situation of the teenager, the other party became more and more silent, and finally almost stopped chatting with him actively.

Claude has not been able to dig out the truth of the institute that night from him so far, so he cannot analyze this change.What worries him even more is that the symptoms have been intensifying since Sephiroth's first nightmare, and have developed to the point where it affects his life.

From once or twice at the beginning, the teenager would have varying degrees of convulsions and sleep talking almost every night.However, whenever Cloud asked him what he had dreamed, Sephiroth always said that he did not remember.

Claude felt that Sephiroth was avoiding him deliberately, and tried to remind him a few times, but the tone of the other party's reply to him became very impatient.He had asked Sephiroth not to go out during the day, and although the other party agreed without hesitation, he often went out through the window late at night.

He guessed that Sephiroth had finally ushered in the belated rebellious period, so he thought twice and decided to give him some space.

Children of this age need some privacy, and Claude has learned not to ask about the other party's itinerary as much as possible.Sometimes Sephiroth would take the initiative to report to him because he soiled his clothes-such as killing a Midgar python in the swamp near the farm, or encountering an egg-stealing Levely moa on his walk- Claude didn't blame him either, he just yawned and got up to wash his clothes for him, and then told him to be careful next time.

This kind of life, day after day, filled all of Claude's thoughts.

He bought two retired racing birds with his wages and started his own breeding program; he took the list written by Sephiroth when he was shopping, and borrowed books and purchased things for the other party.Say hello to the auto repair shop in the town, and look at the new accessories from time to time, and calculate whether it is cost-effective to buy a second-hand car or simply assemble one by yourself; use a tape measure to measure Sephiroth's growing height, and help the two buy new ones. Worried that Sephiroth would not have enough nutrition when he grew up, so he borrowed the back kitchen of the hotel to make extra meals in the middle of the night.

It wasn't until the farm started to snow again that Claude realized in a trance that they had lived on this farm for more than a year.

He was 14 years old, and at this age he had just gone to Midgar to participate in Shinra's conscription plan.And Sephiroth turned [-] last month, and looks like he has completely transformed into a young man.

Looking back carefully on the previous four years, Claude felt a little unbelievable.If someone told him before his death that he could live peacefully with Sephiroth, and even made the other party not have the idea of ​​destroying human beings and seizing the planet for four full years, he would think that it must be a fairy tale made up for comfort.

Now they not only live together, he even acts as a guardian, Sephiroth has never been safer for the planet, it is a miracle in another sense.

On a cold morning in December, Claude was rubbing his sleepy eyes and coming out of the bathroom to get ready for work. He accidentally saw Sephiroth sitting on the bed soberly, lost in thought while facing the half-opened quilt.

At that time, Claude hadn't reacted yet, and it wasn't until a few days later that he bumped into Sephiroth washing some small pieces of clothing in the bathroom that he suddenly realized what had happened.

Sephiroth... has grown up.

Claude was stunned for a moment, then immediately exited the bathroom and closed the door for him.

After finishing this series of actions seemingly calmly, Claude suddenly covered his face, and a blush climbed up his cheekbones.

It was very embarrassing.Theoretically, the other party has already passed the age of the first spermatorrhea, but their physical and psychological development speeds do not match. Some places are too fast, and some places can't keep up. As a result, he has never noticed whether Sephiroth has Adult in that sense.

Under normal circumstances, this kind of thing should indeed be guided by a male relative, but Sephiroth's only male relative is him. Objectively, he is three and a half years younger than Sephiroth, and it would be very... strange for him to guide Sephiroth .

……No.It was just too weird.

Claude began to desperately recall what happened to Sephiroth in his previous life.

Sephiroth talks little about his childhood, partly because he discarded all his memories when he died a second time, and partly because the past was so unpleasant for him.The only thing he knows about Sephiroth's youth is Dr. Gast's records, but the records don't mention how they gave little Sephiroth sex education.

What if it never happened?

Claude thinks this is very likely.

Sephiroth finally opened the door and came out. Seeing his reaction, his expression gradually changed from confusion to nervousness: "I—— am I sick?"

Claude was taken aback, then turned to look at him: "Of course not. Why do you think so?"

Sephiroth seemed to be still in self-doubt, hesitatingly said: "But you have never had that kind of Yin—"

"I see." Claude quickly interrupted him, rubbing the center of his brows in pain, "wait for me."

Claude hurried out, asked Beard for leave, and went to the only library in the town to search for materials.

The library in the small town is full of gardening reference books and farmer manuals. After searching for a long time, he found an adolescent education textbook that was suspected to be donated by a local child, and the child's class and name were on it.

Claude roughly scanned the content. The content of the reader was too simple. It only roughly explained what happened to the reproductive system of both sexes, women's menstruation, and men's nocturnal emission. It did not explain how to deal with such things.

Claude started to think about something, such as sex education for Sephiroth with adult videos, but he was not old enough to rent these things, so this route would not work.

Claude's temple throbbed and throbbed, forcing him to bury his face between his arms and rest for a while.

After 5 minutes, he took a deep breath and borrowed the book home.In any case, it is always good to let Sephiroth take a look, and the rest may need him to teach himself.