Title:
Word Count: 354
Characters: Aerith Gainsborough & Tseng
He looked like all the other ones, but yet he felt different.
Aerith peeked around the side of the building. The man was crouched to the ground; he looked startled when she came around the corner, with her big, eight-year-old green eyes and red braid tossed over her shoulder.
"Are you looking for something?" She asked, her hands gesturing to his crouched form.
"Oh…uh. My pen. I dropped my pen."
Aerith dropped to her knees and searched for a few seconds. The man started to say that it wasn't necessary, but then she stood, holding a pen.
"Is this it?" She asked.
The man's mouth hung open, as if he was shocked that there was even a pen involved. He stood and took the pen from her. He placed the pen in his jacket pocket, next to another pen—no doubt the original one that had never been lost.
"Thank you." He said anyway.
Aerith shook her head at him.
"Is something wrong?" He said.
"You're different." She said. "And funny."
The man looked mystified. "Funny? I have many co-workers that would disagree that my name and 'funny' should be in the same sentence."
Aerith laughed, "You're funny because you're too serious about life." She told him.
"Young lady, if I wasn't serious about my job then I wouldn't have one."
"But I wasn't talking about your job—I was talking about life."
The tall man grew silent, his crisp black suit rustled as he shuffled his feet. A young child's eyes shouldn't be so intense.
"Aerith! Aerith! Where did you go?"
"Coming, mama!" Aerith waved to the man and ran off. The man followed her out of the alleyway.
Elmyra looked at the man skeptically. She had never seen this one before. Normally the guards changed every few months, but this one seemed young. She didn't know his name was but she normally would find out eventually.
Besides, Aerith had spoken to this one; she had never done that before. She wondered what could be in store for this fellow.
She nodded to him, he nodded back, and then she led Aerith inside.