"And how old are you again, little Emporio?" the strange woman asks, a fond smile on her face as she sets the tea cup down in front of him. Steam rises from the drink, and when he gingerly reaches a hand out to take the handle, the entire cup feels pleasantly warm against his palms.
Emporio's memories of his mother are scant, a bone and a voice and a shadow across his. His frame of reference for "mother" is vague at best, but as she sits across the table, leaning back in her chair and her legs crossed, motherly comes forth first.
Unsettling comes back second the longer he looks her in the eyes, and he feels only slightly guilty as he swallows hard and stares back at his warped reflection in the tea. The ghost room has rules, very simple ones, and up until today no one has ever simply let themselves in.
(It had started like this: the stranger, settling in, and Weather, leaning slightly hunched over the table in a seat that is far too small for someone so tall. Both pairs of eyes landed on him, and his baseball, usually idly passed between his mitt and other hand for lack of anything else to do, slipped out of his hands in shock. The strange woman had greeted him from the table, whole face lighting up as though seeing a friend for the first time in years.)
"...Almost eleven," he finally answers, carefully peering back up at the woman and then back to Weather. He has never been talkative at the best of times, but even now, like this, Emporio almost wishes he would. His dark eyes are focused and when they fall on him his brow is furrowed, not lost in thought so much as hoping the boy has an answer to his own questions. "Umm, where did you get the table and chairs?"
"Oh, these? I brought them in from one of the common rooms. They were going to be thrown out, anyway, so one of the guards was going to let me take it back to my cell. By the way, one of the legs are a little loose, so don't knock into it too much. Do you want any sugar, my dear?"
Which brings him back to the tea in front of him, and he finds himself nodding, hoping that it makes the sickly red color of the tea somewhat more appealing. He flinches instinctively when she reaches for something in her pocket, anticipating an attack or weapon or a strike that never comes and his shoulders drop when he sees a simple pack of playing cards. The woman's hands move with grace, less the precision of a dealer and more a relative setting up a friendly game; one card becomes four to a small pile, and as she spreads them out, he- he swears he did not blink, but there is a sugar bowl and serving spoon just there, as though they'd been part of the table setting the entire time.
She doles it out without asking, and turns to Weather, offering a cup of tea Emporio assumes has already been rejected once with his silence.
"Be careful not to burn your tongue when you taste. I brewed it in the cafeteria only a few minutes ago." The woman brings her own cup to her lips with a smile. The chastising tone has the boy frowning under the shade of his cap and almost grumbling until he brings it up to his face. The aroma is pleasant and smells very strongly of fruit, and it's sweet and unlike anything he's had before until it suddenly burns, and he sets the tea down and tries not to sputter.
She was right , he thinks grumpily to himself, and all polite pretenses are dropped: "Hey, who are you?" His hands still wind around the cup as he sets it down.
"What did I just say? And it's Kaato-just Kaato, please."
Weather says nothing.
From the corner of the room, there's shuffling, and Emporio thinks his heart may leap from his throat until he sees Anasui in the periphery. He must have been here from the beginning, sulking in the corner with the bookcase, nearly obscured from view where Kaato sits. She does not turn back to acknowledge him.
"I tried to offer him a chair," she says nonchalantly, perhaps catching his eyes wandering but never letting her own waver, staring instead down into her own teacup. "He's got a foul mouth, doesn't he? No cure for rudeness, I suppose. Do you like the tea?"
"Ignore him, and he won't bother you. How did you get in here?" Emporio's voice cracks, just a little, and he hates it. Kaato looks up from her tea and cants her head to the side, and there's another smile on her face. It's unnervingly serene, almost pitying, and he swallows uncomfortably.
"I get tired of looking at the same walls every day. I thought it would be nice to take my afternoon tea to a different spot. I didn't know there was a second music room, though. This is cute."
"There isn't one anymore," he states, and after a moment, brings the tea cup to his lips again. Suspicious or not, the aroma is pleasant and even when hot enough to scald his tongue, it's tasty.
(He blows at the tea first this time, before taking another sip.)
"Is that so." She asks for no explanation.
From his corner of the room, Emporio can see Anasui glowering down at a book he's flipping through, always staring down at the pages with some righteous fury without ever seeing a word, like he does when the rest of the world is dead to him.
"Almost eleven, though? You're so small! Do you sneak all the way over from the juvenile detention center just to come?"
"I was born here."
It's a fact, and he says it as such, focusing his gaze back to the stranger as she sets her cup down on its little saucer. Her brow is furrowed now, and there's silence for several painful seconds before she clicks her tongue. "That's a shame. You should be outside."
There's something to the way she says it that has Emporio's stomach twisted in knots, sharp like bone digging into flesh. Maybe wistful, maybe still pitying-he doesn't like it, but he feels as though she understands something all the same.
(Weather Report and Anasui speak louder with their actions most days. He does not know what to make of Kaato's words and the tone of her voice and the way she keeps staring at him the way he supposes a mother might-he doesn't know. He doesn't know.)
"I have a daughter a few years older than you, Emporio. She'll be… mm, sixteen years old? Ahh, yes. Sixteen. My, how time flies. I have not seen her since she was barely six months."
That is news to him, and Emporio's head shoots up. "You have a daughter?"
The warmth that radiates from the smile that follows is too genuine to be a farce.
"Two of them. And a boy, who is barely a young adult, and then another boy-Joubin, my eldest. He brought me this tea, you know." She nod towards the teapot that sits in the middle of the table. "None of my other children come to visit me but him. You're not supposed to receive gifts from visitors, but he smuggled it in anyway."
"Don't the guards check to make sure you don't sneak anything in?"
"I have been here a long time. They trust me."
Emporio supposes he can see why, even as he can't shake the distinct feeling of something being off.
"Are you sure your friend doesn't want anything, Emporio? Tea helps with a sore throat…"
"Oh, Weather? He's fine." The man nods in turn, and Emporio can make out the faint mumbles of a quiet thank you as he bows his head. "He just doesn't have anything interesting to say, so he doesn't like talking."
"Ohhhh, is that it?" Kaato's voice sounds different, almost playful for a moment as she lifts her tea again. "Are you shy around strangers, Mr. Weather Report?"
"Dunno." A shrug, and then: "He doesn't remember anything."
There's a sudden chill to the room, and for the first time, Kaato looks as though she's been caught unawares, pausing with the cup at her lips and setting it down without ever taking a sip.
"Doesn't… remember anything?" Kaato's stare cuts directly through Emporio, goes through him and lands somewhere distant and unreachable. He squirms uncomfortably in his seat until she's looking at Weather with the very same expression.
"He doesn't remember why he's here," the boy supplies quietly. The room feels at once cavernous and claustrophobic, and Anasui does not look his way when he peers over Kaato's shoulder for some sort of backup.
There's suddenly words at Emporio's ear but he does not jump; Weather speaks directly to him, hunched over and voice low.
"What was that? It's very rude to whisper in front of people-"
Another gulp. "He says-"
"I will someday."
Weather's voice is low, still barely audible but with the same sort of quiet conviction bubbling just underneath.
There's another pregnant pause, and finally Kaato's posture, gone rigid at the sudden turn, relaxes. She leans back into her chair again, nods once, twice. To herself, he supposes, as her expression is still miles away.
"You will," she agrees, taking a sip of tea. "You will."
("She murdered some kid and buried him in her backyard," Anasui says, glare focused at the wall instead of down at Emporio. He leans against the piano and it creaks in protest. "Kept telling the press over and over how it was to save her son. Wouldn't budge an inch from that testimony."
He speaks as though he understands, and that always has a chill running up Emporio's spine. "Said she did it out of love."
He never sees Kaato again after that day, and learns secondhand from Anasui about her release. She left a chair for the room and a smile-motherly-that stays lingering in Emporio's mind for days afterwards.)