Flowers
May 1st 2018
by Elise the Writing Desk
for Moon Waltz
Lately there's been this boy with red hood coming to the shop. He'd go up the hill with a bouquet of white lilies. During the short time of his visits he would ask this and that, and he'd try to not give away too much.
"Is it for your girlfriend?" he asked, making the boy laugh.
"Nah! I won't bring flowers for my girlfriend if I have one."
"What about badges? Flower badges," he showed the badges in the showcase. "They're high quality. I'm sure you'll get a girlfriend if you give a girl this."
These mundane days and empty laughter had been going on for several weeks after moving into this town.
Well, it's not like they would be staying here for too long. They're just…waiting. It's part of the job, supposedly.
He'd act like a florist, his teacher would disappear for hours and returned for dinner. It's been like this for weeks.
"Sir," he says during yet another stale evening, "…When will I ever go on my own mission?"
The God of Death glances at him. At a glance he has a mild and gentle look, but he can see those eyes are dead, as is the soul inside. He holds back a shiver; it's really something of a big deal for him to have those eyes on him.
Even if for no more than a second.
"Do you really want to test out your skill as soon as you can?"
"Yes!"
"I see. You think you're capable. I think so too!" he sits up from the lounge and smiles to himself. The apprentice feels his heart aflutter, hanging onto his every words, hoping those eyes will finally look at him again.
He needs to prove himself to this man. More than anything.
"But I don't think you'll carry it out as you'd expect it. You have a high chance to succeed, sure, but you don't have enough finesse worthy of any note." The dark-haired man stands up, pocketing his hands.
"Then, what should I do to have finesse?" the apprentice asks, slightly desperate, and hating himself for letting it out in his tone.
The God of Death hums, looking up at the ceilings.
"Lock the shop," he says, and nods to the young man. "Let's take a bit of walk."
~.X.~
He can't help but feel slightly giddy; he can sense the man's gaze on him as he is locking the door of their temporary flower shop.
"You seem to really like flowers." The God of Death says, "You're also good at taking care of them."
He turns, his heart flutters. Is the Reaper trying to acknowledge that he is good at something? So flowers are suitable for him?
But the man says nothing more, and the apprentice can't help but feel his heart slightly sinking as they began to thread the concrete path, up to the hill.
They haven't been in this town for too long, but it's got mediocre crowd. The path up ahead seems lonely, though. The evening air is refreshingly cold, a mild sign of autumn seeping in.
He follows behind the shadows of the God of Death, his gaze not missing anything, not even the slight sway of his hair brushed by the gentle late August wind.
That man. He's just alive, and yet he looks like a graceful flower in a dark sahara.
As an apprentice, he can't help but re-imagine the memories of that murder. The murder that took his father's life. It was so beautiful. It was like watching a gale slashing through a fully bloom rose garden, scattering the red petals into the darkness.
He wishes to become like that. Perhaps then, someone would look at him the same way he is gazing at the Reaper.
"I guess you have a point." They stop before a cemetery gate, the Reaper does not turn to look at him, but his hand throws him a piece of paper. "In order to have finesse, you need to sharpen it with experiences."
The apprentice reads the paper. It is a short article announcement of a male. This man is humble and was just in the news due to a large inheritance of one of the most treasured national building in the town. A journalist.
"You're to find that man and kill him."
The apprentice turns the paper back and forth, not finding anything else but the short newspaper article.
"It should be pretty easy for you, if you've learned from me well. I've even brought you to your clue." The man nods to the cemetery.
This is it. He shouldn't complain; he asked for this. This is his first shot. Perhaps if he can pull his off…then…
"Got it." He smiles brightly and begins to pace to the cemetery.
He can't feel any gaze on him. He'll make sure to succeed, so that those gaze are on him again.
~.X.~
The work of an assassin is not just simply killing. There are ways the client wants their target to go. Sometimes they want their victim to be seen as if experiencing an accident, or committing suicide, or just simply thrown into the ocean, all cuffed.
But the most important skill is information gathering, without opening your own cards. It's inevitable to fake your identity. You don't want baggage weighing you down when moving onto the next job. Clients more often than not, does not reveal much of themselves when pointing the target, because if the assassin knows how much a client knows of the victim, they can know who the client is, and can very well use this information as blackmail.
This client is quite smart, to be honest. It's not easy to conjecture a person who just gives a piece of a newspaper article.
But this target is a bit peculiar, his name is too common; Harry Anderson. In this town, there are at least 47 man with the same name. 17 of them are journalists in different news company.
"You have only three days." The Reaper reminded him last night.
He had gone through the cemetery for clues. It was related to inheritance of a national treasure, so the deceased's name should be quite public. And he did found a particular cemetery filled with flowers and even large bouquets from big companies and institutions.
The next day he opens the flower shop, he checks the list of his customer's orders. He can't help but feel the thrills; the God of Death had been planning this so meticulously, even the fact that they're under the cover of a flower shop is also part of the plan!
What a brilliant man.
"Hello!" the usual boy with red hood comes in. "Can I ask for Queen of the Night?"
"Thank you for always coming to our shop." The Reaper greets the young customer, his smile is refreshing and gentle. "If you don't mind us asking, who are you buying those flowers for?"
"I mind." The boy grins widely. "So I'm not telling!"
The apprentice feigns a laughter as he tends to the order. His teacher is just pretending to be busy with the flowers, until the boy finally leaves the shop.
"Sir," he slowly begins, "Will it be alright if I ask you to take over the shop for a short while?" he asks, taking a Barret and a muffler from the coat rack. He feels his heart fluttering again when the man nonchalantly smiles without looking at him.
"Sure. Come back soon."
~.X.~
There is a reason why people portray God as a magnificent being, and a frightening entity.
They feel embraced by loving an entity that is omnipotent. That knows things predeterminedly, from the beginning to the things that has not happened, and to the end of everything. Such entity is frightening. It's like playing chess, and your opponent can see your every moves, but you can't see theirs.
And he, an apprentice, is a mere pawn to the God of Death.
Is that man even human?
How is he setting up everything as if things are part of a plan? As if every single thing happening around that man is leading up to a person's death…
Just like how a folktale Reaper doing their job to reap a soul.
Them, moving to this city, opening this flower shop, that cemetery, the national library, and the red hooded boy.
It feels like they have arrived to deliver death accordingly, in a predetermined fate.
And he's a pawn—a single silk thread in the middle of the hundreds of threads being weaved by the man that holds the title of God of Death to create a single robe.
The boy, not even older than him, is in fact a journalist in a news company, working for the teens column.
He is the Harry Anderson. The boy diligently delivering flowers to his grand mother's tomb, the person who gifted him the town's library as an inheritance.
The apprentice can't help but feel torn about this.
That boy…is somewhat like him, isn't it? He knows, had he stayed in the mansion after his father's assassination, he'll just become the next target. Everyone looks down on the existence of a child that holds higher power. They think that a child shouldn't be holding such power.
Everyone acts like children are the most important thing and are to be protected, but in reality, adults don't mind tossing off some of them that is in their way.
Because they're children 'they won't understand', or 'they don't know what they're doing'.
They won't really mind going as far as murder, especially if it's a child; they're helpless and weak, and adults can gang up and shun them, making them out as a liar.
That would be what he is, if not for the God of Death taking him in as an apprentice.
And that fate, is what he is about to deliver to Harry Anderson. A fate he happened to dodge.
And this mission…is a planned irony by his teacher.
"How would you want me to carry out the plan, sir?" he asked during dinner.
The Reaper pulls out a special gun; it's one from the police department of this town.
The man needs to say nothing, it's his job as an apprentice to understand.
The assassination of Harry Anderson was not simply just over some inheritance; it's also a political manipulation.
The Anderson family in the Police Enforcement, and there's also the Anderson family from a consulting company. The ones from the company wishes to take over the library, and putting the ones from the police department to blame.
Adults are gross.
Gross, gross, gross.
They look at children as if they're tools to use, pawns to toss and sacrifice, a hindrance.
The apprentice takes the revolver and realizes;
Ah.
That's the same with him.
Isn't that the same way his teacher has been treating him, all this time?
No, that can't be. That's ridiculous. The Reaper is not like adults, he is different.
Yeah. The Reaper is different.
~.X.~
This is just his first murder and he's getting all nervous about it. There are so many conflicts going through his mind. He knows that his teacher will know if he messed up somehow.
He needs to think about all this.
More than what the teacher wants, is it not more important, what he wants?
He gazes at the dried rose in his hand, a memento of his father's life taken by the God of Death.
The smell is sweet and iron—irony. He snorts at his own pun and closes his eyes. Their flat in the flower shop is so tranquil at night. It's such a nice weather to just sleep, but he just can't, he's been trained to be on alert at all time, even when falling asleep.
But being alert is not what he feels; he's just restless.
"Sir," he calls from his sleeping bag. The man in the lounge merely hums. "After this mission…what's next?"
"We'll move, of course."
"What else am I going to do until I can become like you?"
He hears a chuckle.
"You'll never become like me."
He's young. At that time, it feels like a mockery. Perhaps the man meant it as a mockery as well.
But at that time, without anywhere else to go, nothing else he had on him, all he wanted was to become like his teacher and just have the man validates his existence.
He was young. Were he older and wiser, he could've interpreted those words better, or in a more positive sense.
But at that time…it was like a curse.
It sounded more like; "You'll never be good enough."
It sounded more like; "You'll never get my acknowledgement. I know you won't ever be good enough for that."
It was a rejection of everything he was. Denying him of all he wanted.
~.X.~
"Thank you for your patronage, come again!" he waves at the red-hooded boy, who carries a handful of hydrangea.
Harry Anderson skips up to the hill, cheerfully.
It had been quite rowdy back home, with all his relatives coming in trying to talk to him about the library, and then there's also the teens column in his news company.
It's fun, but it's a part time job, and everyone treats the teens column as a plaything; everyone who works in the teens column are treated as if they're never going to become real journalists.
He missed his grandma, a lot. She always listened and looked at him properly.
Without even realizing, he felt his steps going faster that he knocked a pebble and fell, dropping the bushels of flowers.
He quickly got to his feet and gathered what he dropped, finding some other stuff on the ground. But before he could examine it, the bell tower rang, signing that it's going to be noon, soon. He shoved into his jacket the things he couldn't hold by hand, and continued his dash.
It's a Sunday, so he could see more people around, with family, bringing flowers, or just coming alone.
He finally saw the cemetery gate when he noticed a police officer was standing before the gate.
"Ah!" Harry beamed brightly. "Uncle Joseph!" he greeted him. "Are you here to visit granny too?"
The man laughed. "No, silly, I'm here for you!"
Harry's smile froze.
A loud bang was heard in a delayed reaction. The boy stood his ground, bullet went through him perfectly. He was just so startled and in disbelief, he couldn't even hear the gasps and screams around him as his uncle smirked and faded into the darkness.
But the only thing he remembered was this:
That was not his uncle.
~.X.~
"In the next news, Harry Anderson, the young journalist who inherited the town's library from the late mayor has survived the shooting and finally came through. However, there's even more shocking fact, he's saying that his uncle, Joseph Anderson, Chief of Police, was not the one who shot him. This had became an outrageous and controversial statement, yet aligning with the alibi…"
Slender fingers turned off the radio, before returning to the wheels.
The God of Death said nothing, merely driving with his gaze on the road.
His apprentice hummed. "You failed."
"It seems so." Was all the older man said.
The silence was a mutual understanding.
The younger man lifted his newspaper and pretended to read.
Harry Anderson (15), survived a point-blank shot. The shooter was at first identified as his own uncle, Joseph Anderson, and as of the writing of this article, had been arrested in the county jail. However, as the boy came to consciousness, Harry Anderson refuted the claim and stated that the shooter was not in fact, his uncle. The young boy had miraculously survived the shot due to the bullet not shooting into any fatal organs, deflected by a flower badge in his jacket. Police Department had begun investigating their personnel after his statement…(continue to page 43)
There was a mutual understanding.
The apprentice had made the God of Death failed his mission for the first time. But the older man wouldn't admit it to his face.
And that's alright.
That man wouldn't look at him properly. He's only a tool, just like every adults would treat a child.
So the apprentice acted doubtful on last minutes, after slipping the flower badge into the boy's bouquet.
The Reaper said nothing, no encouragement, not even a mockery, and the apprentice finally knew the truth.
The Reaper said he's going to finish the job himself, and the apprentice drowned.
Drowned into disappointment and darkness.
That man, would never give him the time of the day; that man would never look at him properly.
If only the God of Death would say something that time…he would kill Harry Anderson and he wouldn't fail, he knew this. But the God of Death didn't even spare him a glance as he left the flower shop.
That man would only see him as a tool. And at that time, he was a tool that was not working properly, and the Reaper thought 'Oh well'.
Well, it had come to this. He had left his everything to follow this man, only to find out that he's a mere tool. Not even worth a glance.
The God of Death's just the same as his father, his family, and Harry Anderson's family. Everyone's the same.
So, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing if he also treated his teacher the same way.
The next town they arrived to, they found a bridge.
As the God of Death went off to find their next hideout, he took a walk along the bridge and stared at the moon reflected on the river.
The apprentice stared at the dried rose and gave it one last kiss. A good bye, for the longing of acknowledgement. Perhaps he could never become like that man, perhaps that man would never saw him as someone good enough to be looked at, but he could still learn to kill beautifully. He know he could, if he learn enough.
He's going to use that man as a tool. He'll reap every bit of knowledge and skills taught by the God of Death.
And then, undeniably, he'll reap that title for himself.
And when that time comes, it would be too late to finally look at him properly.
He tossed the dried rose into the river. The tide was gentle, but the dried petals had been scattered; the stem slowly disappearing into the darkness.
Along with his heart.
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