2.
Fai avoided Kurogane since then.
Fai tries to annoy Kurogane on their walk home. The mage is smiling his fake smile, but his eyes are vacant and far-away. Sometimes he pauses in the middle of a sentence, trying to figure out just what idiotic remark he was saying, before remembering and continuing. After five minutes of hearing the mage's distracted chatter, Kurogane stops walking. Fai is still in the middle of a word when he notices that the ninja is not walking by his side. He stops too, and they stare at each other.
"Shut up. You're not making sense anymore."
There was brief silence between them before Fai lowers his head. "Okay."
They did not speak the rest of their walk. Luckily, Syaoran and Sakura are home when they arrive. Fai put on his stupid smile and sang off-key while waltzing with the princess all the way to the kitchen so they can make dinner. Mokona follows them, singing the same song more off-key than Fai did (Kurogane never thought that it was possible to be worse than the mage). Syaoran remains sitting on the sofa, his back hunched as he reads different papers. Kurogane decides not to meddle with a busy kid. He took a nap at the bedroom upstairs – at his and the mage's shared bedroom upstairs – and only went down when Sakura called him for dinner.
The dinner table is set already, and they are only waiting for Kurogane. He sits at the only available seat, which is right in front of Fai. They start eating in silence. Fai would usually chatter about the day and annoy Kurogane while they were eating, but tonight he is just eating. Syaoran keeps stealing glances at Fai. After a while, Mokona looks up at Fai and stares for a while before going back to her food. It was so bad that even the princess notices. "Are you alright, Fai-san?"
Fai looks up at her, surprised. "Yes, Sakura-chan, I'm fine. I'm sorry; I was just thinking. Did you find any information about the feathers?"
Syaoran answers for Sakura. "It seems that this place is not magical at all, and there are no weird occurrences anywhere. We still don't know where to start looking." He shakes his head and looks down his plate.
"Well, I also thought it was really weird. I didn't feel any magic in this place, and it's not in chaos either." Fai says.
"Are you sure you're fine, Fai-san?" Sakura asks. Her eyebrows furrows in distrust. Kurogane smirks at that; it seemed like the princess is not going to let the mage change the topic anytime soon.
"I'm fine, princess, really." Fai's cheek twitches once from pulling too hard too long. It is just a little twitch; one that a naïve princess cannot see, but a trained ninja can. "I'm probably just a little tired from my first day in job, but I'm really fine."
"You work in a café, right, Fai?" Mokona asks.
Fai smiles at her. "Yup! The food there is first-rate and expensive. Very rich people eat there. They give pretty high tips, too; I got more than 50 dollars tip today."
"Wow, that's good pay, Fai-mommy!" Mokona claps her hands together and squeals. She turns to Kurogane. "How about Kuro-daddy? How is your work?"
Kurogane glares at the pork bun. He does not want to remember that he should go back tomorrow to tend to brats. "It's a few blocks away. And stop calling me Kuro-daddy, stupid pork bun. I'm not your freaking father."
"Which block, Kurogane-san? I thought you were having trouble getting a job." The kid asks.
"It's the old musty house." He replies. He stuffs more bread in his mouth, wishing the kids would take it as a hint. They did not; stupid brats.
"What's your job there, Kuro-daddy?" The pork bun asks.
Kurogane lowers his voice, hoping the manjuu will not hear him. "Caretaker."
The manjuu with the long ears heard it, though. "Wow! Kuro-daddy is practicing the art of parenthood! I can't imagine Kuro-pin taking care of kids. Poor kids! Kuro-daddy is so grumpy; the children might be so scared! Oh, and Kuro-daddy might love those children more than us, his real children. Kuro-daddy might be grumpy, but he sure loves us in his own …"
Mokona was not able to finish her sentence. She barely had the time to look at the fallen dining chair before hopping off to escape from a raging ninja. Syaoran is torn between hiding his giggles and convincing the ninja to stop chasing Mokona. After a while, Kurogane catches Mokona and strangles her to half death. Both kids are then seriously trying to stop Kurogane until he let her go. Fai never spoke a word.
After dinner, the mage sends everyone to bed. From the bedroom, Kurogane can hear him fixing the mess they made during their chase. The noise stops, and the clock said 11:30 with no mage at the other bed in their shared bedroom. Kurogane drifts to sleep.
When Kurogane wakes up, Fai is already sitting at a stool in front of the dining table and staring at the fading stars out the window. A kettle is screaming with boiling water, but the mage does not notice and resumes staring. The mage is wearing the far-away look he has been wearing last night during dinner and had a hand tucked under his chin. He did not even notice Kurogane enter the kitchen. Kurogane stared at Fai for a while before the mage even noticed. When he did, Fai stared for a split second before putting on his fake smile. Very slow reflexes for today.
"Good morning, Kuro-pii. What time are you going to work?" Fai asks. His voice is thick.
Kurogane decides to ride along with the mage and not question anything as of the moment. "Six." He replies. He takes the seat in front of the mage.
Fai gets up. "I haven't started making breakfast. You might want to drink coffee or take a bath first. I'm already boiling water." He heads to the kitchen and notices the kettle for the first time. "Oh." He turns it off. The click that the stove made echoed in their silent apartment.
"Tea or coffee?" The mage's silent voice floats from the kitchen.
"Coffee."
Fai gives him a cup of coffee and a sachet of creamer and sugar on the side. Kurogane does not see the mage again until the sun is peaking from the mountains and the manjuu and the kid came down from their room. Fai then serves breakfast – toasted bread, fried eggs and something sweet that Kurogane would never eat – and both of them plus the manjuu eats, since both are going to work and the manjuu just loves to eat. Syaoran waits for the princess so they can eat together. No one really speaks. Fai is still washing the dishes when the ninja decides to go to the orphanage already.
He finds both Louie, Angel, and the teenage girls who were helping Angel yesterday eating breakfast.
"Good morning Mr. Kurogane! Have you eaten breakfast?" Louie greets him. Kurogane nods. Louie looks at him for a while, and then summons him to take the seat in front of Louie. "The children wake up at 8, so I guess you don't really have to report to work this early everyday."
Kurogane nods. He is fine with that.
"Well, if you have eaten breakfast, maybe you'd like to start with your job. There are some busted lights in the children's rooms, but you cannot replace them yet since the kids are still sleeping. Some doors are squeaky, and so is the gate, so maybe you could apply oil in them. The fence around the playground needs some repair, too. There are hammers and nails at the tool shed…"
Angel giggles. Everyone turns to her direction. "Come on, Louie, he just arrived. Maybe you could give him some rest first."
"No, it's fine." Kurogane says as he gets up from the table. "It's better to start work early." He leaves the room while the others continue eating.
The playground surprised him. He knew the orphanage is short of funds, but he did not expect to see a rundown playground as this. There are six swings, but two of them are hanging on only one hinge. The other ones are rusty, they would probably squeak if used. The monkey bar is rusty, too. From a distance, Kurogane can see the splotches of darker shades of the bars' paint; they are rusty and uneven and Kurogane knows that at least one of the kids has a blistered hand. The monkey bar is even missing two bars. There are high grasses on the sides, and it definitely needs mowing. And what kind of fence is that? He asks in his mind. The fence is not safe, especially with jagged nails coming out of it. He would not be surprised to know that some brat had cut himself because of those protruding nails.
He approaches the tool shed. The door's hinges are rusty and creaky. Chunks of wood already fell from the door, leaving holes. He opens it and a rusty lawn mower greets him. Kurogane pushes it aside and looks for nails and a hammer. He finds them and decides that the hammer that he asked the manjuu to keep would be much more useful and efficient than the orphanage's stock. Too bad, he did not take nails with him from the last world.
He is leaving the orphanage to get the hammer from the manjuu when he comes across one of the twins in the dark hallway. The twin stares at him. "Hey." He greets the twin. "What are you doing here?"
"Yuui had a nightmare. I'm getting a glass of water." The twin says. Kurogane deduces him as Fai. Fai stares at him for a while before walking to the direction of the dining room. Kurogane has seen that stare. The mage gives that stare whenever he is studying someone else when that someone is not looking.
He gets the hammer from Mokona after he almost strangles her to death again (The manjuu begged him to forgive the kid who pissed him off and not beat the kid with a hammer. He had to teach her a lesson, of course). When he gets back to the orphanage, he finds the twins at the playground. Each occupies a swing. They are talking in hushed voices, and when they see Kurogane, they stop talking completely and just stare at him using the same stare that the mage has.
"It's fine." Kurogane says. "I won't listen to what you're talking about." He starts fixing the fence. For a while, the twins just watched Kurogane. The regular beats of Kurogane's hammer fill the air. Soon, the twins' voices join the hammer. Their voices are airy, just like a certain mage he knows. He cannot decide if he should be amazed or horrified that the kid-version of the mage is so much like him, whichever among the twins is like Fai.
"Hello." A lullaby voice joins. Kurogane recognizes it as Louie's voice. The twins stop talking. Kurogane can hear the tension in the air. He can almost see the twins looking at Louie the same way the Fai child looked at him during their meeting in the hallway. He continues pulling a bent, protruding rusty nail from the fence. Neither twin spoke.
"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Louie asks the kids. The twins continue their silence and Kurogane continues pulling the nail. Damn stupid nail, get off. "What were you talking about?" Louie continues asking the twins. Kurogane hears a swing creak; he pictures Louie sitting on a swing beside a twin. He finally pulls the nail out of the fence and reaches to the orphanage's stock of nails.
"Nothing, sir." A twin finally answers. Kurogane rummages through the toolbox to find an acceptable nail. So far, no such nail has shown itself. All the nails are bent and rusty.
"You know, it's alright to talk to me about how you feel. You must be sad about what happened to your parents. Fai, Yuui, you can cry on us, okay? I know that…"
"We're fine, Mr. Louie." A twin cuts Louie. The mage uses that tone when he wants someone to back off.
"Please don't be bothered. We're coping fine." The twin who first answered adds.
There was silence again. Kurogane realizes that somewhere in the conversation, he has stopped looking for a nail. He picks the toolbox up and digs through it. The shuffle he makes is the only noise heard in the playground. Somewhere, a car honks loudly.
"Okay, if you say so." Louie says. Kurogane hears the swing creak again. "Well, breakfast is ready." Kurogane hears other swings creak.
"Mr. Kurogane" Louie calls to him. "Please come inside for a while. I forgot to mention this a while ago, but one of your jobs is waking up the kids. So… Shall we get in?"
Kurogane turns to the swing area and finds Louie standing alone. The twins are already by the doorway, their hands clasped. They look back at Kurogane and Louie once, their stares studying and mistrusting, before entering the dark hallway. Louie is starting his way to the dark hallway, too. Kurogane drops his hammer and follows.
The hallway is dark and empty, each sound bouncing off the walls. Each footstep echoes; each word bounces off the walls. From afar, the twins hold hands and swing them, their muffled words sharp against the hallway's silence.
"I'm not hungry." Says one.
"You'll be hungry later." Kurogane assumes it is the other twin. This voice is deeper and coarser, while the other is lighter and finer.
"I want to sleep. Don't you?" The owner seemed tired, but his voice remains pure, innocent and singsong. Kurogane can imagine the voice singing.
"The sun's up. And you can't sleep anyway. It is best if we eat now, too. Unless…" The other twin replies. This twin is fatigued. Kurogane recognizes him as the one twin he met a while ago – the Fai brat.
The other twin silently concedes. They turn left to the dining hall.
Up ahead is the stairway. Kurogane had been there yesterday, but he did not see who owns which rooms. Louie went up the stairway first. It is dark (Kurogane had not replaced the bulb yet), musty and windowless, and each step produces a squeaky creak from the wood steps. The stairway railing is rusty. Kurogane touches it and it feels uneven; he takes his hands off the railing to see black paint peeling. Louie waits for him at the top of the stairway. When he steps at the solid wood floor of the second floor, Louie turns left to the door nearest the stairs. The solitary light bulb gives off an artificial glow insignificant to the sun's natural rays. Kurogane finds a switch at the wall to his right. He flicks it and the bulb turns off.
"These are the children's rooms. Two or three share in one room." Louie stops for a while, at a loss of anything to say. "So, there. Good luck waking them up." Somehow, that last sentence gives off a warning that Kurogane does not like. He watches Louie creep downstairs, hands on both the railings and the walls. Louie looks like an old man needing assistance to go downstairs. Kurogane does not offer; not after Louie gave him a warning of sorts. He turns to the nearest door and wonders why Louie said that.
He approaches the door and opens it to see three young girl brats – Chii one of them. He pounds on the wall. "Hey, hey, wake up, time for breakfast." He says. No one stirs.
This is going to be a long day.