Hello, everyone!
It's been quite a while since I last updated this. In fact, it's almost time for my next set of finals for the new year. It's been almost a year since my last update… oh well. I've gotten a lot better at writing and the chapters will be a lot longer. So, I present you, chapter four!
Chapter 4
"Beat, run!" the tall boy with messy silver hair exclaimed. He sprinted away with a few fresh baked loaves of bread in his hand.
"Hold on, Retto, wait for me!" a younger boy trailed as fast as he could behind the other one. He, too, held as many loaves of bread as he could carry. The angry shopkeeper ran out of her little bakery with a broom held over her head.
"Hey, you, where are you going with my bread?!" she shouted at them. She lowered the broom. "It's those brats again! Maybe I should poison the dough next time," she muttered angrily. The shopkeeper went back inside.
The older boy, Retto, jumped down from the ledge where he and the little boy, Beat, hid. Beat sighed in relief. "Oh, boy, that was a close one, Retto!" he said in a relieved tone.
"Nah, that was easy!" Retto closed his eyes, smiled, and held his head up high in a cocky manner.
"Easy? Geez, if that's what you call easy, I'd hate to see hard," the Beat said. Retto let out a laugh.
"Don't worry. Come on, let's deliver the bread. I'm sure everybody's getting hungry," Retto said as he walked away. Beat ran straight after him.
"Yeah, okay, but I don't like the rats down there…" Beat said in a quieter tone.
"Come on, what do you expect? I mean, they live in the sewers. There's bound to be a rat or two!" Retto exclaimed as he walked a few steps ahead of Beat. "And, plus, we're carrying fresh-baked bread. You don't have to be a rat to want a bite of this!"
"Well, what if we do if we get attacked?" Beat asked, a little shaken. They stopped walking.
"Don't let a few rats get you all freaked out. Hey, I took care of them last time, didn't I?" Retto reassured him.
"Yeah… I guess," Beat said quietly.
"Besides, the people lucky enough to live in houses aren't the ones who need us to take bread to them." They passed many locals around them. Retto and Beat knew that they don't even give a second thought about them.
Ritardando was a small town, right next to the sea. Retto and Beat both live there as orphans, raised by the church priest. He taught Retto and Beat the basic things they need to know. Now, the two of them live underground in a forgotten corner of town. They gave it a name; The Hideout.
When they reached the sewers, Retto gave Beat a few pointers on fighting the rats. They finally made it to the main room when a giant rat with red eyes was about to attack. "Be careful, Beat, they're after the bread!" Retto said while tightly gripping the bread in his arms.
"We've got people waiting for this and we don't have enough to give any of it to you!" Beat shouted at the rat. He, too, clutched the bread tightly. They set it down and pulled out their weapons; Retto with his brown and silver sword and Beat with his hammer gun.
After what seemed like forever, the giant rat started to glow a brilliant white and disappeared. They picked up the bread and passed it around to the other orphans around them. "Thank you, so much!" a little girl mentioned as she took the loaves and ran away with them to share with the others.
"You bet! Don't eat it all at once!" Retto exclaimed happily as he and Beat held one loaf per person. Beat waved goodbye.
"Hey, Retto, why is bread so expensive anyway? If it was a little cheaper, we wouldn't have to steal it for people," Beat asked him. "Do you think the baker lady is just being greedy?"
"Well, you know, Beat, it's not actually the baker lady's fault," Retto explained.
"Huh, what do you mean?" Beat was confused.
"The reason the bread is so expensive is the high taxes on it," Retto said while pointing his finger so close to Beat's face that he went cross-eyed. "It's not just bread, either. In Ritardando, just about everything you need for everyday life has high taxes on it. That's why there's a lot of kids out there who can't get a decent meal to eat these days," Retto said.
"And that's why they need us to help them, right?" Beat asked.
"Yeah, the only thing that's not taxed is mineral powder," Retto told him, thinking back to the little shop in Ritardando that sold medicine.
"Oh, I see. So, that's why anybody can get it, because it's so cheap. I guess the Count of Forte isn't really that bad after all. I mean, at least he keeps the tax on medicine cheap." Retto's dark blue eyes narrowed in thought. "Besides, you and I have the bread problem pretty much taken care of," Beat broke his thoughts.
"Hey, don't get cocky. Be careful what you say, Beat," Retto scolded him. Beat covered his hand over his mouth. "Come on, let's hurry up and drop off the rest. Then, it's time for us to eat." With that, he walked off. Beat ran behind him in a hurry.
Polka:
"Polka, dear, what's wrong? You've been sitting in your room all day," Polka's mother, Solfege wondered. She stopped at her door, which was shut. She leaned in her head to see if she could hear anything. "Oh, what am I going to do with you?" she murmured quietly to herself. "I guess what happened is still bothering her. Poor thing; I should just stop her from going to Ritardando," Solfege said as she walked away from the door. "Whenever she goes there, she ends up getting hurt." She paused before saying, "Polka, help me pick some flowers later, okay?"
There was no response.
Retto and Beat:
Retto and Beat ate half their loaves of bread by the time they got back to the hideout. Beat stood while he hungrily bit into the warm, fresh, honey-covered bread. Retto sat on a crate as they ate their meal in silence. Finally, Beat broke the silence. "Hey, Retto, did you notice that magician girl from yesterday wasn't around today?"
"Yeah, you're right," Retto said.
"Hmm, I guess I should've taken a picture of her," Beat said with his mouth half full.
"Are you still messing around with that stuff? You need to look at things with your own two eyes," Retto said. "You'd see things a whole lot clearer if you weren't always lookin' at them through bent glass." Beat looked offended.
"That's not what photography's about at all, Retto!" Beat snapped back. "And another thing: it isn't called 'bent glass,' it's called a lens," Beat turned away angrily as he munched on the rest of his bread.
"Still, you have to feel sorry for that girl. I guess she won't be around for much longer," Retto said. Beat turned back to him, wide eyed.
"What, she won't? What are you talking about?" Beat exclaimed.
"Don't you know anything?" Retto snapped. "That girl was able to use magic, and that means she must be sick with some kind of incurable illness," Retto said.
"And it's always fatal?" Beat asked.
"That's right, yeah. Only people who are gonna die soon are able to use magic like that," Retto said.
"Oh, I didn't know that. Well, I guess being able to use magic isn't that great after all."
"No, it's not. You can't use magic powers unless you're really sick. This world's pretty messed up."
"I get it; that's why no one in town wanted to get near her yesterday. They didn't want to catch her illness, too," Beat realized, the pieces finally coming together.
"Yeah, that's right. But the disease isn't actually contagious," Retto explained. "That's just a rumor somebody started."
"A rumor?"
"Yeah, it's weird. Most of the time, people really don't trust each other. But when it comes to something that they think might hurt them, they'll believe just about anything they hear. And they'll ignore almost anything else that doesn't help them directly," Retto told Beat as Retto crossed one leg on top of the other.
"I guess…" Beat said sadly.
"As long as they have food on their table, they don't care if other people out there are starving."
"And that's why we steal bread to bring them, right?" Beat exclaimed as most of his loaf was already gone. Retto's eyes narrowed in thought again. They widened as he quickly stood up.
"Okay, Beat, we leave first thing in the morning!" he exclaimed. Beat was so shocked, he turned around and dropped his bread.
"What?!"
That is all for this chapter, stick around for more! I'll have more up soon, I promise!
~Tenuto07
