CHAPTER 7
Horo fumbled helplessly with the keys in his hands as the small figure beside him swayed precariously.
"Hold on, Ren. Just one more minute," he spoke quickly, stressed, as the right key finally slipped its way into the lock. Horo turned it, his actions ten times slower thanks to his panicked clumsiness. When he finally pushed the door open, Ren staggered past him hastily. He barely got a few steps inside before he fell to his hands and knees on the floor, legs giving out beneath him. Horo followed and dropped beside him, moving to touch his shoulder for comfort, but thinking better of it at the last moment. "Are you alright? How do you feel?"
Ren shook his head desperately, gasping for every strained breath he took, body quivering hopelessly. He retched, sweat beading on his forehead, and Horo watched the fries he had just eaten appear in reverse.
With more than a little persuasion, and a lot of effort, Horo managed to get Ren into the bathroom, where he hung his head over the toilet, still retching convulsively. Horo hovered beside him with concern, not really knowing how he should be supporting him. When relief finally came, Ren's face was pasty and his eyes were red and sore-looking. Horo offered him a damp cloth with which to wash himself, and forced a glass of water between his quivering fingers. He sat Ren down on the sofa and begrudgingly began cleaning the floor by the front door.
"What do you think caused that?" Horo asked aloud, washing his hands in the kitchen sink after the job was done.
"… I don't know," came Ren's quiet reply.
Horo shook the excess water from his hands, grabbed a cloth and returned to the living room. "I'm gonna call Faust and let him know what happened, okay? He might be able to shed some light on the situation." Rubbing his hands dry, he stepped into the room and saw Ren was lying down, shaking timidly upon the sofa. Horo sighed with pity and gently placed over him the blanket that usually hung on the back of the chair. Horo remained for a moment, watching Ren's pink eyes opening and closing slowly with each heavy breath. His honey-hued skin seemed translucent, the peach of his lips quivering as his teeth chattered behind them. Horo picked up the telephone and, without hesitation, he dialled the number of Faust's clinic.
After a few rings, Eliza answered, her soft voice ringing out serenely as she recited her usual formal greeting.
"Hey, Eliza. It's Horokeu. Listen, I need to speak to Faust. It's kind of urgent."
"Johann? He's just finishing up with a patient, I'll patch you right through," Eliza said, asking no more questions, no doubt hearing the worry in Horo's voice. "Just hold for a moment, if you could."
"Okay, thanks," Horo clutched the handset close to his ear, cloth still held tightly in his other hand. He listened to the silence at the end of the line, watching Ren intently. He looked even frailer now than when they had first met, and an odd feeling of concern washed over him. He chewed furiously at his bottom lip as he waited for Faust to pick up.
"Hello, Horokeu?" came the eventual relief of Faust's fatherly tones.
"Hey, sorry to bother you," Horo apologised. The clinic was always busy during the early evening.
"You should know not to worry about it. Now tell me, what seems to be the problem? Eliza seemed quite worried."
Horo rang the cloth through his right hand tirelessly as he explained the situation to the doctor. While he was talking, he watched Ren's breathing steady, and his eyes begin to focus with each mention of his name. As Horo's conversation drew to an end, Ren's golden eyes were set on him intently, as though absorbing his every word.
"Okay. Thanks, Faust. Yeah, I'll bring him by tomorrow. Thanks again. Good night." Horo turned his back to Ren as he placed the receiver on its stand just beside him. He took a pause, before turning back with one word on his lips: "Malnourishment." He looked at Ren questioningly as he spoke, aware of how his worried anger showed through his words. He watched Ren recoil a little and his chin disappear beneath the corner of the blanket as he said again, "Malnourishment… what the hell, Ren?"
He could see how his hostility was affecting Ren, but the boiling in his veins and the knot in his stomach were not going to let him stay calm. He threw down the cloth on to the floor with exasperation. "You owe me some answers this time. Tell me, what the hell is going on with you?"
Ren's eyes shimmered in response, the blanket creeping ever upward until he was barely peeping over the top of it. The delicate bump that was his nose poked gently at the material, the space around it rising and falling with each small breath. Horo closed his eyes and tried to dissipate his anger, realising he had scared him.
"Listen…" he spoke softly now, with conscious effort. "I'm not mad. I'm just… I'm worried, okay? I think I've seen the worst and then you spring this on me. I just want to know what's happened to you, so I can at least try to help. You're very ill, and I need to know why. Please, talk to me."
Ren blinked up at him, through strands of violet hair falling delicately upon his eyelashes. For a moment, neither of them said a word. Horo sat down beside him, cross-legged on the floor, waiting for Ren's response. A few tense seconds later, a muffled sound and a movement of the blanket hinted that he was trying to talk. Horo smiled gently, and with a soft tug, teased the blanket away from Ren's face.
"Try again."
Ren appeared frozen, hardly blinking. His lips moved silently a few times before the word finally formed. "Grigori…"
Horo waited, to see if Ren would continue uninvited. The blank stare on Ren's face said that he wouldn't. "Grigori…" Horo urged. "What is that?"
"They're people. The people who take care of me," Ren said, carefully. The glistening pools that were his eyes stared, wide as saucers, across at Horo. His body still trembled lightly, and every drop of colour remained absent from his face as he spoke, barely whispering.
Horo frowned, shifting uneasily. "They take care of you? Where are they?"
"They're not always there. They visit me, in the Sanctuary…" Ren closed his eyes, burying his face further into the pillow on which he lay.
"Wait, the Sanctuary?" Horo questioned.
Ren nodded slowly. "You visited me there too. But you shouldn't have been there," Ren paused for a moment. His eyebrows knitted and he shook his head. "No, definitely not."
"You're not talking about that old factory are you? The place I found you in?" Horo felt his stomach turn with the sudden dread of knowing.
"Yes, the Sanctuary," Ren nodded, eyes still closed fast. His voice had once again acquired a dreamlike quality, wistful yet formal. "My home."
"You live there?" Horo exclaimed, watching Ren recoil at the sudden volume of his voice. He steadied himself again, apologising. "How… how do you live there?" He shook his head, in astonishment. The large room he had seen was just a derelict factory, there were no amenities, certainly no living space to speak of.
"I don't live upstairs. That place is for worship only," Ren's eyes were wide again, startled by Horo's outburst. "I live downstairs."
"Worship? What do you mean?"
"That's where we worship Him," Ren's small shoulders jerked in a delicate shrug. "What else would we do?"
"Him?"
"Our God in Heaven. Our saviour," Ren said, a half smile passing across his lips. The first smile he had seen, Horo marvelled, though he had not expected it to look so out of place.
Horo waited for a moment, waited for Ren's strange faraway expression to become instead an innocent laugh, followed by a line about how he was only teasing, for him to say that he was in that old building for some far more mundane reason. But Ren's odd, devoted smile did not fade – a look that changed his face entirely.
"Y-You're serious, aren't you?" Horo gasped, eventually.
Ren nodded, obviously confused by such an obvious truth.
Horo paused, breathing deeply, trying to line up a torrent of questions rushing through his mind, trying to order his words so they came out as coherent sentences rather than a mash of nothing. He decided to start simply. "So… why do you live downstairs? Where do you eat and sleep?"
"I live downstairs because God wishes it," Ren said, plainly. "And I have a room. That's where I eat and sleep, when the Grigori allow me to."
"When they allow you?"
"Yes, I can't eat whenever or whatever I like. That would be gluttonous," Ren shook his head with the ridiculousness of the concept. "And to sleep for such a long time invites idleness. An idle mind does God no favours."
He was building a picture of these people, and it wasn't a good one. They interrupted Ren's sleep and monitored his eating – obviously not well, if he was so malnourished. "These… Grigori? They're normal people?"
Ren nodded unsurely, as though he didn't quite understand the question.
"How many of them are there?"
Ren thought for a moment, eyes wandering to the ceiling as he considered. "I can think of… nineteen faces. Some I see more than others."
"Are you one of them?"
"A Grigori?" Ren shook his head frantically, face half-concealed by the pillow. "No, no!"
"Well… what are you in all of this?"
"An angel."
Not for the first time, Horo spluttered with disbelief. "Wh-What?"
Ren nodded with simplicity.
"You mean, a real angel? Like the ones you see in church paintings?" Horo couldn't help but let scepticism filter into his words. He was unsure whether Ren was lying or simply mad.
Ren looked thoughtful. "Yes, I suppose that's what I used to be like."
"Used to?"
"I'm not in heaven anymore, so now I look like this. Like you."
"So you used to be in heaven?" Horo asked, pressing his fingers to his forehead as he tried to piece together all of this new information.
"Yes, or so they tell me. I don't remember it myself." Ren's eyes were brimming with tears, as though the fact that he couldn't remember pained him.
"Who told you this?"
"The Grigori, of course. They're my protectors."
"What else have these people told you?"
"That I fell from heaven, into the protection of Samjaza. He and the rest of the Grigori watch over me until I am ready to return to God's side. They test my faith and make sure I am prepared to take the journey. But Samjaza has sole responsibility for me. He is a very generous man."
Horo's eyes scanned every delicate inch of Ren's face as the stranger – seeming even more strange now – relayed this information. For a moment, his mouth moved without sound, as his mind tackled whether this was either an elaborate fabrication by the frail young man in front of him, or a situation so wrong he could barely comprehend. Something about this story was amiss, but he didn't know what he should be asking to get the root of it. He asked the first thing that sprang to his mind.
"And I suppose this 'Samjaza' is taking orders from…?"
Ren nodded confidently. " Yes. God himself."
Horo's thoughts upon how to expand on this seemingly meaningless discovery were interrupted by the thud of the front door swinging open and bouncing off the wall behind it. Horo jumped to his feet with alarm, and Ren buried his face once more beneath the blanket, as a young woman of twenty-one strode inside the apartment with a brashness that made the whole room seem to quiver. She was pretty, but exhausted-looking, as though the last dregs of her exotic youthfulness were on the verge of being sapped away by life's troubles. The easiest way to discern her as a sibling of Horo's was the shade of her hair – a glistening azure fountain that descended to her mid-waist. She had kicked the door aside with her foot, due to the fact that both of her hands were encumbered with shopping bags. In each hand she held five, all of assorted shapes and sizes, each one adorned with the name and logo of some top-of-the-line store. As she entered, her eyes shot right to Horo, beside the sofa, and then to the strange figure lying there. Without a word, she threw her shopping bags to the ground unceremoniously.
"Pirika…" Horo started. The normality of his sister arriving home made him feel as though he had been caught in the process of some unsightly deed, and it made him feel vaguely embarrassed. Then his relief at finally seeing her set in, and for a moment, Ren and all the talk of angels and the Grigori disappeared from his mind. "Where have you been?"
The young girl rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated breath of air. "Freakin' hell, Horo. Can't you greet me with a different line for a change? That one's gettin' old."
"It's a legitimate question," Horo said, taken aback. Every time they saw each other – a rare occurrence nowadays – he was surprised by her hostility towards him. She acted accused before he had even spoken a word. "You haven't been here for what, three nights now? I have a right to know where you are."
"Ugh, as if you need to ask," Pirika scowled, throwing her keys on to the table and disappearing into the kitchen. Horo heard the tap running as she made herself a drink.
He raised his voice to make sure she could hear. "I heard you've been hanging around with Ryu again."
"An' who told you that?" A cup slammed on to the worktop, as Pirika also raised her voice. "I bet it was that shit-face Yoh, wasn't it? Fuckin' snitch, as always."
"Leave Yoh out of this. He's just looking out for you, same as I am. I don't need to tell you again that Ryu's gang are bad news."
Pirika suddenly stormed to the doorway of the kitchen, full of angry attitude. "You don't think I know that? Huh? But what choice do I have?"
"You have a lot of choice, Pirika. Stop with this whole game, stop it altogether. You don't need to do it."
Pirika scoffed. "Hah, and then what? It's not like you can support me. Or would you rather I was flippin' burgers for next to no money as well? Would that make you happy?"
He tried to ignore the personal attack. "I'm not saying you have to do that specifically, just try to find yourself a real job. There's plenty of things you can do besides-"
"Besides this?" Pirika laughed dryly. She gestured to the expensive, but revealing, clothes she wore. "Yeah, right. And I'm sure they'll pay as well as this too. Sorry, you've tried to have this talk with me too many times already, I'm not gonna start listening now."
"Maybe if you stopped being so fucking materialistic you wouldn't need so much money in the first place. I break my back trying to take care of you, and you know it," Horo started to shake with anger, scowling at his little sister. He loved her – he knew that, even at a time like this. But she could infuriate him, particularly when this subject arose.
"Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure mommy and daddy are so proud of you, smiling down on you from heaven," she said, bitterly. "You know I don't give a shit whether or not you care that I'm hangin' around with Ryu – it's good money that I'm not gonna get anywhere else. So stick your whole righteous big brother act up your ass and let me get on with my own life."
This time, Horo didn't snap back. Another sound entered the space between the warring siblings, a sound that was noticed at first by Horo, closely followed by Pirika. Horo stood, looking down at Ren, the stranger he had long since forgotten about. His charge was now completely buried beneath the blanket, shaking gently, as the soft sound of sobbing echoed around the tense atmosphere. Both siblings stood in silence for a moment, before Pirika made a noise of exasperation, collected her bags, and stormed off into her room, giving the door a suitable slam behind her. The next thing to be heard was the sound of Pirika's stereo booming aloud, as it so often did after their arguments.
Horo grounded himself for a moment before kneeling down once more at Ren's side. Watching the slight movement beneath the blanket, he listened to the almost inaudible sound of tears, before beginning to speak. "Hey, Ren?"
No response came, but Horo didn't expect one. "Listen, I'm sorry if me and Pirika arguing has upset you in some way. I know it's not nice to listen to, especially when you don't know her. I promise, she's usually a lot nicer. You'll get on, when you get to talk to her, I think."
"I…" Horo heard the squeak that was Ren's voice, muffled by the blankets he was hiding beneath. "I want to rest."
"Ah, of course. You've had a long day." Moving the blanket away from him, Horo guided him in to the bedroom. "Come on, slowly now." He led him in the direction of the bed, hoping he would consider actually sleeping there tonight. Ren didn't protest, obviously too tired even for that.
Pulling the covers up to Ren's chin and leaving a glass of water beside his bed, Horo left him alone. Closing the door softly behind him, he sighed as he stepped back into the normality of the living room. Pirika's music was still blaring, but he doubted it would bother Ren at the moment. He fell back heavily on to the sofa, head in his hands. Running tired fingers through his azure hair, he looked down at himself and realised that he was still wearing his Burger Galore uniform. He scowled at it, grabbing a towel and heading into the bathroom to wash away the bleariness of the day.
