It was a bitterly cold morning during the month of… who could say, and laying in the middle of the desert between a freshly-started fire and a handful of supplies was Matt Stoneman.
He stopped counting after seven, the days that had gone by since he was left to die in the middle of nowhere by Seina. The betrayal had long since stopped stinging. He'd had plenty of time to reflect, and had come to a few conclusions. Maybe, when in the mood, he would bother to elucidate upon them.
()()()
Central Pfousy was abuzz with sounds Seina no longer thought of as magical. The sounds of party, play, and excitement were something she had nothing to compare to before she had entered this town. Now, she came to think of them as the sounds of falseness. An old man who Seina suspected was a bit of a pervert was allowing her to sleep a couple nights in his spare room above a modest café, and as she lay awake, the ghostly wails of police sirens and the shouting of drunk barely-adults filled the air and kept her company.
Pfousy was a college town, and it made up for not having very many people by making sure those few people were inebriated on a seemingly constant basis. For the last three days, Seina saw it as a miracle if she could get a conversation started with anybody who was making sense. She felt old here, even if she was younger than many of these people. Some of these places wouldn't let her in the door, because she didn't have an "ID" of any sort. It was fine with her, though—all she really cared about was one of these buildings.
It was a small restaurant with shoddy, dirty windows on the front and an "OPEN" light that always blinked frantically. The name of the place was "WALLACE CAFÉ," which was stenciled in big, bold letters on one of the windows. The font was unnervingly militaristic, like something Seina had once seen on the front cover of some bootleg movie from the mainland Simone showed her once.
She stood across the street from this restaurant and took a look at the radar. There was no mistaking it, even with the short time she had to learn how the radar worked: this place had the dragon ball in or under it. The other day, she snuck onto the roof via a staircase on the side of the building. There was no sign of the ball there, and she looked in every possible crevice. Now she had no choice but to go in here, to this place that intimidated her.
Every night she'd spent scoping out this place was a night she also spent wondering if this is even what she wanted to do. It wasn't too late to turn back, she told herself. She left Matt a dragon ball just so she could find him again in case she had to. According to the radar, Matt hadn't even moved from their last campsite. Unless he had, and left the dragon ball behind, which seemed greatly unlikely to her. This idea of hers—this complete longshot—would land her in trouble with Matt as likely as it would endear her to him, but she didn't care. This was about proving to Matt that he had no kind of control over her. He could stay out there in the desert, as far as she was concerned—this dragon ball would be her responsibility.
"Is there something I can help you with, ma'am?" A man in his 40s with a gruff voice asked, having just arrived at the same corner Seina happened to be standing on. "I can't help but notice the way you keep staring over at my restaurant."
"Oh! Actually," Seina said, putting on the same winning smile she employed back at her village all the time, "I think you might have something I'm interested in."
"What would that be, miss?"
Seina reached into her purse, the cheap one she'd bought with a chunk of Matt's money, and pulled out the dragon ball that caved in Simone's head. "Something that looks exactly like this."
The man's face faltered for a second, then he resumed smiling, but darkly. "Who told you I had that?"
"No one." Seina made sure to hide the radar in her purse as she reached her hand in to pull out the ball. "No one and nothing. This was just a complete coincidence."
It was so obvious she was lying, he felt like she was just being coy with him. In the dark, he was able to size her up without her even noticing. She looked gorgeous, but was also wearing very bland clothes. They contrasted against his cheap but nice-looking suit he wore for nights out. She clearly wasn't trying to look good, but she had a natural beauty that was nearly irresistible.
"Why don't you come with me," he said. "I'll show you the ball."
()()()
Matt was sitting Indian-style on his sleeping bag, thinking. The bitter air around him had stalled, and was no longer stabbing through him with every cold gust.
Matt stared down at his body. He had been of about average weight when he left Gasket. Now he was much thinner, and his skin, which was once so pale and unblemished it resembled porcelain, was stained and tanned. Even without a mirror, he knew his face had become rough and patched with intermittent facial hair. Never in his life had he been able to grow a passable beard and mustache, and that characteristic was going to hold true, he supposed, no matter how long he went without shaving. Oh, how he could think of so many, many uses for a razor right about now…
Was this the appropriate time to be thinking about suicide? In a matter of only a few months, he had lost everything. He had no idea how to get back to Gasket even if he wanted to. He didn't even know how to get to a city. He and Seina had been relying on the radar completely. They had no map—there was no map for this part of the land anyway. None that would help. He had a good run. The two of them together had managed to get a couple of the dragon balls before…
It was his fault. That was the best conclusion he could come to. In his sheer horniness, he had clouded and distorted his own judgment. She left because he gave her a reason to want revenge, and she got it. Matt had to almost admire how well she did it, too. She was probably planning to do what she did as soon as he managed to find the second dragon ball. She entertained his desire to take her virginity long enough to wait him out, then when he fell asleep, take his valuables and leave him with enough food and water to live on a few days so he could sit out here and figure out what a bastard he had been.
Sometimes, Matt had dreams, where he was in a big, white void, vaster and more terrible than this desert. In those dreams, Seina would appear to him as he sat down on the white floor. She wouldn't walk up; it was as if she simply faded in from whatever immaterial location she used to inhabit. Matt would ask her, "where's the ball?" Seina would just look down on him. "Seina, where's the radar?" Again, her face remained stony, and her eyes wouldn't even focus entirely on him sometimes. Rather, she would be looking straight ahead, and if Matt looked in that direction, he would always see nothing. The dream would end when he stood and tried to reach his hand out and touch her face. Just as his fingertips would start to make contact—contact he couldn't even feel—her lips would part slightly, then her jaw would unhinge like a snake, and she would belt out a violent, piercing scream that sent Matt crashing back into the waking world. Sometimes he just sat up for an hour straight, thinking about it.
When he was tired of the cold blandness, Matt curled back up underneath the bag and thought about his inevitable starvation. If it came to it, was there anything at this campsite that would be sharp enough to cut through him? Was there anything he could do except wait to die of thirst? "I don't want to waste away out here…" he mouthed to himself as he tried to hide his mouth between his two knees, folded up higher than his chest.
"What can I do?"
()()()
"Have a seat, Miss… uh, what was your name?"
"Oh, I never told you it. I'm Seina."
"Seina," said the old man, that somewhat nasty smile ever-present on his pink, drooping face, "I'm Thyme Vealo. I know, a food-y name like that, it's no wonder I ended up in this business."
Seina shrugged. "I'm sure you must think my name is weird. I don't like to pass judgment. Who is Wallace, though, if I may ask?"
"An ex-partner of mine, got the place named after him. He bolted three months later, but by then the name was stuck."
Mr. Vealo extended his hand, and Seina stared confusedly at it. "Do you shake hands where you're from?"
"Oh!" Seina grabbed his hand and shook a little too eagerly. "Sorry, I haven't had to do that very often."
"Quite alright, miss. So, what did you want to talk about regarding the ball?"
"I wanted to ask you what you were willing to trade for it," Seina explained. "See, a friend and I are looking around for them, and when we found out you have one of them, I agreed to, well, talk to you about selling it or trading as an option."
"I see. And you never did answer how you know about my ball, ma'am."
"It's just… something we sort of found out from a stranger. Uh… it was a guy, we were in a bar or something… and…"
Mr. Vealo leaned in a little closer from the opposite side of his desk. The office they were sitting in was this viciously bright stone room that looked less like a manager's office and more like a prison cell. The whole place smelled a little of cleaning chemicals and the desk Mr. Vealo had his hands clasped on top of was dark and raggedy, like a hand-me-down.
"…He, I… he told us that he saw you walking around with the dragon ball."
Mr. Vealo shook his head. "No. I had a friend of mine bring it over a few months ago. He said it looked really rare and valuable. Hasn't left this building."
Seina stared at Mr. Vealo like a deer caught in the headlights. "I'm sorry. He must have been talking about your friend. Maybe."
"Maybe," repeated the man, whose omnipresent smile had curved downward into a suspicious frown, the frown that had obviously been hiding behind his facetious smile this entire time. "But more to the point, my friend had the ball in a paper bag when he arrived. Never once did he take it out of that bag until he got here, to my office. I don't appreciate being lied to in my own fuckin' establishment, lady."
"My name's Seina," Seina snapped. "Did you already forget?"
"I wasn't listening in the first place," said Mr. Vealo. "I didn't bring you in here to be fuckin' negotiated with. I want to know exactly how you managed to get information on this fuckin' jewel. What did you call it? A dragon ball? What the fuck is that?"
"I don't have to tell you that."
Sighing and standing up, Mr. Vealo opened his desk drawer and pulled out a gun. Seina gasped as soon as she saw it. Immediately, she felt completely out of her depth—and completely out of Matt's depth. There was something almost comforting in the fact that, even if Matt had come here with her, the results would have been the same.
"Don't you think, as my guest, you owe me some kind of a fuckin' explanation?" said Mr. Vealo.
"Yes," Seina said breathlessly. "I'll tell you—I have a radar that detects the dragon balls. Look."
She pulled the radar out of her purse and turned it on, handing it to Mr. Vealo. "The blinking light in the center is the ball. The triangle is where the radar is."
Mr. Vealo looked at the device, turning it around to see the back. "Capsule Corp made this… now, that's interesting. I never heard of them releasing anything like this."
"Capsule Corp?"
"Yes, the multinational company I'm guessing you've never heard of because you're a fuckin' foreigner," said Mr. Vealo arrogantly as he placed the radar back on the desk. "Why the fuck would they make something that detects these things?"
"…The government."
"What?"
"The government got Capsule Corp to make it," Seina said, thinking quickly by remembering something she read off the back of a book once. "There's, uh, radiation inside of the dragon balls."
Mr. Vealo sat back down in his chair, putting his gun away. "Are you saying you're from the government?"
Seina thought about it. "Sure."
"Let's see a badge, or some kind of ID."
"I don't have it with me."
Seina looked at Thyme Vealo's face, and he looked even more intently at hers. He was constantly annoyed at this woman's attempts to hide away from the inevitable truth—she's working for one of his men, trying to betray him and take the so-called "dragon ball." He knew it was priceless to somebody, just looking at it he could tell it was lovingly made.
"You expect me to believe you're really from the fuckin' government?"
"You'll believe it when we come break down your door."
"Lot of tough talk for a lady who doesn't even have her gun with her. You know, just like I do, I could blow your fuckin' brains out right now."
Seina had to bite her tongue a little to stop from laughing, but it was becoming clear to her that she had this man almost believing her. She concocted this lie as a distraction until she could figure out a better one, but it looked like she could settle here. "If you do that," she said. "They'll know where to find me. They'll know I'm here."
"Fuck you, there's no 'they.'" But Mr. Vealo's voice was hinting at him suspecting otherwise.
"Just hand over the ball," said Seina. "Please. Don't make this end in violence."
Thyme Vealo let out a deep, deep sigh after a final silence session of thought. "Fine. Why don't we make a deal?"
Matt's face flashed in Seina's mind with a headache intensity. "What deal?"
()()()
With a scream, Matt jolted up in his sleeping bag, looking like a worm with its head poking out. Despite the weather's bitter chill, he had sweat running down his face.
It was very early morning, from what Matt could tell. Maybe it was early evening. Maybe he had completely lost track of days and nights. When he went to bed, it was day. Maybe he had slept for 24 hours.
His exhaustion dissipated when he looked out into the distance, where the sun was rising in the east, and he saw a small human shape illuminated by the sparse light of the morning sun. Was it the east? Maybe it was the west.
The closer the shape got to him, the more it felt like his dream. It was Seina, it had to be, but he didn't know for sure yet whether he'd actually woken up. This wasn't the White Zone. This was the desert, and all of his things were here. He still smelled a little of the fire he'd set the night before.
When Seina was close enough to Matt that he could identify her features, he got out of his bag. He stood, slouching, in front of the remains of his campfire and watched Seina like a hawk. It looked like she was wearing the same clothes as when she left him. Matt saw that she had a purse slung over one of her shoulders. He couldn't stop his mouth from acting out.
"Did you buy that with the money you stole from me?"
It was hard to tell if she had even heard him or not. She unzipped her purse when the two of them were an arms distance away from each other and handed him the radar out of it. As he took his radar back, she pulled out two dragon balls from her purse. Matt gaped in amazement at what she had managed to do without him in such a short amount of time. "That's three, Matt," said Seina. "That's almost half of the dragon balls. So complain about my purse now."
Matt looked her in the eyes. "Why did you leave me out here like this? I thought you weren't coming back. I would have died out here."
Seina walked up to Matt until their bodies were touching, and leaned in until their faces were an inch apart. Then, just as Matt's lips started to pucker, she moved her head over slightly to whisper into Matt's ear. "I don't need you."
With that, Seina began the process of dismantling their campsite, as Matt stood with a cold, contemplative expression, in the increasing light of day. After a moment, Matt reached out and touched Seina on the shoulder as she was rolling up her own sleeping bag. She turned and said, "what is it?"
"Nothing," Matt replied.
Seina sighed and shook her head. "Are you going to keep standing around and trying to start something between us again, or are you going to help out?"
"I was just making sure you weren't a dream again. I'm sorry."
"You dreamt about me?"
"…Yeah."
By afternoon, the two of them were back on the same path. Dragon ball number four was next.
