Only two people were gone, but the apartment was far quieter. Anita moved into Nenene and Maggie's room two days after everyone had left, and back into the room she shared with Michelle the day after that. Junior had heard it all from inside his cupboard, but he did not say anything. It seemed safer. He still was not really used to being there, which was strange. He'd lived in the apartment while Nancy travelled with Yomiko, and he hadn't felt so awkward. It wasn't like the building or the people in it were any newer or like they'd changed a lot. He just hadn't felt that he had belonged there before. Now, things were different, and it was his turn to make breakfast.
Well, it was Michelle's, which really meant it was his. He didn't mind, and not just because Michelle's good-natured kindness tended to leave him blushing and cursing himself for having a crush and her for just being so grown up and wonderful. He didn't mind because Sumiregawa had been right, and one of the only things Michelle was worse at than remembering to buy food was remembering how to cook food.
Anita plodded into the room while Junior was setting plates out, her eyes baggy and dark underneath. Junior had offered to help, but she didn't really seem to have any jobs he could do, yet. So he poured a tall glass of milk, put it down in front of her, and counted slices of bread to see if they had enough for the week to allow for French Toast, which was becoming one of his favourites.
They almost did, and almost was close enough. He started mixing things together in a bowl, thoughts drifting off into the entirely meaningless but regular postcards from Nancy. Junior picked up all the fan-mail in Nenene's absence, and nobody seemed to think anything of it, but so far all that Nancy had said had been brief, in code, and more or less along the lines of 'wait', 'I care about you', 'I know nothing new'. Things being quiet wasn't a bad thing as such, but it left Junior feeling unsettled. Things were not actually quiet, and at the very least there should have been some curiosity from Cole's staff into the anti-Google networking that Anita had been doing. It made Junior scared that they were missing very obvious things under their own noses.
He stared out the glass doors as he soaked the first piece of bread and began to fry it. He was just absently staring, mind turned inwards, and it was a miracle that he caught it at all. A flash of sunlight too bright, and too close. It could have been someone's watch-face in the apartments across the road, or a cup on a balcony, anything reflective, but something about it was making Junior feel very uncomfortable. He stepped back from the stove and called out to Anita.
"Do you remember that book Michelle lent me?"
Anita rubbed at her eyes and groaned. "Oh, what was it? John leCarré? Yeah, I think I read it a while back myself."
Junior nodded. "I wonder if Ricki Tarr ever worked in Japan. Could you take this over? I need to use the bathroom."
Anita looked concerned, but shrugged easily. "Sure. Hang on."
She moved in beside him, eyebrow raised. Junior waved a hand dismissively beneath the line of the bench and escaped to the cover of the bathroom. It was only a quick step through walls to sneak out through the back-end of the apartment and into the outer hallway. Stairs. Parking basement. Sewer. Across the road and up into the other building. Where had he seen that glint, and what had it been?
Junior had to hurry, but he knew he'd found the right place the second he took a peek in. He didn't dare leave his head in the room, just pulled back out and went back home as fast and quietly as possible. Japanese, suited, but very obviously some kind of experienced operative. Binoculars trained on their apartment and a notebook on his knee. A quiet and observant man was a dangerous thing. Junior tried to look nonchalant and calm. He rinsed his hands so that they would look damp, just in case, and took the cooking back over from Anita. It was nearly done.
"Took your time, idiot. I've done it all. You'd damn well better plan on taking my turn tomorrow to make up for it."
"Yeah," Junior agreed, "and I'll sweep the floor today, too."
Anita picked up on the emphasis on his words, and her eyes widened. "Oh. Wow, I guess it gets, er, dusty in here. Yep. Do the housework like a good unwanted guest, I've got important things to do today."
Anita was not very good at faking her normal behaviour, but Junior didn't think that it would matter. If people had been able to bug the apartment, they wouldn't have left someone watching them in such an obvious place. He finished what there was left to do, and carried the serving plate to the table. Michelle arrived as soon as there were no jobs left, some secret skill of hers. She helped make the morning seem almost normal, exclaiming in glee over the food and serving herself a generous plateful.
"Ah, today's going to be great!" Michelle smiled broadly at both Anita and Junior, and Junior had to look down or risk blushing bright red.
He wasn't quite sure what to do with all the attention. He'd never been that close to other humans, and Michelle was so full of all the light fluffy stereotypically cute girl things that he forgot how she could turn silent and solemn in a second.
"I suppose so..." Junior mumbled, knowing that whatever he said would be wrong in this kind of situation.
Anita hmphed and served herself. "It's going to be today. Man, Michelle, why do you always have such unrealistic expectations? You'll only upset the help."
Junior couldn't keep the indignation from his voice. "Hey, I'm more than that, at least! If you want to talk down to me, pay me a salary."
Anita rolled her eyes, and ignored him.
"Oh." Michelle lifted something she'd been reading off the table, and Junior recognised it immediately. A postcard.
"You should read this, Junior." Michelle stretched across the table, the only sign she was surprised by the postcard was the tightness in the corners of her smile. "I picked it up on my way to the table, with the other mail, but I think it's for you."
Junior looked down at it. It was in a large, loopy messy scrawl, and in English, postmarked Washington, DC. All it said was their address and the words,
Rich man, poor man, beggarman. Words from the children's rhyme that was used to make up code-names in the book he'd been reading. It couldn't be anyone but Nancy, and that meant, maybe, that it couldn't be anyone but President Cole's influence behind the surveillance of their apartment. At least, he supposed. It made sense, but then again he'd been reading a spy novel and discovered someone actually was monitoring his apartment. Maybe he was getting a bit too paranoid? No, it had to be Nancy, had to be a warning to him, and a message that President Cole's office was taking them very seriously indeed.
Junior couldn't swallow around the bite he'd taken, so he clenched his jaw shut and handed the postcard over to Anita without a word.
"Hmm." Anita stretched her neck left, then right. "Bit late, isn't it?"
"Anita," Michelle chided, "we should respect the postal service, they have provided a lot of paper in times of great need for us."
"I think it could only have arrived just in time, anyway," Junior didn't want to explain any further, but he knew Anita would figure it out. It wasn't a warning that spies were headed their way, but that they'd been there a long time and were common knowledge wherever Nancy was. To the point that Nancy knew what book Junior had been reading that week. But, that the Americans hadn't quite yet, for whatever reason, stared investigating their post. Maybe there had only been surveillance photographs, maybe Nancy was the only one to have noticed what Junior had been reading.
"Let's not get caught up in this kind of thing. You guys are ruining my happy delicious breakfast!" Michelle sighed, and waved her fork about in the air.
Anita caught Junior's eye and made an exasperated face at him. He simply set about eating, which was a long and annoying chore. It wasn't fair. He'd gone to all the effort for this, and now it did not even taste sweet. If you'd asked him the day before, he'd have been certain that he'd have been able to go right back to the life he'd had before. He wouldn't have enjoyed it, but he thought he'd had the strength inside himself to suppress those feelings of boredom, loneliness, being used. Watching Michelle enjoy her breakfast as if there was nothing wrong in the world, Junior knew he could never go back to that. He had only survived it because he'd never known anything else.
He pushed his plate towards Michelle. "I'm not hungry."
"Ah, more for me then, thank you Junior!" Michelle took his food happily.
Anita kicked Junior under the table. "Stop being a jerk. Just sit and eat, get over yourself."
Junior shook his head. "I'm going to lie down. I'll be back later."
He pushed his plate across to Maggie, stood up, and cleaned his hands. He retreated to his tiny room and curled up on the blankets. He stared at the wall, and the patterns of light that the gaps between the sliding shelves made.
After what felt like a very long time, hearing Anita and Michelle chatter, their cutlery bustle through breakfast, there was the sound of the tap running. They washed up. There was silence, then footsteps. Someone sat down outside his room.
"Hey," it was Anita, calling out from the other side, "you okay?"
Junior didn't answer. It was too quiet in the apartment, and there were whispers at the back of his mind that left him feeling scared and sweaty and lost. Not himself.
"Well be that way, fine. I just see your eyes sometimes, and I think, if that geezer left some loose threads floating around in my head, maybe it happened to you too. You know?"
Junior knew exactly what she met. He slid the door open, eyes wide. "You too?"
Anita nodded. She lifted a finger to her lips. "Don't tell Michelle, okay? She worries too much. We'll never be allowed to do anything if she thinks we're sick from it or something."
Anita crouched in the opening, so Junior squished back to make room for her. Anita slid the door shut, and they were in a secret kind of darkness together. It was strangely comfortable. He could feel Anita's elbow bumping up against his own.
"I like the dark more, it's better than hearing the words when I'm out in the sunlight."
Anita shrugged. "I don't get it like that. It's more like, I make connections and know things I'm not sure I have any business knowing. He says things? What things?"
Junior shook his head. "I don't know. I never remember when I hear them. It's like... like someone having a conversation in a language I don't understand, across a large and busy room. Sometimes there are more esses, and those hiss around behind my ears like static."
"Hmmm? Weird. Wish I could hear it too."
"No, you don't." Junior shrugged and picked at his pillowcase. "You really don't."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, and Junior wondered if it was what it could have been like, to have a real sister in your life, when Anita ruined it all.
"Why the hell do you have to keep ogling Michelle, anyway?"
Junior did not know what to make of that. "Ogling? What are you on about?"
"You know, looking at her tits all the time."
Junior felt his face heat up. Had be been that obvious? Really? He wished he could get away with sinking through the floor, but there was an apartment beneath them, and Anita would really give him hell for it later.
"U-um. I have a reason for that."
Anita scoffed. "You mean, besides being an utter lewd pervert?"
"No, no really!" Junior gathered his courage. He'd have to say it sometime, now. No escaping it. "I just... I was never nursed. I don't understand it. And when I saw Michelle the first time, I thought, maybe... I knew I had no proper mother to speak of, but that maybe as a construct like me, she looked like what my mother might. Somehow I can't look at Nancy that way now, it's too weird."
Anita was silent in the darkness. "Whaaaat?!" She didn't say anything more, and Junior didn't feel brave enough to try and guess how to answer.
"I don't mean to leer or anything creepy. Still. Sorry."
"No, really, what? What on earth? I never thought anything like that in my life, you weirdo! Yuck. Most people don't remember that because they were babies, not because it never happened to them. Even if you'd been nursed like that, you wouldn't know. Yuck."
Anita slid the panel so that the small room was open. She leaned out and took a deep breath. "Ahh. I have to get out of here. It's too stifling in there with all your problems. But if you hear any whole words, tell me? Even if they don't make sense."
Junior nodded. "I promise."
"Freak." Anita nodded back, and shut the panel behind herself.
Junior stared at the wall in the dark for a while. It was shameful, and it wasn't just about curiosity. He'd been behaving in a way that was inappropriate, inexcusable. He felt awful. He'd try to stop doing it, no, he would stop doing it. But he couldn't really apologise to Michelle, could he? Did she even know? He had no idea.
He realised he'd lost the opportunity to ask Anita more about her experience of Gentlemen's thoughts, and sighed. He lay down and pulled the blanket over his head, so that he was separated from the rest of the world by several layers. Clothing, sheets, blanket, walls, the outer apartment walls, the walls of the building. The poles in the street, and the walls of the building across the street, and the insulation and walls of the apartment from which they were being watched. It wasn't enough to feel safe. He wanted to get out. His entire body said get out. His mind. His heart. He suppressed a shiver and curled tighter into a ball.
When the panel opened again, he thought it would be Michelle, but instead it was Anita. "Oh. Well, um, here. Sorry I chewed you out like that. You've got enough of a brain to know what's right and wrong anyway."
When Anita patted his head it wasn't gentle like Michelle's hand, or tentative like Nancy's. A little clumsy, a little too heavy, but warm. Someone like him. He poked his head out and looked at her in the dim light. She had a funny look on her face, like someone had just presented her with a very complicated puzzle.
"Look, we'd better enrol you in school sometime. And it looks like I can't do as much stuff today as I'd had planned. I'll get someone else to print out the stuff tomorrow, so it's not all going through my computer."
"All right?" he said.
"Anyway, get up. Michelle said when I was done grovelling in apology we'd go out for ice cream. Come on."
Junior frowned. Ice cream? They'd only just had breakfast, really. Anita looked pretty grumpy, so he got up and grabbed a jacket, promising himself that he'd turn any offers of sweets down once they were on the street and Anita was out of arm's reach.
"I'm ready," he said. As always, he stood waiting at the front door in his shoes for a good five minutes while the other two bickered and changed their minds over socks and remembered they'd forgotten their keys.
"So I thought it was a nice day for a walk in the park," Michelle explained when they were in the lift.
"It's going to rain," Anita said, "saw it when I was watching the news."
"There aren't any parks in the area," Junior said, "unless you mean the children's playground."
Michelle pouted and sighed. "You're both way too curmudgeonly for your own good."
"Yeah, it's not good for us, we just do it all for you. Get over yourself," Anita sounded grumbly, but Junior caught a glimpse of a smile as they stepped out on the ground floor.
"Do you always disrespect your elders?" Junior asked her, as they followed Michelle down the footpath.
Anita shrugged. "I'm not sure she's even my elder. And you might be older than us, that part of things never made sense to me. With all the files in my head, all the experiments and copies..."
"I think you were first," Junior said. "Wendy seemed to think so, and she'd know. Dokusensha stole the genetic samples years before I was conceived. You might have been made after Nancy, but there's no way you're younger than me."
"So," Anita said, grinning. "Who's disrespecting their elders, huh?"
Junior stood there, blinking. "Wait, did you get into all of that just to..."
"Here, sweeties!" Michelle ran back to them, carrying three bright pink strawberry ice creams, the sort you got from a vending machine. Why would a vending machine have summer things like ice creams, though? Junior was pretty sure they all had hot drinks on their street in winter and spring, but he must have been wrong.
"Uh, I... thanks." Junior took his time unwrapping it. "So, I'm guessing you wanted to talk?"
Anita looked around in an entirely obvious and suspicious way. Some days, Junior missed working alone.
"Yeah, okay," Anita said, "so do we take him out? Just one guy, we can do it easily."
"We could leave him, feed him information? Or just watch him, if his behaviour changes we'll know there's something going on," Michelle suggested.
Junior took a bite of his ice cream to avoid having to answer.
"What, and then what?!" Anita's face was flushed with fury. "Am I supposed to just stop what I'm doing? I have important work to do!"
Michelle sighed. "Anita, dearest, he's been watching us for more than long enough to have seen it already..."
"Crap. Yeah. All right. So we just pretend nothing's happened? I can't live like that!"
"Hmn." Junior said. They all kept walking, eating their ice creams and huddling closer together, whether it was to keep out the cold breeze that kept sweeping past them or just to earn a little extra space between their bodies and those of strangers, Junior couldn't have said. A bit of both, really.
Junior saw it first, but it was Michelle who acted. A magazine, knocked off of a display rack, blown towards a puddly fate. Michelle lunged forwards, reached out her arm, and managed with the brush of a fingertip to connect with the paper, bring it back up into the air. Held it safely in her hand.
Michelle recovered upright, cleared her throat, and placed the magazine back on the rack. "Oh my, what passes for excitement in our lives these days."
Anita and Junior caught up to her with a few strides and it was hard to keep from laughing. Anita was giggling, Michelle was blushing and looking down at her feet. To think, they'd gone from life and death, intrigue and spies, to the sudden and immediate urgency of... Junior craned his neck to read the title around Anita's shoulder. The sudden and immediate urgency of Pichi Lemon.
Michelle choked back a laugh, and then they were standing there, the three of them, half-eaten ice creams dripping and their shoulders shaking. Junior wasn't sure he'd ever been in a situation like that before, where there was so much noise coming out of his own ribcage. It felt like he'd sneezed, or maybe like a too-tight muscle had suddenly loosened, and his entire body felt lighter. Every sensation felt more intense, especially the stickiness that had run over the back of his hand.
"I think," Junior said, "you need to re-open your agency, before you get bored enough to start saving newspapers from commuters' careless hands."
"No way, jerk-face," Anita said sourly, "we need to re-open the agency."
Michelle's smile was so sunny it made you feel warm inside, and if Anita knew what Junior was thinking, he knew she'd have whispered something in his ear, like see what happens when you keep your eyes where they're supposed to be, pervert?
"The Three Paper Sisters Detective Agency, open for business! What an idea! We had our respite, but we're ready for work again!" Michelle flounced.
"I, er, I'm not a paper user, though..." Junior said with concern.
"You're not our sister either, weirdo. And what, you think we're going to kick Maggie out in favour of you just because she's travelling? Not a chance. You're our substitute."
"Maybe we could call it Four, at least as long as Junior's helping us."
Anita groaned and waved her hands in the air. "But he's still not a girl!"
Michelle smiled sweetly. "Junior doesn't mind, do you, Junior?"
Junior decided that keeping his silence would be better than any answer he could come up with.
