Just a random music rec while reading this: 'Alleycat' from the Persona 5 OSTs
I woke up when someone shook my shoulder. Opening my eyes blearily, I was greeted with Eve's smiling face.
"Wake up, Lyn. We're here," she gently tells me. I blinked my eyes, getting rid of the sleepiness as I looked around. I was still in the moving carriage, but this time the early morning sunlight was shining through the window.
Did a whole night just go past me?
"Good morning to you. Did you rest well?" Charles greets me as I sat up from leaning on Eve. I nodded, suddenly feeling shy. This whole thing still made me feel awkward, so I didn't know how or what to do.
I took a peek out of the window to be shown that the carriage was pulling into a mansion like estate area. There was a front garden that had the most prettiest flowers growing, and I watched a gardener or two tending to the plants as we passed it by. Internally I cringed. This felt really cliché, and I didn't doubt for a second that there would be tons of servants pouring out of the gates to greet us. As it is, I have no idea where I stood in this new place.
"Did we travel the whole night?" I blurted out of curiosity.
"We did. We ought to thank the two outside, they've worked hard," He replies as the carriage came to a halt. There was some fussing about outside, before one of them men shouted that we could come out from the carriage.
The door was pushed open by Charles, and I made way for Eve to get out of it before I could. I have good manners, okay. Then with a nod from Charles, I slowly exited the carriage.
Funnily enough the whole "tons of servants coming out to greet us" trope was actually not true. I mean there was at least five of them(not counting our carriage companions) waiting out there. I felt a tad bit stumped by this as I descended the steps of the carriage. Two of them were helping Adrien and his partner out with the luggage, while the other two begun handling the horses that led the carriage. The only one left greeted Eve and I as I landed on the ground.
She takes a good look at me, and sighs. I immediately felt offended. I know I did live on the streets up till now so I looked kinda crummy with my attire, but I did take showers as often as I could. I didn't smell, did I? I discretely sniffed at my right sleeve as the lady servant greeted Charles when he stepped out of the carriage.
"Another stray, sir?" She comments.
Charles puts up his hands in surrender, "It's not me who picked him up this time, Glinda. Eve did."
Glinda facepalms.
"Just like her father…" She mutters, then then turns around to look at me.
"I'm Glinda, the head caretaker here, child. Just so you know, this family isn't your average rich people," She tells me rather straightforwardly.
"Um, its nice to meet you, Miss Glinda! I'm Lyn," I bowed slightly. She raised an eyebrow at me as I straightened up.
"You're unexpectedly polite, Lyn. It's nice to meet you too
"Hey Glinda!" Adrien suddenly calls out, "Kiri and I are heading off to get some sleep. I'll leave the rest to y'all!"
"Stop using that word, it's impolite and incorrect in so many ways!" She yells at both Adrien and Kiri(who was the other man sitting at the back of the carriage). They were snickering as they ran past us into the mansion. Eve, too was giggling into her palm at their antics.
"Tch, I hope you aren't going to end up like those two," Glinda grumbles. Her eyes dart to the side of my face, and she widens her eyes.
Where did you get that?" She gasps, walking up to me and cupping the left side of my face. She runs a thumb near the bullet burn I got and I flinched away in slight pain.
"That's a… long story," Eve says wringing her hands, "We ought to get that checked though."
"And we should!" Glinda declares, and pushes me into mansion.
The mansion was more spacious inside. The décor was tasteful, with pots of neatly arranged flowers scattered near almost every corner. While the wallpaper was a deep burgundy colour, the light that came from the various windows lit up the place and made it seem more homely. There were some paintings of course, and the one that stood out the most was a family portrait of the Horands. It had Charles and a young Eve, plus a lady who I guessed was Eve's mother. She had Eve's strawberry blonde hair and piercing green eyes.
I wasn't allowed time to look at the décor more as I was ushered to the dining room. The door was pushed open by Glinda and we entered it. There sat a few servants who looked up from the long dining table they sat at, some still chewing food in their mouths and some ready to take another bite of their food.
Again, I was surprised with the nature of things that went around here. Why would ordinary servants sit at the 'official' dining table during the day to eat?
"Miss Eve! You're back!" One of them greets as he places his food down and stands up. "How was the city of Juanas?"
Eve grimaced at this. "Not somewhere you would want to end up being on a vacation."
"Eeh? You and the Master went to Juanas? Isn't that place dangerous?" Another one pipes up, "I heard their favour owing cycle around there was super tough to get out of. Did you get into trouble there?"
"We did," Eve confirms, electing a wave of surprise from the inhabitants of the dining room, "But Lyn here helped us out tons!"
She pushes me forwards and presents me to them. I nearly squeaked in surprise when she did that, then looked up at the other people in this room. They stared at me with awed looks on their faces.
"Holy shit, kid, you're from Juanas?"
"You managed to live there?"
"Wow that's kinda amazing that you survived there."
"Y-yeah…" I was starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of attention given to me, and all I wanted to do right now was to crawl into a box and hole myself up.
"All right, all right! Go easy on the kid, he's just arrived here." Glinda chases off any further probing from the rest of the workers, thankfully. She guides me to a chair to sit at, then goes away. Eve eases herself into the seat next to mine. Glinda comes back with a first aid kit, sets it on the table and opens it. She takes out some cotton swabs and alcohol, wiping down my cheek injury. It stung, and I unconsciously leant further away from where the swab was touching my cheek.
"Stay still, boy!" Glinda chides, and makes another effort to wipe at my cheek. I tried not to flinch away this time. After that, she takes a patch of cotton and slaps in on the injury with some tape(which acted much like a plaster but on a slightly bigger scale).
"There you go," She nods in satisfaction, and starts packing up the first aid kit.
Food is then placed in front of us and embarrassingly, my stomach grumbled when I took a whiff of it. My face went warm and I ducked my head in embarrassment. You couldn't blame me; the food set on the table genuinely looked and smelled good. I hadn't eaten freshly cooked meals in quite a long time, since all the Whites gave us were just cold packed lunches and dinner.
"Eat up, Lyn. We haven't had anything since yesterday's tea, didn't we?" Eve prompts me.
I barely managed to control myself to actually pick up the fork and knife to eat the food with. I wasn't in a low class surrounding anymore, so I ought to keep my manners. I wolfed down the food embarrassingly fast.
"Miss Eve, how exactly did the kid help you out?" someone asked.
"Yeah! I'm really curious!" Another chimed in.
Eve puts down the fork she was using and gracefully dabs her mouth free of crumbs with a napkin.
"Well…" She began to tell the story of how I met her, and the subsequent events that happened up till now. The people in the room listened, enraptured with the story she told. I too, somehow started being sucked into her pace despite knowing of the events that happened. She was a great storyteller.
"Lyn pushed me down, then – ah, well, I don't exactly remember what happened since everything happened so fast…" She got to the part where Genrald fired his gun.
The audience of the room immediately went into a frenzy at the statement.
"Woah! So that injury was from the bullet?!"
"What do you mean you don't remember, young miss?"
"Boy, what actually happened?"
I stiffened a little, when they all turned to me. Their looks were expectant.
"Despair. All of you, suffer in your heads!"
Those words rang in my mind yet again. I understood that I'd probably made those men recall their bad feelings, their bad memories and guilt. But to the extent of knocking them out by letting them suffer…
It was for the best if no one knew what I could do. I don't want to be rejected even after coming here. Thanks to Eve's ditsy nature, of course she can't remember what went down. I glanced at her aura, and confirmed that she was telling the truth.
Thank these weird but small miracles.
"I think the bullet pinged off a pipe and hit one of them in the leg, and they all started fighting each other instead?" Eve answers for me when I took too long. I nodded, a bit too quickly. No one noticed though.
Eve ended the story, thankfully not mentioning the part where I cried like a baby. She looks around the room, then asks, "Is Father not joining us for breakfast?"
"He wanted it to be served in his office," One of the men says.
Eve nods in acknowledgement, then turns around to face me.
"I have yet to say this, but thank you, Lyn. For saving me."
I felt my face go warm again and I looked away, stammering, "Y-you're welcome."
"Thank you for saving the young Miss!" someone shouted
"Thank you for helping Master and the young Miss out!" another added
"Thank you!" "Thanks!"
I've never felt this much sincerity and love from people I barely knew. I bit my lower lip to stop it from trembling and willed pretty hard on myself to not cry.
"We'll take care of you better than those White Fangs did, right guys?" Eve grins.
"YEAH!" everyone in the room collectively responded.
I eventually found out how exactly the Horands run the show around here.
Charles had actually started from humble beginnings, but thanks to the right amount of good deals and luck he managed to turn himself into an influential man in just a few years. He got himself engaged to his wife to enhance relationships with his wife's family business, but they legitimately fell in love with each other and moved into this mansion.
Renise – Charles' wife and Eve's mother - was rarely talked about in the estate. Even so, the woman was well respected by everyone here.
Charles' eventually begun "taking in" people off the streets a little while before Eve was born. At that time, Glinda and a few servants were already working for him. He didn't like the idea of hiring a lot of people to do keep the mansion. He'd came across a young Adrien, who was in the streets. Adrien had reminded Charles of his humble beginning, and he immediately asked if Adrien wanted to work for him.
Of course, Charles didn't take in people oh so willy nilly. He couldn't afford to feed every poor child out there. But he took in at least ten more people before Eve became sixteen, and that was a lot already, all things considered.
When Eve was sixteen, her mother came down with an illness. It turned out that in her family certain people inherited an incurable disease. I hadn't learnt much detail of what went on when she died, but it left a significant impact on both Charles' and Eve's lives.
Still, Charles was originally very relaxed with formalities unless it involved people who required them. He didn't truly mind what everyone did in the mansion and tended to avoid calling them servants. It was obvious that he thought of everyone working for him was of equal standing to him. He treated everyone like they were a part of his family, and they did so in return.
A huge contrast to what Leon was.
Only when guests visit this mansion will you then see most of the people clean their act up and do their job properly. The owner of the mansion has no tolerance for disrespect, after all.
Most of the workers here tended to help with Charles' merchant business. So I would often see people come and go from the mansion. Charles would also disappear from time to time, but would always somehow be back at the mansion again by the end of the week.
As the youngest(again) of the estate, I was surprisingly given an education. Glinda taught me most of the lessons(most of which I sort of already knew). I took those lessons properly though. It didn't hurt to refresh my memory on certain things. And with the lessons, I was also given access to their library.
Granted, it wasn't as huge as a normal public library would've been, but the books it held were ones that I've never touched nor seen before. Naturally I was excited to read them all.
I was really happy, since all I truly needed to do was to just attend my lessons and nothing else. But then again, as much as I like reading, doing it all the time wasn't good for me. I ended up helping out with chores, like peeling potatoes or pulling weeds out from the garden. They didn't let me do the more technical stuff, which was fine by me. I had enough of dealing with such things for a while now.
I had to keep myself from getting complacent with where I was though. In the world of One Piece, everything can change from a drop of a hat. Using and playing around with my Devil Fruit powers was very challenging since I couldn't risk anyone discovering what I could do.
Generally, I could, of course, say something causally and people would follow through with what I asked for. This was the Charmspeak ability which became natural after using it for those two years. But I realized that it was just the surface level of things.
Those words I used back then to stop Genrald and his men – those were different. Such words carried more power to it, and it really only worked when I put effort into feeling that way. Unoriginally, I called this ability Weighted Words.
There was also manipulation by touch, but it messed a lot with both parties' heads that I was reluctant to do it to anyone here.
I had a lot of things to work on.
Adrien bursts into the common room in a flurry, the double doors swinging wide open and slamming on the walls with a resounding "Bam!"
Of course it got everyone's attention.
"We've – We've-!" He pants out, leaning forwards with his hands on his knees to support himself.
"What is it?" Glinda asks. She sat in an armchair closest to the doors in case she was needed outside.
"We've managed to get it! The boss got the land 'n the deeds done!" The man manages out. He looked as if he ran a marathon, with his hat missing and brown hair askew.
Glinda's eyes widened in surprise and she gasps. So does most people in this room.
Then they all erupted into cheers.
I was left in a confused state and I stared weirdly at the people in this room.
"Ah, newbie. You didn't know about that yet, did you?" Luckily someone comes to my rescue. The black haired man grins at me – Jerry was his name, and he always seemed to never part with this red beanie of his. He was still considered a teenager since he hadn't hit seventeen, but he was the second youngest in the Horand's family. So he's kinda decided to take me under his wing.
I gestured for him to explain, and explain he did.
"Well the boss's been trying to move his business to another Blue, you see. The late Missus' family had issues with him going over there but boss finally convinced them! And from the looks of it, he got the plot of land he's going to have our new home in!" The boy beams.
He leans in closer and whispers in my ear, "I'd like to think that the boss needed to get away from the North Blue since there's a lot of bad people around these parts."
Bad people. Yeah, there were a few up-and-coming mafia-like organisations that didn't make the business that the Horands did safe. Oh, I forgot to mention that the Horands were more of a merchant management business, where they did intakes of which person had what and processed it. All that fingly stuff that I never really did wrap my head around. Politics was one thing – businesses were another. I couldn never understand the latter.
"But where are we moving to? And isn't crossing from one Blue to another very unsafe?" I asked.
"It is," Oriana, the sous chef, approaches us. She was only nineteen, like Eve, and was also the few people who were under their twenties here. Thanks to that, most of the time I usually hung out with Jerry and Oriana since we were all in that category. Eve joins us on occasion too.
"I heard that the Master's going to hire help from the Marines, if that's even possible." She tells us.
"Ohhh that explains a few things," Jerry laughs, "I doubt they would refuse if he offered them money."
"You guys hadn't answered my first question yet," I grouched out, and Oriana ruffles my hair and laughs.
"Don't be impatient, kiddo. All questions are meant to have answers tagged to them. It's just a matter of time on when they will be revealed."
"We're going to the East Blue!" Jerry exclaims excitedly.
Oriana rolls her grey irises at his interruption, but nods anyway, "Yep, we are."
"I see," shoving my hands in my pockets, I excused myself to go to the toilet.
And as I walked there, I can't help thinking, 'Why there? Of all places to be, why go to the sea where the next Pirate King was going to appear?'
Whatever higher being that decided this arrangement must be nuts in the head.
A/N: (Somewhere in an office Winford sneezes)
Woo boy got busy preparing for an upcoming con so I had sidetracked a bit. It's nice to take a break from that though and write some words(and subsequently stay up till 1am lol)
Also things are moving! I wanted to put more scenes with Eve but Lyn has to have his own friends in the family too haha
Thank you for all the follows, favourites and reviews! I hope I haven't lost you guys' attention yet ;w;
-Riki
