Understanding

After story time was over, Stefan got a customer. Lalli decided it was best for everyone involved to leave them to whatever they would be up to. The Hunter's Lodge was positioned in such a way that Lalli could walk to it from the house and back without needing to go into any sort of side street. He walked by other businesses on the way and back, but he had never been inside any of them, except for the bank. He wasn't even sure what some of those places were, and hadn't cared much back when going to the Hunter's Lodge would take the bulk of the energy he had for the day, if not the next two days. For once, he felt like he could check a place or two before heading home. Giving the place he figured to be the general store a try sounded like a good idea. Just as he was heading for its door, Emil stormed out, holding a shopping basket that seemed to have a few items in it:
-Fine, I'm leaving! But this place shouldn't have its counters manned by people who can't count change properly and won't listen when told they made a mistake!
The sight made Lalli reflexively freeze for long enough that he took a few moments to come back to his senses and remember he wanted to go inside the store.

Upon entering the building, he found out it was the kind in which there were only a few items on display, all things he wouldn't have guessed the store sold if he hadn't seen them. Anything else the store had for sale was listed on large blackboards covering the walls and alternating with the windows, in letters big enough for people to study them while waiting in line. The counter separating the customers from most of the stock could be manned by up to two people at a time, maybe three if two people ended up with a big order at the same time. Lalli didn't know if he was going buy anything yet. The fact that he was allowed to live in the house for free and the Hunter' Lodge actually being a good deal for the food served were the only reason his savings were still doing decently in spite of the larger safety deposit he had insisted on making for the entire courtship with Stefan and the part of his most recent pay that had vanished in Roni's care. But he was also certain that he'd never hear the end of it from Onni if his courtship efforts ended up on hold or dependent of the old man's generosity because he had spent too much money on something else. He noticed a few clothes on mannequins in a corner and remembered that his only set of nice clothes had been gifted to him by the old man to wear at parties like the one that had been held in the Solberg's house. He suddenly felt in the mood to swap one of the outfit's elements with something he would choose himself, or at least buy something that would add a personal touch to it. A waistcoat caught his eye, and he saw there was piece of paper offering different color options next to it. As he was thinking things over, he overheard two women in spite of the fact that they were technically whispering:
-Seriously, what has gotten into the Västerström kid? Making such a fuss over a ten-crownbit discrepancy!
-Not to mention that if the clerks just went ahead and believed him every single time, there would be no way to be sure he's not the one making a mistake… or lying to swindle money out of the store out of spite. In case you weren't aware, he very briefly worked here a few years ago.
As Lalli was trying to figure out which color he wanted for his waistcoat, his first instinct was to think of how sending servants to do shopping worked at the old man's place, and that any missing change would probably have to come out of Emil's own money. And if his family had lost a large quantity of money in relatively small increments in the past, what did ten crownbits look like in regards to the quantity of money earned by someone paid partly with food and a place to live? From previous jobs, Lalli knew the actual sum of money received tended to be much smaller when they were sleeping in a place provided by their employer and only got smaller if food was also provided. Neither of the two whispering women seemed to think of those things before the one who was closest to the counter became the next to order her groceries. In spite of having been able to figure out Emil's reasons to an extent, Lalli considered the incident to be extra proof that he had done well to not pursue him. Roni had given him an aversion for extreme reactions to just about anything. At the same time, it was even more difficult than it had been before for him to voice the fact that such reactions bothered him. Two things were playing into that: his tendency to miss things everybody else noticed meant that the reaction could be more warranted than realized and he, himself, tended to react strongly to things everyone else treated as trivial. This new aversion was one of the many factors that had made the mild unease he had sometimes felt while around Onni in recent years become much less bearable and more of a permanent fixture. Light blue looked like a nice choice. Sigrun would tell him he should focus on that instead to not make himself too low-spirited. He went in line, and whispered to himself that he wanted the light blue waistcoat at a regular interval to make sure he would remember it when he actually got to the clerk. Fortunately, the line wasn't too deep. The clerk called someone to come take his measurements, as any clothes that weren't actually on display were made to order.

The young man who came out of the back to take his measurements, probably as to not interrupt the person actually making the clothes, was Leif, the youngest member of Lalli's "easy arrangement" pool. Leif had turned sixteen not long before Lalli had arrived in town, which meant he was just barely old enough to knowingly engage in the more adult aspects of a romantic relationship in the eyes of the law and it had been acceptable to approach him as a potential future partner for about a year. He was set to become the store's manager when the owner would retire due to old age and inherit the store upon his death, but this was literally the only thing he had going for himself. If he disappointed the store's owner in any way, the only place he had to go back to was one of the poorer households in a nearby village. Said village was one of those that people usually fled when they realized they were interested in people of the same sex or even reluctant to live as the place's idea of a "proper" member of their own sex. Lalli had also been told by the old man that the store's owner was abusing the power the situation gave him over Leif, and a past incident had confirmed everyone's suspicion that he would do the same with whoever would try courting Leif. The old man had shared that information with Lalli to warn him that courting Leif had a high chance of feeling like being around Roni all over again. Lalli let out a sigh of relief at the thought that all in all, it was a good thing that he had been able to come to the old man's house. Leif only had the choice between two situations that were bad for different reasons, unless someone cared about him enough to want him around whether he was going to end up running the store or not. According to the old man, many knew Leif was in a difficult situation, but also considered that living through it was necessary to acquire the social skills he would need as the store's future manager and owner. After taking his measurements, Leif went to the back of the store and returned with a folded piece of paper he gave Lalli. Lalli opened the piece of paper to make sure he had correctly estimated the sum of money he would need to pay in advance:
Stop courting Stefan or never come back here again. The boss hates you and you're lucky he's out right now.
Lalli's first reflex was to leave. That note didn't make any sense. He had never interacted with the store's owner that he knew of. And why did that man care about whether he was courting Stefan or not? Going back home immediately and finding someone who could explain felt like the right thing to do. However, the impulse to try making sense of the note on his own in the meantime was so strong that he was no longer paying attention to the finer points of where he was going. He was just about to walk past the last house that could be considered part of the town proper when he bumped into someone about the same height as him:
-Hey, will you watch where… you don't look good. Is everything okay?
He had apparently bumped into Emil. However, the most startling part of the encounter was the fact that Emil even noticed he was in a bad mood. Roni, all too often, would insist that Lalli was in a bad mood when he actually wasn't or appear to ignore actual instances of him being in a bad mood. Onni and Tuuri seemed more or less able to "read" him, but Anne-Mari's father and Cecilia seemed to still be figuring it out. Fortunately, whatever Cecilia's default assumption was resulted in her guessing right quite often. Anne-Mari's father, meanwhile, seemed to have a very tenuous understanding of the concept of not wanting company while in a bad mood. It was a good thing he and Tuuri kept each other occupied, barring the part where their daughter could potentially end up with the worse from both of them. He realized he should be saying something:
-In a hurry.
He continued walking in the house's direction, but Emil spoke again:
-Wait, you dropped your piece of paper… who gave you that?
Lalli turned around, and saw that Emil was reading the note. He promptly took it out of Emil's hand:
-None of your business.
Emil reflexively showed Lalli his open palms, then promptly started using the hand that wasn't keeping his basket from sliding off his forearm to rustle his own hair:
-Sorry, I didn't mean to read that. But I if I were you, I'd show it to Mikkel and the seagull guy as soon as possible.
-I know that, that's why I'm on my way home.
-Fair enough. I need to head back to the house neighboring yours, how about I stay with you until we need to part ways?
-I'm able of taking care of myself.
-It would have been a little easier to believe if you hadn't just bumped into me, but fine. Let's just each go our own way.
There was suddenly a gust of wind, which turned out to be too strong for Lalli's loose hold on Leif's note. Before he could react, it was blown away from his reach. He briefly hopefully looked for a seagull, but the old man definitely had more important areas to focus his attention on.
-Oh no… How about I come with you? Like that, I can confirm if someone doesn't believe you.
Lalli didn't like the sudden need to bring Emil to the house, but he'd be lying to himself if he claimed to no be a little worried that he wouldn't be believed now that the paper had been blown away.

Both Lalli and Emil told what had happened to Mikkel, who decided it was something worth bothering Väinö about. The old man went as far as looking for the note via his seagulls, but didn't find it. He also had both Emil and Lalli write down what they remembered of the note's contents while the other was outside his office, deciding it would be the next best thing to the actual note. After Emil was dismissed and left telling Lalli could call upon him if anyone else refused to believe him about the note, Lalli was shown Emil's version of the transcription. It was identical to his own. For some reason, Lalli felt like crying for the first time since he had woken up and realized he wouldn't have to face Roni ever again. He cried on a chair for a while without an interference form Mikkel or the old man, but he went to his bedroom as soon as he felt up to it, and soon fell asleep.

He and Tuuri were playing "What does this cloud look like?". They would always see different things, and Onni would usually have a third answer the few times he was both present and willing to play. When that game extended to various situations and the attitude to have towards them, two of them would occasionally agree, but never all three. Lalli was used to being the odd one out, as Onni and Tuuri, in spite of their differing outlooks on life, always seemed to both notice things that Lalli missed and both miss things that Lalli noticed. The rare times Lalli would agree with one of them and not the other, the one he was agreeing with was always assumed to have "bribed" him in some way. At the end of the day, Anne-Mari's father and Cecilia had just become extra players who could potentially agree or disagree with him. Stefan, per his own words, had spoken with enough people to have low expectations in terms of others seeing things the same way he did and was sometimes literally being paid to tell people their outlook on the world had some valid elements when nobody else around them did. Emil… had been the only one besides him and Leif to see a piece of paper with writing on it, and had reproduced its contents from memory soon after that. Lalli knew all too well it didn't mean anything. In some of his moments of anger, Roni had complained about having pretended to see "the same crazy things as him" in the clouds to please him, and that because of that Lalli did owe him shirking the first hour of his night shift to help him with something that could only be done then. Lalli had genuinely believed Roni had seen those shapes also until he had complained about it, so he couldn't be entirely sure Emil wasn't simply doing the same thing. However, there were several undeniable realities to that situation. He and Emil were the only people besides Leif to have seen the note. Anyone from the store who had noticed the note-handing had almost certainly assumed in was the bill for the waistcoat. Leif was in a situation in which he may have to back any claim made by the store's owner to keep his current job, home and future. He would also need to speak to Stefan and find out what he knew about the whole situation. Considering an arrangement with someone he appreciated, but didn't actually love the way he had loved Roni was working out very well, so far. It kept him from being angrier about the situation than he needed to be.