Chapter 6 Food and Drink
They were in Italy. All five of the Bladebreakers were sat around in one of Rome's top restaurants. Rei looked up from his feast of red meat and tomato based sauce with a frown. The others were all enjoying their meals heartily , well all of them except Kai who instead had just opted to have a plain black coffee.
It worried Rei that he very rarely saw Kai eat and that even when he did it was never much, never enough to sustain a teenage boy especially one with Kai's toned build.
He hoped that Kai was sneaking in meals when he disappeared which he did with a annoying frequency especially at nights.
But he doubted that Kai ate that much at all. It was scary to think that a team mate could have some kind of disorder but there was not much he could do about it. Kai would never admit that he needed help and until he did what could they do?
He decided to try and forget about it, after all the food was good and he was in a country he never even dreamed he'd be able to visit.
Ian was hungry. He was on punishment and that meant no food but still having to watch the others eat. Sometimes the Abbey made him sick with anger.
It had not been his fault! One of the other boys Valodya had been brewing his own 'moonshine' using potato peels he had stolen from the kitchen. It stunk and Ian had been unlucky enough to smell it and investigate.
Valodya had panicked and soon Ian had blackmailed him out of half his supply. Unfortunately one of the Abbey guards had smelled it too and busted Ian before he'd had more than a few bottles.
And so now he was stuck watching the others eat and he knew Spencer well enough to be able to tell that the taller boy was finding it hilarious. Bryan looked angry and disappointed, he'd just recently had his own supply taken , which Ian quietly applauded the guards for Bryan was a mean drunk...even meaner than he could be sober.
But Tala was annoying him the most. Sure it was bugging him that Spencer was now shaking with suppressed amusement (A rare and slightly disturbing sight) and that Bryan had apparently been hiding half the abbeys stock of brandy (stolen from the medical supplies) under his bed and not sharing. But Watching Tala push his 'food' around on his plate and not eating a bite of it...well it should be a crime to waste food in front of a starving boy.
Finally it got too much "Tala would you just eat the bloody food!"
Tala looked up in shock and everyone turned towards them.
"I'm not hungry" he answered after a minute going back to playing with the odd grey stuff.
Ian wanted to say something else but he knew that he was already in enough trouble. What the hell was up with Tala these days anyway, normally he would have had his arse handed back to him for shouting at his team captain. Something was wrong and whatever it was it had been wrong for a while.
He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by the scraping of Tala's chair against the floor. He knew that something was wrong but even if there was what the hell could he do? It wasn't like Tala confided in anyone. None of them did, who was there to confide in?
The train to Russia. The journey had been long and hard. Kai lay on top of his bed waiting for signs that everybody else was asleep. One by one he heard the breathing of his friends even out . When he was sure that they had finally dropped off he threw his legs over the side of the bunk and began to make his way out of the carriage.
All he needed now was a man and a bottle of something alcoholic.
Tyson was awake when Kai finally made his way back into the carridge the team shared.He had been asleep but was awoken in the middle of the night by the pressing need to empty the small complementary travel fridge. He had found Kai's bunk once again empty and had decided to stay awake and wait for their leaders return.
He was angry now as he lay with his eyes closed that Kai could just slip in at all hours of the night and climb into his bunk as if he had been there the whole time. Kai had been disappearing more and more the closer they got to Russia and he was starting to get worried.
He wanted to bring it up with the others but when every morning Kai woke them up acting the same and not even seeming tired he knew that he didn't have a leg to stand on. Kai was older and team captain. If whatever he was doing did not affect the team as a whole then nobody else would be too concerned.