"Terrible, terrible, terrible..." said Mr. Toc.
"This is the second tragedy that happens today!" Mrs. Yamashita muttered to herself with saddened eyes. "He's dead. He's most definitely dead."
"Don't say that, Patty! I called the ambulance, they should be here any second now," the nurse told Mrs. Yamashita.
"Faloun," Mrs. Yamashita said, "could you go and inform Pete of this most unfortunate event while I go make a quick phone call. Would that be too much trouble?"
"Don't worry, Patty," Mr. Toc said from his wheelchair. "I may be handicapped, but I am always body-abled to perform a service of good intention!"
"Thank you, Faloun. You're a saint."
Faloun Toc exited Mrs. Yamashita's office and went to look for Pete, the other co-director who ran the orphanage with Mrs. Yamashita, who was on yard duty watching over the children on the playground. Seto and Mokuba were fond of him; he had congratulated Seto when he had defeated Gozaboro Kaiba in their chess match and had let him keep the chess set in his room as a reward.
Mrs. Yamashita took out the address book and looked up a number in panic. Before picking up the phone and dialing, she turned to look at the nurse, "Katherine, go fetch Seto and his brother. I don't know where the hell they ran off to, but accident or not, the little brat has to own up for what he did! Murder is murder!"
"Ma'am, the child isn't dead!"
"But do you honestly think he'll live after something like that?!"
"Also, ma'am... I don't suppose now is a good time to tell you this but a new family wants to schedule an appointment to take a look at the kids. Norma forgot to tell you. The Wheel—"
"I DON'T CARE! GO LOOK FOR MOKUBA AND HIS BROTHER!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Back at the dormitories, Violet Baudelaire burst the door open to her room in quite the hurry. Her brother Klaus, startled, was laying awake on the bed reading a book about Egyptian pharaohs.
"Wow Violet, what happened?" he asked her, putting the book down. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Klaus," Violet told her brother, "Olaf is here!"
"What?"
"Yes, he's here! I saw him!"
"If this is some kind of joke—"
"Why would I joke about something like that? He's in disguise again!"
"He's still dressed as Stefano?"
"No, no. He's pretending to be some guy in a wheelchair named Faloun Toc who volunteers at orphanages."
"Does he know we're here?"
"Klaus, that's why he's here! He wants to kidnap us or adopt us, I don't know! He dropped the T.V. set on a little child just a few minutes ago!"
"He did what?!"
"It was a warning to me! To show me he's capable of hurting any of the other kids here if we attempt to run away. And what's worse is that he's blaming it all on Seto's little brother."
"Who's Seto?"
"He's a boy that I met, he's really nice. But now his younger brother Mokuba is afraid of getting punished for it and ran off to hide somewhere. Seto is looking for him."
"How's the kid who was crushed by the T.V.?"
"Nobody knows. The ambulance was on the way when I left the cafeteria. He's really badly injured and he lost a lot of blood, but at least he's still breathing."
Violet actually had wanted to say, "It's unlikely he'll make it" because, sadly, that was the truth. But she decided not to draw in any negative vibes from the universe. Her mother had always said if you thought positively, even if the result was negative, you still had the satisfaction of knowing you didn't give up and drew in the bad energy. Besides, she felt kind of responsible because Olaf had merely hurt the child to send out a message to her, and the message was very clear.
"So what do we do, Violet? Do we run away? We have to go get Sunny and get out of here!"
"No! If we try to leave, he'll hurt another child!"
"But we can't stay here either!"
"And we have to help Seto and Mokuba too. I have to let Mrs. Yamashita know it wasn't Mokuba."
"Did anybody else see it happen?"
"No! That's the problem! Nobody was paying attention, Klaus. Nobody seemed particularly interested in The Littlest Elf, Mokuba's movie selection. Everyone was so engrossed in their own business and Mokuba was putting in the tape when Olaf swiftly stood up from his phony wheelchair in the blink of an eye, and pushed the T.V. off the cart where it fell on the little boy who walking to throw away his trash. He planned it so perfectly! He had even called the boy over and had told him to throw away the tray just seconds before."
"That's horrible!"
"And then he started screaming, 'Oh Mokuba, what did you do?' while looking at me, and called Mrs. Yamashita over."
"We have to let Mrs. Yamashita know who Mr. Toc really is."
"But how do we do that? None of the adults are going to believe us if we tell them Mr. Toc isn't actually handicapped."
"Mr. Poe warned Mrs. Yamashita about Count Olaf when he dropped us off yesterday night. She knows what he looks like, she has a picture. Is there any way we can show his tattoo or unibrow?"
"He isn't hiding his unibrow this time, but he has a cast on his right foot. There is no way Mrs. Yamashita will make him take it off just to—"
Violet and Klaus looked at each other as the invading sound of someone knocking, or rather pounding, on the door interrupted their conversation and permeated freely through the walls of the dormitory like a murderous echo.
Knock, knock.
Klaus gulped and tried not to make much noise.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
Was it Mrs. Yamashita? Was it "Mr. Toc"?
"Who...who is it...?" Violet asked with a shaky voice while she looked around the room for something to defend herself with in case it was Mr. Toc.
"I'm looking for my little brother," came a voice from the other side. "He's hiding somewhere. Is there any chance he's in there?"
"Klaus, that's Seto!" Violet told her brother as she ran towards the door to let Seto in.
"Oh, Violet. It's you," said Seto with a look of partial relief.
"Seto," said Violet, gesturing him to come in.
"Mokuba didn't do—"
"Don't worry, I know. I saw it."
"You saw it? Then you have to go tell Mrs. Yamashita! She's convinced my little brother did it on purpose, but I can assure you it was just an accident! Mokuba wouldn't—"
"No, Seto. Count — I mean, Mr. Toc — is the one who dropped the T.V. on the little kid."
"Mr. Toc? The old man in the wheelchair who can barely see?"
"Who can barely see?" Violet repeated. "What do you mean?"
"Yeah," said Seto, coming in and closing the door behind him. "He told us his eyesight wasn't too good and that's why he was holding onto me—"
"No, no, Seto. That is not why he was holding onto you..." Violet told him a little uncomfortably.
"What do you mean?" Seto asked, afraid of where the conversation was going.
Was Seto going to hate her now once he realized their arrival at the orphanage was what had lured Olaf in? That, indirectly, it could be argued that everything that was happening now was their fault?
Violet just looked at Seto, and Seto looked back at her.
"Mr. Toc is really a man named Count Olaf," Klaus spoke up from the bed. "He saw my sister—"
"He saw me in the cafeteria," Violet continued, "and he saw that I had seen him too, so he grabbed you as a way of letting me know that if I screamed out his name right then and there, he would hurt you and Mokuba."
Seto stared at Violet and Klaus with a unique kind of stare, as if deciding whether to believe them or not or perhaps judging them. In the three and a half years that he and Mokuba had been at the orphanage ever since the dreadful day their parents died in a terrible fire, he had never truly made friends with any of the other children there. In fact, he avoided them like the plague, or like how a pauper avoids a princess in fear his request at a friendship is turned down. Although in Seto's case, it was technically the opposite. But there was something about Violet and Klaus that let Seto know they were telling the truth. Perhaps it was the disturbing familiarity of pain and hurt visible in their eyes that he could relate to.
"What's the matter?" Klaus asked Seto as he fixed his glasses. "Don't you believe us?"
"I believe you," said Seto. "It's just not flattering to know I was in danger without even knowing it at the time. I suppose that's why he gripped me so hard."
"That man is a monster," said Violet.
"What's he want with you two, though?"
"We can explain it all to you later, Seto," said Violet, "but right now finding your brother is priority. Mokuba is in terrible danger if Mr. Toc catches him."
"Or if Mrs. Yamashita finds him first," Seto said. "Let's go."
"We should look in the cafeteria," said Klaus.
"No, we shouldn't," said Seto. "Mokuba wouldn't hide there and besides, your sister and I were just there and we didn't see him."
"What if we split up?" Violet suggested.
"Is splitting up really a good idea if Count Olaf is lurking by?" Klaus asked.
"It is if we want to find my brother as soon as possible."
The middle Baudelaire was taken aback by the combination of assertiveness and lack of friendliness in Seto's cold and stern voice, probably because he assumed this mutual threat made them friends by default now and Seto seemed anything but friendly.
"I can go look in the playground," Violet suggested, "Klaus, why don't you go to the kitchen, bathrooms, and the other dormitories. And maybe Seto can look upstairs?"
"Sounds good to me," said Seto.
He opened the door when suddenly—
"SETO!" came the angry voice of Patty Yamashita from the hallway as Seto and the two Baudelaire siblings where in the process of splitting up and going their separate ways.
"For the love of Ra..."
"Stop right there, you three!"
The children did as they were told.
"I don't know where he is," Seto said.
"You don't even know what I'm going to ask you!" Mrs. Yamashita said. "Now, where is your brother Mokuba?!"
"Didn't you hear me? I just told you I don't know where he is!" Seto responded fiercely at her with a command in his voice that made Violet and Klaus understand he wasn't the kind of person who took nonsense from adults just because they were adults.
"You told him, didn't you?"
"Told him what?"
"I asked you not to tell him!"
"What are you talking about? Gozaboro Kaiba's accident?"
"Yes! Of course I'm talking about Gozoboro Kaiba's accident and death!"
"What?" asked Violet and Klaus in unison.
"I didn't tell him," Seto answered back.
"Yes you did!" cried Mrs. Yamashita. "And in a moment of madness and self-proclaimed revenge, your brother dropped that television set on the little boy!"
"What?!" cried Seto.
"He figured if you and him couldn't have an adoptive father, the other parents wouldn't be able to adopt the other orphans either so he tried to kill one of them!"
Seto and the Baudelaires looked at Mrs. Yamashita with a combination of anger, frustration, and disgust. None of them could believe the words that were coming out of the woman's mouth. The very same woman who had seemed so kind and understanding and used words like "sweetheart" and "hun."
Finally, after a long moment of silence and intense exchange of loathing stares, Seto said, "You're a stupider bitch that I thought, Patty."
"Excuse me?!"
"You're an absolute moronic idiot if you actually believe, even for one goddamn second, that my brother would injure another kid here!"
"I'm an adult! I know how children work! I run this orphanage! Plus, Mr. Toc agrees with my theory!"
"Mrs. Yamashita!" Violet cried. "You don't understand! Mr. Toc is actually a man called—"
"What does Mr. Toc have to do with anything?!"
"He dropped the T.V. on the child!" cried Klaus.
"That's preposterous!" cried Mrs. Yamashita. "Mr. Toc is harmless! Besides, he is in a wheelchair. There's no way he could have stood up to reach the T.V.!"
"Oh, but my little brother could?!"
"Well, yes! Mr. Toc told me so!"
"Wow. You are truly an imbecile," said Seto.
"That's it! I've had it with you, young man! You're hurting my feelings!"
"Mrs. Yamashita, Mr. Toc is actually Count Olaf!" cried Violet. "Do you remember Mr. Poe was telling you about him yesterday night when he dropped us off?"
"No, of course I don't remember! It was like 1 in the morning!" exclaimed Mrs. Yamashita. "How am I supposed to remember anything that happens at 1 in the morning? I don't even remember your name, Violet!"
Seto rolled his eyes at Mrs. Yamashita's remarkable stupidity and, without warning, grabbed Violet by the arm and started running at full speed. "Come on!" he said. "We gotta find my brother!"
"Wait for me!" Klaus said and chased after them.
"COME BACK HERE, YOU BRATS!" Mrs. Yamashita yelled as she ran after them. "SECURITY! SECURITY!"
"Klaus! Go to the nursery and grab Sunny! I'll help Seto look for his brother!"
"Are we running away?!"
"Just do it, Klaus!"
"SECURITY!"
The three orphans exited the long hallway that lead to the dormitories, with Mrs. Yamashita not too far behind them. Klaus made a run for the right side of the orphanage, where the nursery was located and the babies and toddlers were being taken care of. Seto and Violet entered the cafeteria once again, since that was the only way to make it back out into the playground. They could see the broken television laying on the ground where it had crushed the little boy.
"Door's over there," Seto told Violet, pointing at the door that lead to the playground where a lot of the children where still playing. "Let's try not to draw too much attention to ourselves."
"Got it," said Violet.
"SECURITY!" came the annoying voice of Mrs. Yamashita from the hallway.
"Run!" Seto yelled at Violet.
They ran out of the cafeteria as fast as their feet could take them, which actually wasn't too bad of a plan since children ran out of the cafeteria all the time to go play on the playground and they had in fact blended in with a crowd of girls who were doing precisely that at the moment.
"Mokuba?!" Seto called out. "Mokuba!"
"I think we're safe," Violet told Seto. "Mrs. Yamashita is looking for us in the bathrooms."
"Mokuba!" cried Seto. "Where are you?!"
"Let's look around, Seto. I'll go check the swings and monkey bars."
"Seto!" cried a voice from behind them and Seto and Violet turned around almost instantly.
It was a boy clearly older than Seto and Violet. He was probably about sixteen or so and had long hair as black as a raven at night.
"Garrett?" Seto asked, trying to remember the boy's name. He had seen him around a lot during his stay at the orphanage, but like Seto himself, the boy was usually pretty quiet and didn't interact much with other kids. "Or is it Grey? I'm sorry, I don't remember your name."
"Grayson, actually. Richard Grayson," said the boy. "But you can call me Dick. I know where your brother is."
"PATTY!" cried yet another voice behind Seto, Violet, and Dick Grayson. It was Pete, the other co-director, who was standing next to a man in a wheelchair who the three orphans knew was none other than Mr. Toc. Pete was speaking on his cell phone, "PATTY! I FOUND THEM! SETO AND THE BAUDELAIRE GIRL ARE ON THE PLAYGROUND!"