7. Where Chaos Reigns
"We're going to find a new place for you to stay," the dark-skinned woman said, grinning.
Syaoran looked up warily, draping his cloak over his head like a hood. "I don't want to go."
"Sorry, but it's time to register you with Clow's orphanage so you can live there."
"I don't want to go," he repeated, feeling as if the ground beneath him had turned to wind.
The woman's lips curved up at the sides, a strange response to his refusal. All the smiles he'd seen before had contained genuine happiness, or at least that was how he'd perceived them, once he'd realized what the facial quirk meant. But this smile seemed . . . sad, somehow. The contrasting shades of emotion set him ill at ease—if someone could hide pain behind an expression of joy, what else could be hidden from his eye?
"You'll be just fine," the woman said, scooping him up in her arms. He flinched, eyelid squeezing shut. "I've met the people working at the orphanage. They're nice."
His eyelid slid open again. "Nice?"
The woman started walking, hoisting him over her shoulder so he couldn't see her face. Feeling empty, he stared at the familiar clay walls of the police station until they disappeared beyond the door.
The sun pressed down on them, a vengeful furnace in the sky. Combined with the woman's body heat and the warmth of the cloak, the temperature swiftly went from irritating to intolerable. When he tried to wriggle away from the woman, she held him tighter to her body. "None of that. We're almost there."
He fidgeted, unable to trust the words when the air around him was so sweltering.
"You would be cooler if you'd let me take that cloak," the woman said.
"No."
The woman sighed. "I don't suppose Fujitaka taught you about heatstroke, huh."
The word was unfamiliar, but Syaoran understood the rest of the sentence. Even as part of him recoiled from the thought of learning from someone besides Fujitaka, curiosity commanded him to ask, "What's it mean?"
The woman smiled, her voice cheerful. "It means that if you stand out in the sun too long, you just fall over and die."
Syaoran shuddered and pulled the hood of the cloak over his head, shielding himself from the deadly sunlight.
"Don't you worry about a thing," she said. "That won't happen to you. I promise."
He looked at her, distrust blooming in his stomach. When Fujitaka had promised something, he'd always followed through. He'd always reappeared, day after day. There was no such precedent for this woman, and given that she was taking him from the building he'd grown so accustomed to since coming into existence, he refused to give her claims as much weight.
A shadow fell over them, cooling the air. Syaoran dared to peek out of his cloak. Above them, a green and yellow awning shielded them from the glaring light, rippling in the stifling breeze. The dark-skinned woman freed him from her embrace, setting him down on the cement porch. She knocked twice on the door, then walked in without waiting for an answer.
A flurry of activity bombarded him as he entered. For several seconds, all he could do was stare at the scene unfolding before him.
Each wall was painted a different hue—all the primary colors plus green. Tiny handprints marked the sheetrock, sometimes overlapping, sometimes standing alone. Cheery music twisted through the air, a foreign chorus to his still-inexperienced ears, and while the melody was pleasant, the volume made his head throb. Other children, many of them younger than him, ran around, playing with wooden blocks and smearing paint on shiny paper with their hands. Three boys were clustered around a series of linked boxes, connected by bits of plastic and fit to a half-finished track. In the corner, a girl with yellow hair cried, snot dripping from one of her nostrils. A welt on her forehead indicated some kind of trauma. When a red-haired woman finally stooped down to pick her up, the girl's sobs doubled in volume.
Syaoran lifted his hands to his ears and closed his eyes, trying to block out the cacophony. Muffled voices rose above the rest. He recognized the voice of the dark-skinned woman. "Hey, I called you earlier, about the missing boy we found."
Another voice pierced the air, feminine and unfamiliar. "Excellent. We can talk in here. I'll get Talt to take over for me." The woman, still holding the sobbing girl, gestured to a door on the opposite side of the room. Like a good portion of the walls, it was plastered with papers, many of which appeared to be smeared with paint.
"Thanks," the dark-skinned woman said. Her hand snaked out, prying Syaoran's hand from his ears. "This way, Little Wolf."
He obeyed, hoping the next room would be less chaotic than this one. As they crossed the bustling play area, the girl standing next to the shiny canvas glanced over and waved at them, her hand crusted with crimson paint.
The room beyond the door was the antithesis to the room through which he'd entered. A desk dominated the far wall, neat stacks of white and yellow paper arranged in a line across the side of the desk. A metal filing cabinet stood off to the side, taller than any adult he'd met so far and flanked by a stool that allowed access to the top drawer. Several chairs were lined up in front of the desk, and one more facing them from the other side.
"We've just got some paperwork to fill out," the dark-skinned woman said, taking his hand and leading him to the chairs. He took a seat. His legs dangled over the edge, his tiptoes only brushing the ground only when he stretched his legs. This world isn't built for people my size, he thought, trying to get comfortable on the wooden seat.
A few minutes later, the red-haired woman who'd tended to the crying girl appeared at the door. "Sorry it took so long. One of Talt's charges had a diaper emergency."
"It's no problem."
The stranger took a seat on the opposite side of the desk and started sliding sheets of paper across the surface. "This is mostly legal stuff," she said. "Custody forms, adoption versus foster care, and the like. You can just skim through that while I talk to our newest addition."
The dark-skinned woman nodded, already scanning each of the documents. The redhead leaned forward, pushing her glasses back so they didn't appear so skewed. "Hello there, little boy."
He said nothing.
"He doesn't talk much. Like I said over the phone, his vocabulary is pretty limited."
The woman's ponytail bobbed as she nodded. "Of course. So, I'm told you like to be called 'Syaoran.' Is that right?"
He shrugged.
"Well, you can call me Macy. Can you talk to me a little bit? What do you remember of the time before that man found you in the rain?"
"Nothing. I didn't exist."
Her eyebrows climbed, almost disappearing into her bangs. "You didn't exist? Well, that's a very . . . creative way of expressing your memory loss."
He fidgeted—he didn't understand half the words at the end of her sentence.
Macy leaned forward and pressed a finger to the bindings around the right half of his face. "Do you remember anything about losing your eye?"
He blinked slowly. "I . . . I only had one eye when I came into existence." He wasn't even sure if that was accurate. He'd been bandaged ever since he'd come into existence, and though most of the bindings had been removed, the one over the right half of his face had only been removed so the officers could clean the skin underneath.
"But you must've lost it somehow. Are you sure you don't remember who did this to you?"
He shook his head.
"He says he doesn't remember anything before he woke up in the rain," the dark-skinned woman chipped in. "And he hasn't really contradicted himself yet, so I think he's telling the truth. But that's up to your psychologists now, I guess."
Macy's lip quirked to the side. "Yes, well . . . He certainly is a unique case, isn't he?"
The dark-skinned woman leaned forward, setting the papers in her lap. "You think he'll be hard to place?"
"As it stands now, yes. But he may get lucky, or he might recover from his trauma enough to be reclassified. The world is full of possibilities for children this young." She folded her hands, lacing her fingers, and leaned forward, scrutinizing him through her spectacles. "We're going to find you some good, adoptive parents, and everything will work out just fine."
"Why do I need parents?"
Macy's eyelids fluttered. "Well, to take care of you, of course."
"People already take care of me," he said, hand rising unconsciously to touch his cloak.
"Yes, but I mean in a more permanent sort of way. You'll be safe and secure, and you'll always have someone to go to if you ever need help."
He frowned, wishing she would just believe him. Fujitaka would take care of him—he had ever since they'd met. Fujitaka wouldn't turn him away if he asked for help. What use were parents when he already had someone looking out for him?
Yet the bespectacled woman resisted every argument that came to his lips, and after a few more minutes of questioning, he lapsed into silence.
"Is this all I have to fill out?" the dark-skinned woman finally asked, paging through the documents.
"That's all. Just sign here, and he'll be under our care."
"No!" he yelped. "I can't stay, I have to go back to the station, or he won't be able to find me."
"Who won't be able to find you?"
"Fujitaka," he said. Honestly, this woman had no idea what she was doing.
Macy raised an eyebrow. "And who is this . . . Fujitaka?"
"He's the one who first found Syaoran. He's been teaching the boy the language."
"Oh." The redhead frowned, a finger going to her lower lip as her eyebrows came together. "Well, we have speech therapists that can help him with that here."
"I need to see him," Syaoran said. His voice broke.
Macy ignored him, turning instead to the officer. "We have to keep him under observation for a few days before we allow any outsiders to visit, to make sure he's emotionally stable."
"I know." She leaned forward and pressed the tip of her pen to the paper. Wherever she applied pressure, ink flowed out of the pen.
With nothing more than a scribble, the woman signed his existence away.
"Thank you," Macy said, pulling the papers toward her and glancing over them. "I think that should be just fine."
"So we're done here?"
She nodded, her glasses slipping half an inch down her nose. Absently, she pushed them back into place. "Don't worry. We'll take good care of him."
The dark-skinned woman stood up and patted Syaoran's shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm sure Fujitaka will visit soon to teach you all about Clow."
Hope flared in his chest, hotter than the deadly sun outside. That's right, Syaoran thought. He promised he'd see me today.
The dark-skinned woman abandoned the room. Macy knelt in front of him and took his hands. "How about we find you someplace to sleep?"
He wasn't sure why she phrased it as a question when it was obvious he had no choice. He hopped down from the oversized chair, pulling his hands from hers. Her eyebrows climbed toward her bangs again, but all she did was open the door and walk him out.
Syaoran endured the chaos of the colorful room as the woman explained what it was. She spoke simply, using words he mostly understood, yet he couldn't help but feel belittled, somehow. Surely she wouldn't speak to a normal child this way. If he ever hoped to have command of the language here, he'd have to listen to more mature conversations.
"This is the nursery. The little kids play here all day. You'll like it here a lot."
His nose twitched. "It's too noisy."
"Lots of kids are playing here," the woman said, reiterating her earlier point. "It's always loud."
He frowned and allowed her to lead him across the bustling room. She pointed out various attractions, including the easel—still in use, blue paint now splattered over the ghastly crimson he'd seen before—and the linked, plastic boxes, which the woman labeled as a "train." She pointed to every child in the room and gave him their names, claiming he would grow to like them. Already, Syaoran was struggling to process the severity of his new situation. This place was all wrong—the colors were too bright, the contrasts too sharp. A steady throbbing in his head reminded him of the rain drumming against the windows, the first night he'd stayed in the police station.
He'd left only an hour ago, and already, the distance seemed insurmountable.
"Let's head upstairs and find you a room," the woman said, taking his hand. Obstinately, he yanked his fingers away and drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders. With a sigh, the woman tapped the back of his shoulder and prodded him forward.
Syaoran quickly realized the stairs were going to be his new nemesis. They loomed above him, a forbidding mountain with uniform angles and sharp edges. A tattered rug clung to the wooden steps, a gaudy red strip that stood in stark contrast to the pale blue walls.
"Come on, dear." Macy nudged him toward the steps. He shied away.
"It's too high."
"Don't be silly. Even the little kids can climb these stairs."
He bristled—most of the children he'd seen had looked younger than him, and the thought of them scaling these steps left him reeling. How could they manage such a feat?
Moreover, how was he supposed to climb them when the edges of the steps blurred together like this? He could hardly tell how distant they were, and even now, the steps seemed to shift, unstable.
"Come on," Macy said, tugging him closer to his nemesis. "I'm not going to carry you up the steps—I'll throw my back out trying."
He jerked his hand away and started forward, refusing to acknowledge her apparent confidence. When his shins bumped into the closest step, he tumbled forward and hit his head on the edge of the third. The impact sent a spark of pain through his face, right where the bandage was wrapped.
"Oh my!"
He ignored the woman's cry of surprise and pulled himself onto the next step. It was slow progress. He couldn't judge the distance between each step, so he had to climb the stairs with both hands and feet on the floor. The woman came to his side, ascending the obstacle with sinuous grace. He studied the way she moved, but couldn't replicate it without risking a nasty fall.
He was out of breath by the time he reached the top. The woman took his hand and pulled him away from the edge of the stairs. "Oh my, you've scuffed up your knees. We'll have to put a bandage on that."
He shook his head. "I'm fine."
She sighed, losing her omnipresent smile. "There are rooms this way."
Syaoran allowed her to lead him to a hallway lined with doors. Some had whiteboards attached to the outside, some bearing pictures and some bearing words he didn't know. Frustration bubbled up inside him. Fujitaka could've taught him all those words. He could've been free to sculpt whole worlds out of printed letters. Now, all he could do was search in vain for meaning in the symbols. What good was a phonetic alphabet when his vocabulary was still so crippled?
They came to a stop at the end of the corridor. Macy stepped in front of him and turned the brass knob of the door, peering inside before holding it open. "Go on in."
He slipped through the gap and found himself in a small room. Unlike the rest of the orphanage, the walls were subtly colored—beige with brown trim. Two empty beds, both covered with white sheets, sat on the opposite side of the room.
"We have an odd number of boys now that you're here, so you'll be rooming alone until something opens up. Bed check is at nine every night, and you can't leave your room after that."
He fidgeted. This place was more like a prison than the barred cells he'd explored at the police station.
"There are clothes in the dresser. When it's time for lunch, there'll be a bell. Make sure to come down right away, otherwise you won't be able to eat. Um, what else?" She glanced around, as if something in the barren room would spark her memory. After a moment, her face lit up. "Oh, the bathrooms are just down the hall. You . . . You know how to use those, right?"
The insinuation, like everything else about this place, irked him. "Of course I do," he said, as if none of the police officers had been forced to show him to the bathroom the first time he'd . . . slipped up.
Besides, walking to the bathroom was much less uncomfortable than the alternative.
"All right, well, I'll just leave you here so you can get used to things." Macy smiled again, too cheerful, and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Syaoran walked over to the window and flung the curtains open, standing in the sun for a few minutes before he remembered the sunlight could kill him. He closed the curtains and crawled into bed.
He left his room only a few times that day. At lunch, he kept to himself, watching the chaos unfold between the other children. Sometimes, he could feel their gazes crawling across the bandages on his face, but whenever he looked at them, their heads would turn away, their shoulders bunching up as if to shield them from his gaze.
Lunch passed. He faced the brutal obstacle presented by the stairs and sequestered himself in his room. When dinner came, he made no move to go downstairs.
Fujitaka never came.
Author's Notes:
I know. It's been forever. I'm sorry, but I didn't expect this fic to be this long, and I wasn't sure how to get where I was going, so it was delayed.
My reasoning on Syaoran's hatred of stairs is thus: with only one eye, he has no depth perception. Therefore, it's difficult for him to judge the distance from the stairs, and they seem a lot more forbidding than they really are.
Also, I don't know much about orphanages or adoption, so if I write something blatantly incorrect/illogical, just point it out and I'll correct it.