Track for this chapter:
Cascada, by Christine Brown, on the album Promise
He was woken by a rough hand grabbing his collar and yanking him up. Kyouya winced as the grey silky fabric of his vest tore and grabbed his bag as an afterthought, tuning in briefly to the ship security guard's continuous rant.
"...YOU YOUNG HOOLIGANS...ALWAYS SLIPPIN' INTA DA SHIPS..." He sported a thick Brooklyn accent, and Kyouya tuned out again. He didn't know how many times he'd been caught on ships like these, subject to the same such speeches from angry, burly men. It was kind of fun to drive the guards mad, though.
The man tossed Kyouya over the rail into the shallow water near whatever harbour they happened to be at, and Kyouya picked himself up, ran a hand through his hair, grabbed his backpack, and headed off.
It was the way things had always been, after all, so why change it now?
Tsubasa walked into the store on Monday. Ethan was absent. Hadley leaned listlessly on the counter, chewing on a strand of her short hair. Then Cindy emerged from the kitchen.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" Tsubasa tried to mask his surprise, though honestly he hadn't been looking forward to spending an entire day with only Hadley round for company.
"Ah could ask ya ta same thing, buddy." Cindy turned and straightened her apron in the reflection of the countertop, which Ethan had scrubbed sixty times the other day for lack of anything else to do.
"I'm homeschooled?" Tsubasa tried.
"Nope. Ah met a ton o' homeschooled kids in mah life, an' you don' fit ta bill. Ah ain't gonna question ya 'bout yer personal life", Cindy added, holding her hands up in defence of his growing tension. "Ya got yer own reasons fer bein' here, same as me. An' if ya don' ask me no questions, ah won't either."
Tsubasa slumped with relief. It was hard to explain why he was here; not many came to a small town such as Beaumont looking for a life.
"I do have one question, though. If you aren't at school, why did Quinn say he'd see you at school when he left?"
"Ah guess ye kin say it's a inside joke. We grew up together, an' he's been sayin' it ever since we was little. Ol' habits die hard."
Kyouya left the ship slightly damp, but none the worse for wear. He walked with a bounce in his step, not missing the smelly freighter at all. There were plenty of other boats in the harbour that would serve his purpose just as well as the rest.
He slipped into one while nobody was looking, this time sufficiently canopied behind several pallets stacked to the bottom of the deck, which loomed high and rustic above him; the bowels of a ship were one of the best places to think.
Stark and undemanding, the curved steel beams rose sharply above him, hitting the deck at a sudden angle cutting steep yards high. Kyouya gazed glassy-eyed at the opposite side of the unpainted hull and thought about the orphanage drowsily, remembering how he'd never fulfilled his self-made promise to return. Someday he'd go back.
The shop door closed with a soft clang behind him as Hadley exited on his heels.
It had been a long day.
There had been absolutely no customers, and this in itself was tiring; Tsubasa couldn't imagine what he'd have done if the shop had been packed full and wondered how Hadley managed to pay everybody though she made barely any profit.
As he headed to the other side of town in his evening custom of searching for an apartment for a reasonable price, he thought he heard something in the alley nearby.
He peeked stealthily around the corner, feeling almost like he was back on duty again for the WBBA.
A few meters away was a man in a business suit, speaking into an ancient flip phone.
"I left it in the garbage can near that general store today. Don't go there 'til later though - they just hired this new kid who's got secrets in 'is eyes. Yeah. Yeah...yeah, you better pay me soon. Okay. Okay." He shut the phone and Tsubasa ducked into a nearby antique store until the man had passed.
That fedora.
He was certain he'd seen it dropped on the corner of the general store's porch this morning, and by late afternoon it was gone. He'd assumed it had blown away.
By all logic it could have been any fedora blown by a wayward breeze off of its owner's head; except that there was a knot where the ribbon looped around the back of it. A double knot, sticking conspicuously, like a small child had practised its knotting on the ribbon and then its father had placed the ribbon round his hat.
He doubled back to the general store quickly. The garbage cans behind the store were hidden from the view of the street beyond, and he thought he heard something rustle nearby. With light footsteps he paced down the alleyway and opened the garbage cans.
The third one held a battered blue backpack; what could the man have hidden inside it? Coins? Counterfeit money? Fake passports?
Tsubasa unzipped the top zipper and peered inside.
An object tumbled out of the backpack's gaping mouth, wrapped in twine and brown paper like Ethan's lunch always was. Tsubasa tugged at the twine, casting one last self-conscious glance round the alley; paranoia led him to believe that somebody was hiding behind the stacked pallets at the other end.
He tugged open the paper the rest of the way and a small golden statue no longer than 5 inches rolled into his palm.
He gazed at it for a moment; it was a model of a man girded in robes. The diamonds in the eyes looked real enough; he scratched one against the wall of the alley.
Genuine.