Oh look, another chapter with approximately 4.00 x 10^8 paragraph breaks; weird, list-like introspection; really short paragraphs; borderline inexplicable actions; and other writing quirks I am unable to rid myself of. However, the great and glorious (I say this with neither sarcasm nor sardonicism) karina001 and Hn have apparently found it decent, and so I shall go forth with my plan of not bothering to edit much.
The inn in question, as it were, was seven minutes or so south of the port, perched up on the edge of the sea. After a meal drawn out by Tiedoll's questions about the architecture, the four exorcists found themselves split between two rooms.
Daisya curled up beneath his blankets, wearing his coat over his pyjamas. It would be a while before he got used to the chill of a northern climate.
"I do hope Kanda hasn't been too…abrasive," mused the old man from the other side of the room, "He does have some difficulty with kids his own age."
If there was one thing the old man was, it was predictable. Daisya decided which lie to use, and chose a more neutral one.
"He's been okay. He just doesn't talk much. It's a bit boring."
"Oh, I'm glad," said the old man, sounding relieved, "I know that a lot of the Order hold him at arms' length. It really isn't any good for him, so I'm happy you can understand."
"Mmm."
Daisya stared at the wall, eyes drifting over the pattern of knotholes in the wooden paneling.
"He just seems…"
What was the word. Lifeless, pushy, hungry?
"…tired."
Tired. Yeah, that was the word for him. Not tired as in 'oh dear I haven't slept in a day and my eye just started twitching and did you see that elephant cycle past,' but tired as in 'existence is a trial.'
He pushed, and when you pushed back, he kept pushing until you backed down. His own surrender was never an option.
"Yes. Hmm, that is a good word to use. He has lived through many things, and now he is tired…"
The warm, dry tones of the old man's voice wore on as Daisya came to his own conclusions. In the dusty recesses of his skull, he pulled out a checklist, and crossed off the first bullet point as ineffective. Kanda didn't have enough of a sense of humour for that to work.
Time, now, to try a more neutral approach. Well, what other people thought was nice, at least.
...
The sun had just barely come up when Daisya was woken by a bell. Not his own, but a shrill noise echoing up the stairs.
He groaned, and sat up.
"What time's it?"
"Six bells."
The old man's cheery voice came from near the door. He was already up and dressed.
"How do you even get up this early?" murmured Daisya, half to himself.
"Well, the view from here is just so beautiful, I couldn't help but want to watch the sunrise. I would have woken you, but I thought you might not appreciate it so much."
Daisya had gotten up, picked his shirt off the floor, and pulled it over his head. Then he realized he hadn't taken off his coat or pyjamas yet. Then he remembered that the old man had said something.
"Oh, thanks. How'd it look?"
"Lovely, thank you. I managed to fish out my pastels in time to make a sketch."
After a few false starts, Daisya finally managed to button up his coat over his clothes, not the other way around.
"That's good."
He pulled on one boot, stamping down on the thick leather.
"Uh, General?"
"Yes?"
The old man looked over at him from the door.
"Is there anything Kanda actually likes to do? Whenever we do something, he complains."
The old man chuckled.
"He does like to do that. He's quite fond of arguing, too. There isn't a good way to put it, but I don't think Kanda likes much in particular, nor does he hate anything. The complaining is more of a habit."
Having finally tied a tight enough knot in his laces, Daisya followed the old man downstairs.
"So it's like Marie not saying much, but the opposite?"
"Yes. It isn't too much reflection of his own feelings. That's why the two of them get along so well."
Daisya smiled.
"Yeah. I was wondering about that."
The only other free room had been at the opposite corner of the inn, so Kanda and Marie were already waiting for them.
"Were either of you up to see the sunrise?" asked Tiedoll, pulling up a chair, "It was beautiful."
"I imagine so," said Marie diplomatically. Sometimes it took the General a few moments to catch up to himself.
"Oh, more's the pity. I must say, I have a soft spot for coastlines."
The table subsided back into the vague silence of the half-asleep.
"I'll get some breakfast," mumbled Kanda.
"I can go w—"
"No."
Daisya shrugged, and leaned back in his seat. The time for playing the joker had passed, having not worked.
"Well, while we're waiting for breakfast, I think I'll check up on our situation."
The general pushed his chair back from the table, and wandered over to the telephone in the corner, leaving Marie and Daisya sitting in an awkward silence.
"So today we've got to take the train up north, and then we're going south on the ferry?" he asked, trying to start a conversation.
"Almost," said Marie helpfully, "We need to take the train east to the Black Forest, and then we board the ferry. It will be a few days before we arrive there."
Daisya tried to visualize the journey.
"So, if we're here…"
He tapped a knothole on the table.
"…and we're going here…"
He tapped about a foot away from it, at a spot slightly closer to him.
"…then we need to go here."
He traced a dotted, somewhat diagonal line halfway, then drew a more level line to his second hand.
Marie thought for a few seconds about the patterns of of the sound, and nodded.
"Roughly. Do you like geography? Not many people bother to memorize it."
Marie attempted to continue the conversation, despite his tendency to silence and the occasional twanging of his patience when Daisya talked too much.
A rustling of cloth against wood indicated that the child had shrugged in reply.
"We had a few maps in the shop, so I read them when there was nothing else to do. It's not too hard to memorize stuff when you've been staring at it for years. Do you like it? The maps must be impossible to read."
Marie nodded amicably.
"Most, yes, but there are some in Braille that I can read."
"Braille? Is that the writing with dots?"
"Yes. It's the alphabet for the blind. But in most cases, my hearing is sufficient."
Daisya grinned, and Marie could hear it in his voice.
"Cool."
Kanda returned to the table, balancing four plates on a tray. He glared slightly at Daisya offering a hand, then passed the plates around the table.
"Where's the General?" he asked quietly, hopping back into his seat. The chairs around the table were closer to barstools than proper chairs, necessitating the undignified movement.
"He's phoning headquarters for updates," said Daisya cheerfully, "Thanks for the food, by the way."
A confused glare should be an impossibility, but Kanda managed it.
The three of them started to dig into the food. Continental breakfasts weren't as substantial as the ones at headquarters, but enough hot chocolate fixed anything.
"Anyway, it looks like we're heading for Germany today."
"Tell me something I don't know," muttered Kanda through a mouthful of croissant.
"We are heading for a location near the source of the Danube river in the Black Forest," Marie said, piping up if it were possible with the pitch of his voice.
"Mmm. And then from there to Budapest?"
"And from there to our destination."
The two settled back into silence, and Daisya wondered how that came about. He'd seen Kanda a couple of times, but he yelled at most all the kids except the little Chinese girl who they said refused to synchronize.
Maybe he liked her because she went through the same ordeal, or something. It would take a lot for him to like someone.
So where did Marie fit in?
Maybe a friendly mentor, or maybe someone he knew before…whatever it was had happened. Because something had definitely happened. People are born mostly blank. The world is mostly arbitrary. Anything good, bad, or otherwise was mixed up inextricably with everything else. Kanda was oddly and remarkably pure, then, compared to the rest of the world. The anger that exuded from him wasn't affected by any emotion he was feeling — it was part of his being.
It was beautiful, in a way.
But he could never have been born like that.
Something had happened.
Daisya's thoughts were interrupted by footsteps that should have had the certain bounce in them unique to the old man.
But his footsteps were flat.
"The second team of finders just got wiped out, so we'll have to hurry," he said calmly, "If we catch the six forty-five train, we can make it to the river in half the time, so eat up."
He pulled up a chair, and began to eat with an unusual speed.
Two teams gone. Wow.
The finders were interesting. For one, they were always too cheerful for people whose lives were just an extended suicide mission. Who'd want to do that?
Then again, Daisya hadn't been at the Order long, but normally one team of finders could hold their ground for weeks.
No wonder they sent four exorcists.
But then, why was he there? Kanda had no motivation, which itself was motivation. He would carry out any task asked of him by virtue of having little to fight for or against. Marie was a prodigy. Blind and able to outdo most sighted exorcists in precision, and the ideal teammate for any more combat-oriented fighter. The General was the General. He had survived decades, even when most of his students hadn't. He was one of the most powerful exorcists in the world.
And then there was him. Daisya Barry. Age eleven. Soccer fanatic. The Barry kids' weird older brother.
But now he was an exorcist. The latest of General Tiedoll's line of students.
And yet, he was again relegated to the odd one out.
A trio of family, and their hanger-on.
Oh, well. At least these ones weren't annoying.
Despite the feeling of uselessness, this world was so much better like this.
He ran a finger around the edge of the plate absently. Maybe that was why the finders stayed.
...
A few minutes later, the four were walking at a good clip east towards the train station in an odd silence. Daisya had decided against humming a tune. Kanda would probably prefer he didn't.
Why was he doing this?
He was going through a checklist of attitudes, using each of them to try and put together a picture of Kanda.
But why? He had one already, and it was wrong to treat humans like that.
Like what?
Like animals, to test for traits. Like characters in a book.
But how else could he have done things?
He could have treated Kanda like he normally would. But that wouldn't have been good anyway. Aggression worked on most people, but for those who were a bit harder, well, he just ignored them. But here he was, without a wish or a heartbeat or anything to make him want to have anything to do with Kanda except for burning curiosity.
He himself didn't even act like a kid, but — no, he did. Just not in the right way.
He liked the General. Far more than his own family, far more than anything.
Alone, above everything. No one else at the Order quite accepted what they saw as well as he did.
Marie was nice enough — they'd talked once, and he'd played a card game with Kanda as a participant.
In his world, that counted practically as friendship.
It was odd — it wasn't as if he was a loner. He was perfectly sociable.
It's just that there weren't many people that made him feel happy by their very existence.
There was the old man.
He was that person.
And then there was the idea of football, oddly enough. A game with the precedence of a soul. It was energetic, and cunning, with a wicked grin on its face as it passed the ball behind it without looking away.
That idea, and a kindly old man who hadn't found his mistake yet.
The railway station loomed up ahead, beautiful in its ornate wrought-iron façade and fleur-de-lis-tipped gates.
It was half past six in the morning; the sun gleamed off the windows of the town.
And the air was cold with silence.
Vote General Tiedoll for best and weirdest dad, June 2015. As for an explanation, Daisya is basically approaching Kanda like a human that's only ever met dogs would approach a cat. I.e. using a bunch of different, equally ineffective methods that only end up making the cat hiss, and go somewhere else. Stay tuned. By the way, I'm going away on vacation soon, so I won't have internet access from the 27th to about the 6th. I'll probably post fairly regularly, though, depending on motivation. Of course, if I run out of story, I'll slow down for a while, but that shouldn't be an issue for a while.