Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tentatively, light seeped through the big windows of the train. In the darkness of her carriage, Cheadle could only hear the incessant hum of the engine and the rhythmic breathing of a sleeping man opposite her. She had long since closed the book in her lap and had been trying to sleep for what seemed like hours, to no avail.

Her cell phone must’ve buzzed a dozen times by now.

Kanzai.

Cluck.

Mom.

Mom.

Mom.

Cluck.

Mom.

Cold crept into her toes, the zipper of her jacket was stuck and refused to pull up, and behind her smudged glasses everything appeared too gray and cloudy, but outside, the world was unraveling.

The edges of short, stocky buildings sharpened against the rising sun, the dark blues dissolved into soft pinks and purples, and in the haze of a new landscape she caught a smearing of her reflection in the window glass, and not for the first time since boarding this train, she sensed doubt finding its way back into her.  

At least, if something is going to crash and burn, it’ll be at her own hands.

When her mother called yet again, she didn’t answer.

A stranger at the station, Cheadle stood and watched everyone around her move in rapid, miniature waves that made her feel lost. She blinked the exhaustion away, pulled her modest luggage and walked towards the staircase at the far end of the station, climbing up towards the square of light, feeling the cold wind descend in swift loops to meet her halfway before she emerged into a conspicuously empty street. Empty for her standards. The people here seemed to live quieter lives. Nobody was hustling to get places, no suited people making discreet congregations before they crept back into their offices, only the wheezing of the wind and the hunched old woman rounding the corner.

Cheadle wrapped her jacket around her and decided that she wanted some time to herself before calling Cluck and Kanzai to come pick her up. Having been told that their apartment is pretty close to the station, she just hoped neither of the two was seeing her right now from their balcony.

Would they even recognize her if they were? She did tell them she dyed her hair.

Surveying the area for a diner or a coffee shop or any other damn place to sit, she resigned herself to taking the moldy-looking bench erected at a wholly nonstrategic place on the sidewalk, but as she bent down to sit a man wobbling her way clumsily pumped into her and almost knocked her over, tripping over his own feet.

“Hey, watch it!”

He was drunk. She knew he was drunk before he even spoke. For a moment they just stood staring at each other before he offered her an awkward nod, like he only just realized that he had almost made her fall on her face.

“Sorry, sorry,” he extended his arm as if he was trying to help her up even though he was too far from her for that. “Are you okay?”

“Almost.”

“Okay, good. Sorry again.” The man turned around to continue on his way but he suddenly stopped, chuckling, and pivoted to face her again. “Is that your natural hair color?”

He looked genuinely, benignly curious. Cheadle groaned. “Fuck off.”

The man shrugged. “Okay.”

Cheadle watched his retreating back, tall and hunched, hands quickly shoved back into his pockets. She sighed.

Maybe it was time to call Cluck.

III

When the old, yellowing Volkswagen beetle rolled into view, with a changed but familiar face behind the steering wheel, Cheadle suddenly had an urge to run away, but her old friend was faster. She’d always been faster.

“Cheadle, holy shit!” Cluck exclaimed, somehow between parking the car and opening its door. Her long legs slunk out of the tattered vehicle before the woman herself did, and it took Cheadle a moment to reciprocate the tight hug that she was all too casually enveloped in.

“Why the hell weren’t you answering your phone?” Cluck pulled away, her fingers taking with them strands of Cheadle’s hair. “You look amazing. I love your hair!”

“Thank you.” Cheadle tried to wiggle away from the hands around her face. “You haven’t changed yours.”

Cluck rolled her eyes. “Of course I haven’t, blue looks great on me.” She grabbed Cheadle’s hand and started leading her to the car. “Come on, get in the limo.”

Said ‘limo’ was barely holding itself together. The seats were leathery and old, and litter was everywhere. If not for the weight of Cluck’s hands on the driving wheel perhaps the whole thing would fall apart. The engine sputtered and whined, and only when the car began moving did the myriad of smells in the confined space assault her nose. One, in particular. Something of a time-capsule that duly reminded her of a night that had happened a lifetime ago, a nightmare where, high out of her mind after Prom night, she drove at a rapid speed while Kanzai was in the back fucking a boy whose name she couldn’t be paid a thousand dollars to remember.   

Several empty plastic bottles rolled around at her feet. She already hated this.

A song was playing in the car. It took her a moment to realize what it was. “The Cure? Really?” 

“I can’t tell you how they made a comeback and I can’t say I’m not enjoying it.” Cluck laughed. “Anyway, I really still can’t believe I found you through Facebook. Didn’t think you were the type to make an account there.”

“I’m not, really. I hardly use it.”

“Right, the last post on your timeline is from July, and by your mom.” Cluck chuckled. “I creeped on you. Sorry not sorry.” She almost yanked the driving wheel in an attempt to get the car to round a corner which caused the vehicle to swerve sharply. “I’ve been trying to deactivate my account for ages now but who am I kidding, we all say we’ll quit the blue monster and then never do, right?”

“I suppose.”

Cluck shot her a glance. “Still not much for talk, huh.” She smirked. “Sour bitch. Did you come here to look down on poor little us?”

Cheadle’s eyes remained fixated on the passing scenery outside her window. “Frankly, there isn’t much to look down upon.”

“It’s a beautiful town, girl. Just give it time.” Cluck said. “Besides, someone like you doesn’t move an inch without doing some research beforehand. I’m sure you didn’t choose this place just because your old friends are here.”

A part of her was glad that Cluck was onto her shit, another part felt guilty about it. “I’m glad to see you again.”

“Same same.” Cluck smiled at her. “To be honest, I’m still surprised you contacted us. After we read about you in the newspaper we thought ‘oh there she goes, we lost her, she’s famous now’.”

“Hardly.”

Cluck lowered her head, searching for a place to park. “You were on all those cases, it was amazing. Not surprising at all, considering it’s you, but still amazing.”

“It’s nothing, really.”

“Stop downplaying your accomplishments, it’s kind of insulting when you keep doing that.” The car finally came to a stop. The engine fizzled pathetically. “We’re here!”

The two exited the car, and Cheadle’s eyes followed Cluck’s pointed finger. “It’s up there, the one with the plants.”

She had to admit it was beautiful. The balcony was almost bursting with overarching greenery dotted with budding flowers. She glanced at Cluck as the latter picked up her luggage and waved her off when she tried to protest.

“I’ll carry this.” Cheadle took the typewriter, hidden within a black, greenish leather case, and held it protectively close. She followed her old friend as they entered the building. “Still an amateur botanist?”

Cluck lead her up the stairs. “I only read the magazines now. Haven’t got much time to indulge.”

“Acting?”

“Yeah, alongside other stuff.” Cluck maneuvered the suitcase around in search of her key, growing increasingly frustrated when it didn’t materialize. After a long moment of futile searching, she groaned loudly. “I didn’t even bring it with me. Fuck. Let’s hope the fucker wakes up. KANZAI!”

Cluck punched the door with her fist. “Kanzai, open the door!”

Cheadle decided to stand idly to the side while another round of banging shook the floor, and was almost glad when the door flew open and a yelling match started between the two. Almost.

Kanzai hadn’t even noticed her as he stood half-naked at the doorstep, resolutely guarding the entrance like a mad beast, challenging Cluck to pass through him, which she did, forcing him to step back with her shoulder, tossing the suitcase inside. It made Cheadle glad she didn’t give her the typewriter.

“Wench.” 

“Bastard, I told you I’m going out to bring Cheadle from the station, told you to wake up and clean around. I can’t rely on you for shit.”

“Well yeah, fuck me, I didn’t wake up.” He retorted, but Cluck ignored him and was already calling for her to come inside while babbling unintelligibly about how much of a prick her roommate was. He threw his head back to yell at her. “You know I was up working all night!” 

But Cheadle didn’t follow. She stood in the hallway, still in disbelief at how utterly familiar this scene was, like the two of them were just affectionately reenacting a fight they had more than a decade ago.

“Hello, Kanzai.”

The short man ran a hand through his hair, long and dirty blond and hanging over his shoulders, his brown eyes still as glaring and feisty as the day she first met him. If she didn’t know who he was and what kind of person he is she would’ve found him attractive. “Fuck, I missed you.”

For yet a second time in less than an hour she found herself engulfed in an embrace that she should have foreseen but didn’t. He too did that whole pulling away thing to size her up and down, a grin plastered on his face.

“You look so different.” He said, hands gripping her shoulders. “Your hair, your face—no, wait, your face is still the same.” He snickered. “Anyway anyway, come inside.” He ushered her in, arm around her shoulders. “Sorry for the mess, but don’t worry, there’s an extra room and we prepared it for you.”

“That’s very kind of you.” She meant it. “You didn’t have to.”

“We’re not gonna let you sleep on the couch now are we?”

“I’d hope not.”

It didn’t take her long inside to step on something. The short, narrow corridor was dark and cluttered, an ugly cabinet taking up a large portion of breathable space, topped with trinkets and framed pictures and a jar full of marbles. There was too much of everything and too much of Kanzai pulling at her arm that she decided to squint at all this later.

Out of the corridor, the morning light spilled into a tiny living room that also contained only two vestiges of a kitchen: a sink counter and a fridge. Opposite them was a small table adorned with a bowl of fruits.

It hit Cheadle how she’d never been into such apartments, not even during college. She’d have been suffocated, as she felt now. Was it the apartment or their presence that made her feel so, she wondered as Cluck reappeared in the living room, tossed a shirt towards Kanzai and went to slide open the door to the balcony.

“Sit,” Kanzai invited her, already taking a seat by the table while simultaneously pulling the shirt over his outstretched arm. Cheadle reluctantly followed suit, pulling a chair out, her fingers lingering on the smooth wood of it.

“Coffee, right?” Cluck asked, opening a cupboard over the sink.

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t even get two minutes of peace before Kanzai asked: “So, what brought you here?”

The glare Cluck shot him wasn’t lost on Cheadle, but as she’d come to know, reproaching looks can’t stop either of them.

“What?” Kanzai looked offended. “It’s not like she’s keeping it a secret.”

“Even so!”

“It’s alright,” Cheadle intervened. “It’s not because of the engagement, if that’s your question, Kanzai.”

Kanzai opened his mouth to say something but Cluck beat him to it, rushing to the table to place a cup of coffee in front of Cheadle and then taking a chair opposite her. “I’m so sorry about that, by the way.” Cluck looked at her with sympathetic eyes, and yet Cheadle saw nothing but pity. “It must’ve been so hard on you.”

“It went fine.” She asserted. She had to say that, it had to be that way. It had to be fine. “We broke off the engagement on friendly terms.”  

As friendly as one could possibly be after trying to choke their future spouse under a pillow, but she didn’t have to tell them that.

“How did the whole thing happen though?” Kanzai asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She said, bringing the coffee cup to her mouth.

The two nodded. “Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, it’s probably still a hot issue.”

“It’s not.” She said, trying to strike a balance between affirming and apathetic. “I’m simply over it, there’s nothing to talk about.”

They nodded again, and seemed lost as to what other topic could possibly satiate their curiosity more than talk of the embarrassingly public break up of a young, dashing billionaire from his not-young-enough and not-hot-enough fiancée, narrated to them in excruciating detail by the ex-fiancée herself. She was certain they scoured the headlines on the internet. Their eyes told her they did. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of a more intimate knowledge of the events, certainly she won’t tell them that the ring was sized and the venue booked and that the dress was hanging over her closet. Definitely, they won’t know that her ex-husband-to-be was almost certainly a sociopath. He got to keep the puppies they had bought together. Fuck him for that. 

Cheadle continued to sip her coffee, reveling in their silence. She then poured herself another and let the cup hang between her fingers. “What about you two, what have you been up to?”

Relieved of their silence, their faces lit up.

“We’re mostly involved in the local community theater,” Cluck started, looking excited. “And when we’re not Kanzai designs websites and I give music lessons to tweens. We also do night shifts in the store nearby.”

So that’s what they’ve been doing with their liberal art degrees. It could have been worse. Surely it didn’t seem to be bothering them; their faces beamed, just waiting for her to ask for more.

“How long have you been here?” She asked.

“Three years?” Kanzai guessed, glancing at Cluck for affirmation.

Cluck nodded. “Three years and a couple months, yeah.”

“We came here right after graduating,” Kanzai said, moving a hand through his hair. When did he pick up that habit? “First it was like a vacation but then we really fell in love with the town and didn’t want to leave.”

“Yep, and we’ve been here since.” Cluck added. “The people here are different, even the air you breathe feels different.”

“It fits you two quite well.” Cheadle said, hoping, in a deep part within her, to accept this place as they have accepted it. It wasn’t her goal, but it seemed to be an important step towards accomplishing it.

“Yeah, and the theater work is keeping us vital, creatively speaking.”

“Is there a play in the works?”

“Sort of,” Cluck answered.

“It’s more like a series of sketches,” Kanzai said. “Each is written by a different writer but explores similar topics.”

“And there are cats!” Cluck added with a jovial clap that was soon followed by an exasperated sigh when Cheadle’s expression remained impassive. “Still not much of a cat person, huh.”

“It’s not a deal breaker,” Cheadle tried to reassure them. “How do you manage them?”

“We don’t.” Kanzai chuckled. “We actually have a cat here but he’s disappeared since last night and we couldn’t find him.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah he likes to travel.” Cluck said. “But the other cats we’re using for the play are cool, trained and well-behaved. I mean, they have to be, considering they’ll be in every sketch.”

“And hey, we actually told our director about you, you know, after you said you’re going to come here.” Kanzai nudged her. “You said you wanted a writing job, right? We told him you wrote like three plays for us, in high school, and we’re still cobbling together sketches, so you know—”

“Submit something.” Cluck finished for him. “He wouldn’t mind seeing what you’ve got.”

Cheadle wanted to retreat back from them. “I’m not sure about that.”

“Why not?” Kanzai lowered his head. “You don’t want to write plays?”

“I still don’t know what I want to write, actually.” Cheadle said. “Admittedly, it’s been a very quick decision. I haven’t written anything significant in a while.”

Cluck rested her chin on the back of her hand. “But those plays in high school, they were really great.”

“No they weren’t.” Cheadle’s hand reached for the coffee pot only to find it empty. “They were silly and immature.”

“We had fun acting them.” Kanzai shrugged.

She didn’t want to take their word for it, but it was an opportunity, a chance to start something new. She figured it’s alright if her first gig wasn’t anything grand, and besides, she needed to get well-connected, even if she didn’t end up landing that one; she can’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Her tendency to work alone and forgo networking wasn’t going to be of much use here, she supposed.

Was the world of a writer much different than that of a lawyer? She thought she was neither, not right now, anyway. Her job at the firm was over and one has to write to be a writer and she wasn’t writing. She only said she wanted to, which was meaningless and counted for nothing.

“Can I read the script?” She asked.

“Script s .” Cluck hissed the s out. “We’re kind of, ah, undecided.”

“It’s a communal project,” Kanzai interjected. “So it keeps changing until we find a unified vision, or something that everybody agrees on.”    

Cheadle was beginning to dread this. “Well, can I read the scripts?”

“Sure, now?” Cluck was already getting up. “We’re holding auditions tomorrow, for musicians. Wanna come?”

“Musicians?”

“Yeah, see, there will be musicians playing their instruments alongside the cats. We'll be playing too!” Kanzai said. “It’s essential.”

Involuntarily her mouth twisted in a soundless grimace. That wasn’t lost on them.

Kanzai chuckled, taking the empty coffee pot with him to refill it. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

“I sure hope that’s the case.”

“Look,” Cluck came back and tossed a hefty slab of papers in front of her. “You don’t have to decide now, just come with us tomorrow and get a feel for all of it. Who knows, you might get inspired.”

Cheadle held the heavy manuscript in her hands, wondering if it could kill a man. It was exceptionally thick and stiff. She had used frailer things to defend herself.

She shifted her gaze from the white, frayed pages to Cluck’s expectant eyes. “I’ll read it tonight.”

Cluck grinned and nodded at her. “Great, I’m sure you’ll do good.”

Cheadle wasn’t so sure about that, but she returned the smile anyway, and with the arrival of the coffee, felt that some positivity might cause things to work out for her, in the end. ‘ Stay positive, Cheadle! Smile more, Cheadle! ’ were the words of her mother — and it’s always the voice of her mother she hears when things become uncertain or go wrong. The woman was lodged unflinching in a reptilian corner of Cheadle’s brain that refused to stay quiet whenever life became tougher than usual, it therefore merited displeasure when she thought of the importance of thinking positively. Besides, the true underlying plea of her mother’s pressing encouragements were the demands to stop frowning so much and be more compliant and agreeable.

Her mother. She must’ve called a hundred times by now, but Cheadle didn’t care to check. Her cell phone sat muted in her pocket, and a past anxiety that used to make her incessantly fumble with it was gradually abating, leaving behind a conviction and a desire to simply not answer or even look at it, knowing full-well what kind of words awaited her at the other end of the phone.

Did her mother even know of all that had happened in the past month? The woman had left for a ‘self-discovery’ vacation that was purported to last for three months or so, so she had boarded the plane blissfully unaware that her daughter’s life was about to change irrevocably and in a way that did not involve her.

Cheadle was still engaged and with a job when her mother left. Now she neither had the fiance in shining armor nor the prestigious job she had and which was a great source of pride to her parents. But really, it’s the marriage her mother wanted. She can work but not be career-oriented, have charming acquaintances to show off but no close friends. Her eventual, natural role was to settle down with a rich husband in a condo empty but for herself, pop out a rugrat or two –through a C-section, because natural birth is for poor people- and then spend her life in a loveless marriage hiding a case of high-functioning alcoholism and a chain-smoking habit and secretly hate her children.

“Wanna listen to something?” Kanzai asked, placing his phone between them. He pressed the play button, not even waiting for her answer, and they all had to sit silently through an audio file that started with forty-six seconds of pure crackling. A throat clearing. Then, the music began.

Bach. Played amateurishly but not unpleasantly. It glided and dipped and swept under the fingers of someone she suspected had not played the violin in a long time. There was a rustic quality, an unpracticed tilt to it which at one point she would have found unworthy of remark but which now felt strangely relatable.

They all listened in silence until the piece was over.

“Who’s playing?” She asked, having a sudden desire to ask Kanzai to send her the audio file but deciding against it.

“Leorio Paladiknight. He’s one of our friends.” Cluck said. “We haven’t seen him in such a long time but he’s come here for a visit a couple of days ago. It’s not really his hometown but he did grow up here and we met at a party.”

“You’ll meet him tomorrow!” Kanzai added. “We’ve convinced him to come audition for the play, so last night he sent me this sample.”

Cheadle hummed, giving herself permission to restart the piece again. “He doesn’t sound like a professional player.”

“Ah no, he’s not.” Cluck said. “He used to play, but went on to study medicine.”

This piqued her interest. “Oh so he’s a doctor?”

“Not yet. He only graduated last month.”

Cheadle was disappointed. A doctor who also played the violin seemed appealing in a purely aesthetic, upper-middle class way. It tasted of unrealized sophistication, of high culture that was not too high as to be suffocating, of someone you could meet at a party and click with then never see again. At least, that was the image she got from listening to him playing.

She envisioned a young man in his early twenties. There’s a possibility that he’s not good looking at all but she chose to imagine him as at least conventionally handsome. Dark. Could be blond but she’d rather he wasn’t. Could be athletic but she doubted it. Athletic handsome doctors who played some instrument were the stuff of trashy romance novels.

“You’ll meet all of our friends,” Kanzai said, as if she was afraid they were going to leave her stranded alone in this apartment. “Everybody’s really nice.” 

Naturally, she bulked at the mention of meeting a lot of people, and her two friends here were the kind who claimed a lot of people as friends, and she suspected that they weren’t going to give her much room to breathe, and that, with the tone with which they spoke, they expected her to be nice about it.

Cheadle had no choice but to be nice about it. She was relying on them to keep a roof over her head and food on her plate. Alone and new and raw after a quick and sudden life-upheaval, they were her anchor, a fact she begrudged but decided to accept anyway. After all, it was her decision to contact them and rely on them. They weren’t bad people, they were just not her kind of people. After graduating high school, that seemed to be the case, anyway.

At first, when she contacted Cluck, she was hoping the spunky woman will be the one to receive her. Back then she didn’t know her old friend’s living situation, but being relayed the details caused her to swiftly reintegrate an old fact into her new perspective: that Cluck and Kanzai came only as a package deal, and if she had to put up with one of them she was gonna have to put up with the other. She wasn’t surprised that the two of them had managed to stay friends for so long, but it still amazed her that two people could grow in such similar ways as to remain practically inseparable since kindergarten.

Within her, she envied them.

“Wanna see your room?” Kanzai asked.

They lead her from the kitchen into the small hallway that branched into their room and a bathroom. It was dim in there and she could sense the slight hesitation in their footsteps, walking slowly in a tight space that couldn’t accommodate the three of them, hoping that the room is to her liking and suspecting that it probably won’t be.

“Here you go,” Cluck walked ahead and pushed a squeaking door open, then stretched her arm inside to flip the light switch beside the door.

Cheadle stood at the doorway, and looked into the tiny room.

There was a bed, made and crowned with a big white pillow, an empty nightstand, and an aloevera plant spiking out of an ornamented pot placed on a small desk that stood worn-out and solemn against the left wall of the room. 

There was no balcony but the window was of respectable dimensions, drapes pulled open, allowing for a patch of light to enter the room, illuminating a brown, drab carpet. In the corner was a tall, old closet, and against it all of her things were placed.

It was cute, she had to admit. Whimsical and modest in a cartoony way, like it’s the room of a baby mouse who just wants to provide for his family. It caused a sudden rush of affection and a longing of an industrious nature.

For a moment, it seemed too good for her.

“You like it?” Kanzai asked from somewhere behind her.

She turned around to face them. She didn’t know why her heart was beating so. “You did all this for me?”

“Yeah?”

She lowered her gaze, found it hard to look at them. “I’m touched. You really didn’t have to.”

“Oh come on now, it’s nothing.” Cluck waved her off. “We got everything from used stores anyway, and we figured you’d like to customize it yourself so we didn’t add a lot of stuff. Not like it can contain a lot of stuff, but you know,”

“I know.”

Kanzai ushered her inside. “Try it.”

She stepped inside, already imagining her typewriter perched on the desk under the window, herself sitting on the chair, typing away in this airy, glowing cavity. She breathed in it, processing it emotionally, coming to accept it.

Cheadle turned to them and smiled. “I love it.”

When the evening rolled around, she entered her new room and started setting up her things. Once the clothes were tucked away and the bed moved a little to the right, she opened the leather case and pulled out her typewriter. A ’77 Underwood, black and smooth. An old model, but she loved it. A gift from an old friend.

Lovingly she placed it on the desk, shifted it here and there until she felt it was just in the right spot.

The streets below had quieted down, the world seemed to become entirely still as she sat on the chair and placed the tips of her fingers over the protruding keys.

For just a moment, the world was hers.

Chapter Text

Cheadle woke up in the haze of a dream that she couldn’t even remember, Cluck’s voice calling her name from somewhere in the apartment.

Everything felt like a heavy blanket around her. The warmth of the bed, the timid glow filtered through the drapes, the pages upon pages on the desk. She didn’t remember crumbling so many papers; the small trashcan beside the desk was overflowing.

Maybe she had encroached on the wrong enterprise.

“Cheadle, come on, wake up.” Cluck’s head peeked from behind the door. “We made breakfast.”

She swallowed. “What time is it?”

“Eight.”

With the enthusiasm and verve of a stale cup of coffee, Cheadle got out of bed. The place around her still felt unfamiliar, still felt strange and discomfiting, and the thought of doing all her bathroom rituals for the first time in this apartment was enough to make her covet a return to her bed. The bed was the sole space were nothing and nobody else could intrude.

At the kitchen table she learned new things about them, most notably that Cluck was now a vegan and Kanzai almost went to jail—for what, exactly, they did not elaborate. 

All in all, nothing entirely surprising. And in the manner of all ancient friendships that were unceremoniously renewed, she had to share some personal information of her own.

Several mundane stories from her days in uni later and a look from them that revealed they expected something a bit more exciting, and the three of them were on their way to the theater.

This time around the car was less alien but no less cluttered. With the notes she worked on last night and scattered pieces of her old writing that she salvaged from her now-defunct blog piled in her lap, she spent the ride humming in response to everything they said and staring at the new scenery outside the window.

The sky was a peaceful, clear blue, marred only by a few disparate clouds that bubbled just outside the corner of her eye. She knew the place was full of greenery but it still surprised her; tall tree crowns peeked out of the sprawl of houses and short buildings, and every residence seemed to have a garden of its own.

Cheadle didn’t have a bucolic past, not one that extended beyond watering a lonely succulent stationed at her office window, although she did fancy such a lifestyle. Perhaps only aesthetically, for she didn’t see herself as belonging to any earthly materials, and her experience with demanding physical activities had stopped at her last volleyball match in senior high school. There was the gym, too, but she only went there for social capital and to save face in front of other, more fit colleagues.

The town was too quaint and picturesque in an impeccable, timeless way, and for a moment she imagined that all this, the streets and the houses and the trees and cute little gardens, were just a cardboard façade that would comically fall backwards with a curious poke of her finger.

Did she want to poke around at everything? Something inside her demanded it, a suspicion that nothing is what it appears to be, people and places alike.

How joyless of her.

“We’re here!” Cluck called out, swerving the car into a spot that stood under a red ‘No Parking’ sign.

Cheadle looked at her. “Should you really be parking here?”

“We have privileges, baby!” Kanzai exclaimed as he exited the car, slamming the door behind him. The vehicle was still rattling when she stepped out of it and the three of them walked into a public park.

Privileges, huh. Cheadle looked up at the building, no sign whatsoever indicating its purpose or if it’s even still in use. It stood in front of her, old and debilitated and threatening to swallow her with a long, wide set of stairs that lead to the main gate above.

Holding the stack of papers to her chest, Cheadle walked behind them up the stairs and into the theater.

The musky, old scent of deteriorating velvet seats crept into her nostrils the moment she stepped foot inside, and the first thing she saw was a swirling column of smoke wafting into the air, a faint white against the dark walls of the theater.    

Apparently, they had already started rehearsals, and apparently, the man in the front row who was watching and smoking his pipe was not pleased. Or maybe he was just asleep. The sunglasses on his face certainly didn’t help in discerning his expression. A couple other people were sitting at either side of him, torn between watching the rehearsals and watching his reaction to them.

Kanzai leaned down to whisper in her ear. “That’s the director, Morel Mackernasey.”

“He looks high.” She said, funneling with the two of them into the fourth seat row.

“He could be, but you never really know with him.”  

The velvet seats were red and cold to the touch, the kind that squeaked loudly and folded back on itself almost violently the instant you stood up or tried to adjust your butt.

A young woman stood on the stage, playing a weird-looking flute. When her lips parted to take a breath, the director told her to stop. “Let’s take a break.”

The director stood up and turned his head to look at them, raising a hand in greeting, then slowly made his way to them, fidgeting with his pipe the whole way.

With a quick introduction, the big man ventured out a hand to shake hers, lifting up his glasses to reveal a pair of small brown eyes. “I’ve heard about you,” he smiled. “I’ve been told you wanna write for the play?”

She didn’t, really. “If all goes well, and if you like what I write, yes.”  

Morel hummed, taking the stack of papers from her hand when she offered it to him, eyeing it for a minute before looking back at her. “I assume you’d like to just watch things for now to get an idea? We can talk afterwards.”

“That would be best.”

He nodded and offered her a pat on the shoulder, encouraging her to sit down for now and make herself comfortable. Then he turned to Cluck and Kanzai. “You two ready for work? I want you to work with the musicians today.”

Cluck looked more excited for this task than Kanzai; something of the old cello player within her was always ready, but Kanzai’s past stint as a failed drummer in his mom’s garage was begging to be left buried.

The three slunk away from Cheadle, descending the steps towards the first row.

“And right,” she heard Morel say while fishing out a tobacco packet out of his trousers. “Leorio’s name is on the list. He’s still set to audition?”

“Yeah, I called him last night to confirm.” Cluck answered. “I think he’ll be here in an hour.”

“I sure haven’t seen him in a while.”

And then Kanzai snickered about something, and she stopped following the conversation. She remembered the Bach piece played to her from last night, and sensed a tingle of anticipation run through her legs.

She did want to see him play, if only to hear the sound of his violin without the crackling of bad phone recording, but an hour passed and he did not show up. How distasteful, and just after all the festive talk about him. Another hour rolled by and she was sitting down in the front row next to Morel who was getting impatient, murmuring something about how special treatment spoils people.  

One after another the actors and musicians climbed up the stage, and it didn’t take Cheadle long to realize that nobody really knew what they were doing, not even Morel. The director was leaning back in his seat, fidgeting with his hands, almost certainly dying to smoke, having exhausted his supply of the cloying, sickeningly sweet tobacco he had in his small little fancy packet.

Her heart leapt to her throat when, in an attempt to distract himself, he picked up the stack of papers she gave him and started reading. To his credit, he did appear to give the thing his full attention. She tried not to sneak anxious glances at him as he read through them, tried not to snag his ruffled collar to ask what he thinks of her writing.

Why did she become such a fretful mess upon giving him her work? She never felt that way when she presented her cases, when she stood in front of a jury; this felt intensely personal, to let someone read her writing, the ultimate reflection on herself.

When was the last time she even gave someone a piece of her writing? She went through her whole three years of engagement without her now ex-fiancée even knowing she had a writing blog. Now this stranger sat next to her and sifted silently through her papers, and she wanted to shrink on herself enough to turn into an unseen particle that transcends mere human emotions.

But she was not above emotions. She desperately wanted to know his opinion.

“Well,” he finally looked up, adjusting his glasses, inhaling in that breathless way of chain-smokers. “There are some things here I like and a lot I don’t.”

What ensued was a long tangent about what she could do better and what she ought to get rid of entirely, only interjected by her defensive statements, each one falling flat with the uncertainty of her voice.

At the end of it, she excused herself as gracefully as she could, taking her papers with her, sensing Cluck’s gaze on her as she made her way in front of the stage and out of the theater through the wooden door.

This Morel must be an idiot, she thought, speeding down the stairs and heading towards the farthest bench she could find in the park. Thinking that he’s an idiot is easier than thinking he might be right about some things. She could reread what she wrote to glean a different opinion against his criticisms, to look at the text with renewed eyes, but she couldn’t even bring herself to glance at the papers in her grip.

He must think he’s so smart, so knowledgeable, with his stupid glasses and stupid pipe and stupid face. When was the last time he put as much effort as she did into anything? The theater was a mess, everyone up on stage was a mess, and under the carefree atmosphere she suspected that nobody in there really knew what they were doing. Behind those glasses and easy smile of his, Morel Mackernasey was leading them naked into a burning house.

Yet, she ought to have said more, countered with smarter replies, but a doubt lingered within her, a doubt that whatever she might have said would have only been a reflection of her latent fears that everything he said was right, that she was only deflecting because it was the truth.

Finally finding a tree and a bench she liked among identical trees and benches, Cheadle sat down with a clenched heart, letting go of the papers held tightly to her chest, placing them beside her on the fissured wood of the bench. She could cry, if she wanted to, and if she wasn’t forcing her eyes wide open to keep the tears at bay by staring at absolute nothingness between her feet.  

She should not have left the way she did. How small he’s going to think she is, how easily hurt, how immature. Why did she feel like an utter waif listening to his words? It was the fragile part of herself she shared, the vulnerability she allowed herself to show.

It always came back to vulnerability, didn’t it. She wanted to scream.

A queue of ants trotted on the ground, circling around her boots and subsequently disappearing under the bench, and with the moisture in her eyes she could imagine them as a single ant who was stuck in an endless time loop, doomed, forever, to circle her boots until some kind of cosmic fuckery of astronomical proportions was fulfilled.

Cheadle took a breath, then another. She wasn’t a lost waif in a strange land, and no matter how much her mother tried to convince her that she wouldn’t survive two days in the wild (the wild, to her mother, being any place and any persons outside of a very select group of elite acquaintances and friends-of-convenience whom you secretly loathe and wish to see destroyed), here she was, yet it still took less than two days to ruffle her and make her question every single decision she’d made since folding clothes into her suitcase. She’d experienced worse, which made her feel a bit better, but that only lasted for as long as she didn’t think too much about her writing. And she did think too much.

Perhaps some jobs just came with more emotional baggage.

Less baggage than Kanzai’s voice calling to her from somewhere.

“There you are,” he stood in front of her, arms crossed, and threw her a suspicious look. “Have you been sulking?”

Cheadle groaned. “What is it?” 

“Why did you leave like this?” Kanzai asked, taking a step closer, his sneakers infringing on a different queue of ants. “Come on, the director wants you to meet some of the other writers there.”

“I’m not sure I really want that.” She said, her whole body rising in a heavy inhale.

Kanzai walked closer, taking the papers off the bench to sit next to her. “What are you worried about anyway? None of us there are professionals.”

She rolled her eyes. “Truly, this makes me feel a whole lot better about this endeavor.” 

“Don’t bitch about it.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Kanzai twisted his mouth. “At least I’m there.” He then lifted the papers to fan himself. She wanted to punch him for this. “Sorry we’re not some award-winning big ass glossy downtown theater company with distinguished screenplay writers and shit.”

She glared at him. “It’s not about that.” But really, it was slightly about that. The modesty of the place, of the resources, the obscurity and limited scope of it, made it appear almost meaningless, like it will never take her anywhere or help her accomplish anything. Being potentially part of it seemed like the stuff of adolescence.

“Whatever,” Kanzai said, surprisingly deciding not to argue. “Come on, they’re waiting for us.”

Reluctantly, Cheadle got up and walked with him back to the theater. Halfway on the stairs, she looked at him. “Where are the papers?”

Kanzai looked down at his open hands to find nothing, clenching and unclenching them as if the papers will appear any moment, and before he could look up at her to apologize she was already skipping down the stairs and back to the park.

When she, miraculously, managed to find her way back to the same bench under the same tree, Cheadle found someone there. A guy with what appeared to be her papers in his hands, his head bowed down, reading them.

She walked closer from behind him, cleared her throat. “Excuse me,”

The guy turned towards her, a pair of sunglasses hitched on top of his head, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. A moment of recognition passed between them, but it was from an encounter so insignificant and infinitesimal that it seemed silly for both of them to bring it up and pretend that they knew each other in any capacity.

Cheadle knew the world was small, but this was just stupid. He was close to breaking her nose only yesterday.

“Ah, these are yours?” He asked, giving the papers a soft shake.

“Yes, they are.”

“You wrote them?”

“I did.”

“The Cure though? Really?” He looked simultaneously incredulous and unimpressed. 

Cheadle frowned. She heard those exact same words before. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” the man returned her expression with a frown of his own. “I just think this reprise of their song is really corny.” 

She looked him up and down, at the cigarette in his mouth, at the old gray coat he wore, at the bicycle parked next to the bench. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, hobo.”

He grumbled. “Sure, Marimo.”

“Give them to me.” Cheadle snatched the papers from his hand, shooting him a disdainful glare before pivoting to leave, and when she heard an acerbic ‘jerk’ spat out from behind her, she didn’t turn around.

Back in the theater, she had to endure a roundtable of young-looking, slick-talking writers who thought they were better and knew better. Worse still, the ‘cat actors’ were not just a dumb improbable possibility but a reality she had to work with and somehow incorporate into her writing if she hoped to get any of her proposed sketches accepted.

Morel had looked at her with something akin to concealed judgement when she returned, saying no more about her writing, only urging her to sit with the other writers to get a ‘better idea’ of what they were all aiming for, leaving the duty of introducing her to Cluck. So much for making a good first impression.

At the end of the day, Cheadle was thoroughly demoralized, Kanzai and Cluck’s attempts to cheer her up only grating on her nerves. The car bumped and jiggled in streets desolate under the sweeping orange of a soft sunset.

Without asking, Cluck stopped them in front of an ice cream parlor. Upon Cheadle asking for mint chocolate chip ice cream, Cluck laughed.

“You still order the same thing every time, huh.”

Cheadle received her ice cream in a cup and glanced at her friend. “It’s the best.”

“It’s kinda admirable, that your favorite things have always been the same.”

The three of them walked outside to sit on a ledge in front of the parlor. “That’s not true.” Cheadle replied, feeling the chill of the ice cream dissolving against the roof of her mouth.

But it was true. Her favorite things have always been the same, from food and fashion to books and TV shows. A part of her resented being seen like that; that there seemed to be a rigidity to her character that has not changed significantly since high school, only metamorphosed into something a little more pragmatic, but was a mere preference for a single ice cream flavor an indication of some horrible inflexibility in her person?

Overthinking and getting bothered over small things has not changed as well, it seemed.

“So, what did you think of the whole thing?” Cluck asked.

“The theater?”

“Yeah,”

Cheadle looked ahead, holding the spoon motionless over the cup. “It’s fine. Hectic.” 

“Everybody’s working hard there,” Kanzai said, sticking his tongue out to lick a melted trail of ice cream off his cone. “You’d fit in, if you didn’t think you’re better than all of that.”

She stabbed the ice cream mounds with the spoon, the dull effect hardly satisfying. “It’s not that I think I’m ‘better than all that’, it’s that I saw a level of amateurishness to the work being done.”

“Duh,” Cluck rolled her eyes, pulling the spoon out of her mouth. “We’re all amateurs there. You’re in a peripheral town, exceptional talent tends to trickle out, not in.”

Wow, way to wound her ego.

“I was just hoping for something cohesive, more thought-out.” Cheadle said. “How can I know that my work wouldn’t go to waste in all of this? Aren’t you worried that your efforts might as well?” 

In some strange lapse of time, Kanzai was already done with his ice cream cone. “Look, you’ve only been there once, and Morel thinks you’ll do just fine, so why the fuck are you worrying so much?”

“Did he tell you that?” She asked, pulling out a tissue from her bag and handing to him to clean his mouth.

“Not with these words, but we know him. If he likes someone and thinks they can work well, he keeps them.” Kanzai said. “See, he’s actually an asshole and has no problem telling people to fuck off, but he didn’t tell you to fuck off, so that says something.”

“Yeah,” Cluck started. “That’s why he was really upset about Leorio not showing up for the audition. He was just about ready to give him the role but couldn’t do it if the guy didn’t even bother to come.”

Cheadle sighed, opened her mouth to say more but decided against it.

She didn’t feel reassured or validated; in a space between acceptance and rejection, she felt small and unappreciated, but was she even owed anything other than that? Was she simply too used to easy access and short routes to everything courtesy of her family’s myriad connections? Now that she had decided to toil on her own path, it appeared that all the tools at her disposal were of the wrong sort.

This time around, it was not enough to just show up and say your name. No bells in this town rang for the Yorkshire dynasty and businesses. No one here gave a flying fuck about her father’s connections and influence.

She was a nobody.

III

Back at home, Cluck and Kanzai were gearing up for their night shifts at work. Cheadle found it peculiar that the two of them entered the bathroom to shower together, to ‘save time’. When they got out, steamed in fuzzy bathrobes, she said nothing, pretending to look through the titles in the stack of books by the window.

Ready to leave, Cluck came to collect her bag and jacket off the kitchen table. “Don’t wait for us to eat dinner. There’s a lot of shit in the fridge, just make yourself at home, alright?”

“You’ll be fine by yourself?” Kanzai asked from the hallway, rummaging in the shoerack in search for his sneakers.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Take care.”

It turned out that she was not, in fact, fine by herself. The moment they left the apartment she threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, imagining it collapsing on her head to kill her instantly.

Now with them gone, she was alone with her thoughts. Her papers were on the table, silent and unassuming and insufferable. The only way to get over them was to reread them, she believed, so she made coffee, picked them off the table, and retreated to her small room.

Less than two hours later, Cheadle was splayed on the ground, using her numb fingers to crumble whatever was left of the notes scattered around her body, her face hot and swollen from crying, her tears crusting over her nose and cheeks, her loud sniffing the only sound in the whole neighborhood. 

Talentless , she thought, yet it wasn’t her voice taunting her, it was her mother’s. Shrill and perpetually unimpressed, the voice echoed in her mind, and she was once again in her room, hunched protectively over a notebook, covering it with her entire arm because her mother was standing over her head, demanding to see, ridiculing without proof, belittling without reason.       

It didn’t matter how careful she was, how smart she went about it, there was no place to hide her belongings from her mother’s disapproving, maliciously prying hands. No drawer was left unchecked, no school bag or pocket. If she wanted anything solely for herself, she couldn’t hope to keep it on herself.

On the floor of this new room, Cheadle wanted nothing more than for that voice to be wrong. Desperately she wanted to disbelieve it, to dispute it, but nothing that had happened today helped her.

“I just thought it was corny.”

She should have choked that man right then and there. How fucking dare he.

With a heaving chest she pushed herself off the floor, too emotionally and mentally drained to think about this failure or any future failures anymore. With a hazy resolve and a questionable sense of duty, she bent down to clean the floor of all the torn, shredded papers. In the kitchen, she washed the cup she used, watered the plants, ate everything in the fruit bowl, and went to bed without brushing her teeth.

She was a nobody.

Chapter Text

Cheadle blinked, her eyelids fluttering in exhaustion, her body still cocooned under the sheets. She wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but the intruder sitting over her chest had other ideas.

“Good morning you stupid cat.”

The cat’s insufferably neutral face blinked back at her, then rose up, mewed, tilted his head, and went back to sitting with his entire weight on her chest.

She groaned and propped herself up, which was enough to make the cat jump over the bed and leave her alone for the moment.

Yesterday was hell. In fact, she felt that there was no yesterday. The days and nights melted together and the last thing she remembered was hitting her forehead against the typewriter and promptly deciding to sleep before sunrise.

Out in the kitchen, she didn’t find her two friends. Scouring the fridge for something to eat, she pulled out the leftover cake given to them by a neighbor. 

The moment she sat at the table with a piece of cake in her mouth, she remembered that the cat had to eat, too. Or did they feed him before leaving? She looked at the creature, sitting on the windowsill, silhouetted by the glow of the morning sun, flipping his tail left and right, staring at her with the indifference of someone who knows when and how you will die.

This grumpy, furry asshole had a habit of casually trotting out of the apartment, disappearing for days, but since they had found him two days ago, completely on accident, they were paying extra attention to his movements. He was, after all, a distinguished understudy. 

“Are you hungry?” She asked him, gathering a heap of frosting onto her fork.

The cat looked away, ignoring her.

“Fine then,” she stuffed her mouth, deciding to ignore him too.

Cheadle chewed her food and stared at the calendar on the wall.

It’s been exactly two months since she stepped foot in this town. Exactly two months since she boarded that train and decided that her life was officially transformed, and despite all the new things, she still felt that not much has changed.

She was now employed, kind of, if you split hairs and ignore contracts or actually getting paid. She was also writing on a consistent basis, tilling for hours over her typewriter, for work and for personal pleasure, and she was not happy about how her brain did not process the same activity done for two different purposes similarly.

At certain moments during her work, when she could remember herself breathing, thinking of her fingers over the keys, she felt terribly lacking and unfulfilled. And worst of all, if she continued like this, with no compensation for her work, she was soon going to run out of money.

Checking her bank account yesterday was a wake up call, an abrupt and sudden slap to the face. It turned out that distancing oneself from their rich parents was sufficient to reveal that one is not actually rich at all.

The money she had saved from her budding law career was swallowed almost entirely and in a matter of days by the garbage fire that was her wedding preparation and then cancellation. She was not entitled to a refund from the venue, and all the highly paid professionals who had been working tirelessly to help her live what was purported to be the ‘most magical night of her life’ were not pleased to hear about her change of heart.

When it was all over, Cheadle was left with very little to her name. Help from her father was out of the question; by then she had already made up her mind about the whole thing. 

She was doing her share of house chores and contributing to living expenses and rent with them, helping with the bills, buying groceries for the apartment, and she was starting to run thin.

Cluck and Kanzai had no idea about this. They regarded her sometimes with the eyes of someone who suspects that you are sitting on a treasure of massive and undisclosed value, and they had developed a cheap habit of relying on her to buy necessary shit for all of them. In well-intentioned, dumb ignorance or willful, miserly selfishness, she didn’t know. To be entirely fair, she never made them feel like she couldn’t do it, because she never thought she couldn’t do it. Pulling money out of her purse without thinking twice was like turning doorknobs to her. At least that used to be the case.

Moreover, she always had this sense that they were waiting for her to reveal something, to pull away the curtains on the real reasons she's here, on why she's living with them, on why she even reconnected with them to begin with as if she only ever shows up with ulterior motives. It annoyed her, and hurt her a little, and the sense that this specifically was going to blow up in her face haunted even the most amicable of their interactions.   

Cheadle looked at the cat, lounging under the sunlight with closed eyes, and sighed. “You have no worries.” The cat yawned and turned his head to the other side.

“Bitch.”

One hour later, and after a struggle to keep the cat away from the door, she was walking out of the apartment and heading to the theater. Massive clouds loitered above her and sunlight glittered through overarching tree branches, and she let it all pass through her, the warmth and the breeze and the earthly colors of everything around her.

Halfway to her destination, Kanzai called. One of the cats got sick and they needed her to go back to the apartment and bring Mushi with her.

Mushi, they called him. Cheadle sensed that the cat did not have a name, and if he did he preferred to keep it to himself. In either case, she turned around, begrudgingly, and made a beeline back to the apartment.

As if with full-knowledge of her intent, the cat refused to be put in the carrier. He struggled and scratched and hissed, growing bigger than he already was every time she tried to corner him. He regarded her with disdain for attempting to capture him, perhaps having so far believed that she was a neutral party in his entrapment.

“You’re going to be a good cat now, aren’t you?” Cheadle squatted over the carrier and stared at the stubborn cat with all the patience she could muster. “I know you’re not a house cat, and I respect that, but we have work to do.”

The look on his shrewd, scrunched-up face told her that he will humor her, for now, but that he will escape, preferably when she’s looking so that he can bask in her defeat.

Silently she agreed to this, and it did not take even the whole trip back to the theater for this damn cretin to find his way out when a gaggle of boys were mock-fighting and one of them bumped against her.

Cheadle stood in the middle of the road, an empty carrier dangling from one hand, a folder full of papers from the other, and watched the cat trot away.

For a moment she hated everyone in existence, including herself. That was enough motivation to follow the little shit and bring him back.

Through winding streets and perky gardens she followed him, and for the first time since she’d arrived, found herself in strange neighborhoods. There was a whole part of this town that she had not discovered, sections she never stepped foot in, and every now and then she had to stop to take in the views, to absorb everything around her.

She climbed a long concrete staircase, realizing that the chase was taking her higher and higher in the town, up the hills and the houses that overlooked the plains.

From the corner of her eye she saw the cat padding on top of a wall and set after him, the rowdy animal leading her through concrete terraces and sunlit alleyways before reaching a somewhat closed area and jumping over a small red metal gate.

Cheadle wasn’t entirely out of shape. At least she hoped she wasn’t as she tiptoed to place the carrier and the folder on the wall, then climbed the gate and propped herself over it, taking a look at the dirt path ahead before hopping to the other side.

As she quickly collected her stuff, the cat sped ahead, leading her to a narrow, upward alleyway extending between two houses, shrouded in the cool shade of an overhanging ivy, ending in an arch of light that seemed farther away the longer she looked at it.      

A sense of wonder began to gradually overcome her. Something of the old novels that she loved to read found its way back to the forefront of her memory, something of her little adventures on the mysterious, bewitched footpaths that surrounded her family’s country residence. There was a secret joy in this.

With renewed resolve she began trekking up the dirt path, her boots kicking up pebbles and soil clumps, the back of her shirt sticking to her back, her skin cooling off under the cover of plants.

When she reached the top to a protruding, balustered ledge, her breath hitched. The scene before her was mesmerizing.

The town unfolded under her eyes, the vibrant plots of land and the vaulted red roofs and the sloping, green mountains in the distance. The sky was endless, a blue so impossibly clear and encompassing, and through it lulled hefty clouds carrying the last of spring with them.

Her hands grabbed the cold metal railing and she let her eyes wander over the landscape, breeze running through her hair, heart mellowing out for beauty.

Breathing it all in, Cheadle allowed herself to let go, to take a step back and wonder just where in the hell that cat went. Her question was promptly answered when Mushi jumped to the top of a wall behind her and continued his curious journey through the neighborhood.   

Cheadle found a new appreciation for this guy. He managed to single-handedly ruin her mood and then elevate her spirits. She wanted nothing more right then than to follow him and let him take her to whatever other places he knew.

Through another staircase and another upslope, she found herself in a new neighborhood; a big tree in the center of a modest plaza, circled by old residences in the middle of which stood a shop with a red front, door open.

Of all the things that cat could have wanted to do by coming here, Cheadle couldn’t have guessed it was to tease a dog that was barred by a leash from retaliating, and when the cat became bored, he simply left the dog to bark incessantly and trotted across the street towards the shop.

“Going shopping now, huh you little shit.” Cheadle followed him as he disappeared inside, and stood at the entrance to eye a statue of a golden boar baring his tusks at her.

Bravery and fertility.

She entered.

The place had a peculiar smell, a thing of varnished wood and burned incense and old sofas. The first thing she noticed was a big statue of a black horse with a mane of fire, front legs raised valiantly in a battle of his own, then her eyes wandered over other objects, ship miniatures and dollhouses and ornamented vases and huge portraits of hunting scenes and festive picnics in rolling sceneries.

Then something glinted at the corner of her eye. A figure on a table, a doll enjoying a prolonged moment of peace under the shade of dried flowers sprouting wildly from a vase.

Cheadle walked closer to the small figure, putting down the carrier and her papers atop it and leaning down to inspect the figure’s face. It was a lady cat, white-furred and clad in Victorian-era attire. From under a stylish, lopsided hat peered out a thin, elegant face with a pair of striking blue eyes.

The cat lady appeared to be staring to the side, as if she’s only just noticed something that at once amused and disheartened her. What that thing was, the mysterious smile she sported resisted telling.

Regardless, Cheadle followed the direction of it, and was confronted with an old, tall woman staring at her with a smile.

“You like her?” The woman said, approaching them with a small ladder.

Cheadle straightened up. “I’m sorry for entering like that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The old woman waved her off, carrying the ladder across the room. “You can look for as long as you want.”

“And I do like her!” Cheadle threw a glance back at the cat doll and then at the woman. “She’s amazing.”

The woman smiled, coming closer to stand next to her. “Her name is Louise von Gerard, and she’s a Baroness.”

Cheadle’s eyes widened. “So all that fanciness is not just for show.”

“Absolutely not.” The old woman feigned offense. “She is but the most fashionable, eloquent lady in all the lands, and for good reason.” Then she winked at Cheadle, as if passing a secret between them. “Some even called her a witch.”

“I imagine she’d seen a lot of things then.”

“She’s been around the block.” The old woman nodded sagely. “Oh, do you want to see something cool?”

Cheadle was lead just across the room, towards a tall, massive grandfather clock that stood against the wall, exactly where the old woman left the ladder.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

She nodded, her eyes fixated on the clock, eight feet tall and towering over her in that mystifying way of old objects.

“It was found in an old derelict mansion, north of here.” The old woman said. “God bless who thought of salvaging it. It certainly made the rounds before ending up here with me, which is the best thing that could happen to anything, but that’s just blowing my own horn.”

Cheadle smiled. “Well, does it work?”

“I’ll make it work.” The old woman answered, only having to climb the first ledge on her ladder to reach the hood of the clock. “All other antiquarians before me lost hope for it. It’s a tired thing, but it’s not hopeless, that’s for sure.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t.” The old woman laughed, which caused the ladder to shake a little. Cheadle reached with her hands to keep it steady. “Thank you.”

“I’m Cheadle, by the way.”

“Well Cheadle, you’re a lucky gal for sure; when this clock strikes twelve, you will witness something magical.” And with that she lowered her arm down and opened her palm, showing Cheadle what appeared to be a stylized enamel key in the shape of a wolf, but which she quickly realized was an automation piece.

She continued to stare at the piece as it glinted away from her. “It’s an automata clock!”

“Yep.”

“I haven’t seen one in years.” Cheadle said, watching the old woman open the dial frame to place the automation piece inside, pushing it down on what appeared to be a set of tiny rails.

“This one is exceptional, although I’ll be seeing just how exceptional it is now. However, it still needs a lot of internal repair.” The old woman said and stepped down the ladder. “Come on up, see for yourself.” 

Cheadle climbed the ladder tentatively, and waited, her face inches away from the opened dial frame, listening to the old woman winding a key at the side of the clock.

Soft music started playing from somewhere within the clock, then the first automation pieces appeared in front of a meticulously scenographed background: a man in regal blue garb standing on a hill in front of a sunny sky.

The clock struck twelve. Slowly, a full moon descended above the lonely figure, bright and round and speckled. The figure of the man shifted, folding backwards to be replaced with the wolf piece she saw earlier.

“He’s a werewolf,” she heard herself whisper, hands grabbing the edge of the face dial, the edge of this little stage, watching as a new piece arrived, that of a woman sprouting from the ground in a white dress adorned with flowers.

The two figures stared at each other in wretched longing.

“Queen of the underworld.” The woman introduced her. “Every full moon, she is banished from her land for an old crime, the same night of his transformation, and they are only able to meet as such.”

The serene music continued to play as the woman and the wolf stared at each other, the soft lilting of it indifferent to their plight, responding only to the hidden beauty and ardor of it all.    

“They’re in love,”

“Terribly romantic, huh.” The woman chuckled. “I imagine he is afraid that she will reject him, and she is afraid that he will forget her.”

When the show ended and the pieces all retreated to their places, Cheadle looked down at the antiquarian. “What was her crime?”

“Who knows, but it would be fun to speculate, no?”

Cheadle smiled and descended the ladder. “Thank you for showing me this, it was beautiful.”

“You’re welcome.” The large woman suddenly extended her hand. “I’m Tsubone, I own this place.”

The two shook hands, then Cheadle’s eyes suddenly widened in horror. “Is this clock correct?”

Tsubone hummed. “I believe it’s off by ten minutes.”

“Shit, I have to go.” She sweared under her breath, already retreating back to the door. “Thank you!” She was out of the shop for a moment before reappearing in the doorframe. “I want to come back, if that’s alright with you.”

“Sure!” Tsubone said, waving to her as she sped out.

Cheadle was almost damn certain she forgot something while her feet hit a merciless slope, and she sure as hell didn’t need the voice of that man to remind her of it.

“Yo, Marimo!” On a bicycle he came speeding by, passing her then pedaling back to circle around her with a stupid smile on his face, then stopping to hold what he carried in front of her. “You forgot something?”  

It was not only Mushi in his carrier, all docile and obedient, but also her papers. She gritted her teeth.

The man side-eyed her. “Forgetting your pet and leaving him alone like that, kinda bad don’t you think.”

“He’s not my pet, and I didn’t ‘leave’ him alone; he left by his own volition and free will.” She said. “In fact, I was searching for him.” 

He didn’t look convinced. “You must be so horrible to this poor animal if he keeps running away from you like that.”

“I’m not horrible to any animals, certainly not to this one.” Cheadle said, taking the carrier from his hand, more carefully than she would have done in any other situation, then snatched her papers too.

The man snickered. “Of course, I’m sure that’s why he keeps running away from you so he could come to me.”

“I said he’s not mine.” Cheadle hissed, her hand covering the carrier’s lid so no other escape attempt could happen. Not in front of this man, anyway.

“Sure Marimo,” he said, already pedaling away from her.

“And stop calling me that!” She yelled after him, and she could hear him laughing as he cycled back to wherever the fuck he came from.

“Marimo~” He sang at the top of his lungs, cackling his way out of her sight.

Third time’s a charm, allegedly. She should have struck him where he stood, having exhausted all three chances to make himself even a little bit likeable.

Mushi purred in his carrier, calmer and more content than she’d ever seen him before. “You’re in on it too, huh. Jerk.”

He ignored her as he wont to do. Cheadle grunted and made up for all the time she lost by taking a cab. The theater was packed when she arrived, and she apologized for coming late but did not confess to losing the cat. Twice. Nobody needed to know that.

“Cheadle,” Morel called for her, a look on his face that revealed he was about to drop some bad news. “We were talking and revising the script, me and the other writers, and we want to change the bit you wrote.”

“Wh—”

“Not entirely!” He tried to reassure her. “We’re just going to scrape off some bits so they could match with Leroute’s vision for the sketch she wants to perform.”

Cheadle stared at him. “But I thought mine was set, we have agreed to it last week.”

“I’m just asking for some changes here.” He said, already gearing up for more defenses. “Nobody will rewrite your sketch but you, nobody’s going to take over it or replace it.” 

Her hands were beginning to clamp. “Is anybody else going to change theirs?”

“Um,” he threw a glance over his shoulder to the group of writers huddled about in a row behind them, then he looked back at her. “No, just yours.” 

She pursed her lips and glared at him. “Well then, I want to ask you a question.”

“Ah, sure, ask.” He really didn’t seem like he wanted to be asked anything by her.

“Do you want me on this project or not?”

“Of course I do! You’re an excellent writer.”

Cheadle frowned. “Then why is it that I am the only one whose piece has to change? Am I a worse writer than the others?”

“You’re not, of course you’re not.” Morel said, coming closer to grab her shoulders then deciding it was a bad idea when she glowered at him. “Look, to be completely honest with you, it’s just that you’re the least flexible member on the writing team, the one who isn’t putting their full imagination to the task. I mean for fuck’s sake, you even argued for removing the cats entirely from the play!” He shook his head like a disappointed father.

“ Because it’s the logical thing to do. ” Cheadle countered, her heart shaking. “What kind of production has actual, real cats on stage?”

“See,” he started again. “That’s the radicalism of what we’re doing here.”

The sheer confidence of his statement pushed her back in her seat. “Radicalism? Are you mad?”

Morel pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s what I mean when I say you’re inflexible and unimaginative.”

“By which you mean I’m not enough of a fool to go along with your ‘radical vision’.”  

“Cheadle, Cheadle, can we calm down?” He urged her with a hushed tone. “Everybody’s starting to look at us.”

His plea did work, and she assumed a more neutral, less combative position on her seat, clearing her throat. “I’m only asking you to be honest with me. I know you love Cluck and Kanzai, so if it’s only some kind of nepotism that’s keeping me on this project then I’d rather not be here.” She shot him a piercing glare. “Or worse, if it is pity on your part towards me then it’s insultingly misguided and unneeded.”

Morel removed his glasses and looked at her. “I promise it’s none of these. I genuinely didn’t mean to offend you.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah but I didn’t mean to.”

“Yet you did.”

“Well, look,” he said, trying to placate her with an easy smile. “I completely understand your misgivings about this, so can I suggest that we sit and discuss it with all the others? And look, you get to keep the parts you want, I love some of the things you put in there, I really do, but this project is a group effort and I’d appreciate it if we solved it as a group, and I apologize for not doing so from the beginning.” 

The two of them stared at each other for a long time, and she wondered if he in any way understood what and how she was feeling. She couldn’t gauge his earnestness or if he was earnest at all, which bothered her, and he regarded her with the eyes of someone who was only slightly inconvenienced by her discontent. He wasn’t afraid of losing her, yet he would rather not.

She recognized that he can’t make her stay if she didn’t want to, but if she was to stay and hash it all out with the others then she would be conceding to his way of doing things and, implicitly, to his opinions. He was more concerned with group cohesion and unity than the final product of their work, which put the two of them at odds, and it became clearer by the day that if she won’t learn to become a better team player then he will simply ask her to pack her stuff and leave.

She didn’t have many choices and he knew that.

“Fine,” Cheadle said finally. “But I still want to have the final word on it. It’s a collaborative project after all, isn’t it? If Leroute has issues I’ll take them up with her, personally.”

“Great!” Morel exclaimed, putting back his glasses and clapping her on the back. “We can resume our day as it was, now.”

It was not a satisfying conclusion to her, but she acquiesced for the time being. She was not a popular figure among the others, something she already suspected but was now certain of. That was yet another thing with which she had to contend.  

III

Back home, things were less tense. The cat was strangely pliant and manageable, and Cheadle felt much less angry with him now that he kept her little fuck up earlier that day to himself.

The three of them milled about in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She stood over the kitchen counter, slicing celery and carrots, wondering if she should share her unexpected adventure today with them. Did they know about that antiques shop? She felt oddly possessive of the experience, like it will unfurl into a lie the second she recounts it. This feeling was eerily similar to how she felt about talking with her mother regarding anything exceptional or interesting that happened with her.

After a moment of contemplation, she decided to keep this, too, to herself.

“What are you thinking about?” Cluck asked from where she stood over the stove, stirring a golden broth.

Cheadle shook her head. “Nothing. Is there anything else to cut?”

“Here,” Cluck passed her more vegetables. “Oh by the way, we wished you were in the theater earlier.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Leorio came over and stayed for like an hour.”

“I thought he was done atoning to Morel for his sins.”

“Morel doesn’t believe in atonement anyway,” Cluck said, leaning down to sniff the broth. “He asked us about you, actually.” 

Cheadle’s knife struggled through the skin of a leathery lemon. “Leorio? Why would he do that?”

“Because we told him about you, silly. He knows we have an old friend staying over.” She chuckled. “It’s like you two are barred by fate itself from meeting. Every time he’s around you’re not present, and when you’re present he doesn’t show up!”

“Tragic.” Cheadle rolled her eyes. “I dare say he lost his momentary appeal by way of tardiness.”

“He had his reasons you know,” Cluck said, turning halfway to take the sliced potatoes from Kanzai’s hand. “I invited him over for my birthday next Saturday.”  

Dinner conversation was terse but amicable until she was inevitably questioned about her short tense moment with the director, which she did end up sharing with them, specifically the poorly-concealed tension between her and the other writers, and regretted doing so the instant they tried to pretend it was new information.

Cheadle doubted they talked shit about her behind her back. Those two can be as vicious, gossipy and slanderous as the worst of them, but they weren’t backstabbers. They always served nastiness upfront, which she had always admired about them, and which was a valuable character asset in cycles of high school drama. Is it possible that this was no longer the case?

“So the other writers did talk about it openly with you two?” She questioned them, feeling the frustrations of today boil to the surface. “It’s not a new thing then.”

“Hey, I mean,” Kanzai said, looking at her. “We’re not gonna lie, they did try to say shit but we shut them down.”

As if they both read her mind, Cluck added. “We got your back, but if this ever becomes horrible for you we’d want to know, since we already feel like we guilted you into doing all this, writing for the play and all.”

“Guilted me?” Cheadle asked, torn between appreciating their support and questioning the reason they brought up the subject only after she mentioned it. “I understand, but I don’t believe I was guilted into anything. It’s certainly not the first thing I would have chosen, but I did choose it. Besides, I’m not a child, I can take care of myself.”

Kanzai’s spoon clacked against his plate. “Yeah but still,”

“And you know, no matter what, we’re here for you.”   

Cheadle scowled at them. “Why are you two speaking as if I’m not part of the project anymore? Is that what this is about? Telling me that it will become horrible like it’s an inevitability?” Her heartbeat quickened, her hands fists on the table. “You think it would be better if I moved on to something else?”

“Come on now!” Cluck said, frowning. “Why do you always turn things into some conspiracy shit against you?”

She seethed. “Maybe I wouldn’t do that if you didn’t hide things from me.”   

“We don’t hide things from you, what the hell are you talking about?” Kanzai said. “We just told you we defended you when they tried to start shit.”

“Oh thank you so much for defending me, it really makes me feel better about everything .” Cheadle spat out. “Don’t you dare think that I don’t know how you two feel about me being here, that I don’t know how you think of me sometimes. I know that I’ve encroached into your lives and that you’ve done your best to accommodate and help me. This situation is unsustainable for all of us, I’m aware, and for my part I’m already no longer able to sustain my life like this. I barely have money to last me for another month and I’m sure as hell not getting paid.” She pulled her clenched hands to her lap and tried her best to remain composed. “I know that I appeared out of nowhere as if nothing had happened and as if I didn’t cut you off years before, relying on your generosity and kindness, knowing nobody else to turn to, maybe even taking advantage of you.” Cheadle promptly got up with the plate in hand and put it in the sink, then she turned around to face them again. “So if you have a problem with me, if there are things you want to say, say them now.” 

When the two of them only simmered in anger and frustration, saying nothing, Cheadle left the kitchen and went back to her room, surprised to find Mushi already there, curled under her desk. 

Her only consolation was falling asleep to the memory of the automata clock ticking away in her head, its characters folding on themselves over and over again.

Chapter Text

With the single exception of the rain outside, everything around her was telling her to fuck off with her bad mood.

Cluck was no child, but she evidently loved balloons and birthday decorations, which were hanging from every surface, reminding Cheadle that she had to be nice tonight. She didn’t want to be nice. A volcanic scream was threatening to burst out at any moment, and the only reason it lay dormant for the time being was a lack of trigger. A single touch, she wagered, would be enough to make her explode. Or worse, collapse on herself in utter sadness.

The apartment was as still as she was, empty but for herself and Mushi, both of them staring out of the window at the dimming sky, at the ropes of rain cascading on the glass.

She helped with the decorating and with the food, cleaned around with Kanzai and restocked the fridge. Now she waited for them to return with the cake.

Since the day they fought, the three of them had not exchanged a single meaningful word. They worked together in the apartment and spoke of work in the theater but that was as far as it went. A fake cordiality animated their interactions, a strong sense of tension for all that remained unsolved and unspoken.

If they were worse people – smarter people – they would have politely asked her to leave, but they weren’t, and so they didn’t. A part of her wished they would, perhaps because the guilt she carried from her outburst still lingered over her, because she had projected her fears and anxieties on them, and they deserved to have that openly acknowledged, but she would rather not have to deal with it again. She gave them a chance to voice their grievances and they didn’t take it; she didn’t want to go through it once more.

Nothing else was fairing particularly better than their crumbling friendship. Certainly not her theater work, and most definitely not the money situation. 

The writing she was doing for the play failed to fulfill her. She had come to approach it mechanically, almost out of duty, and at one point she had decided to hunker down and just listen, receive criticism, and modify as suggested, the energy and verve required to maintain defense slowly seeping out of her. Despite haggling with Morel over the value of her contributions, the work was becoming less and less personal by the day, and it only meant something to her insofar as it proved her commitment and work ethic.

Everyone was expecting so much and yet nothing at all. It exhausted her.

Through the window, she saw the two of them exit the car and scramble towards the building. Cluck was covering the cake box with her shirt while Kanzai was covering her head with his jacket.

Not for the first time, Cheadle wondered about the nature of their relationship. Sleeping in the same bed, showering together, wearing each other’s t-shirts and underwear. Cultural conditioning had taught her to believe that these things meant something other than friendship, but she had long since become disillusioned with all the unspoken rules of courtship and romance. Did it even matter if they were just friends or romantically involved? What difference was there, anyway? They were close and comfortable with each other in a way she’d never been with anyone in her entire life, and the more she thought about that fact the worse she felt.

When they opened the door and walked into the kitchen, the three of them acknowledged one another with curt nods and awkward smiles.

“Everyone will be here in about an hour.” Cluck said, as a warning perhaps, or a reminder to loosen the fuck up.

She didn’t want any of that glumness on the night of her birthday, which was entirely fair, but none of them seemed to be ready just yet, not even Cluck herself. She milled about in the kitchen, opened the fridge to take a look at the cake then closed it, surveyed the room with furrowed brows while Cheadle and Kanzai sat there watching her, then finally, she let out a long, frustrated sigh.

“I know things are tense between us and I know that we’re all a little bit sad and angry with each other but I sure as fuck don’t want that to ruin my birthday party, okay?” Her eyes shifted from one face to the other. “I don’t expect us to solve our shit in an hour but I want to be an old happy hag tonight, can I have that?”

“Of course!” Kanzai said, extending his arm to hold Cluck’s hand. “It’s gonna be a good night, I promise.”

Cheadle looked at her friends – if she even had the right to think of them as that anymore – and nodded with a smile. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Cluck breathed out. “Thank you.”

After that, things seemed to mellow out between them. Cheadle went to her room and searched her closet for something nice to wear. A sleeveless pink blouse tucked under a navy blue skirt. A bit totalitarian for a birthday party, she thought, but not entirely inappropriate. The truth of the matter was that she’d barely brought any clothes with her from home. Mounds of dresses and boots were left to moths in her old house. She believed she wouldn’t need any of them, certainly not the most lavish stuff; they would have been dead weight.

Her gift for Cluck sat wrapped and still on the desk, withholding opinions and impressions. 

When people started pouring into the apartment, Cheadle realized she was the most overdressed among them. This was perhaps the most casual birthday party she’d been to since high school, and something felt dreadfully amiss about it.

Morel came in wearing the same clothes he wore everyday. He had the decency to have the shirt and pants in different colors, at least, and wrapped the outfit up with a pink bowtie. He grinned at her blouse as he stood in the doorway, shaking the water off his umbrella. “We match.”

She gave him a dry smile. “We certainly do.”

“How are you today?” He asked, squeezing himself through the narrow corridor and into the living room. “Got any writing done?”

“Just revised some things.” Cheadle replied, passing him a beer can from the fridge.  

“No talking about work tonight!” Cluck barged in, her arms already outstretched to hug Morel. “We agreed to that didn’t we.”

Morel hugged her back. “We did.” He looked at her, at the blue summery dress she wore that swayed around her willowy frame. “How’re your mid-thirties going so far?”

Cluck growled then laughed. “Peachy.”

Organically removed from the conversation, Cheadle felt relief, and a marginal freedom to move about as she pleased, trying and failing to loosen the tension in her shoulders, to be more lighthearted than apprehensive, to disregard the way she felt increasingly suffocated by the coming crowd. The apartment wasn’t big enough for all of them, and by the time she finished her third wine glass it was hard to push through towards the kitchen counter and grab a fourth.

Although the possibility was terribly alluring, she wasn’t going to get drunk. Knowing herself to have a history of angry drunken outbursts, Cheadle stood as close to the wall as possible and watched people dance all around her. They blurred and melded into one another, became shapeless masses of light, far away and insufferably close. Hours passed. There was more wine in her glass and then there was none. Her legs hurt.

Something about this reminded her of every other birthday and party she’d attended, the sense that she was in it but not of it, that she was outside of herself, looked at things and people from somewhere other than her own eyes.

She felt invisible, to herself and to everyone else, at once a comfort and an ache. If she was to look down at her hands, she might see nothing.

It crawled over her, then, old and buried, mold and loam--a ghastly, devastating unhappiness.

How succinct, to acknowledge it now, so fully, to feel that unhappiness with such intimacy, and what an awful time to see it like this, as simple and plain as it was.

When Kanzai approached her, shuffling his way among the crowd, and asked her to dance, she said no.

“Come on, you’ve been really silent and gloomy.” He said, pulling at her arm. “Cluck is kinda starting to notice.”

“Cluck is fine.” Cheadle said, snagging her arm away from his grip. “Go dance with someone else.”

Kanzai stepped closer to her and cornered her against the wall. “We said we’ll make it a good night for her, she wants us both to be involved.”

They were at eye-level, his scowling brown eyes staring into hers, and she glared right back. “Her happiness doesn’t hinge on whether I’m present or not. I just don’t want to dance, is that so hard to understand?”

“Then just do anything else.” Kanzai hissed. “You didn’t even bother to say ‘happy birthday’ to her.”

Cheadle inhaled, wishing he’d step the hell out of her personal space. “Leave me alone, Kanzai.”

“Hey, what’s it you two?” Smoother than his appearance would suggest, Morel stepped in, casually leaning against the wall next to Cheadle.

Kanzai shrugged. “Nothing, we’re just chatting.”

Morel twirled his beer can before taking a large gulp from it. “You look angry at each other.”

“We’re not.”

“Yeah we’re really not.” Kanzai grinned at the older man and held once again to her arm. “We were just about to dance.”

“No we weren’t.” Cheadle said, yanking her arm away once again, her face stern and scowl uncompromising.

Kanzai glared at her. “Cheadle!”

“Leave me alone!” She heard herself yell, and it was as if another version of herself was yelling from somewhere else. “Just leave me alone, I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to do ANYTHING!”

At the point, Morel was no longer the only audience to their little scene. Everyone was looking, dozens of eyes seeking the commotion in befuddled curiosity. Among them stood Cluck, motionless, a plate of cake in her hand, her bright blue dress in dissonance with the hurt and confusion marring her face.

Her gaze traveled from one face to the other, pinning them all with eyes that grew increasingly angrier. “What’s going on?”

Cheadle felt like a stain on the wall. An angry, stubborn stain, yet she said nothing. Her mouth refused to open, the empty wine glass hung limply from her hand.

“Cluck, honey, don’t worry,” Morel forced out a chuckle. “A friendly argument just got out of hand.”

“Really?”

Morel nodded, trying to reassure her. “Yeah it’s about the play. We’re all just a bit drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.” Cheadle finally spoke out, her heart hammering in a rush of fierceness. “And it’s not about the goddamn play. Or you know what?” She turned to face Morel, a mocking smile twisting her mouth. “It is. It is about the play.”

“I get it, it’s okay.” Morel tried to calm her down. “You’re one of the writers, we can talk about it all tomorrow.”

A cruel snort escaped her. “I’m not one of the writers! I don’t want to be one of the writers. Your play is fucking stupid, I hate it and I don’t want to write for it anymore!”

Everything died, then. Even the people staring at her did not seem to be sentient, only copies of each other, lifeless in their silent judgment, their plates and glasses disconnected from their hands, floating alone in the air.

If she took a breath, everything will collapse.  

“Leave."

It was Cluck. The two of them stared at each other, strangers in their friendship, strangers to each other, the only two people in the whole room.

Cheadle breathed in, out, nodded, and with nothing on her, she left.

III

Somewhere in her way out of the door, Mushi had slipped out along with her. Cheadle didn’t bother to stop him as he descended the staircase ahead of her, and the last thing she wanted was to alert the others to his escape.

She walked behind him out of the building and into the drizzle outside, a cold spray only visible in the orange glow of street lamps and car lights.

By the time Cheadle noticed that she was still holding the empty wine glass in her hand, Mushi had disappeared. She didn’t look for him, liked to believe he was giving her space by trotting away into the night by himself.

Under the rain she stood and wondered where to go. The cold was starting to bite into her naked arms and legs, hair sticking to her forehead and the ridges of her glasses, her toes curling instinctively in her shoes.

Her feet took her to the only place that garnered her unquestionable affections, and although she alternated between fast walking and sprinting, seeking every awning and side street as temporary shelter from the wind blowing cold droplets in her direction, it was still a long trip.

The road towards the antiques shop wasn’t magical this time around. The uphill streets extended forever in the darkness and the staircases were slippery with water, their metal railings blisteringly cold under her shaking hands. 

She felt like a runaway criminal, an outlaw with a past hiding in an unnamed town, except there was nowhere to hide here. The absence of people from the streets and neighborhoods made her feel even more seen, even more exposed.

Somewhere along the way, the rain had stopped.

When she finally arrived at the neighborhood, Cheadle was soaked, miserable, and utterly defenseless.

Her heart withered at seeing the shop closed.

The air was cold and enlivening, and she allowed herself to stand still for a moment, to breathe in the fresh dampness, to stare at the glittering asphalt, so unreasonably clean that if she lost focus it would seem like she’s standing on water.

Cheadle turned around and left the neighborhood, heading towards the only other place she was familiar with: the theater and its surrounding park, but because it was she and because the cosmos hated her with a burning passion, he had to appear.

The tall man slowed down his bike and came to a stop in front of the shed she was hiding under, and sized her up and down with what she loathed to think was a genuine look of concern.

“Holy shit, you alright there? You look really bad.”

“Haven’t you annoyed me enough already?” She seethed. “Just leave, I’m perfectly fine.”

But he didn’t leave. Instead he got off his bike and ducked under the shed, standing close but leaving a respectable distance between them. “Do you need help?”

For some reason, that was all it took for repressed tears to burst out. “No I don’t need help, I’m alright.” She choked out and hunkered back against the wall, hugging herself in cold and sadness.

His eyes widened at the sight of her tears, already being vigorously wiped off, her sniffing embarrassingly loud in the silence of the park. He stared at her, then his gaze shifted down and he squinted in puzzlement at the glass still in her hand. “Were you collecting rain with that?”

That got an amused snort out of her. “I was collecting my fucking tears.”

He laughed, and the stupidity of the situation made her laugh too. Why did she carry this glass with her all the way here? She could’ve left it somewhere around the building, placed it on some wall or something, even left it in the apartment.

Both gave the glass a long, contemplative look, as if it withheld some wisdom, contained some galactic secrets that were lost to the two of them.

“Here,” he approached her, digging for something in the pockets of his long coat, then finally pulled out a wrinkly tissue. “I think this might help better with the tears.”

Cheadle scrutinized the tissue with incredulous eyes.

“I promise it has nothing of my fluids on it.” He said, unfolding it, smoothing it, then stretching it out at the edges. “See, clean.”

Tentatively, she took it from him, wiped her tears and cleaned her nose. She sniffed. “Do you have another one?”

“Yeah, here.”

When her sinuses were as clean as the air she was breathing, Cheadle sighed, stuffing the wet tissues in the glass, then she looked at him. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.” He waved her off. “What the hell were you doing out in the rain at this hour anyway?”

Cheadle grimaced at him. “It’s none of your business.”

He grimaced right back, indignantly stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Fine, lady, whatever.”

“What are you doing out in the rain at this hour?” She side-eyed him, suddenly envious of his coat.

“I was on my way somewhere.” He pointed to his bike, then fished a cigarette pack out of his pocket, shook it until a cigarette jutted out. “Want one?”

She didn’t smoke. “Yeah, sure.”

One cigarette in her mouth and one in his, he leaned down, his head inches away from hers, a lighter flaring between the touching tips of their cigarettes. Once lit, he pulled away and stood next to her, inhaling deeply before blowing out a long cloud of smoke.

Cheadle hadn’t smoked since her first year in college, when she was roped into it by some classmates at a house party. She hated it, then, but this one tasted fine. She suspected it was the kind of light brand someone smoked when they were trying to quit. Or pretending to.

She noticed him eyeing her curiously, and when she returned his gaze he didn’t have the shame to look away.

“What?” She demanded.

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “You’re just a weirdo.”  

Cheadle frowned. “Excuse me?”

“I meant that in a good way!” He squared his shoulders defensively. “It’s a sleepy town, we don’t see ones like you much around here.”

She squinted at him. “‘Ones like me’?”

“Yeah you know,” he shrugged, starting to feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny. “You stand out, mostly because everybody here knows everybody, and you’re just sort of, there, easy to spot.”

“Oh.”

“Also you have green hair. I mean, who does that, really.”

Cheadle was about to say something when she inhaled too much smoke and was overtaken with a fit of coughing. “Dammit,” she cursed under her breath, smearing the cigarette against a wall then angrily shoving the butt into the glass.   

“You wanted to go to the shop?” He asked, flicking away the butt of his cigarette with such precision that it landed exactly in the middle of the nearest trash bin.

Her eyes widened, partly because of his question and partly at the move. “You saw me?”

“I’m not creeping on you or anything, I was just coming from that direction.” He said.

“And you followed me?”

“No,” he looked annoyed. “I told you I was going somewhere. Riding through the park is easier and faster than going through the main street.”

Cheadle leaned back against the wall. “Shouldn’t you be going then?”

“It’s late now.” He said, turning his wrist to look at his watch. “I think the party’s over.”

“Well,” she sighed. “I ought to leave.”

The man nodded, started walking back towards his bike then stopped to turn back to her. “By the way, if you want the shop try coming earlier tomorrow.”

“How do you know that?”

He gave her a cheeky smile. “I live there.” Placing one foot on the pedal, he nodded with his chin towards something. “Want me to give you a ride home?”

“No, thanks.”

“Alright then. Make sure to eat a lot of garlic, though you’ll probably get sick anyway. Bye!”

She watched him pedal away, and when he was completely out of her sight, she began her journey back to the apartment.

There was nowhere else to go, and by the time she made it back to the apartment Cheadle had no idea what time it was, no idea how much time she'd spent outside. She stood in front of the door and wondered if people were still inside, if the birthday was still in order, or if everything got unceremoniously wrapped up in the wake of her outburst.

Maybe they were not even awake at all.

Should she knock? The apartment was silent, the whole building soundless, and for a second she imagined opening the door to a cliff. Funny, she thought, that would be easier to deal with than opening the door to Cluck and Kanzai’s faces.

Her hand reached towards the inconspicuous ledge above the door where she knew a spare key was hidden. The sound of the door unlocking was cringingly loud. She hated this stupid old door.

With careful, uneasy steps she walked inside.

The corridor was dark, but the light from the kitchen told her instantly that they were awake. She finally parted with the glass, placing it on the corridor cabinet.

There was no avoiding them now.

Cheadle walked in and saw the kitchen completely empty except for Cluck and Kanzai. Sitting opposite each other on the table, tea mugs between them, they were already looking her way before she even came into view. 

All decorations had been removed and brought down, there were no dirty dishes and forks in the sink, no alcohol bottles and cans in sight, no sign that any festivities were held here at any point that night. If she were to guess, Cluck had vented out her anger with a brutal cleaning spree.

“Hey,” Cheadle spoke out, their silence alien and intolerable.

“Where did you go?” Kanzai asked but without concern. He asked as a demand, as interrogation. Only when he pointed at it did she notice her phone on the table. “We tried calling you.”

Heat was beginning to move back into her body. She curled her toes. “You told me to leave, so I did. I went for a walk.”

Did Cluck feel guilty for kicking her out? They must’ve known she was going to come back, eventually. Perhaps they just didn’t want to be held responsible for her death, if it happened.

When it seemed that neither was going to say anything, Cheadle opened her mouth but Cluck instantly interrupted her.

“Did you mean what you said?” She asked, her nose wrinkled in a deep scowl. “That our play is stupid and you don’t want to write for it?”

Cheadle took in a breath and nodded. “I did. I still do.”

“Do you know how fucking embarrassing that was? To me? To Kanzai?” Cluck asked, her grip tightening around her tea mug. “Do you have any goddamn idea how small I felt after what you did?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you!” Profound resentment animated Cluck’s face. “I just don’t understand. What do you want? What the fuck did you even come here for?” She spat out. “To shit on us? To be a bitch about everything? Huh? What brought you here, Cheadle? Do we have to take the brunt of your break up with your shitty fiancée? Or your shitty family or your shitty job?”

“I didn’t ask you to take the brunt of anything !” Cheadle yelled. “ You offered the work to me, you offered a place for me in your home. I didn’t ask anything of you, I don’t want anything from you, and my life before is none of your goddamn business. You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know what I went through.”

Cluck feigned a look of sympathy. “Oh you poor girl. You must’ve suffered so much all those years.” She snorted. “You came here pretending to be some broken up girl with nothing left for her but you just want the fantasy of that. You just want to feel like you’re starting again with nothing, but that’s not the truth.” Her hand cut through the air and slammed the table. Cheadle's heart jumped at the sound. “You could’ve come here and lived comfortably and found a job that didn’t involve you demeaning us at every turn. You never needed us for anything; we’re just a conduit for your rich woman guilt.”

“I’m not pretending to be anything you stupid, mindless cretin!” Cheadle retaliated, her heart contracting painfully, her hands shaking. “Rich woman guilt you say? What are you so aggravated about? What are you so jealous of? My monstrous parents? My failing relationships? My life friendless and unhappy? All the money that was never mine? The fact that I’m going to die alone and unloved?! ” Tears gathered in her eyes. “Because that’s what I came here with. That’s my fantasy for you, Cluck.” She breathed in, feeling that her legs can’t hold her up anymore. “And I would never have come here if I didn’t need you, and I’ve said it, I had nowhere else to escape to, nowhere else to go, no place with people I know and trust, because I don’t have any . I can’t do it alright? I’m scared of being alone.” She sniffed and wiped her tears. “I know I did something horrible and I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry for coming here and burdening you, you won’t have to put up with me anymore. Tomorrow I’ll start searching for a new place to stay and I’ll move out as soon as I find one.” Cheadle inhaled, brushing wet hair away from her eyes. “I’m sorry for being a horrible friend.”

Neither of them opened their mouth to counter her self-denunciation. They looked at her as if they had already been thinking that since the moment she left. 

In her room, she heard the front door open then slam shut. From the clamped silence in the apartment she guessed both have gone out, perhaps to search for the cat.

Cheadle spent the next two hours repacking her stuff. When she finished, only her gift for Cluck remained on the desk. If they came back before she fell asleep, she didn’t hear them.  

Chapter Text

The morning compelled her to remain outside for as long as she could. Dewey and lush, the rain had left the town in an atmosphere akin to post-coital bliss. Streets seemed wider, the sky closer, the air heavy with promise.

Perhaps it was all in her head. Despite the ugliness of yesterday she felt new and light, felt unburdened, closer to earth, closer to her senses again. Crying did her good, so did anger. She needed those two things and with them she was able to see with better eyes, move with less weight on her chest.

There was nothing to hold her, and the moment she woke up she dressed and left, exchanging only the briefest of acknowledgments with Cluck and Kanzai who were having their coffee around the kitchen table.

She gave herself time. No longer constricted by work, she could wander as she pleased, and upon passing a cute little diner that she’d never entered before she decided to have breakfast in it.

The place was warm and snug, still not entirely awake as a waitress stopped pulling out chairs off empty tables to come take her order.

Cheadle wanted the best pie they had, told the young woman that she could choose. A cup of coffee with milk and sugar between her fingers, she took a spot on a table beside the morning glow with a notebook and a pencil in front of her.

It would make her endlessly sad if things were never solved between her and Cluck and Kanzai, but especially Cluck. There was something buried there in their fight, an ancient, unstated hurt, an old wound that was never properly mended, the acute feeling that both had failed each other long time ago, failed their friendship and never got around to truly, wholly face the consequent fallout. Kanzai was there because he was always there, and he was no more because he was always going to take Cluck’s side.

Cheadle opened her notebook and wrote everything she was thinking about.

She was selfish, in the past. Left them behind because the world after high school promised other things, promised other people. Back then it seemed that there was no place for them in her future, the future her parents wanted, the future she thought she wanted, and because, despite years of friendship, it seemed that they didn’t want her, either. She pushed them out because by senior year they were already slipping out of her hands and she refused to be shut out first, resisted the vulnerability of rejection.

If there was to be hurt she refused to be at the receiving end of it, didn’t know that it was going to hurt anyway, that friendships were messy and difficult and deserved negotiation.

In her heart, she hoped Cluck and Kanzai knew all this as well, that with enough time for everybody to mellow out, they could begin to repair what broke between them years ago.

With a mouthful of surprisingly delicious blueberry pie in her mouth, she resolved to at least try. She wrote a promise to herself in the notebook and headed out to her next destination.

The shop was closed, to her disappointment then aggravation, because that man had lied to her.

Everything from the tree and the houses situated around it appeared untouched, rising anew from the wet ground, and she wondered for a moment if anybody at all even lived here.

To her surprise, she spotted a small, familiar figure by the door of the shop. She never thought she’d be this happy to see him again.

Mushi curled beside a tall, round flowerpot, eyes blinking against the cool sunlight, and when his gaze met hers he made no move to acknowledge her presence, only raising his ugly little face towards the sun then lulling himself back down.

“You little shit,” she stood beside him. “Is this where you’ve been all night?”

He didn’t even pretend to be innocent.

“Sure, sure, I shouldn’t ask where you go. You are your own damn cat, after all.” She said, trying to peek inside the shop, her face smushed against the door window, gazing through the drapes, realizing that she’s mostly hoping to see the Baroness still on her table. “There is a better behaved cat in there, you know that?”

“You wanna see the Baroness?”

Cheadle pushed her body off the door and pivoted towards the voice. “ You . You lied to me.”

“No I did not!” The man grumbled, bringing his bike to a stop and parking it against the wall. “Is that why you're being a creep, looking through people’s windows.”

“I recall someone yesterday said the shop will be open early.” She replied, crossing her arms and turning away from the door.

The man looked at his watch then regarded her with an amused look. “It’s ten.”

“What does early mean for you people?” 

He groaned and murmured something, opening a side door and leading his bike in, gesturing for her to follow him inside. “Tsubone was supposed to come here early but she got busy.”

“Do you work here?” Cheadle walked behind him, the view ahead obstructed by his tall figure in front of her.

“Yeah, sort of. I just help around.”

Then he stood to the side and let her glimpse the way in front of her. It was magnificent; a set of narrow stairs that lead to a balcony below, a wooden ledge that overlooked the town under. Cheadle suppressed a gasp of awe at the scene, her eyes following the blue horizon as it engulfed every house and building.

Her gaze shifted down to the balcony where he now stood. He pointed right. “This way.”

Cheadle stood on the balcony, her hands grabbing the thick wooden railing, her mouth open in amazement at the view. It was colder here, a spot unreached by sunlight. She wanted to savor the very air she breathed.

The balcony had a door that lead into what appeared to be a workshop. She walked in behind him, stepping carefully around boxes and old chairs. There were violins hanging from a rack above and a big work table snug in a corner against the wall to her left.

He lead her up a staircase from the workshop to an upper floor, and she found herself once again in the gallery, as piquant and timeless as the first time she saw it.

“There’s your cat lady.” He said, pulling out a chair for her and setting it beside the table where Louise still stood.

Cheadle looked at him. “Do you know her story?”

“Not entirely.” He said. “There are many conflicting tales about her. I think she’s some kind of witch and was married to someone who died in the Great War.”

Her finger dared poke Louise’s soft, smooth nose. “A widow, then.”

“Yeah, with really pretty eyes too. Did you see this?” He urged her to sit on the chair then slightly shifted Louise’s position, bringing her closer to a shaft of light that penetrated the shop.

Louise’s eyes caught the sunlight, their icy color breaking into a dozen other shades of blue, the big irises shattering into a million specks of light, a constellation of glassy stars glued together by something as luminescent as the glass shards themselves.

The secret she saw in those eyes the first time broke into a million, and the mystery of this doll thrilled her even more now.

“I’ll be down in the workshop.” He said. “If you need anything just holler at me.”

Cheadle looked up at him, somewhat lost for words. “Would it be weird if I stayed here for a while? I suddenly feel really inspired to write something.”

“Not at all.” He smiled at her. “You can stay for as long as you want.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” he replied and made his way downstairs.

When he was out of her sight, Cheadle returned her full attention to Louise, crossing her arms on the table and resting her head over them to take a better look at those glittering eyes.

“What’s your secret, Louise? What did you go through?” She whispered to the doll, the tip of her finger caressing the cat lady’s striped dress. “There’s a sad story but no one seems to know it in full. I’ll have to figure it out myself.”

Louise remained silent, sporting that same mysterious smile, and for a fraction of a second it appeared as if her eyes moved. Cheadle jolted up and stared at the figure, then slowly leaned down again to inspect the strange trick of light.

There was so much to know, and with doubled curiosity she pulled out the notebook from her handbag and set it on the table.

Hours must’ve passed as she scribbled on the paper, words and sentences and entire ideas pouring out of her. With each page turn the sun sunk down outside, the soft, yellow light that filled the gallery flaring into a reddish hue that submerged everything under a mystical shroud.

Cheadle only stopped writing when her eyes hurt and she couldn’t see properly anymore. Putting her pencil down, she got up, a bit woozy, her wrist strained, suddenly cold and hungry and a bit sleepy.

Her feet carried her towards the staircase and she walked down, blinking in the warm glow that filled the workshop. She stood in the middle of the staircase and watched him sitting at the table, bent down, his hands chiseling away at what appeared to be a violin.

She’d never seen an instrument in the process of being made. She never saw someone labor over them, and the curved piece of wood in his hands seemed so fragile, so bare, but his fingers were delicate around its edges, the minute movements of his fingers precise and careful, his face so close to it as if he’s passing a secret.

“Hey,” she announced her presence and he promptly turned to her, putting down a disembodied fingerboard.

“Hey, you finished writing?”

Cheadle nodded, completing her way down. “For today, yeah.” Her eyes wandered around the workshop once again, this time with more attention to everything around her. In the soft glow of the desk lamp hunched over his work table, the room appeared larger, more accommodating. Perhaps it was his presence. She pointed to the row of violins on the rack above. “You made all these?”

“Of course I didn’t.” He replied, brushing wood flakes off his pants. “Students come here every weekend.”

Her finger stroked the curved underside of a hanging violin. “And you’re one of them?”

“Used to be.”

“Is any of them yours?”

He pointed to a violin hanging in the middle of the rack, a shiny art piece that had the red shade of a withering rose petal and glinted warmly against the lamp light. It was beautiful. Her eyes gleamed. “Can you play it?”

The man looked embarrassed and unsure. “I can, but I’m not very good.” He scratched the back of his head, suddenly vulnerable under her curious gaze. “I’m more about making them.”

“Please play something.” Cheadle said, coming to stand closer to him. “It’s alright if you’re mediocre.”

He looked offended. “I’m not ‘mediocre’, I’m just not a professional.”

“Then play something.” She pinned him with a challenging look, and as she expected he stood up, picked a violin case from a nearby chair and opened it.

“Fine,” he said, taking the violin out, then the bow. “Can you sing?”

Now she was the one uncomfortable. “I don’t sing. My voice is terrible.”

“Oh, I know the perfect song.” He looked at her with a cheeky smile, placed his jaw on the chinrest, and played a short piece for warm up, then glided into whatever song he was thinking of.

She couldn’t tell what it was at first, but then it became clearer with every note. She shuddered. “That’s the song you read in my notes!”

“Yep.”

“You made fun of it.”

“I did.”

“How will you play a song like that on violin?” She asked.

“Just sing!”

Cheadle turned away from him, feeling her cheeks burning, but slowly she started. Now that the lyrics were coming out of her mouth, she realized just how silly they were. She did choose the song for her segment but at least she didn’t write it.

“ We move like cagey tigers,

Oh we couldn’t get closer than this

The way we walk the way we talk

The way we stalk the way we kiss. ”

Despite herself, her voice was picking up.

“ We slip through the streets while everyone sleeps

Getting bigger and sleeker and wider and brighter. ”

He laughed and she laughed too, but they didn’t stop.

“ We bite and scratch and scream all night

Let’s go and throw all the songs we know

Into the sea, you and me

All those years and no one heard

I’ll show you on the spring, it’s a treacherous thing

We missed you,

Hissed , 

The Lovecats! ”

They burst out laughing, and from up on the staircase they heard Tsubone chuckling quietly at the sight of them. The old woman was sneaking down the stairs with two companions, carrying with them several string instruments and a flute.

“I took a peek then thought we could join you.” Tsubone said, then urged the two of them with silent gestures to continue playing and singing.

Cheadle tried not to think of any of them. She tried to envision that she was by herself, singing to herself in her own house and not surrounded by a small, makeshift orchestra.

Music filled the workshop, the deep reverberations of Tsubone’s cello taking center stage for a moment, then Cheadle sang the last chorus accompanied by a smooth guitar and a sprightly flute.

At the end of the song, only the playful sound of his violin remained as he wrapped up their little performance with a long glide of his bow over the violin strings.

When everything stilled, she allowed herself to breathe.

“That was really nice!” Tsubone said, getting up from her chair and making way for introductions. “Those are my friends and fellow instrumentalists, Melody and Gotoh.”

Cheadle nodded and shook their hands. “Thank you, that was amazing.”

“Leorio, why didn’t you tell us you had a friend with a nice voice like that?” Melody asked, the tip of her flute tickling a teasing smile.

“We’re not really frie—”

“You’re Leorio?” Cheadle turned to him, her eyes wide and accusative.

He leaned back on his stool. “Yeah.”

“Leorio Paladiknight?”

“Yeah?”

“It can’t be you.” She said in disbelief, taking a long, assessing look at him as if he’s just appeared out of nowhere. “Everybody made you into this... impossibly perfect man.”

He smiled. “Thank you, I am an impossibly perfect man.”

“No you’re not. You’re awful!” Cheadle snorted. “You’re nothing like what I thought you were, nothing like what I’ve heard about you.”

“Oh you know what,” he started with haughty huff. “You’re exactly like what I’ve heard about you.”

They stared at each other, unspoken judgments hanging between them.

Cheadle took a challenging step forward. “You’ve heard about me?”

“Aha. With all the shit I’ve heard you’d think the Pope was visiting.”

“Yeah?” She crossed her arms. “What did you hear about me?”

Leorio leaned so close to her they almost touched noses, then he whispered so only she could hear. “That you’re a basic bitch.”

She let out a mocking snort. “That must be why both of us always attend the same places.”

“Yeah maybe.” Leorio said, a reluctant smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“How about dinner?” Tsubone asked, halting any further banter, and really, it was more of an order than a suggestion. “No pulling pigtails while eating.”

Around a table beside the fireplace, with a satisfied stomach and a teacup in her hand, Cheadle asked Tsubone about lodging and work, specifically here in the gallery. It seemed like a job she’d enjoy in a place that inspired her. As for why she needed to move, she didn’t elaborate.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to find work elsewhere, honey.” Tsubone said. “But I can rent you one of the rooms here.” She added, pointing over her head to the uppermost floor.

Cheadle’s heart skipped a beat. “You can?”

“Of course, and you can help around here, if you feel inclined.”

“I’d love that.” She said, exchanging a glance with Leorio then looking down with a little smile at the greenish gold of her tea.

III

It was late when she left. They had spent the rest of their evening in peaceful, amicable companionship, reheating the tea kettle and listening to Melody play her flute.

On the way back to Cluck and Kanzai’s apartment, Leorio walked at her side with his bike beside him. They moved slowly over sloping streets, the town to their right a mass of twinkling lights against a dark sky.

There was a penitent awkwardness between them as they strolled in silence, ears tuned to the passing cars and the restless whirring of insect swarms around street lamps.

“You play nicely, by the way.” Cheadle finally said, not looking at him. “Have you ever performed?”

“Thanks! And no,” he shook his head. “I haven’t. I’m a pretty average violin player, kinda better at making them but haven’t practiced either in so long.”

“Why so?” She asked. “Med school?”

Leorio looked at her. “Yeah, and other reasons. Making violins just didn’t seem like a viable option anymore, especially after I started uni.”

“So it was once an option.”

“When I was fourteen, I quit school and went on what was supposed to be a year-long training period in Italy, to study under a well-known violin-maker, one of the true masters of the craft.” He started, a wistful look in his eyes. “But I came back three months sooner than I was supposed to, because of the death of a close friend. I felt really guilty for having left him alone to pursue something so nebulous. Life seemed really serious then, and scary, and once I realized that my parents can hardly sustain this ambition of mine, I didn’t want to fuck around anymore.” He let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “I was just coasting through life, thinking I’m gonna reach somewhere eventually, and at the time I was scared that it was never gonna happen if I remained the way I was, having dropped out of school, all that shit. I came back from Italy, pretty stupefied, and decided to go back to school. I studied hard enough and ended up going to med school, for a lot of reasons.”     

“I’m sorry about your friend.” Cheadle said, offering him a sympathetic smile.

“It’s alright,” he said, shrugging. “What about you? What brought you here?”

“I don’t even know anymore.” They both laughed. “I wanted a new start. Everything about my old city was suffocating; family, job, relationships. I wanted to be somewhere else, a place where I didn’t feel miserable and unfulfilled.”

“You’re a lawyer, right?”

Cheadle chuckled. “Was.”

“And you write.”

“I do,” she said, her fingers brushing the cold surface of a side traffic barrier. “Although I stopped writing for a very long time. My parents insisted I enter a ‘prestigious’ field and I complied because to me, back then, it was the most logical path, something safe and comfortable.” She snorted, remembering just how insignificant her role was in choosing law school, how compliant and unresisting she was to the idea of it, in hindsight an idea not even her own. “But I loved what I studied, I immersed myself in it, yet all the time I had this nagging sensation, that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do.”

“So you came here to do what you really want to do?”

Her eyes followed a speeding car on a street below. “That was my plan. To come here and write, but it seems I’m not even good at it anymore. I can’t write anything without wanting to tear the whole thing apart. The moment I look away from the page I get this sensation that I’m just wasting my time, that I’ve made a seriously stupid decision by coming here.” She glanced at him then back at the roads below. “Today was a bit better, but I usually feel terribly uninspired and unconfident.”

“I bet you’re better than you think you are.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”

Leorio stopped and looked at her. “I mean it. You know when I read your segment for the play? I really liked it, but I was feeling awful about myself, creatively-speaking, so I was mean.”

“You don’t have to say positive things about me now that we can tolerate each other.”

He chuckled, following her when she continued walking. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

“I lost that shot anyway.” Cheadle said. “I said a terrible thing to the theater people, I don’t think they’d want me to work with them anymore even if I hadn’t quit. It’s just a waste of time.”

“It’s not a waste of time.” He regarded her with seriousness in his eyes. “Would you have come all the way here if you didn’t love writing?”

Cheadle’s gaze shifted from him to the intersection ahead. “Loving something doesn’t mean you’re good at it.”

“But you’ve barely even begun.” Leorio said. “And anyway, I think you should leave it to someone else to evaluate your creative work; you’re always going to be biased against it, that’s what my master in Italy said.”

She sighed. “The fellow writers at the theater who evaluated my work so far have evidently not liked it.”

“But you quit, right?”

“I did.”

“Now you’re free to work on something else.” He said with a smile, both stopping to let a car pass before walking across the intersection. “I liked what I read from you, I think you should keep pursuing it.”

Cheadle returned his smile. “Going to the shop did help a lot with inspiration.”

“I’m glad.”

Once they reached the apartment building, Leorio had a curious look on his face. “I kinda forgot you’re living with Cluck and Kanzai.”

She felt a creeping sadness at the mention of their names. There was no feeling of dread at knowing she’ll see them tonight and say goodbye, just a sense of vacancy.

“Speaking of, I’m sure Cluck is mad that you didn’t show up to her birthday yesterday.”

Leorio did look sorry. “Yeah, I know. I haven’t heard from her since she invited me and she didn’t call today or yesterday.”

It was better if he didn’t know about the fight she had with Cluck last night, and she had refrained from mentioning any unpleasant reason for moving out. She was certain Cluck will call him soon.

“Do you need help moving your stuff tomorrow?” Leorio asked.

Cheadle shook her head. “No, I don’t have much on me, I’ll bring them myself.”

He nodded. “Alright then. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Cheadle smiled at him. “Thank you for the lovely evening.”

“Don’t mention it.” He got on his bike. “Goodnight, Cheadle.”

“Goodnight, Leorio.”

Chapter Text

Her new room was larger and had a small balcony that overlooked the neighborhood with its paved hills and tree rows, and with that particular rosebush that climbed in magnificent twists over a wooden fence.

It’s been a week since she moved in and her breath still hitched every time she entered the room. The place was dusted and cleaned before she occupied it, and the bed stood adjacent to the right wall in the darkest corner of the room while a small desk sat under the window where her typewriter would catch the glint of sunlight.

Cheadle was beginning to get used to her new home, grew familiar with the old mechanisms that ran it, the water boilers and the creaking wood and the fireplace. Now that she was in it, walked through its hallways and used its appliances, she realized just how unlived-in it appeared. Something here spoke of abandonment and absence, of a contentedness to let things be, and where everything took just a minute too long to respond to her touches, yet she loved it. She loved the scents and the views and the untouched nooks. Something in it spoke to her, a sparseness that called for her to just exist as she is.

At her desk was today’s newspaper, unfolded and its pages splayed apart. The last page had job listings and she was yet to find one that attracted her. She had spent last night with Leorio circling potential job offers, laboring over the grainy newspaper pages with beer and snacks strewn between them. They found nothing, but she resolved not to lose hope.

Most of her time was spent either contacting potential employers (who were more than happy to tell her she was “over-qualified”) or working in companionable silence with Leorio, taking her typewriter downstairs to the workshop while he carved away at yet a new violin. When Tsubone’s students arrived for their class the two of them either climbed back up to her room or went out for a walk.

They explored places together. The obscure wine kiosk at the corner under the branching bougainvillea, the vegetables garden on the other side of town, the public greenhouse and Gotoh’s little memorabilia shop that mostly displayed ancient coins and foreign currency that had gone out of print. They even went to the tourist trap restaurant that occupied a respectable space on one of the highest hills in the town, where they only ate bread and had to constantly prevent the tablecloth from flying away with the strong wind currents.

Leorio walked her through every little unknown cranny and untrodden path. It was a process of re-familiarization for him, here in a place that changed so little over the years. He was just as curious to find new places, to discover things anew. 

“We used to play here,” he pointed to a large plot of land. “But they’ve built a school. It was just an empty lot.” A pink building stood in the middle of the clearing. It had a basketball court surrounded by long metal railings. “I’ve had my first kiss in there, when it was just dirt and rocks and weeds.”

Cheadle looked away from the building to him. “You did?”

“Yeah!” He said, tearing his eyes away from the clearing and away from her to continue walking. “It was with a boy.”

“Oh.” She followed him, sensing a cloudy sadness surrounding the place. For a moment he seemed embarrassed, as if he wished to swallow back what he'd just divulged. She felt a sudden connection with him. “My first kiss was with a girl.” She confessed, stopping when he abruptly stopped to stare at her.

“Really?” He looked curious and amazed.

Cheadle nodded. “But horrible things happened after. Two decades ago people were not as forgiving. Or maybe it was just my parents.”

Her shoulder bumped against his arm as they went on walking, fumbling awkwardly with their feet, sharing a sense that they had just pulled out a long thread that would take a while to coil back.

“How old were you?” He asked, looking at her with an empathy that compelled honesty.

“Fourteen.” Cheadle answered, curling her fingers in the pockets of her jacket. “I was in an all-girls boarding school. Someone saw us, me and that girl, and snitched.” She wanted to laugh at how horrible it all was, how swiftly and scathingly it happened. “My parents knew and pulled me out. The therapist they sent me to said it would do me good to attend a public school with boys in it.”

Leorio looked wounded and offended on her behalf. “That’s awful.”

“It was.” She agreed, kicking a pebble in her way, then chuckled despite herself. “But I didn't fight back after that, I thought they were right. I just wanted to lay low and please my parents.”

He kicked the same pebble that fell victim to her foot, booting it much farther ahead. “And what happened with that girl?” He asked, invested in the scraps of her story. “Did you ever talk with her after that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Cheadle said, staring at an orange cloud that seemed to be dissolving into cotton tendrils. “We lost all contact after I left the school, and I never thought of finding her. I don’t think she’d want to hear from me again.”

“How can you know that?” He asked, the soft, velvety colors of the sunset leaving his skin a shade darker, his eyes a shade brighter.

Cheadle rolled her eyes. “Would you contact that boy again?”

“I can’t even if I wanted to.”    

She looked at him wide-eyed. “Is he the same friend—”

“Yeah.”

Almost instinctively she placed a comforting hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He offered a half-hearted shrug and a small smile. “It’s alright now.”

Cheadle inched closer to him as they crossed the street, shadows surrounding them, stretching to mend with theirs as the daylight dimmed and the flaming colors of the sunset withered into melancholic hues. She thought they might stop speaking all the way back home, but Leorio didn’t shut her out.

“What have you been writing, by the way?” He asked her, stopping for a moment to eye the stacked front of a liquor store. “Whenever I look you’re hunched over your typewriter.”

“Nothing interesting.” Cheadle answered, noting whiskey brands she’d never seen before. “Just short stories, writing exercises. I’m trying to collect all my ideas in one place, get them to make sense, but everything is so disparate.”

They entered the store after exchanging glances that spoke of just how much they wanted to get the alcohol they were eyeing. The place inside could barely contain the two of them, so they ended up squished against each other, her left cheek smudged against the cold, foggy slide door of a refrigerator.

“What are the short stories about?” He asked again after greeting the man inside. “You’re just being vague.”

Cheadle groaned. “Why do you ask?”

“Huh? I’m curious and interested.”

They got their alcohol and exited the shop, nowhere left for them but to take the long way back home, trekking up sloping streets under an indigo sky and flickering street lamps. The weather had grown milder but the higher they walked the stronger the winds became.

“Or you know, you can let me read them.”

“Ha! I will not.”

“Why though?”

“They aren’t good.”

“How did you decide that?”

“I wrote them.”

He made a sound at the back of his throat like water in a plugged faucet. “Fine then, whatever.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

At home, the two of them pulled out an old mattress and put it on the balcony, brought their drinks and food and splayed them all out on the wooden floor. It was a summery evening, clear and mellow with the occasional cold breeze.

They sat on the mattress, barefoot with legs dangling through the wooden railing, drinks in their hands. They have sneaked out of the old cabinet two of Tsubone’s most ornate cups, two pieces of intricate china that were made for some brand of exotic tea but were now instead filled with cheap whiskey. According to Leorio, they are a family heirloom of magical origins. They might have been ancient and touched by the hands of a wizard, but they did not make the alcohol taste any better.

Cheadle hoped to god that neither cup would fall down into the trees below. She didn’t want to lose the roof she just got over her head.

“So,” Leorio started, pulling out his cigarette pack and offering her one, but she declined, so he didn't take one either. “What would the Old Cheadle be doing on this lovely evening?”

She snorted. “Preparing for tomorrow’s case, drinking wine alone in her home office, contemplating deactivating her Facebook page for the umpteenth time but not doing it.” The whiskey burned her throat. “Maybe she’d watch some TV at 10, think of taking a shower but then decide to do it in the morning. Maybe masturbate, if she was in the mood for it. Maybe she’d think of her fiancé and fantasize about dueling him in a pigsty.”

Leorio choked on his drink then stared at her, shocked. “You have a fiancé?”

“Had."

“Oh thank god.”

She side-eyed him. “Oh so it wasn’t one of the things you heard about me?”

“No!” He laughed. “I wish I did though. You were so mysterious.”

“‘Mysterious’,” Cheadle chuckled. “But yes, I was engaged.”

Leorio looked utterly amused by this fact. “What was his name?”

She loved that they spoke of him as if he’s dead. “Pariston.”

“Ah!” He exclaimed and nodded. “It’s like the name of that famous billionaire.”

“Yeah that’s him.”

“Huh?”

“It’s him, Pariston.”

“Pariston Hill?”

“Yes.”

“You were engaged to Pariston Hill?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her for a disconcertingly long minute, cup hanging limply from his hand and she desperately hoped it wouldn’t fall down. Leorio then threw his head back and gave her the most outraged look.

“WHAT.” He burst out in a mad laughter. A poor bird out there must’ve fell off a branch. “You were engaged to a real life, flesh-and-bones billionaire? And not just any of them,” he scoffed in disbelief. “But actual celebrity Golden Boy himself Pariston Hill who gave a speech at my university?”

“ Yes , and I wish I never were.” Cheadle said. “What can I do for you to believe me, show you our engagement pictures?”

Leorio’s eyes widened in shameless curiosity. “You would?”

“Nah,” she twisted her mouth in disgust. “I burned them.”

He groaned. “You’re crazy, I would marry him.”

“I wouldn’t let you. He’s a monster.”

“All billionaires are monsters.”

Cheadle leaned back, her hand searching for the whiskey bottle nearby. “Then why would you marry him?”

“The money .” Leorio rolled his eyes and looked at her like the answer was so impossibly clear that she’s the stupidest person on earth not to have figured it out. That didn’t stop him from reaching out to her with his cup for a refill while his eyes persisted in trying to assess her sanity. “Who are you, green-haired stranger who almost married a man richer than god?”

She feigned nervousness, throwing glances around them, to the sides, to the workshop, to the trees below, then when she was pleased with their relative seclusion, she leaned closer to him and whispered. “I’ve been sent back in time, body and all, by the Council of Thirteen, the highest governing body in post-apocalyptic Earth, to prevent my past self from marrying that man for lo and behold, in the future I traveled from, that unholy union had brought unforetold catastrophe upon the human race.”

Leorio stared at her for a contemplative moment then nodded in complete understanding. “It’s something to do with corporations and climate change, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She said with a helpless, indifferent shrug, as if she’d already succumbed to her fate as the anonymous savior of the human race. “And I must say I find it pretty suspicious that you so casually appear everywhere I am, it’s almost as if someone had been sent to surveil me.”

“Well clearly then, that council doesn’t trust you entirely. They might have predicted that you’ll rebel if the opportunity presented itself, but since on the surface, you had obviously fulfilled your mission, they ain’t got much ammo.” Leorio said, offering her a conspiratorial look. “Your secret is safe with me, for now. At least until Tsubone figures out, which she always does.”

“Of course.” Cheadle nodded. “I will have to come clean if it happens, then I will probably be sniped by my watchman.”

“He’d never snipe you.” Leorio said with certainty, taking a long gulp from his cup.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he kinda likes you.”

Cheadle looked away and cleared her throat, pulling her feet back to the balcony, her hands blindly thumbing the cold wood in search for something to busy herself with. “He’s obviously not a very competent watchman then.” She said, her voice low and distant and embarrassed.

They fell into silence, bumping their feet against the wood, the only sound around them that of rushing wind, whirling over their heads and trailing away.

“I’m torn.” Leorio suddenly said, staring down at his cup, his forehead resting against the railing. “I came here with a conviction, knowing what I wanted to do, but I suddenly don’t know at all.”

“What do you mean?”

His brows were furrowed and he seemed lost. “This was only supposed to be a short visit before my internship starts, and I didn’t want it to be anything else. I studied to be a doctor. I want to be a doctor, but when I returned to the house here, to the old workshop, all I thought about was making violins again. Tsubone asked me to help the young students and I was suddenly so envious of them just watching them work and learn. It’s so fucking stupid when I think about it.” He scoffed, at himself, at his late realizations. “It’s too late to go back now. I have a responsibility to continue what I started, and I’m so close it would be insane to quit now for something that's probably just nostalgia.”

“Do you feel guilty?” Cheadle asked. “Do you feel that you’ve made a choice out of guilt?”

“Sometimes.” He nodded. “But I don’t regret it. I don’t think I duped myself into going to med school. Maybe I didn’t realize fully back then just how much of a lifetime commitment it was, but I’m fine with the choices I’ve made, it’s just that sometimes I slip and wonder about the alternate paths where I didn’t have to make them at all.”

“I don’t have any wisdom for you, if that’s what you want.” She said, taking his empty cup to refill it. “Circumstances and choices are what they are. I’m just as constrained and baffled by my life decisions.”

“But you’re here, aren’t you?” Leorio stretched his legs further out and lay the rest of his body on the mattress. “You were doing something and then you changed your life and came here to do something else.”

“Is that why you’re telling me about your dilemma?” She asked. “You think I can help you with this decision?”

“Yeah!” 

Cheadle stared at his feet out against the dark sky and the shrouded tree branches. “I told you, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. Just because I came here doesn’t mean that I don’t feel it’s too late as well, for me.” She sighed. “I’m thirty-five, changing fields should’ve been something I did in college, not now.”

“I think it’s great that you’ve done it.” He looked at her, again with that unbearable sincerity. “It’s amazing. I mean c’mon, you broke off your engagement with a billionaire to do it.”

“That was the easy part.”

“It wouldn’t have been for me.”

She chuckled but then her face grew somber. “I come from money. I come from a family pretending to have more money than it does. Money is acid, and I wasn’t strong enough to turn it into a weapon, and when that’s the case it’s turned by others against you.” She said. “To marry someone like Pariston was the only logical conclusion for women like me. We’re bred for it. Our whole lives are designed to arrive at that endpoint.” She looked at him then down at her feet, toes red from the cold. “And that’s what terrified me, that it was an endpoint. Knowing that there was nothing after it, that nobody expected anything great of me once I fulfilled that expectation, was the worst thing I could imagine.” Cheadle leaned back until she too lay by his side on the mattress. “I was complicit, living a life that I believed to be the best there is, despite knowing almost all my life that emotionally, I was void.”  

“And you’re better here?” Leorio tilted his head to look at her.

Cheadle smiled. “I am.”

He looked younger under the warm glow seeping from the workshop, half his face mired in shadows. Maybe it’s the eyes. “That’s great.”    

There was a strange intimacy padding its way between them as they lay down staring at each other. Did her eyes speak so openly as his did? She feared that, yet felt exposed anyway as a cold gust of wind whirred over them.

“So to answer your question,” she straightened up and cleared her throat. “I did come here, after all that, which would suggest that you can, as well. You’re much younger, so I imagine your chances are probably better out there in the world.” Then she chuckled. “No, they are better. There’s an aspiring writer every two blocks, but how many doctors out there want to also make violins professionally?”

His lips curled in an endearing smile. “Are you saying I should make bank on my identity crisis?”

“Oh! You could be one of those barber surgeons.”

Leorio laughed. “It suits me!”

“It’s usually unhinged old men so I think you’d fit right in.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” Cheadle started with a smirk, left him to wait as she grabbed the nearest potato chips bag and popped it open. “Pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it, Leorio?”

He pinched her ankle and her hand was on its way to pinch him back when the sound of heavy footsteps sounded from inside.

“Oh shit, it’s Tsubone.” Leorio hissed. “Hide the cups hide the cups .” He was lost for a second between drinking what’s left in his cup or spilling it down to the trees. He threw his head back, groaned at the taste, and slipped the cup under his sweater and leaned forward innocently. Meanwhile she just placed her cup in the dark against the wall, exactly beside the jutting, broken doorjamb.

Tsubone’s large frame appeared at the balcony door, and she stood at the doorstep to look at them from her great height. “Aren’t you two cold out here?”

“We’re fine,” Cheadle smiled up at her. “Come join us.”

The old woman shook her head. “I came here to give you this,” and she leaned down to hand Cheadle a white envelope. “It arrived just now.”

Cheadle murmured a hasty thank you, flipping the smooth envelope to look at the back. It read:

To Ms. Cheadle Yorkshire   

When she read the letter inside, her mouth hung open. “It’s an invitation to the play.” She looked from one face to the other in shock. “From Morel himself.”

“Excuse me,” Leorio snatched the letter from her hand. “ You get a direct, fancy-ass invitation and I don’t?”

“It seems so."

Leorio scowled. “I’m fucking offended.” His eyes surveyed the contents of the letter again, then he promptly went on defense. “Who even sends letters anymore?”

“You just want a fancy letter with your name on it.” Cheadle teased him, taking the letter back from him. “And that could totally happen if you just join the Barber Surgeons Guild.”

“There’s a guild ?”

Cheadle nodded. “In Swaldani, yes. It’s very quaint.” Then she offered him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “I can write a letter of recommendation for you.”

He snagged his shoulder away from her but his face was smiling. “I hate you.”

Tsubone sighed over their heads and began to turn around. “Don’t forget to return the mattress and everything else inside. And, right,” she pivoted back to them with a treacherously sweet smile on her face, stepped with a resolute foot on the balcony, and then, as if she’s been watching them all along, bent down to the foot of the broken doorjamb and took Cheadle’s hidden cup, then winked at her. “That’s where I myself used to hide it.”

The other cup soon followed out from under Leorio’s sweater when Tsubone did nothing but stretch her hand out towards him. He complied with a defeated sigh.

Cheadle still appeared bemused but somewhat admiring. When Tsubone was out of sight, she looked at him and pointed to the dark corner between the wall and the doorjamb. “She really didn’t hesitate at all there.”

“I told you she knows everything.”

The letter sat heavy between her fingers. She wondered why Morel would send her an invitation, why he’d acknowledge her at all. Did he feel bad? There was no reason to; she was replaceable and doubted that anyone in the theater missed her. Cheadle knew she owed him an apology, if not for her opinion then certainly for her angry outburst.

“You want to go?” Leorio asked.

She glanced out at the town glittering in darkness. “I don’t know. It’s a week from now.”

“I think you should go.” He said while getting up. “You want to stay out here?”

“No,” Cheadle got up too and started gathering the trash in her hands. “It’s late, I should go to bed.”

Leorio nodded. “Take all these, I’ll bring the mattress up.”

Back up in her room, Cheadle sat on the bed and reread the invitation. If she went then she’ll no doubt see Cluck and Kanzai, and if she saw them they might talk and tensions might rise again. Her lips curled in amusement; did they even find Mushi? Did he go back? She haven’t seen him since she moved residences.

At her desk, she gathered a stack of stapled papers and pulled new ones from a drawer along with other stationary items she’d borrowed from Tsubone. She was never particularly good at arts and crafts classes, but she still remembered how to make an envelope, and her penmanship was light years ahead of her paper-folding skills.

With everything she made in hand, Cheadle passed the hallway to Leorio’s room. His door was open, exuding a warm glow into the hallway, and she barely had a chance to knock when he appeared at the doorway in a tank top and pajama shorts, his hand on the doorframe.

She realized that it was weird to seek him out at this hour, and the expression on his face spoke of a similar feeling. She’d never been to his room and never really looked inside it. From the doorway she could make out stacks of medical textbooks that concealed empty corners, a table under a window and a bed that looked too small for him.

“Do you need anything?” He asked, looking her up and down as if he might find some injury, but she just shook her head and handed him the stapled papers and the envelope.

“I wanted to give you this.” She said. “A fancy letter with your name on it.”

Leorio took them from her hand, expression changing from confused to touched to confused again when he opened the envelope. “Why are you giving me your ticket?”

“It’s not my ticket,” she said. “If you had bothered to stop fussing for five seconds you would’ve noticed two tickets in the envelope.”    

“Oh.” He stared at the ticket then back at her, his face lighting up. “You want me to go with you?”

Cheadle nodded. “Unless you don’t want to go.”

“I do want to go.” He said. “So you’ve decided?”   

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “Alright then, thanks.” Then he realized there were other offerings along with the ticket. “Wait, those are…” He trailed off, sifting through them while her heartbeat quickened at every page turn. It wasn’t any less scary, yet she felt strangely fine with the vulnerability of sharing her writings, felt that it was manageable and that she wasn’t gripped with the need to disappear out of sight at seeing him holding them.  

“This is what I’ve been writing for the past week.”

He hesitated for a moment, then offered them back to her. “It’s fine, you don’t have to give them to me.”  

Cheadle groaned and pushed them back towards him. “Just read them and tell me what you think.”

“Fine, I will.” The papers rustled in his hands as he held them to his chest. She nodded and turned around to walk back to her room but he stopped her. “Hey Cheadle,”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he fumbled a bit at the door. “I just wanted to say I had fun with you today.” 

Cheadle smiled and nodded. “I had fun, too.”

“Also,” he called again, pointing to his name spelled out in cursive on the back of the envelope. “Is this your handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

He groaned but it wasn’t one of irritation. “Goodnight you pompous time traveling marimo.”

His smile was the last thing she saw before he closed the door. Cheadle walked back to her room, steps a little too light, a little too giddy. 

Chapter Text

Leorio’s voice sounded as excited as hers on the payphone as she informed him in haste and out of breath that she had finally found a job, bursting out in laughter as she confirmed that yes, it was at a local moms magazine and that no, she didn’t need to pretend to be married or pregnant. He was leaving the shop and wouldn’t be back until the evening right before they went to see the play.

It was a weird place to be, for her; a paid internship at a magazine about moms written by moms for other moms. As someone who considered herself betrayed by motherhood, it was a domain that she wished to never step foot in, a lofty expectation that she was lucky enough to escape before having the opportunity to fail at, but for some reason it didn’t feel bad at all to approach it with a certain distance. In a team of women writers and editors, she was the only one without a child of her own. It was rare for her to feel that way, but she allowed herself to be new and raw.

If it was the way she presented her skills or the sheer honesty of her exchange with the interviewer that got her the job, she didn’t know, but for the first time in what felt like decades, she sensed the joy and thrill of getting something on her own.

Back at home, she was greeted with a new presence in her room. A striped haworthia sitting quietly on her desk, beside the typewriter. A baby eldritch monster, the plant was tall and dark green, unfolding from the center into long, sharp tentacles, quirky and threatening all the same. Cheadle ran the tips of her fingers over the plant’s jagged edges and along its smooth belly.

She was certain whom it was from before she even noticed the card under the small, rounded pot. On the card she read, in big, straight letters:

I saw it this morning and thought of you.

It doesn’t need much affection to survive, so I think you two will get along.

Congrats on getting the job!      

Followed by a little cute bad drawing of what could either be a boar or an elephant.

Cheadle stared at the card affectionately for what was perhaps a little too long. So much for getting along with her stoic new roommate. She took the card and slipped it inside her pocket, realizing how she had no books whatsoever in which she could hide the little things she loved, as she used to do. For the first time since she came to this town she wondered if Pariston had ever looked inside one of her books after she’d left, certain that if so he would have been picking up newspaper clips and letters and postcards and dried flowers off the floor all day.

They had shared a library, which she’d never done before. His books with hers, lining long shelves that rose to the ceiling and extended from one corner to another across the walls. Reading and talking about books seemed to be the only activities they shared with equal passion, if she can even call his interest in anything ‘passionate’, and when Cheadle left she had also left all her books behind in that library. For him, for the dust, she didn’t think about it then.

With an unfamiliar, contented lightness in her heart, she thought it was fine for him to have them, if he wanted, even though something told her that he was more likely to return them to her family, if not to her directly. He seemed to respect her privacy, whenever matters like these appeared, but always in a way that suggested he didn’t need to breach it because he already knew everything he needed to know about her, already knew about all the little silly things she hid in her books.

Her fingers traced the edges of the card in her pocket, remembering her mother’s phone call this morning. She didn’t answer despite wanting to, knowing that it will certainly ruin her day. She refused to answer after the happiness of getting a job.

The woman had been calling her every single day, several times, aggressively persistent in trying to reach her. If she had no idea what happened with her daughter before then she certainly did now. Her ‘vacation’ was over and no man, no god could hide from her the truth of what transpired in her absence.

With her penchant for emotional collapse when things were out of her control, she must’ve sobbed at her husband’s shoulder, then sobbed a little more at Pariston’s, then created an entire plan to make her daughter come back.

But there was nothing to go back to, that much Cheadle knew. Even if she returned, the people around her won’t ever let her have the same things again. There still existed a bridge to her old life but not the same one she’d crossed the first time.

Her mother could sob all she wanted, for as long as she needed, and one day she will have to get over it and move on, will have to just let things be, to cede control and accept things as they were, and Cheadle didn’t want to take any part in that process.

With the card in her hand, warm and smooth, she decided to buy a book with her first salary. The rest of the day passed peacefully as she cleaned her room, helped downstairs with moving a large, outrageously pink dollhouse that found a buyer, then sat down to her desk, fully dressed for the play, and wrote. Something was shaping up in her head, the story she wanted to tell, but she still needed to assemble all the proper pieces. Something was missing and she couldn’t tell what it was, exactly.

When six thirty rolled around, she was down in the gallery and ready to leave, waiting for Leorio to come while she ruffled the new flower arrangement over Louise’s head. The cat lady stood leaning on her little umbrella, as poised as ever, the brightness of her glittering eyes a muted, watery green against the crackling orange of the fireplace.

Cheadle sensed him outside before he even entered and went to pick her coat off the chair.

“Hey!” He greeted her, making his way through the antiques towards the staircase. “Just give me a moment to change, I’ll be back down in a minute.” Then halfway up the stairs he trotted back down and gave her a kiss on the cheek that left her frozen and wide-eyed. “I’m so happy you got the job, and you look great, by the way.”

They stared at each other, smiling awkwardly before she shooed him. “We’ll be late, get going.”

She underestimated how much it usually took him to get ready. Fifteen minutes later she called for him and he was still deciding which shirt to wear. On his bed were sprawled four shirts, and five minutes later she convinced him to wear the blue one. When he was done she beckoned him down and ran a swift hand through his hair.

“I must say,” she took a step back to evaluate her work. “For the first time you don’t look like a homeless man.”

He grumbled. “If you weren’t dressed like that I wouldn’t have worried over what to wear.”

Cheadle didn’t tell him that she too stressed over what to wear because he was going with her, except she stressed about it earlier in the day so they could arrive on time, yet she suspected that everything she was wearing already revealed that, from the baggy white crop top that belonged less to her and more to a teenage boy to the ancient, high-waisted tight black skirt that she had owned for years but never worn.

After some more grumbling about shoes the two of them were out, the evening growing colder with each step they took. The approaching summer rarely lessened the chill of nightfall, even when it took longer for the light to fade.

The sunset was mellow and sweeping, colors fading quickly, no clouds to catch the warm hues. She watched the orange horizon fizzle away from the window of a cab, and by the time they arrived at the theater, street lamps were lighting up the park, all the while her stomach roiled, and she wondered if she’ll have to speak with any of her previous colleagues, wondered if they even knew she was coming. For a moment, even, she wondered if Morel had sent her that invitation with sincere intentions, or if he sent it with the purpose of bringing her here solely to humiliate her.

There were other people on the long staircase heading towards the theater entrance, even one of the writers in her new mom magazine was there with her two kids. Cheadle waved at her, not feeling any less nervous with this new unexpected company.

Leorio placed a hand on her shoulder. “You alright there?”

“I am, I’m alright.” she looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you for asking.” 

“We can always leave if you want to.”

Cheadle shook her head, leaning into his hand as it slid down to the small of her back. “I’m just wondering what they made of the script, after I left.”

He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Oh, I just remembered,” she said as the two walked inside and sought their seats. “I never asked why you didn’t showed up for your audition. You were outside in the park, weren’t you?”

Leorio stood to the side to let her in, then followed her along the rows of seats. “I still don’t know, entirely.” He admitted. “I just suddenly felt inadequate and a bit scared of it. Playing isn’t my thing, and I didn’t want to have the part just cause Morel knows me and knows Tsubone, and I thought, if I went there and played, it will make me even more confused about what to do next.” He smiled at her in the dim theater as they finally sat down beside each other. “I guess I just didn’t want to face my uncertainty, so I was feeling shitty, hence why I was mean when you saw me.”

“That’s a deeper answer than I expected, to be honest.”

“What did you expect me to say?”

Cheadle hummed. “That you just didn’t feel like doing it.”

“Well, it was kind of that, too.” He said, shuffling in his seat. “And I’m glad I didn’t. If I got the part and then you left the project, it would’ve been really awkward between us and we might have not become friends.”

“What makes you think we’re friends now?”

He snorted. “Only the past month or so spent stuck with each other. I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re friends.”

“We’re not ‘stuck’ with each other.” Cheadle argued. “You could’ve left any time you wanted, we weren’t in forced company.”

“Exactly, what does that suggest? We’re a team.”

Thankfully, she didn’t have to openly concede to him as the curtains were pulled open and the play started. To her simultaneous shock and delight, there were no cats in sight. Not a single one, not in a single sketch. The spirit of the old thing was there, still, the musicians even played The Lovecats on stage - an occurrence that Leorio gladly poked at – and while little of her input had been incorporated, she felt clear, unmistakable, gloating joy at having won the Big Cat Debate even in absence.

Was that why Morel sent her the invitation? A quiet admission that she was correct about his stupid idea? Even if it wasn’t, Cheadle felt satisfied, and halfway through the play, she had to admit that it wasn’t bad at all. For a small production done by an unpaid team, it was better than she imagined it could be, and when she saw Kanzai enter the stage, followed shortly by Cluck, her heart fell. They were wearing ridiculous costumes that looked terribly uncomfortable and even though she wasn’t worried about their confidence, she hoped that they’ll do well. She felt invested in their success.

When the play was over, she stood up and clapped. The theater lit up and the actors and musicians all walked to the front of the stage, held each other’s hands and bowed.

On their way down, they had to stop when approached by several people who knew Leorio, one of them her new colleague in the magazine. Neither of them managed to dissuade said colleague from believing they were on a date, and when the woman left with her kids the two of them refused to look at each other.

In front of the stage stood Cluck and Kanzai among a rowdy crowd, and when they were spotted by Kanzai she tried to go ahead, to turn around before she had to interact with them, but inadvertently her gaze met his. He was still in costume, hair braided, makeup on, and seemed lost as to what to do, glancing back at the distracted Cluck before looking at Cheadle again. She didn’t want to embarrass either of them so she turned around to continue her way towards the exit, but he called for her, the mention of her name causing Cluck’s head to finally turn to them.

They hugged Leorio and scolded him and demanded to know where he was spending his time and admonishing him for not calling them more. All the while Cheadle stood to the side, feeling weirder by the minute. Once they quieted down Leorio leaned to whisper to her. “Want me to go ahead?”

“Can you wait for me outside?” she requested, her heart beating fast. “I won’t be long.”

He nodded and left, leaving her alone with her two old friends. Friends. She wanted that to still be true. The three of them stared at one another, alternating between awkward nods and uneasy smiles.

“Hey,” she started. “I won’t hold you long, I just wanted to congratulate you on the play.”

“Thanks.” Kanzai said. “Did you like it?”

“I did. Your parts, especially.”

Cluck’s arms were crossed and she appeared to be arguing with herself, brows furrowed and expression terse, and despite the outrageous makeup, she looked gorgeous, eyes a dark blue under a liberally-applied sparkling green eyeshadow. It was entirely possible that she was still angry, which Cheadle wouldn’t begrudge her for. Despite that, she wished they could talk, if not now then any time later, if nothing deep then just acknowledgment of each other’s presence.

“You still play the cello beautifully.” Cheadle said, offering the other woman a smile. She meant it. She meant it in a way that surprised her.

Cluck finally looked at her directly. “I haven’t played in ages. It’s a miracle I managed to do it again with so little time to practice.”

“I thought it was amazing.”

“Thanks.”

“Alright,” Cheadle shuffled about. “I have to go now. Take care of yourselves.”

“Cheadle,” Cluck stopped her. “Thanks for the birthday present. I loved it and I hate that you got me something I loved this much.”

She smiled, feeling something old and warm seep back into her. “I’m glad.”

Just in the corner of her vision she spotted Morel. He was looking her way, saw her before she saw him, stood taller than those around him, his arm raised to her. She raised her arm in return, then left.

Outside, Leorio stood leaning against a wall waiting for her with a cigarette in his mouth. She grabbed him by the arm and ushered him down with her. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she smiled widely. “I’m hungry and I want to go eat something.”

He squinted at her. “What happened in there? Did you make up with them?”

“I don’t know.” She stopped and looked at him. “I don’t know what happened but I feel good about it.”

“That’s great.” Leorio said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “And, ah, I have to tell you something.”

Cheadle blinked. “What is it?”

“Not now or here. Let’s eat something first.”

“What is it?” She pressed, her heart already full.

He was the one pulling at her arm this time. “Let’s just get something to eat and I’ll tell you there.”

On a whim they chose a junk food bar, a small place residing on a hill overlooking a garden. Something about the contrast between the greenery and the greasy meat between their hands was amusing, but in the darkness of the outside world it was only their reflections on the glass front they saw.

Cheadle bit on a hamburger of a size that was not made for human mouths. At least normal human mouths, since Leorio didn’t appear to have a problem at all.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you have a giant mouth?” She asked, wiping a trail of ketchup off her chin.

“Yeah, every single person I blowed.”

She suppressed an embarrassed chuckle with a long gulp of her cola. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Ah, right.” He put down his burger and glanced out through the glass before looking back at her. “I decided to leave, to start my medical internship.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m leaving next week.” He said, his face somber and serious. “It’ll last a year.” 

“Well,” Cheadle stumbled over what to say, how to express the sudden conflicting emotions she felt. “I think that’s great. I’m glad you made up your mind.”

Their hands rested so close to each other; hers pale and small and contracted, his upturned, open, waiting for her to speak again, to say more. Why did she feel like this all of a sudden? This particular sadness that she thought was gone? Why did she suddenly care so much if he stayed or left? She shouldn’t care where he went, or if he remained here, or if he was in the room across the hallway when she would seek him, door always slightly open, or if she didn’t see him every day, for a year, maybe more, maybe never.

Why did she become this attached out of nowhere? Cheadle wanted to run away from him, from that attachment that always blended into resentment. It was all a cliché waiting to happen, something of Cluck’s angry accusations echoing in her head. A single woman in a new town, rebuilding her life anew, adding a cute guy to the new life because why not, because that’s part of the fantasy. It wasn’t him she’ll miss, it was the evaporating façade of the life she thought she was having. That’s what she tried to convince herself of. 

Cheadle stared down at her food, her stomach coiling around itself, her heart so heavy she couldn’t feel it beating anymore.

“Cheadle,” Leorio leaned closer to her. “Are you okay?”

She recoiled away from him. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She breathed, feeling small and suffocated. “I want to leave.” 

“C’mon, is everything alright?”

“I’m so stupid.” Cheadle pulled her hands closer to herself, away from his, couldn’t look at him, her eyes seeking the solace and peace of the garden outside. “I think it’s amazing, that you’re going to become a doctor, and here I was, imagining that I’ll spend the rest of my life writing silly barely formed stories while you make your violins.” She snorted. “It’s so childish.”

“It’s not childish.” Leorio said, his voice emotional. “I thought of that too, I still want it, but I have to take responsibility for my decisions.”   

“I understand.” She choked out, trying to smile. “And I’m happy for you, I really am.”

“You know,” Leorio started, resting his chin on the back of his hand. “Since the moment I first saw you that morning near the train station I really hoped to see you again. I didn’t even think that we’d talk or anything, just thought it would be nice to see you around.”

Her shoulders rose in an amused sigh. “And you did see me around.”

“I did, and I hoped you’d notice me.”

“Oh you made yourself very noticeable.”

He grinned but then it withered off his face and he looked upset but resolute. “It’s really shitty timing, isn’t it?”

Cheadle swallowed, finally shifting her eyes from the garden outside back to him. “It is.”

“There’s a party tonight, wanna come?”

“No, I think I’ll stay in tonight.” she said, smiling. “I want to write. I think I finally figured out how I want my story to be.”

*

For the next week, she didn’t see much of him. He loved to go out and socialize and spend time god knows where and all she wanted to do was hunker down in her closed space and write, trying not to pass the hallway to see his room, a little less lived in, a little less cluttered each time she glanced through its door, her primary solace an insatiable desire to put words to paper.

She had spoken with Tsubone this morning as they sat down for breakfast, alone in a house that already seemed emptier for anticipating his absence tomorrow. The old woman made them tea and they sat around the table, passing time together before Cheadle had to go to her third day on the new job.

“I want to ask your permission to use Louise in my story.” She said, feeling the warmth of her tea mug pass to her hands.

Tsubone raised her eyebrows. “Is that so? I’d be happy to see what you make of her, then.”

“You don’t mind?” Cheadle asked. “She’s yours, isn’t she? And she has a story of her own. It feels a bit like plagiarism.”

“She has a new story every time someone looks at her and loves her.” Tsubone said after taking a sip from her mug. “I have a story for her, too, botchy and incomplete because I was never good at these things, but you seem to have made up your mind.”

Cheadle chuckled. “You speak about her as if she’s sentient.”

“Looking at her eyes, she does feel that way, at times, doesn’t she?” Tsubone smiled. “I would love to read what you write, Cheadle.”

“I can’t promise it’ll be perfect, or any good at all. I’ve never written a novel before.”

“Artists are all alike.” Tsubone scoffed, but it was one of endearment, one of covert admiration. “They all think they aren’t good enough. Don’t get hung up on perfection, it isn’t real, no matter how close you seem to it.”

“I have difficulty thinking of myself as a writer, let alone an artist.” Cheadle confessed. “I’m worried I’m wasting my time on something stupid, some unreachable, silly pipedream. What if it’s never going to work? What if I can’t make it work?”

“Remember the clock?” Tsubone asked, pointing to the empty space where the grandfather automata clock once stood. “I fixed it, and it worked, despite all the talk of how hopeless it was. Some pieces were old and clunky and others definitely needed replacing, and against all of that the clock still stood. The time I spent on it wasn’t wasted, and the more I worked with it the more hope I had, but more importantly, the more I learned what it needed from me.” She picked the kettle again and poured tea into Cheadle’s mug. “The start is always the hardest. Things can be salvaged, even when it doesn’t look like it. Don’t be afraid to start.”

Cheadle stared at her reflection in the honey-colored liquid, muddled and indistinct. “But what if there’s an irreparable design flaw? What if I’m not made for it?”

“Well, you’ll have to figure that out yourself now, won’t you?”

“Promise that you’ll tell me the truth about my story, once I finish it.” Cheadle requested, looking up at the old woman with pleading eyes. “You’ll be honest with me.”

Tsubone nodded. “I promise.”

*

During lunch break, Leorio called her.

“How’s work going so far?”

Cheadle desperately wanted a third cup of coffee but was too new to just go ahead and get one. “It’s going fine, I’m still getting to know the staff.”

“Tell me you’re not the only maladjusted person there.” He joked, but she took it seriously.

“I don’t know, moms are particularly hard to read.” She said, throwing a glance at the women sitting a little farther away from her, all behind their computers. Why couldn’t they all be alike so she could judge and understand them all at once. Then she asked despite knowing the answer: “You’re leaving tonight?”

“Yeah, I packed all my things.” Leorio replied, his voice choked behind a loud motorbike speeding beside him. “My flight’s at 10. See you then?”

Her heart fell. “I can’t, I have to stay here. Tomorrow’s publishing day, I have to be present when the issue is sent to print tonight.”

“When does your lunchbreak end?” He asked, hasty.

“Ten minutes?”

“Can I come? Just for a minute.”

Cheadle held her breath, looking out the window as if he’s already outside her workplace. “No you can’t, Leorio.”

“Are you stupid? I can’t leave without seeing you.” He snapped back. “I’ll take another flight if I have to.”

“No.” She said, defying the squeaking voice in her head that demanded otherwise. “Please don’t come to my workplace. We’ll talk on the phone before you leave.”

“Cheadle!”

“I have work to do.” Her words were final, hand already pulling the phone away from her ear. “Have a safe trip, Leorio.”

If he ended the call before she did Cheadle didn’t know, but when her cell phone sat motionless on her desk and the sounds of chatter around her resurfaced to the foreground, she got up to finally get that coffee cup she’s been craving. Knowing him he’d have called again but he didn’t, so she worried he might show up uninvited, but he also didn’t. For the rest of the day she worked, throat dry, eyes dull, working because she had to, because she felt responsible, because when the clock hit nine thirty she breathed, feeling a rush of love for the things she was doing, the things she was learning.

She didn’t think of home, didn’t think of how she’ll go back to it, or when, or to what she’ll go back to. She didn’t want to think of staring at the dark corner where the grandfather clock stood, didn’t want to think of the workshop below, with hanging violins, none of them his, or to glance into his bedroom, empty of him.

Hours passed before she made it back home, her feet dragging, begging her to go anywhere else, but she continued walking, only feeling the misery settle when she opened the door and stepped inside.

The gallery was empty, its occupants frozen in time, the fierce horse and the cluttered dollhouses and the big paintings with their happy figures.

Cheadle should have let him come, but it was useless to think of that now. Her hands caressed everything in her way as she climbed the stairs to her room, coat draped around her arm, her heart heavier than her feet.

Her room, made up and warm, was a comfort. She refused to despair, to feel broken by this, so despite wanting nothing more than to toss herself on the bed and sleep as she were, she changed her clothes and carried her toothbrush and comb to the bathroom in the hallway.

There, she heard the sound of creaking floorboards. “Tsubone, I’m home!”

“It’s me.”

Her heart sunk.

It took her a moment to step away from the sink in front of her and walk out. Leorio stood in front of his bedroom door, fully dressed, looking distraught.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, frozen in place, not daring to take a step closer.

“I said I’ll take another flight if I have to.”

Her head reeled. “Are you a fucking moron?”

“Yeah I’m a fucking moron.” He glared at her. “I’m a fucking moron who wants to see you. My flight’s now at four in the crack ass of dawn.”

Leorio was about to open his mouth to say something else but she rushed towards him, feeling her heartbeat in her entire body, placed a forceful hand on his face and brought his lips down to hers.

She feared that he was going to draw away but he pulled her closer, sighing into the kiss, burying his fingers in her hair. Arms wrapped around her, he carried her off her feet and pinned her back against the wall, then broke the kiss to look at her.

When his lips sought hers she met him halfway, when he asked if she wanted to go to his room she said yes, when he asked if she wanted to spend the rest of the night with him, she said yes. 

Chapter Text

The typewriter, the Baroness, and her story were the only consistent companionship Cheadle had for the first two months that followed Leorio’s departure. With all the work and the few hours she had in the mornings and nights for writing the novel, she had little time to process the creeping loneliness or the fact that her introverted tendencies were manifesting in the worst ways.

The story was coming alive in her mind and she feared that if she stopped writing or thinking about it the story would fizzle and disappear. In and out of work, the plot of it occupied her brain. When she wasn’t in the office she was in her own mind, almost blind to the world around her, to the ways in which it moved and melded and changed. Sleep was intermittent and shoddy, ending as if it never happened, as if she didn’t close her eyes to rest.

Regardless, she thought, the work was good. It was keeping her on her feet and forcing her to interact with people consistently, to be more flexible, to be better with others. Cheadle supposed that if it were up to her she wouldn’t be talking with any of them, notwithstanding the fact that they were not an unlikable bunch, and if it wasn’t for them she would most likely be voluntarily locked up in her room, rotting with the desire to tear apart every page she wrote.

Work provided her with a certain distance from what she was writing, mentally if not emotionally. She was already either feeling too much or not feeling at all, most of her empathy reserves going to the fictional characters she was creating, even though the majority of them hated her and refused to comply or be entirely clear about their intentions. At times, wrestling with them caused her to suspect that she had lived her entire life in a cave without having ever encountered another human being or used any human language.

But most of all, when she closed her eyes, when she tried to shut out the external world, she only heard the voice of her mother, so when Cheadle stopped typing one weekend morning to see who’s calling her and saw the woman’s number blaring on her screen, she decided - against her better judgment and the anxiety in her heart - to answer, hating that she picked up the phone with the trepidation of a teenager found by their parents one hour after supposedly eloping.

She inhaled. “Hello.”

“Cheadle, my god! ” The shrill voice rang in her ears all the way from her parents’ house. “Where have you been? Why haven’t you been answering my calls?”

“Good morning to you too, mom.”

“Where in the world are you, Cheadle? Did you read my emails?” her mother demanded, her tone that of someone on the verge of sobbing, but that’s how she almost always sounded. “You leave without a single word? How could you do that?”

Cheadle got off her chair and walked to her closet, then to her bed where she stood, aimless. “I moved to another city. Dad knows.”

“Your father saw fit to lie to me!” Her mother shouted into the phone. “He didn’t even tell me about what became of your engagement! You two are alike, you never tell me anything like I’m not important to you. I’m always the last to know.” She heaved, her voice breaking.

“I think he didn’t want to stress you while you were on vacation.”

“ I'm stressed.” Her mother hissed. “You quit your job, you leave Pariston, you move residence. Cheadle, honey, just what happened to you? What in the world has gotten into your mind?”

“Nothing, I just decided to do all these things then did them.”

“Is it because I left without you?” She asked, worried. “Is it because I wasn’t there?”

Cheadle sat on the edge of her bed, already feeling hopeless, already feeling that she had heard all this before, that her mother had a single tune that she consistently rehashed. “It’s not because you left. It has nothing to do with you. It’s about me. I was unhappy, mom.”

“Unhappy?” Her mother repeated in genuine disbelief. “Why would you be unhappy, darling?”

She couldn’t bring herself to be vulnerable, the smallness of her voice betraying her, revealing her. “I was just unhappy.”

“Unhappy with what? With your great job? Unhappy with a perfect man at your side?”

“Is that what you care about?”

“I care about our family!” She exclaimed. “Do you know how hard your father worked to get you that job, Cheadle? Do you know how embarrassed we are by this?”

Cheadle breathed, breathed until her chest tightened enough to suffocate her. “I don’t care to know how embarrassed you are.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like this.” The emotional voice regained a certain coldness, a sharp edge that was as familiar as the woman it belonged to. “Your father has spoken extensively with the shareholders, and they are willing to give you back your job if you come back next week.”

“It’s no longer my job, I quit, and I’m not coming back next week. Tell dad he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.”

That coldness dissipated from her mother’s voice, replaced again with soppy pleading. “Cheadle, just tell me where you are and I’ll send someone to take you and bring you back.”

Cheadle closed her eyes, willing patience. “I’m not a fugitive, I’m a grown woman. I’ve made a decision to leave and I’m doing great.”

“Don’t lie to me!” The woman said. “What is it, Cheadle? What’s more important than your family? More important than the life we wish for you?”

“I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m doing something for myself, for me, for nobody else.”

“Tell me what it is.” 

“You will know when it’s finished and done.” Cheadle said, hoping the finality of her tone would deter any suspicions of that thing’s importance. She could already hear the tears coming on the other end. “Why can’t you just call to ask me about that? To ask how I’m doing, if I’m safe, if I’m comfortable, if I’m happy?”

“Your happiness is with us, here.” Her mother said, sickly, imploring.

“I was never happy with you, mom.”

That admission was all it took for the branch between them to snap. An admission of something that had always been present, a thought that haunted her at the worst of days, something she’d never really allowed herself to ponder. It poured out of her like boiling water and she let it scald them both, let the pain of it linger.

“You’ve always been awful to us.” Her mother let out a sobbing breath, a cruel retaliation of her own. “I don’t know what mistakes I've made so that you turned out like this. I must be an awful mother.”

An agreement with that statement hung silent in her throat. “Life turned out like this, don’t wail about it.”

Another heaving breath. “You are a terrible daughter. We’ve done everything for you, you went to the best schools, you had everything a girl could ever want, you’ve always been ungrateful.” Another sob. “You never loved us.”

Her chest tightened and her hand gripped her thigh. “That’s not true.”

“Then why aren’t you here? If you truly loved me you’d be by my side. We’re the only ones you have in this world, Cheadle. Nobody will love you as much as we do.” Her mother said. “Are we awful parents? Have we ever wronged you in some way? Do you know how many clamor to be in your place, to have what you have? I’m appalled by your behavior. This late adolescent phase of yours is embarrassing.”

That tone, years ago, would have cowed her, would have stopped her and forced her to swallow her words and thoughts and her entire being. She would have lowered her head and agreed, years ago, she would have retreated to maintain the peace, retreated because she thought they were right, because she believed they wanted the best for her, because she loved them.

The suggestion that it wasn’t the case angered her, wounded her. She refused to let it be.

“I’m not a child,” Cheadle said, a coldness engulfing her body. “I’m making my own decisions, I’m living independently, I’m happy.”

“It doesn't matter, Cheadle, darling. Can’t you see? It’s all just temporary.” Her mother said. “It will not be easy if you are away from us. You will fail, honey. The best life for you is the one with us, where we can always be together and there to help you.”

“My life with you?” Cheadle snorted, her head aching, on the verge of tears. “My life’s with you had been hell, mom. You say I don’t love you but do you love me , did you ever truly love me?” She choked, her heart hammering against her chest, hand clutching the collar of her shirt as if challenging herself to retaliate, to fight back. “Your love has always been self-serving. If I wasn’t good you openly loathed me, you locked me in my room for entire days when you were angry with me and wouldn’t forgive me even after I apologized, you hid and destroyed letters I got from friends, you found a way to ruin every summer vacation for me, you criticized me my whole fucking childhood, for EVERYTHING—my hair, my weight, my clothes, how I spoke, how I laughed, how I moved. You handpicked friends for me, you handpicked boyfriends for me, you only ever showed me affection when I was exactly as you wanted.” She cried, tears faster than the shaking hands wiping desperately at them. “It’s not Cheadle you want, you just want a vehicle for your ego. I could be the most perfect daughter in the whole world and you’d still look at me like I’m nothing. It’s never really me as I am that you want. That’s been my life with you, mom.” Cheadle heaved a sigh, brought herself up again. “Please don’t call again. I don’t want to talk with you anymore.”

“Cheadle!”

She ended the call.

If Tsubone or anybody else heard her sobbing on her bed for the rest of the afternoon, she didn’t know. The world around her was suffocating, minuscule and massive all at once, simultaneously pressing down on her and leaving her with nothing to hold onto for support, and she felt terribly alone within it.

Her body ached and she was cold, and even under the blankets the chill came from within, from inside of her, and she worried she might get sick, worried she’ll break when she should stay upright, when she had made a promise to work hard.

The relief of her decision to end all contact with her mother was yet to settle, but she felt it deep within, mouthed it internally every time her brain voiced doubt. She was going to be alright. She was going to survive the heartbreak of this; she had been molded to face it, been preparing to deal with it for years.

By the time she decided to leave her room and go out, she looked like a sick animal. A pallid face with swollen eyes stared at her from the mirror, and for the first time in a couple months she noticed that her hair has gotten much longer, longer than she liked it to be, and if she didn’t brush them to the side her bangs fell down to obscure her eyes. Red roots were showing, too, and for the first time since she dyed her hair she didn’t know if she cared enough right now to fix them.  

Eventually, Cheadle did nothing but wash her face and stuff a dozen tissues in her pocket just in case her heart decided to burst again, and she didn’t know whether it was her particular mood today or the objective world around her, but everything appeared duller than usual, muted in a way that begged her to look away, to seek something else. Even the branching bougainvillea on the corner looked old and dusty.

The air around her suggested an oncoming heatwave, a few days of furnace hell that were going to cling oppressively over everything like a thin plastic sheet.

She walked, purposeless, hoping that something distracting might just come her way, her feet trekking familiar streets that seemed as if they wanted nothing to do with her, didn’t care to get her anywhere, and when, unconscious of where she was heading, she arrived at her old neighborhood, Cheadle had to stop and breathe for a moment.

Cluck and Kanzai’s apartment appeared closeby, standing out among the apartment buildings with its blooming flowers and the long drooping plants that poured out of the balcony.

What was she doing here?

The neighborhood looked exactly as she had left it, with its narrow windows and the bright supermarket and the old cars parked wherever their owners pleased. Cheadle hadn’t been here in a while, had purposefully avoided passing this place, and now she found herself in it again and didn’t feel the pressing need to leave, her legs rooted in place as if waiting for something to happen, yet when she spotted a familiar figure exiting the supermarket she promptly crossed to the other side to continue walking, but she was stopped.

“Cheadle?”

She turned around, hoping that she didn’t appear like she’d been lurking, like she’d been waiting for this exact thing to happen. “Hey.”

Kanzai stood a few feet away from her in shorts and flipflops, his arms loaded with grocery bags, his hair longer too, untied and unbrushed. He looked the way she imagined he looked throughout his years in college.

“What are you doing here?” He asked her, already closing the distance between them.

“Nothing, I was just passing by.”

He squinted. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’m going now. It’s good to see you.”

“What the fuck.” Kanzai grunted. “Come on up with me.”

Cheadle brushed away her bangs then had to readjust her glasses. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I think it is.” He shifted all the grocery bags to one hand then hooked his arm with hers. “Cluck won’t be home until nine, so I’m gonna take my sweet ass time making lasagna.”

“Okay, fine.” Cheadle unhooked their arms and reached for the bags. “Let me help you then.” Kanzai, in a rare and unnecessary act of chivalry, passed her the lighter ones.

The apartment was a bit changed when she entered it. The giant cabinet in the hallway was removed and the bathroom door replaced. The kitchen was still the same, the table bowl full of fruits still a fixture of the décor, only the sickly green of the fridge appeared cleaner, with new stickers and magnets and affixed notes.

“Wanna drink something?” Kanzai asked even though he was already placing a soda can in front of her. “Cluck made cookies last night, want some?” And again he placed a plate in front of her before she had the chance to answer.

Cheadle accepted them, her stomach, left unfilled the whole day, demanding she take in something. She still didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything, but when Kanzai started working with his ingredients she got off the table to help him.

“What have you been up to?” He asked, passing her a giant block of cheese to grate.

“I found work, and I’m writing a novel.”

Kanzai stopped chopping vegetables to stare at her. “A novel?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it about?”

“A crime mystery.” Cheese tendrils started gathering in the middle of the bowl. “It takes place after the Great War and the protagonist is a widow turned detective who takes it upon herself to solve an old murder case when the authorities fail her." She chewed on some grated cheese, humming. "And she’s a cat.”

Kanzai laughed. “A cat?”

“Anthropomorphized.” Cheadle smiled. “But everyone else is human and no one ever makes a thing out of her appearance. She is just like that. Maybe she’d been cursed, maybe she was born that way.”

“And what’s the truth?”

She threw him a knowing smirk. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Fine, keep your writerly secrets.” He conceded, going back to chopping. “It sounds really neat though!” he sidestepped to pull something out from the fridge. “I’d love to read it.”

They exchanged a smile. “The story is still in its early stages. I’m trying to put down a first draft, for now.”

Kanzai really meant it when he said he wanted to take his sweet ass time making the lasagna, because by the time Cluck came home they had just popped the tray in the oven.

She came into the apartment panting, called for Kanzai before she even crossed the hallway, still at the door taking off her shoes, and when she sprinted into the kitchen she had none other than Mushi hanging limp between her hands. “Look who I found!”

“Look who I found.” Kanzai said, pointing awkwardly to Cheadle who stood motionless by the kitchen counter, water glass in hand, exchanging befuddled stares with the newcomer.

Cluck cleared her throat and put the cat down, then straightened up and walked to the fridge to pull out an orange juice bottle. “You’re here I see.”

Cheadle placed the water glass on the counter. “I’ll leave if—”

“I invited her.” Kanzai cut her off. “We made lasagna together.”

“Lasagna huh,” Cluck chugged the juice straight from the bottle then put it back in the fridge. “I love lasagna.”

“I’m sorry, Cluck, Kanzai.” Cheadle said, swallowing, moving her eyes between them. “I don’t want to lose you. I didn’t know how much I cherished you as friends until you weren’t there anymore. I need you, and I’m sorry for the things I said, and I’m sorry for all those years ago, for disappearing. You two are better than all that I had walked away for. I should’ve known that.”

After saying that, she didn’t know what to do other than stand and stare and wait for them to say or do something, and unlike what she’d expected of herself, she didn’t want to take any of it back.

The first one to wrap her in a sudden and unexpected embrace was Kanzai, his hands still wet from the dishwashing, and she let herself settle into his arms, hugged him back, told him she loved him too when he said it first. From over his shoulder she looked at Cluck, still standing by the fridge, staring at their little burst of affection.

“Bitches.” She said under her breath, rolling her eyes, and joined the embrace, taller than both of them, her arms coiling around them to pull them closer. Kanzai let go to give the two women a moment. “And I’m sorry too, for telling you to leave like that. You had nowhere to go and I just kicked you out. I’m sorry, I love you. I’m still angry at you but I love you. Also your hair is awful and you need a haircut.”

Cheadle reached instinctively for her bangs. “I know, I just barely have time to scratch my head these days.”

“Of course.” Cluck said, ruffling Cheadle’s hair with a deft hand to assess the situation. “Do you want me to cut it for you?”

“You still know how?”

Cluck grimaced, already sifting through nearby drawers in search for a pair of scissors. “You always underestimate me. I didn’t spend all that time at my mom’s hair salon for nothing .”

Surrendering herself to Cluck’s hands and the sharp edges of her scissors, Cheadle sat on a chair in the bathroom, a towel around her neck, hair wetted and brushed, and was suddenly struck by an idea, something she’d thought of before but never had the guts to go through with. “Can you cut it short?”

“Like jaw-length short?”

“Shorter.”

Cluck leaned down to look at her, surprised. “Really? Never thought you’d go there.”

She nodded resolutely. “Remember Haruka from Sailor Moon?”

A knowing look dawned on Cluck’s face and she nodded in understanding. “Got it.”

Cheadle took off her glasses for the ordeal, wanting to see nothing until the haircut was finished. However, she still argued with them which of the Senshis was the best (Sailor Mercury and that was final.)

When Cluck was done, Cheadle stood up, gingerly, hesitant about seeking her glasses just yet. She turned around, almost blind, the world a blur of colors, Cluck’s hand on her shoulder keeping her from addressing the wrong direction. “What do you think?”

“I’m so fucking good I should just open a hair salon.” Cluck exclaimed, laughing. “You look amazing!” Her hand reached for Cheadle’s head and she tousled her hair, brushing her bangs upward.

Glasses on her face again, the first thing she saw was a bathroom floor littered with green locks of hair. It was something of a shock to stare at them like that, to realize they no longer belonged to her, to be happy about that. Cluck was blocking the mirror for the dramatic reveal while Kanzai, from his strategic leverage squatting on the toilet, filled the bathroom with a rousing war chant.

Cheadle must’ve stared at her new reflection for hours, because by the time she was done processing her appearance she felt that an entire history had passed. Her smile was growing bigger by the second as her fingers moved a hair here, a hair there, her bangs away from her forehead; the new haircut, for some reason, making her freckles more prominent, her eyes brighter. She turned to Cluck with a grin. “I love it. If my mom knew about this she’d lose her mind.”

“I’m so glad!” Cluck grinned back and hugged her. 

“For the love of fuck, can we go eat now?” Kanzai pleaded, still perched like a monkey on the toilet. 

Cheadle stayed behind for just a bit longer to clean the hair off the floor. She gathered the tendrils in a sack and tossed them in the trash, and then saw Mushi approaching the bathroom to stand at its doorway, as if waiting for her to either get out because he wants to use it or follow him somewhere.

“I missed you.” She said, tapping him playfully on the nose.

Mushi didn’t turn away, let her pet him, and when she sat with her friends to the dinner table he curled under her chair, body resting against her feet, and stayed there for the remainder of the night.

Chapter Text

The novel was finished. The first draft of it, at least.

Cheadle sat in front of her desk, hands still hovering over the typewriter, fingers weltering over the keys even after she’d typed ‘THE END’ at the tail of the page. She pulled her hands to herself, set them on her lap, and took a long, contemplative breath.

It was done, for now. Done in a way she thought it would never be. Took her eight months. She removed the last paper from the typewriter and added it to the stack on the desk, her fingers sweeping over the grainy pages, warm under the sunlight.

Tsubone wasn’t home, and Cheadle herself had to leave for work in an hour. She used a big binder clip to hold the pages together, emptied the rest of her water glass in the growing haworthia, and left the room, deciding to go to work earlier than usual, too anxious and excited to handle breakfast.

The moms at work were not as inscrutable as they had been in the beginning, not as difficult to mingle with or understand. They were diverse and talented and she felt good in their company, and once they knew she was writing a novel they were more than willing to help, with the research and with the editing, also with endless questions about the story, but she was more than happy to reserve the right to ambiguity until they could read it.

Cluck was now cutting her hair regularly, and they had managed to get that extra special, extra secret hair dye that Cheadle purchased from that one specific man who may or may not be dabbling in black magic. She refused to elaborate, goaded Cluck into silence by buying her a blue dye, too.

News from Leorio were scarce and came intermittently. They rarely spoke on the phone and whenever she heard at length about him it was from Tsubone. She missed him, terribly, more than ever, especially after she had finished the novel she promised him to write, and wondered if he missed her as well, wondered, if once he came back, they could maybe make things work, wondered if she even wanted that, if he wanted it that.

His absence made it clear that she didn’t need a guy to complete the picture, or be happy, but once she realized that she also acknowledged her growing feelings for him, specifically, outside of that idea; a sense that if he was to be here, to be present, she would love to be with him. But there was no guarantee that these feelings would persist and that the night they had spent together could have meant anything beyond itself, beyond a brief moment of passion and intimacy.

What they spoke of on his bed at dawn didn’t involve any confessions, and their promises to each other didn’t include any vows of fidelity, but he did ask her to wait for him.

It didn’t matter to dwell on these thoughts now when he was so far away, when they barely stayed in contact, when she was so deep into her own thing, when he was mired in his own, too. She thought that the possibility of heartbreak was inevitable, and she couldn’t hope to avoid it, so she just focused on work and let herself be immersed in new things, be with new people, miss him silently.

*

Next day, she woke up tense and distressed. Today she was going to give Tsubone the finished draft, and she dreaded the whole thing, wished that the old woman wouldn’t be home this morning, wished she could ask for more time, but she had promised to let her be the first to read it.

When she walked down the stairs she found Tsubone sitting at the table, cleaning a pristine set of china, her glasses perched low on her nose, her eyes and hands focused on nothing but the work in front of her, so when Cheadle said hi the woman only nodded in acknowledgment.

“I finished the novel, Tsubone.”

That made her raise her head. “Is that so?”

“Yes.” Cheadle said. “Do you want to read it?”

“Of course!” Tsubone smiled, put the yellow piece of cloth down and leaned back on her chair. “Just give me some time and I’ll get to it.”

“Can you read it now?” Cheadle blurted out. “I’m nervous about it. I just want to know as quickly as possible, what you think of it.”

Tsubone hummed. “Sure. Go get it, I’ll put the kettle on the stove.”

Anxiety gripped her the moment she entered her room to bring the manuscript. She stared at it for a long time before she picked it off the table and went back down. Rejection was inevitable, criticism was important, vulnerability unavoidable. Her legs felt weak under her but she walked down the stairs and back into the showroom.

“Here,” she handed it to Tsubone, her voice small and nervous. “Please read it quickly.”

Tsubone threw her an impressed glance. “I’ll take my time. Don’t you want me to read it carefully? Go on, sit.”

Cheadle shook her head. “I can’t. I won’t be able to just sit and watch you read it. I’ll go outside, just call for me when you finish.”

“Take your tea with you then, it’s cold outside.”

Hours passed with her pacing between the balcony and the workshop, gazing out at the sky as it changed colors, at street lamps starting to light up, at the fading blue of the sky, tuning to the sound of a plane overhead, to the train far away, to the rustling tree branches and the speeding cars she couldn’t see. She breathed and tried to calm her heart, to feel lighter, and at one point she stepped away from the railing and sat against the wall, immersed in darkness, the light from the workshop stretching her shadow beyond the balcony, taking it somewhere down below.

She remembered the nights she’d spent with Leorio here, with the mattress and the chips and the alcohol they shared, their feet bare and legs hanging down, his long enough to brush against the leaves of the tall trees, hers sinking into darkness. Her tea mug sat cold between her hands, and by the time Tsubone came down to fetch her Cheadle was hunched down, hugging her legs, head between her knees.

“I finished” Tsubone said, placing a gentle hand on Cheadle’s shoulder to rouse her. The old woman looked at her with a kind smile. “I am confident in saying that there is no irreparable design flaw.”

Cheadle instantly burst out. “But there is! I know that the plot is lacking and the characters are one-dimensional and the dialogue is corny! I know it’s a mess!”

“Oh sweetheart, it’s not like that at all.”

“Please be honest with me.”

Tsubone pulled her closer to the light so she could better see her face. “I would never lie to you about it. What I’ve read was beautiful and heartfelt. It is undeniably rough and raw, but that’s not unfixable.” She smiled at Cheadle. “There’s a lot ahead too; you’ll have to polish it, and that’s also hard work.”

Tears filled Cheadle’s eyes and her chin trembled.

“Just a bit more patience. Don’t be upset.”

She couldn’t do anything then, she just buried her face in her hands and cried. “I really wanted it to be good.”

“And it is good. You’ve done a wonderful job, sweetheart.”

“It’s so stupid, I shouldn’t be crying, but I feel like I’m not good enough.” Cheadle sniffed, wiping her tears. “I promised Leorio that I will finish it before he comes back but I feel so hopeless sometimes, I feel that I will be unable to make it a better story.”

Tsubone held her. “It’s alright, I understand. Come on now, let’s get in, it’s freezing out here.”

The two walked back inside, and Tsubone solaced her with noodles. They sat around the table and slurped their food, the heat of it making Cheadle sniff even more, nodding when Tsubone asked if she liked them.

“You know, when Leorio finished making his first violin, he was so distraught he threw a fit.” Tsubone laughed. “Some attitude he had. We had to cook him all his favorite foods just to stop him from drowning the shop in his tears.”

Cheadle chuckled. “I don’t doubt it.” She let the heat of the food settle in her stomach, inhaled the aromas emanating from the bowl. “Did you like how I wrote Louise? Did it feel authentic to her?”

“I loved your take on her.” Tsubone replied. “Very peculiar, in some instances. I can tell you wrote her with a lot of heart.”

“Sometimes she seems sad but hopeful, to me. She smiles in a way that’s only for herself, as if she's smiling only at a thing she thought of, at some secret desire in her heart.”

Tsubone nodded. “She’s very special. It made me happy to read her, to think of her as living fully. Thank you for letting me read your story.”

Cheadle smiled. “Thank you for reading it.”

*

At around midnight, she was about ready to head off to bed when Kanzai called. “There’s a party, wanna come? We’ll pick you up.”

Hand laying on the manuscript back at her desk, she looked out of her window to the town outside, still very much alive, still flickering. “Sure.”

Chapter Text

Cheadle had no idea where she went to sleep, or how, or when, a headache the first thing she felt, a faint blue light from outside the first thing she saw. It took her a minute to realize she was sleeping on a mattress against the wall on the kitchen floor of Cluck and Kanzai’s apartment, the two of them also splayed beside her. The table had been pushed to the side at one point and her nose caught the lingering scent of last night’s fast food splurge.

It must have been five o’clock, the chill of dawn creeping into her skin the moment she pushed the sheets off her body, blinking. Her hand sought her glasses on the windowsill and even when the world came into focus she still felt like her head was contracting and shrinking.

Using the windowsill as support, she stood up to take a look at the outside world and almost gasped in shock.

Down in the street was Leorio, on his bike, looking right back at her. She could catch the grin on his face from all the way down as he circled around in his bike and beckoned her down with an excited gesture.

“No way…” she whispered, sliding the window open. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just come down.”

Cheadle turned around to look at her sleeping friends, mapping her course to the door across the sheets and pillows and their sprawled limbs. She tiptoed around every object, forgot where her shoes were, found them and put them on hastily and resigned to the fact that she could not open and close the door without sound, so she stepped out as quietly as she could and pulled it gently back, the clacking of its lock ringing in her ears as she descended the staircase.

“How did you know I was here?” She skipped her way towards him, rubbing her hands together against the cold.

Leorio smiled. “Tsubone told me. I wanted to see you before anybody else but you weren’t even there to greet me.”

“I thought you won’t be here for another week.”

“Yeah but I came early.” He reached a hand to her and she took it without thinking. “Your hair!”

Cheadle smiled, feeling his hand tighten around hers.

“Come on now, I want to show you something.” He said. “Here, it’s cold,” he took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

“But you’ll get cold too. Wait, I’ll go get one.”

Leorio shook his head. “No we don’t have time, just get on the bike already.”

Once she did, he circled around a tree and pedaled past the building and out of the neighborhood. “I still can’t believe it, you were actually awake!” He laughed. “I wanted to see you so I thought I’ll drive around the neighborhood and then you appeared. It’s like a dream.”

“It is.” Cheadle rested her head against his back, eyes closed, a smile on her face. “I’m glad to see you again.”

“Yeah!” A car moved past them, its driver throwing them a glance before looking ahead again. “How did things go? Did you finish writing the novel?”

“I did, but it still needs more work.” She said, guilty that it wasn’t a perfect answer, a resounding ‘yes’.

“I’m so happy for you.” Leorio said, then his voice fell low. “I’m sorry I haven’t checked on you much and wasn’t there to support you all the way through.”

She shook her head even though he couldn’t see it. “It’s alright. I had a good time, I wasn’t alone. I’m sorry that I haven’t called much, too.” Then she chuckled. “So are you a certified doctor now?”

“I am!”

When they arrived at a treacherous uphill Cheadle hopped off the bike to help him push the bike upward.

“What are you doing?” Leorio asked, throwing a glance at her.

“You can’t ride up that with me on the bike.”

“But I said I will!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Cheadle said, using all her strength to push the bike forward. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”

After a moment Leorio huffed. “Fine.”

The uphill smoothed into a flat street again and Cheadle fell behind for a moment, catching her breath. Leorio turned to her and slowed down so she could catch up. “We’re pretty close!’

Finally, Leorio stopped beside a tall water tower and let his bike lean against the gray concrete as he lead Cheadle towards what appeared to be a roof consumed by weeds and algae, a downslope like a giant step leading to something below, but Cheadle wasn’t looking down.

Leorio jumped to the roof and was already staring at her to see her reaction.

The sun was yet to appear on the horizon, but its golden halo was already stretching behind the sleepy blue mountains and short buildings, a melting ring pouring slowly over the foggy landscape, clouds parting to let it through, catching the sunrise, raining down transparent shafts of light.

Cheadle stared, her eyes tracing the oncoming light that swept the town and began to approach the little spot they stood on. “It’s amazing.”

“I used to come here when I was a kid.” Leorio said, walking forward to sit on the edge of the roof. “It’s really inspiring, isn’t it?”

She followed him, trying not to look down as she sat next to him. They were so close she didn’t know what to do, wanted to look at him but didn’t. “Here,” she took one side of his jacket, still on her shoulders, and placed it on his. “It’s cold.”

That brought him closer to her, his brown eyes gleaming in the sunrise, and his hand sought hers. “I’ve made a decision. A really stupid one, it might turn out, but I’m sure of it.” He started. “I contacted that friend of Tsubone, back in Italy, and he’s willing to receive me again but I’ll have to prove myself, otherwise he’ll boot me back here and I’ll have to start my doctoring life sooner than I want.” He chuckled. “And I was thinking, that, you know, if you wanted, you can come with me.”

“To Italy?” Her eyes widened. “That’s an entirely uncalculated move.”

“I know! Let’s do it.” Leorio laughed. “We’ll live together, we’ll work side by side.” When she didn’t answer right away, he brought her hand to his heart. “What are you thinking about?”

Cheadle smiled, shaking her head, still processing the offer. “I’m in a good place.”

He hugged her, kissed the top of her head, then she looked up at him and sought his lips.

Soaked under the warm sunlight, heart at once heavy and unbearably light, her hand in his, Cheadle breathed.

The world was hers again.

THE END