Track 09
I had these thoughts no longer than 20 minutes ago… five minutes before I got off the monorail, eight minutes before I stepped in those little pods that sent you down to ground level, and 15 minutes before I found Kugo’s street. So then why… somebody please tell me why!? Why, oh why, on earth, was I standing in front of their music store [I still need a name] You’re weak Rei! So weak! What happened to all that self-control you displayed this morning!!! I heard the little – ding dururu-ring – jingle that played whenever their front door opened.
Oh. That was me.
“Ah! Rei-chan~ Glad to have you back so soon, how was your day?” A hand caught the back of my head while a nervous smile smacked my face. Why do I do this to myself?
“Oh, Y’know, same old, same old” I roamed closer to the counter – trying my best not to get distracted by the music equipment all around. Kaia laid down the pen and paper she was holding. On closer inspection I noticed she’d been playing Sudoku.
“Hmmm,” she analyzed me with that unreadable smile of hers and nodded. “Are you here to play with my son again, or perhaps to buy something?” I tried to avoid addressing the ‘play with my son’ part.
“Aha, to be honest I was out looking for a job today, so I should probably land one before I buy anything here.”
“Oh you’re looking for a job? You can work here if you’d like.”
“Yea, my full day was spent searching for one. Nowadays, I’m just applying every-… “ I felt my eyebrows scrunch together. “ every-… evuh-…” I couldn’t finish this sentence. I felt like I misheard something and I couldn’t confirm this theory because she immediately started writing on a sticky note after she said what I misheard. “huh? Sorry, what?” I blinked.
“You can work here if you’d like.” She repeated my hallucination and stuck her sticky to the front of the desk. It read, while she said: “‘We’re hiring’… Can’t promise you minimum wage though with all the hungry mouths I feed, but maybe somewhere under that.”
My jaw might dislocate from the shock she was giving me. I couldn’t do anything other than stare at her. I’ve never been offered a job before. The casual tone didn’t help; it made me feel as though my mind was just creating the dubs I wanted to hear over the foreign words she was really saying. But she repeated it, so the only comprehensible reason I heard this a second time was that the Kaia in front of me was a robot and the store I walked into was a simulation.
“You seem to be having trouble swallowing this.” She noticed. “If it helps you sleep at night you can hand in your rezu-chip, but let’s be honest here, I’m probably not gonna read it. As for an interview, you mainly won me over yesterday, but I guess I’ll still need to figure out your strengths and stuff… ”
My left eye may or may not have been twitching at this stage of disbelief. “Wait, wait… wait you can’t just- just hire me like that!”
She gave me a frown of disappointment, “Huh? Why not?”
“Well, be-because, you don’t really- fully- know me!”
“Oh, that’s all? You’re still hung up on that?” Her calculating smile returned to nestle against intertwined fingers, “I let you sleep in my household without ‘fully’ knowing you. I also fed you pancakes without ‘fully’ knowing you, and entrusted you with the super, ultra-important, and rather successful, mission of coming back here – without fully knowing you. I don’t need to know you in order to force my trust on- put my trust in you.” I must have misheard something there.
“Besides, I don’t think you realize how rare it is for people to get along with my son. There’s an age old saying: if you can befriend a sell-soul then you’ve got one hell of a soul… or was it swell soul?”
“So this is real?”
“As real as you want it to be, yeah.” The front door jingle buzzed me out of my daze. I turned around to see some guy, and possibly his son, walk in. “Reginald! It’s been a while!” Exclaimed Kaia, she looked back to me quickly. “Rei-chan, why don’t you go out back and ask Axel for an interview. Just follow the path.”
The next moment she was back to addressing her customers. “And this must be Reginald junior.” I made my escape to the hallway past her desk. The idea of being introduced by Kaia to a customer scared me somehow.
In the distance, I thought I heard the man say: “Kaia how many times do I have to tell you my name isn’t Reginald.” But that couldn’t be right; I must have misheard that too.
I continued down the hall. The lively memory of Kaia’s household made the current house seem dead. She said he was out back – as in outside – but why would he be outside? I did what I was told and went through the back sliding door, passing that living space where terribly embarrassing memories lurked, and gladly shutting the door behind me without dwelling upon any of it.
A deep breath later and I hopped down the little step on to cute panda-shaped stone islands embedded in an actual yard of grass, then-
I gawked upward. Trees. I stood in place and admired a mini forest of real, authentic tall oak trees. It was like stepping into a painting, red and orange star-shaped crinkle bits swayed both above me and along the ground. The scene made me realize it was fall. Living in the heart of the city of Ezveria made you forget those in-between seasons where buildings weren’t frosting and snowcapped or shining and sweating.
I hesitated further into the VR painting. The panda stones turned into a narrow peach-coloured road. Without looking at the path much, I journeyed down it, weaving and crunching through scattered leaves, brushing my fingers along the barks of trees, all while watching the sky and tripping over whatever was (or wasn’t) on the ground. I think the only thing that kept me on the right track was the occasional collision I made with an off-track branch or hedge. I didn’t mind walking into them, the bark smelled of forgotten nature and the bushes sometimes held pretty flowers. I’m sure Mother Nature minded though.
When I emerged from the forest, I thought for sure I’d gotten lost, but the first person I found myself staring at was a certain familiar kid eating a lollipop. He was sitting in the grass at a slight incline. I kept blinking at him, whereas he didn’t look too surprised to see me. He opened and closed his fist at me. Was that supposed to be a wave? I narrowed my eyes. “…hhhhhhhhiii…?” my greeting was stretched by confusion and left unfinished by awkwardness.
It’s not that I didn’t like children, I was just, extremely wary of them, especially this one. There was a time in my past when I had worked with kids. I was fired shortly after for trying to force a child to accept their rightful punishment for eating everyone’s dessert cookies. There were several similar occurrences, but for this particular instance, the child’s parents were present; I thought it’d be a good idea to display how they should be correcting their child. This was a mistake, I know this now.
This kid was a bit different from the children I remember. Actually, a lot different, were his eyes always that bright? He looked away from me and back to a bird he was playing with who hopped around in front of him.
“Axel is over there.” He pointed without looking. I felt like this kid posed a bigger threat than most children. I frowned and followed his finger.
“AAHH!!” I yelled.
In the closest clearing, I saw that Hulk-man completing a full-swing jump attack towards Axel. In his bulky hands were two swords that looked something like mini claymores, one had multiple prongs that jutted out of the slashing side and curved towards the tip, the other was a bit wider with a jagged saber edge. Axel rolled out of the way at the last second and clumps of dirt flew up behind him. Axel had his usual sell-soul sword phone in hand, but other than that he was defenseless. There was no arrow-proof vest equipped, no plate of armor, no helmet, no magical soul-y barrier thingy; no nothing. He was dancing around with these short claymores in the hands of a suddenly psychopathic Bollywood star. He was giving Axel such a hard time that he barely had time to block or dodge.
This disaster was occurring right in front of this kid’s bright hazel eyes and all he decided to do was lick a lollipop and tease some bird. Meanwhile, here I was, torn between nervously flinching at every near miss from Axel’s circle of combat, and fighting the desperate urge to search for help. I wanted to help, I wanted to scream for help, but I didn’t want to distract him. The last time I was involved in Axel’s fight, he got injured, and it was quite possibly a needless injury, thanks to me.