His hand let go of the wall. For the last seven days he'd been carried on stretchers, wheeled beds, and once, humiliatingly, on Roby's back. Now he just had to make it to the end of the hall. It was time to prove himself!
⠀
He took one step. His left knee gave out on the spot, and he slapped a hand back on the wall.
⠀
"Ryunosuke," Yuhuan said.
⠀
"I'm fine!" Mori said, waving without turning around.
⠀
"You're leaning on the wall."
⠀
"I was leaning on the wall. Past tense. Look at me, Yuhuan! I'm a free man!"
⠀
"You're a free man with a wall for a crutch," Yuhuan said, laughing.
⠀
Yuhuan was standing in the doorway of Room 312 with one hand out, like a mom watching a toddler on the stairs. Three of his fingernails still hadn't grown back. The violet bracelet on his left wrist wiggled, and a dry little voice came out of it.
⠀
"Let the boy fall on his own face, human," the serpent said. "It builds character."
⠀
"You'd know," Yuhuan muttered.
⠀
"I have had three years to observe the process."
⠀
"Ten Nanum says he eats tile before he even hits the elevator!" Roby yelled from inside the room.
⠀
He was lying across the empty bed next to Mori's with his boots still on, spinning a tin top on the tray table. He hadn't looked up once. He'd been quiet ever since the catwalk, the loops, and floor ten, and the top was the only thing that stopped him from bouncing his knee. Nobody said anything about it.
⠀
"I'LL RAISE YOU! TWENTY SAYS HE EATS IT BEFORE THE WATER FOUNTAIN!!" Saoirse shouted from the windowsill.
⠀
She was on her fifth can of Viscoso Fun Cider, with Stuffy on one hand and Arnold on the other.
⠀
"GO, MORI, GO!~ (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧" Arnold cheered, bobbing up and down.
⠀
"...He's going to fall..." Stuffy said flatly.
⠀
"Stuffy, that's NOT how you cheer!" Saoirse said.
⠀
"...It's how I cheer..."
⠀
Mori closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His friends were the worst cheering section in the Ring. His scarf fluttered up around his neck, trailing black and red flame from both ends like it always did.
⠀
"Ten minutes," Mori said. "Alone. Like a normal person."
⠀
"The lobby's on the ground floor," Yuhuan said.
⠀
"Then I'll take the elevator. By myself."
⠀
"Five minutes."
⠀
"Ten."
⠀
Yuhuan sighed. "Seven. Then I'm coming down there."
⠀
"Deal!" Mori said.
⠀
It was the first time in a month he'd left a room without someone else setting the terms. He counted it as a win.
⠀
The scarf had a sign at the nurses' station all to itself: NO OPEN FLAME WITHIN THREE METERS OF OXYGEN. Someone had added underneath in angry handwriting: THIS MEANS YOU, RYUNOSUKE. The scarf had been on its best behavior for two whole days.
⠀
On the way, he passed the empty room.
⠀
The bed two doors down was made with corners so tight you could bounce a coin off them. Only a soldier makes a bed like that. A folding chair sat next to it, still turned toward the pillow.
⠀
Mori's steps slowed down.
⠀
A week ago, a helmet had come off in that room. Mori had looked at a face he never thought he'd see again. Then a courier showed up with sealed orders and three names, and the next morning the bed was empty. Nobody had said goodbye.
⠀
He'd asked the nurses about it. They said, "Post business," and stared at the floor. After the third day, he stopped asking, but he never stopped counting.
⠀
Later, he told himself, and kept walking.
⠀
Then came the elevator.
⠀
It was a normal elevator. Steel walls, a cracked handrail, and a recording of a nice lady announcing the floors. Mori stood in front of the open doors for way too long. He'd been in a lot of elevators lately, and none of them had ever gone where they were supposed to.
⠀
The doors started to close, so he jumped in.
⠀
Three. Two.
⠀
He gripped the rail.
⠀
One.
⠀
The doors opened on the lobby, and the floor stayed a floor. Mori let out a huge breath and grinned like an idiot.
⠀
The lobby was big, gray, and quiet. Rain ran down the glass wall at the front. A receptionist was asleep at her desk, and a Viscoso vending machine hummed in the corner, covered in cartoon apples doing stupid things.
⠀
By the window, a man was painting.
⠀
He wore a paint-stained cardigan, and he looked about twenty-two, with the tired eyes of someone who hadn't slept properly in weeks. It was one of those faces you like right away and can't describe later. In front of him stood an easel with a half-finished painting of a big old tree. The top was full of branches and fruit with no color yet, and the bottom was still blank canvas.
⠀
He spun his paintbrush between two fingers while he looked at it, over and over, without even watching his hand, the way some people click pens.
⠀
"You're walking like a guy who's mad at the floor," the painter said.
⠀
"The floor started it," Mori said.
⠀
The painter's mouth twitched. "Then it deserves it. Sit down before it wins."
⠀
The nearest chair was orange plastic and way too small. Mori dropped into it, and both his knees popped. The painter kept his eyes on the canvas and added one stroke of green.
⠀
"First day out of bed?" the painter asked.
⠀
"First day out of bed alone," Mori said.
⠀
"Ah, that's a different kind of first." He dabbed some brown onto a branch. "I'm Sam."
⠀
"Mori."
⠀
"Mori," Sam said, like he was testing the weight of it. "Good name. Short enough to shout."
⠀
Rain ticked on the glass. In the vending machine, a can shifted with a soft clunk.
⠀
"You paint?" Sam asked.
⠀
"Nope," Mori said.
⠀
"Good. Nobody who paints is ever honest about why." The brush kept turning. "I'm here for a friend. Third floor, bad fall. Bad injury, actually, the kind where the doctors go quiet in the hallway. He's stubborn. He'd take the stairs on a broken leg just to prove the elevator wrong, then act surprised about it."
⠀
"Is he gonna be okay?" Mori asked.
⠀
"He'll be fine. It's the waiting that's rude, so I paint. Waiting goes faster when your hands have something to feel guilty about."
⠀
Mori laughed, and his shoulders finally came down from around his ears.
⠀
"I'm on the third floor too," Mori said.
⠀
"Then we're neighbors." Sam glanced over at him for the first time. His eyes were brown and warm and paid close attention. "Who's waiting on you?"
⠀
"My friends. They're upstairs arguing about cider," Mori said.
⠀
"Friends. Plural." Sam said it slowly, like a word from a language he used to speak. "That's a good thing to have. Makes people dangerous or careful. Usually both." The brush went around once more. "Anyone who isn't upstairs?"
⠀
Mori opened his mouth to say no.
⠀
"Someone left," he said instead. "A few days ago. They didn't get to say goodbye. I don't think they wanted it that way, but I dunno. I dunno anything, really."
⠀
He hadn't meant to say that much to a stranger with paint on his sleeves. It just came out.
⠀
"That's the worst kind of leaving," Sam said quietly. "You can't even be mad about it."
⠀
"Yeah," Mori said.
⠀
"So what do you owe someone who leaves without saying goodbye?"
⠀
Mori thought about it. He looked at the tree instead of Sam.
⠀
"Nothing, maybe," he said. "Or everything. I'd wanna find 'em. Not to be mad or anything." He turned his hands over in his lap. "I'd wanna say it back."
⠀
"Say what back?" Sam asked.
⠀
"Goodbye. Or hello. Whichever comes first."
⠀
Sam didn't say anything. His brush kept turning.
⠀
A TV on the wall above the reception desk was on with the volume almost off, playing one of those boring midday news shows nobody in a hospital lobby actually watches. The ticker at the bottom read: SCRAPYARD HEAP SHAFT SEALED UNDER JOINT VISCOSO AND OFFICE AUTHORITY. FIXER TEAM EMERGES AFTER ONE AND A HALF MONTHS. ARGUS DIRECTORATES DECLINES COMMENT.
⠀
"Funny thing about stories," Sam said, nodding at the screen without turning his head. "There's this boy from the 6th District. Walked up to Gun and told it to stop, and it did. Half the Ring says he's a saint. The other half says he's Gun's dog. Everybody tells it like they were standing right there."
⠀
Mori's scarf flared up. The black and red flame jumped higher at the ends and blew the wrong way, against the air vents. He slapped a hand over it like that would help.
⠀
Sam's brush stopped for one full turn. Then it kept going.
⠀
He looked at the scarf, then at the patch on Mori's sleeve, a faded IV stitched in yellow thread. He looked at it a second too long, then went back to the tree.
⠀
"I'm just a patient!" Mori said quickly.
⠀
"Course you are," Sam said. He didn't smile. "I paint, so I notice things. Your scarf's on fire, by the way. Very politely."
⠀
Mori laughed nervously. Sam let it go and didn't push.
⠀
"Can I ask you something rude?" Sam said. "It's raining, and I've got no manners."
⠀
"You've got some," Mori said.
⠀
"Flattery. Very Argus of you."
⠀
He said it so casually that Mori didn't catch it for three whole seconds. By then Sam was already talking again.
⠀
"Say you knew a guy who kills, because killing's the only thing anyone ever taught his hands to do," Sam said. "And you could stop him, but only by doing to him exactly what he does to other people. Would you?"
⠀
The lobby went quiet. Mori looked out at the rain, then down at his knees. In the back of his head, an old voice asked him an old question about a room and a single bullet. He shoved it away.
⠀
"I'd try to stop him some other way first," Mori said.
⠀
"And if there wasn't another way?"
⠀
"I dunno," Mori said. He winced. It was a bad answer, and he knew it. "I get angry. Like, really angry, and it scares me how fast it comes. If someone hurt somebody, I'd wanna hurt 'em back. I'd wanna say no. But I'd need someone next to me to tell me when I'd gone too far. Yuhuan would. He'd punch me. Probably in the face."
⠀
Sam let out a soft breath that was almost a laugh.
⠀
"And if you were standing there alone?" Sam asked.
⠀
"Then I'd remind myself he's a person," Mori said. "Even if he forgot."
⠀
The brush stopped an inch from the canvas and didn't move. Mori felt like the whole lobby was holding its breath.
⠀
Sam set the brush down on the tray, carefully, like it might wake up.
⠀
"That's an honest answer," Sam said. "You'd be surprised how rare those are." He rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. "Do me a favor. That machine over there. Pear cider, two cans. My knees have opinions."
⠀
He pressed a handful of coins into Mori's palm before Mori could answer.
⠀
The vending machine was at the far end of the lobby. Mori put in a coin. The machine ate it and gave him nothing.
⠀
A week ago, he would have apologized to the machine. Now he smacked it with his palm, and a can dropped out. Behind him, the receptionist snorted awake and fell right back asleep. Mori didn't care.
⠀
He reached for the second can and noticed something in the window.
⠀
Across the street, a tall man in a gray coat stood under a black umbrella. His gloved hands were folded over the handle, and rain ran off the edge of the umbrella in a perfect curtain. He was facing the hospital, and he hadn't moved at all.
⠀
That guy's really good at standing still, Mori thought.
⠀
He bent down to grab the can. When he looked up, the man was gone.
⠀
Mori walked back across the lobby with two cans of pear cider. The chair by the easel was empty.
⠀
"Sam?" Mori called.
⠀
The cardigan was gone. The brush was clean and lying on the tray with a folded rag beside it. The canvas was finished.
⠀
Mori stared at it. He'd been gone five minutes, tops. But the tree now filled the whole canvas, with a thick, knotted trunk and every branch loaded with gold and green fruit until the top sagged. At the bottom, in the grass by the roots, lay one peach. It was small and round without a single bruise on it, like it had rolled a little way off and stopped. It hadn't been there when he sat down.
⠀
"Hey, you."
⠀
An orderly was standing a few feet away with a mop, leaning on it like a man who'd given up expecting anything interesting.
⠀
"You a friend of his?" the orderly asked.
⠀
"Kinda. I just met him," Mori said.
⠀
"He's been here every day for a week, that guy. Paints a tree, leaves it in the supply closet by nightfall. I've got seven of 'em now." The orderly squinted at the canvas. "Never seen him put a peach in one before."
⠀
He shrugged and went back to mopping.
⠀
Mori touched the corner of the canvas. The paint on the peach was still wet and left a gold smudge on his finger.
⠀
The painting made his chest feel tight, and he couldn't say why. It was just a tree with a peach that had fallen off it. But the peach looked like it had been let go on purpose. Mori thought of the yellow patch on his sleeve, the laminated sign, and the empty bed with its tight corners, and a shiver ran down his back.
⠀
"Ryunosuke."
⠀
Mori turned around. Yuhuan was standing at the edge of the lobby with one hand on the elevator door. His face was serious.
⠀
"It's only been five minutes!" Mori said. "You said seven!"
⠀
"I know what I said," Yuhuan said. He glanced at the canvas, then away. "Haddler came by the room. Antollio wants the four of us at the Post. Now."
⠀
"Did he say why?"
⠀
"No," Yuhuan said. "He wouldn't even look at me."
⠀
Mori looked at the second can of pear cider in his hand, cold and unopened. He set it on the easel's tray next to the folded rag and the drying peach, like an offering.
⠀
"Let's go," Mori said.
⠀
The elevator doors closed behind them. In the lobby, the rain kept hitting the glass, the wet paint kept drying, and the little peach stayed right where it had landed.