EPISODE 4 - PART 2

- THE SILVER RABBIT -

[WHITE]

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Fenik sits on a stone bench in the park, where Amaral and his shitshow were. Just the thought of those people being here last week makes him nauseated.

This is his favorite place to stay, his bedroom was just too tiny that was suffocating; besides he spends so much time there that he knows every crack on the walls.

Being in the living room wasn't that amazing either, even if its larger and had a big window to an upper view of the street, it had drawn pictures of his family that gives the shivers, the idea of them being hours static on a chair for someone to draw them is disturbing, they sit there waiting, expecting it to be as they wanted to, perfect, and for what purpose? Just to be remembered or to keep watching for their descendants to do the same?

He puts his side bag on his laps, opens it and takes the notebook, he goes on one of the first pages where some hundreds after are still blank, showing the annotations about the past classes, he handwrote everything expecting to learn something, but with no success, he already knew all of those.

What a waste of time.

He pulls out the pocket watch, he doesn't care what time it is, he's so accustomed to look at the clock to see how long until it’s over that it became an uncontrollable compulsion.

He puts it back to his pocket slowly, sighing tiredly. He closes the notebook and keeps it on his bag. It's just not the same relaxing place when people are watching you, both because of his silver hair, and now the white uniform of the main academy of Windcut, they are quite drawing.

Some like it, while others give that hidden grimace. The fortress surely is being torn apart, surely not a good omen.

And now, those four are following me for some reason.

They try staying on the street corners, only with their heads out, but that just makes them even more noticeable.

Someone should teach them the art of being in public without being a bunch of weirdos, then they wouldn’t call so much attention.

“I’m sorry, young one.”

A man appears in front of Fenik, he has orange straight hair, full beard and uses oval glasses, which the left-side lens have a single crack from up to down. He rubs his hands slowly, with a friendly grin on his face.

“You’re from the rookie’s academy, right?”

Fenik looks at him, its strange how in broad daylight such a shady character is on the streets.

“That’s right.” Fenik quickly looks around.

People are passing by and glancing at the strange man and his striped clothing.

“Great! I recognize that uniform of yours are from the main platoon, am I right?”

“Why do you want to know that?” Fenik answers coldly.

The man goes a step forward, being now two feet away.

“You see,” The man points his finger at Fenik’s uniform. “That has quite the value for some collectors,” he opens his grin even more, showing his golden back tooth, “so what if you sold it to me?”

Fenik hesitates for a second. “What?”

“Of course, you can just tell that you lost it, so they are going to give you one to replace, so it’s a win-win situation.”

“I doubt it works like that.”

“No, no, I’m sure it works, this is pretty normal, actually.” He straightens his glasses. “You see, every year we buy them from the students, the green uniforms are for about thirty, the blue is eighty, and the rarest of all, the main platoon’s uniforms, which are for two hundred. Those are my prices, of course. In cash. So, what do you say?”

“Are you serious? So, you want me to commit a crime by selling-“

“No, that’s not it at all, young man.” He interrupts. “No one is getting hurt, so there’s no evil, right? It’s just for collectors’ love for the military academy.”

Fenik’s face closes up.

What a bunch of crap.

“Look, sir-“

“Brother!” Someone calls happily from afar.

A boy with messy light-blond hair and a grin is waving as he approaches Fenik, he’s a familiar face, one that Fenik doesn’t like that much, before he could reply, the boy hugs his right arm with a smile.

“I’m not your brother, Aston,” Fenik replies tiredly.

“It has been so long!” Aston rubs his cheeks on Fenik’s arm. “We should talk more! How can you let your little brother alone all this time?”

“Damn brats.” The man mumbles, clicking his tongue and walking away.

“You aren’t my little brother, Aston,” Fenik says with some anger.

“Oh my, what a way to treat family.” He pushes softly.

“So, who was that guy?”

“Who?” Aston asks confused.

“You don’t need to lie, I know you enough to realize when you are doing it,” Fenik says methodically.

Aston stops, breaking his happy face for an instant, but then he makes it happy again.

“You are such a caring big brother!”

He looks back, the guy is now going for the four that were following Fenik. Aston gets closer and forces them to walk forward by pulling with the arm-hug, away from the strange man.

“That’s just a terrorist.”

“Huh?” Fenik makes them stop walking, looking at Aston’s smile. “And why the hell he’s free, talking with academy’s students?”

“Oh, big brother, you are too naïve, I still don’t understand why you needed to go to that filthy academy,” He tries to keep his happy face, but he clearly dislikes that place for some reason. “To hunt a rabbit you shoot it on first sight, but if you want to take their entire family out, you need to wait for it to get on the hole.” He then forces to continue walking.

“Well, whatever, that’s not my problem.”

“I guess it isn’t, but you shouldn’t talk like that, this is real trouble.” Aston closes his mouth to Fenik’s ear. “Elections are coming up, and things are starting to get hot.”

“Many things are happening on the fortress, do you think I care about every single one of them?”

“You know, uncle Ortiz is getting too worked up about things lately,” He talks like a worried child. “I think he’s not sleeping well, you know?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It's just that the rats are moving around, getting excited. Almost like something in this election is different from the past ones. Like a big cake is being baked.”

“You really like metaphors…” Fenik mumbles.

Aston smiles, but then he looks back with worry at an open doors coffee shop, in which about ten people are seated on small tables. “My master is probably so angry right now, I shouldn’t have obstructed the mission like that.”

“Then why did you bothered to talk with me?”

“Well…” Aston thinks. “That’s for two reasons:” He starts counting with his hands. “One, because you are my big brother; and second, you were going to make a scene weren’t you? That or you would end up killing the guy.”

Fenik looks to Aston’s face, which is waiting for a response.

“Stop being so close to me.” He says annoyed.

“Nooo…” Aston hugs his arm tighter.

Fenik clicks his tongue in anger and they continue walking.

“So, what do you say?” The strange man asks the group.

“Not interested, all right,” Zack responds firmly, trying to see where Fenik and the other strange boy were going. “We are in a hurry.”

“What about two hundred and twenty then?” He grins showing a two with both hands.

“Two hundred and fifty,” Vincent speaks behind the group.

The strange man’s grin closes in surprise for a second, then he smiles back.

“Sure, but only if at least three of you sell it to me, and each one of you is going to be paid the two hundred and fifty.”

“Hey man,” Oskar whispers to Vincent, “who knows what he’s going to do with it, maybe he’s some kind of pervert with a fetish, let’s just walk away, its not worth the money.”

“Look, Oskar,” Vincent answers harshly, “maybe money doesn’t make much of a difference in an elite family, but for me, two hundred and fifty would.”

Oskar goes a step back, resentful.

“So, what you need is money?” The strange man grins. “If you really need it, my assistant did leave me in the past days, maybe you could help me, if you have the right qualities, of course.”

“Vincent,” Zack says in a hurry, ”this is way too suspicious, don’t trust this guy, lets just keep following Fenik.”

All of it makes Vincent even angrier.

“Sorry if I’m more worried about money than to be following a guy from the class like some kid’s game.”

“It’s not a kid’s game,” Zack says, “I thought you understood it, we need to be together for-“

“Yeah, yeah, just for the ‘team’ to be together,” he starts to raise his voice, “I’m starting to think that you just want everyone in the class to be together just so you can feed your leader superiority complex.”

“What? That’s not it, we are a platoon, we need to know how to teamwork, that’s all.”

“Sure,” He laughs, “I’m going to take this chance if any of you want to do the same.”

“Younglings, let’s not argue in the middle of the street.” The strange man says in the background, straightening his glasses and starting to sweat.

Vincent looks to the other two, all of them with unsure faces.

“Yeah,” Larry replies in a sigh, “I’m not feeling it, you know?”

“You are alone on this, man,” Oskar says.

“Okay,” Vincent goes a step back, “you guys can go follow however you want.” He looks to the strange man, “What about that job you got?”

On their parting ways, Vincent didn’t look back and Fenik was out of sight. Thinking now, following Fenik didn’t have much meaning, but what Vincent did wasn’t the best option by far, the strange man with the broken glasses and stripped clothes was untrustworthy to the bone.

But even so, the weight of someone being angry with something you did, even by him being the wrong one, simply didn’t felt right, so Zack promised himself to make up for it in the next class in the academy. Not because he wants people so he can be a leader, but because he knows that the more friends he has, the easier is going to be to solve problems in the future.

The next day came, so Zack woke up and dressed up, and arriving at the academy he realizes that Vincent isn’t on his desk.

Maybe he just late.

And so Zack waited until the last class, nothing from him.

“He’s probably sick of something, don’t worry about it,” Larry said with a smile.

And so he waited for the next day, preparing to talk with him once again, looking at the mirror and checking if his uniform was good, but he wasn’t there again.

The third day was the same, but this one was different, on the middle of the classroom the door opened, with a person coming in and walking to the front of the class.

“I’m from the Guards station,”

The guard looks to the class with a serious face, his dark-blue uniform reasserts his authority, and so everyone stops.

“I’m here to ask if any of you have any information about a missing person,” he takes a rolled paper, “I’m sure you all know who he is,”

He unrolls the paper in front of the class with a photo on it and a name on the bottom.

“His name is Vincent Gill.”