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Part 1
Page 18
Shujuan took desk duty from the end of lunch until
closing time, long after sundown when the last day workers had come home
and finally stopped calling for emergency dinner supplies, and the night
shift men no longer rang up for coffee. Guonan was the last to arrive,
rattling home from the bicycle graveyard with a new, or at least newer,
chain, to find his boss with the office floor cleared in the center setting
to work attaching a new front wheel.
"Hurry in and shut the door," she ordered, looking
up.
"I was gonna do it for you..." Guonan began.
"Like I need you to fix my bike for me. Get in and
close up before the stray ca-- Oh no," she managed, as a fuzzy tabbied
head poked its way through the open doorway, seeking a bit of meager warmth
from the cold night. Shujuan dropped the wrench and immediately covered
her nose. "Get that out of here! Now!"
"Wha-- Bu--"
He was interrupted by a violent sneeze. "GET IT
OUT!" Shujuan roared.
Guonan scrambled, suddenly frantic. He kicked the
cat off onto the porch and slammed the door after him. And wedged his bike
against it as an extra precaution. It wasn't like they were going out again
tonight anyway.
An idea struck him.
"How'd that guy know you were allergic to cats,
anyway?"
"How the hell should I know," the girl mumbled,
voice still muffled by the hands over her face. "Gimme your shirt."
"Ew, no!"
"Yeah, I'm not lookin' forward to what I'll get
infected with either, you walking goober. Jus' get over here."
"Wenlonnnng!" Guonan wailed as she tried to grab
at him. "Shu-rin's trying to get her diseases on me!"
"Did you bring another cat in?" came the answer
from the back room.
"Yeah, but--"
"Then it's your own fault," the boy concluded happily.
Somewhere back there with him, Jianmin started snickering. "Suffer it for
the good of the empire, Guonan."
"That's not helping!" the orphan cried.
Eventually, after a lot more screaming, Wenlong
came out offering a tissue. Accompanied by the money box. He let Jianmin
carry the record book.
Shujuan finished tightening the last nut of the
wheel and set her own bike to the side, clattering up against the others
on the far wall while they cleared away the tools to get to work. The space
in the middle of their losely-defined circle became a pile of assorted
coins and notes, all crumpled and dirty, except for the bank-crisp 100
RMB bill that floated down on the top of the heap.
For a moment, the other boys just stared at it,
as though puzzling over whether their eyes were just playing tricks on
them.
"Shujuan," Wenlong said slowly. "You'll have to
get that changed. We can't split that."
"Jin can do it?"
"Just don't get shorted," Jianmin, between sips
of his beer. "You know the fucker don't play fair. Check it all 'fore you
leave."
"Duh. Not all of us our morons, pinhead."
"It's very weird," Wensley said a bit more contemplatively,
holding the note up to the light. "It might be small for him, but not many
rich people deal in cash these days, you know?"
"I know; that got me too," Shujuan told him. "He
wasn't uncomfortable with it or anythin'. Seemed all natural. Like he was
used to it."
"Mafia man?" Guonan guessed beside her.
"No," the girl said at once.
"Now, we don't know that yet," Wenlong said, adjusting
his glasses as he returned the note to the pile and brought up his pad
of paper and a pencil. "I still need to do a bit more checking, but I don't
think my books at home would have anything."
"I didn't find anything in mine either. But I din't
even know what to look for."
"I dunno either," the boy admitted. "I guess we
have to go bigger. But we don't have time till Tuesday. Still, I mean...
Y'gotta wonder..."
"The eyes," said the blonde abruptly, laying the
subject flat, like a card hand.
Wenlong looked uncomfortable with it, about as she
expected. He hadn't wanted to let on about this. He usually didn't like
letting on about a lot of things. "Yeah. Didja notice the other guy had
them too? Sort of... washed out, like, drained?"
He shifted, finding their gazes on him, the attentive
looks of children listening in to the start of what they anticipated to
be a good story. What was he, a teacher? "Did you get the feel, looking
at 'em, being around 'em, like they're real older than they look?"
"But they are old," Guonan objected. "They're
adults n' everythin'."
"No, older than that. Like way, way older. It's
only in the eyes. You look there and you kinda see, even after everything,
they look old, and tired." Wenlong bowed his head a little, trying and
failing to concentrate on the numbers he'd started scribbling, now that
he'd gotten this stuck in his brain. "...Like their souls've been stretched
out," he said at last, defeated.
"D'you think..." Shujuan began.
"It's not natural, I'm just sayin'. I mean-- it's
just stuff in books, but--"
"But what?" Jian persisted, nudging his shoulder.
"We don' care. Jus' say it."
"It's hard to talk about!" Wenlong managed desperately.
"How'm I 'sposed to go on about mythos and genetics and experimental science
around you peop--" He stopped, too late, realizing the words coming out
of his mouth.
"Yo," his boyfriend said, gentler this time, "knowin'
stuff ain't anythin' to kick yerself over. Brains're meant to help people,
yeah?"
"...But I didn't mean..."
And suddenly Wenlong's eyes had locked on Shujuan's.
"We're stupid," she told him flatly. "You're not.
We know it. So cut it out. I wouldn't ask if we could've done elsewise."
He could barely keep the gaze. His eyes kept daring
to twitch away, and he had no idea why. It wasn't something he'd experienced
before in his life, or at least for a good many years. Those two men that
kept showing up with their eyes drained and gray, they wore their age and
their fatigue plainly, and there was none of that lack of color here with
Shu-rin. If anything, hers were way too intense for any natural creature.
It got scary, even though he'd never make the mistake of saying it to her
face.
But just for a moment, right then, right before
his resolve broke down and he pulled his gaze away, they looked much older
than anything else he'd ever looked at. And far colder.
"There's a theory," he said finally, staring at
the floorboards. "And it has to do with magic."
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