“Does the CIA teach you building structures too?” I asked, staring at the complex drawings with excitement. The maintenance engineer, who should’ve known the information we were seeking, stood beside us with the bewildered face of a Halloween kid who dropped the candy bag into the sewer and just stared.
“No, I studied this in college — always go to college, my little friend, you have a brain to do so.” Edward raised his head and rubbed my hair, leaving a faint scent of ink lingering, “But, well, don’t think your college major would become what you are going to do in the rest of your life. Fate, my friend, is very fickle.”
“From civil engineering to spying on magical people surely is a pretty huge shift change.” I remarked, “Where did you learn these?”
“Purdue, which I kind of regret; it is too far from home.” he sighed, “Perhaps not the best example for my siblings, and none of them stayed with our mother after my demonstration.”
“If this can make you feel better, my Hong Kongese cousins now go across the continent to the Empire of Enclaves for their pre-med, and my Texan cousin went to Germany to get dental degrees.” I offered, trying to console him. “So where are you from? It can’t be that far.”
“Gaylord, Michigan.”
Half of the water spewed from my mouth before I could compress my lips and forced myself to not laugh. which he took surprisingly well, shrugging and smiling in response. “Many people had the same reaction,” he admitted, “Laugh if you want; Would be pretty good if my hometown could lighten the mood.”
“No, I just swallowed it,” I said, couldn’t help chuckling, “but—like—whoever named your hometown deserves a medal. Don’t you get bullied in school?”
“When everyone is from the city called Gaylord, no one is really bullied because of the name Gaylord. But over 90% of the population are white people, so the main reason I was bullied was racial.” he pointed at the young officer opening the door, just finished the tasks we assigned to him, “This guy, Brian, his situation was just the opposite. He’s from Baldwin, Michigan, which has more black people than white. We come from the same state, yet I was bullied because I’m black, he was bullied because he’s white.”
“Michigan state doesn’t sound like an enjoyable state, then,” Scathach said while calculating something on paper.
“Oh, it is enjoyable. Beautiful scenery, a lot of outdoor activities to do. Maybe come for a visit after your retirement?” Edward drew a piece of paper from the stack for testaments and wrote something for me, “My sister is getting her medical degree in California, probably a few classes ahead of your cousins. She has a son, my nephew, around your age. So — you know — if your cousins need any assistance.”
“Thank you,” I said, put the note away. He looked at me, unspeaking, with a face that looked like he held back a thousand words in his mouth, and silently walked away. Two Imperials witnessed the whole thing but reacted in totally different ways — that civil engineer wore a smug smirk with his moustache tilted so high, it could probably prise up the earth and patted my shoulders friendly, yet Scathach gave out a sigh, carefully folded that piece of note with all the care in this world and stuffed it in my inner pocket.
“You know, Edward is leaving you his last will.” She remarked.
“Scathach, there got to be at least one million people leaving all kinds of wishes to each Hao every year.” I replied, “Do we look like some kind of Santa Claus? Even Santas don’t make adults’ wishes come true.”
She was stunned, “You do realise, that the CIA would wipe their officers’ existence if they were killed in action, right? Mr. Edwards simply wants you to tell his family the truth.”
“One thing about running power is, Scathach, that if a seemingly cruel or unreasonable rule exists somewhere, then it is there for a purpose soaked in blood.”
“But kindness is always the key —”
“Then maybe you need to go talk to these homunculi downstair to just shake hands with everyone and let us leave peacefully.” I rolled the structure graph into a reel, “Do you prefer to come with me, or just me to deliver the message to these CIA officers?”
She chose to silently follow me out, and like she should, stood there with a glum face and watched me shaking hands with the CIA officers. “Don’t think so negatively, Mr. Edward.” I said, stuffed his folded letter into his pocket, “I am very sure that you will easily do this and return to your family. You graduated Purdue, how hard can planting some demolitions be?”
“Yeah, it’s just to plant some explosives onto one of the pillars of the storage floor, how hard can it be?” He grabbed my hand firmly, “I still wish you could make friends with my nephew, though. A real good one, he is.”
“You can take me to him when you are back—”
“I should go.” Scathach interrupted, her voice steady. “Alone. That way I can move within my Void, which makes everything quicker.”
But I didn’t want her to go — you wouldn’t want your first cool friend to go fight a bunch of seemingly maniacs downstairs, too. “No, the report is going to be ugly if any of you get injured.” It was like Edward saw through my mind and raced me to answer her, “Our mission is to protect you, after all.”
Edward stood in front of the line of CIA officers, his chest puffed out, bulging like his belly like he was a feisty rooster in front of his own chicks. “Brian.” He called the youngest officer, “How do you feel about your first run in the CIA?”
“Fabulous, sir.” Brian replied, his eyes shining with youthful enthusiasm, “My blood is boiling.”
Edward's expression shifted, turning more solemn. “Then you need to cool down. This isn’t the Marines.” he said in a rather serious tone, “Leave two magazines and one HE round to yourself and hand in the rest to me. You’ve been assigned a new task.”
“But, sir—”
“I’m sorry that your first run in SAD is not as same as one would imagine, son.” Edward said, “Your new mission, protect this young gentleman here, no matter the cost.”
“Me?” I asked, my excitement rising, “Does that mean I am the chosen one now?”
“You will always be my chosen one.” Edward smiled warmly, and reached out a fist for me to bump, “I’ll see you soon, champ.”
As the magic people made way for their silent exit, their icy gazes seemed to lower the room's temperature. The engineer approached me, extending his hand, which I instinctively grasped. "Good job, kid,” he commended, his voice heavy with appreciation. "We should have regarded these people as cannon fodder long ago."
“Pardon me, Mr Bennett.” Scathach's voice erupted like the impending explosion of a powder keg. "They risked their lives to save us.”
“Blimey, professor, they are Ignorants.” The engineer, seemingly indifferent, retorted, “They weren’t being merciful, actually, when they harmed us. Do you plan to be a Marie-Antoinettist forever?”
“The fuck are you trying to satirise my friend?” Frustration surged through me, though I didn’t know what a Marie-Antoinettist was, I wished I were taller so I could grab his neck and confront him more directly. “Off with you!”
He shrugged and didn’t forget to make a funny face with me when he left. Scathach didn’t hesitate to turn around and walked away, while I remained standing there, wondering if I had inadvertently upset my new friend.
“What are Ignorants?” I asked Souyo.
“Non-magic folks, in a very impolite way.” He replied swiftly, “But everyone seems to call them that. A politer way to say it could be ‘Voidless,’ though it's fallen out of favour since the French Revolution.”
“The guy standing beside you,” a magician lady with a fancy fan in her hands standing beside us added, “he is considered to be a Voidless.”
“What is your nature, Brian?” I turned around to verify with him, “Shouldn’t ‘Voidless’ just mean people without a Void nature?”
He didn’t immediately answer my question, but handed me some kind of — statue, in the polite way of saying. He mixed sawdust with some spare whale oil and used the paste to mould something that looked like a seriously undernourished sweet potato with 4 even more undernourished potatoes under it, and used cling film to cover it up, though I can still feel the sharp wood on the surface.
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
“Black bear, sir,” he answered with a face of solemnity.
“It is the deadliest statue in the world, that is what it is,” I said, trying my best to find the slightest feature of this thing being the shape of a bear and still failing, “does it, like, explode better in such a shape?”
“It can’t explode, sir. There is no igniter inside.” Brian said. He then explained carefully to me how to make a phone-triggering bomb, which, for obvious reasons, you shouldn’t know the details, but I can tell you that the igniter is based on the parts of a US military M68 grenade since the chance of you being able to get a live grenade is pretty low.
“That is pretty cool,” I praised, “It feels like you don’t even need a nature.”
“I don’t have a nature, sir,” Brian responded.
I nodded, approximately understanding the issue here, but soon found a new issue. Brian became a mixture of one mirror and a lot of chewed sticky candies mashed together — if I took a step, he took a step. I stopped, and he stopped. I knocked on Scathach’s room door, he stepped forward to knock on the door, too, and quickly returned to his original position a few steps away.
“You may be dismissed.” I said, “I just want to talk to my friend privately.
“My order is to protect you, sir,” he replied.
“But you are a CIA officer, not some kind of Marine—” I gave a pause, realising that Edward mentioned he was a marine indeed, “Anyway— I understand that you are trained to carry out an order in the Marine Corps, but shouldn’t CIAs be all mysterious and give these ‘you’ll never know I am here’ experience?”
“I am a recruit of the division of SAD.” He straightened his back, “In many ways, I found my missions have similar logic to missions in Kabul.”
“SAD stands for?”
“Special Activities Division, sir,” he clarified.
“Alright, Brian, first of all, don’t ‘sir’ me, I am not your superior, and you are significantly older than me, I should probably ‘sir’ you.” I said, trying to persuade him with a smile. “So, uh, are you guys SOG like Alex Mason and Frank Woods?”
“No, I am part of the Political Action Group, sir. We handle various tasks including escorting political heavyweights like you.”
“Alright, how about this, my name is Ninety-nine, and from now on, we call each other's name, because we are friends now.” I suggested, reaching out a hand towards him, “I mean, I am really trying to make some magician friends to brag about to my dad, but it's also pretty cool to have a CIA friend — also, you don’t have a nature, I have a useless nature, we are kind of equal here.”
“Yes, sir.” he shook my hand.
“No— you should say, ‘ok, Ninety-nine’ — or something like that. Now, I need to go talk with my other friend, Professor Scathach, inside this room. And since she is my first friend from earlier, even if you get in with me, you will probably end up as the third wheel in a three-person group, especially when I notice that you are not very talkative. Do you understand me so far?”
“Yes, si— ok, Ninety-nine.”
“So what I am going to do, Brian, is to leave you here for a brief moment, because I am your friend. It is for your own sake, so you won’t feel bored or isolated.” I hid half of my body behind Scathach’s room door and was proud of myself for trapping him in a maze of my logic, “And you may guard the door if you want, but it is technically a break to be with friends.”
Don't get me wrong, I love military personals, but the military trains people to think too straight, and sometimes the best way to manipulate a straight-minded person is to make him lost in a maze because his mind only walks forward to keep bumping into walls. The room I entered was enveloped in a veil of floating, ethereal mists, and my fairy godmother sat amid the mist with a lighted cigarette between her fingers.
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“Scathach?” I whispered. Do smart people smoke too? I asked myself, I always thought smarter people wouldn’t need anaesthetic to paralyse their brains, just like I drink water but I can’t fill water in our Jaguar’s gas tank. A few years later I learned there’s this smart people’s thing called cocaine, and another few years later I learned about Amphetamine. She probably thought the same, you can tell from the awkwardness on her face, as I was the father who caught her stealing a few sips behind a locked door.
“Hey, mo chridhe.” The speed of her using her fingers to cease the cigarette and her other hand reaching for windows was remarkable, but her voice sounded just like these drunk people who were about to faint on the street. “do you require my presence elsewhere—”
“Don’t open the curtain—”
Bullets came faster than their guns to sound. The second I felt an unexpected push from behind, I thought that was the feeling of getting shot. But as the world spun in disarray, I found myself cradled in Brian's arms, our bodies rolling toward the window in a frenzied tangle rapidly, like a tumbleweed ball in the storm. The third round whistled across the room, quicker than in a duel of a fast draw, and broke something across the room. But nothing across the room could squeeze into my eyes, they were filled with my friend’s image.
“Scathach?” I called quietly, voice trembling. She didn’t answer back — she couldn’t answer back. her eyelid twitched, her forehead unknitted, but couldn’t cover the hole on her forehead no matter how hard her skin tried to extend. I reached my hand through the smoke and tried to stop the pink, stringy thing from coming out of that hole, but the second hole on her chest started to spit red as soon as I tried to pull her to me.
The fourth round came, and this time it made a muffled sound before Brian could shield me with his back. That bullet bounced off the wall they were aiming at, and I heard Brian’s snort with a twitch of pain — the bullet ricocheted right onto Brian’s back. I heard the sound of someone dashing in, and his represent immediately added something familiar to this strange room. Souyo waved his hand in the middle of the whirlpools of smoke, and as he granted them weight, they fell to the ground and the room unleashed her veil.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” He shouted towards the outside of the window, “Hao is here!”
And the next bullet never came, despite he just stood in their range. Souyo flipped me up and down like I was a French toast slid into hot pans, and after he made sure I had no bullet holes on me, his arms clamping me were stiff as dead, popping every joint of my body just like I was a piece of bubble wrap that he often played with. Unknown language flew out of his mouth like butterflies, reminded me of the Norwegian Father in my hometown’s church.
“I’m okay, Scathach was shot.” I stammered, my voice barely audible, my words sounded weak due to air all squeezed out of my lungs, “I’m okay.”
Compared to how careful and loving he was with me, the way he caught Scathach’s neck and flipped the corpse around looked rather crude. “No holes on either side.” He said, “The bullet stuck in her brain.”
I craned my neck and stared at that tiny well of flesh on her forehead leaking red water. Should there be so many ways of having a bullet hole? I thought pathetically, thinking back on my first time killing people — three rapists, four murderers, one drug dealer. Rifle rounds tore vase-sized holes in their backs, my hand could barely wrap the grip of my aunty’s pistol, excitement and joy could almost erupt every time I secured each death on their heads. This must be karma, I told myself, Once you clung to your aunt and insisted to go doing some executions, the god repays you by executing your new friend in front of you — and making you watch. Brian reached for his back like he was trying to apply soap on the dead spot, and pulled a bullet out of his back, no harder than pulling out an acne — his spine was too hard, it literally stopped a ricochet.
“Ninety-nine,” Souyo's voice resonated with unwavering authority. “I need you to trust whatever I am going to do.” Didn’t seem to care about the miracle of flesh stopping a bullet, he raised his rapier.“And you there — hold the shoulders, raise it higher.”
It was a hard job for a spoiled 5 ft 3 guy to balance a 5 ft 8 corpse, but Brian was there to bore the brunt of the weight for me, despite the body's weighty tilt towards him. Souyo stood in front of us, his expression looked rather like that executioner who chopped off 60 heads in a day, than the guy who would go steal Dr Pepper in the fridge for me after midnight. The weight I bore in my trembling hands seemed to diminish as a sliver of light whizzed across the room, my eyes darted upward, greeted by nothing but half of a severed neck.
“Oops.” Souyo said calmly, like it was a revenge for me, “Missed the neck. You should’ve raised it higher.”
“You fuck—”
I hopped up and Brian immediately pulled me away from the window again, silently pointing at the corpse — well, not the corpse anymore. Red crystal pillars pierced her collarbones, originating from within her. and just like the air was absorbing red, they quickly oxidised and reflected the pristine white of bones, then the rich red of muscle, then the delicate pallor of the skin. The last to regrow in those five seconds was her hair, scarlet cascading down as a raging torrent, drenching my vision in a red other than blood.
With an unwavering resolve, Scathach defied death itself. She sat up without hesitation, her eyes locking onto mine, shimmering with an apologetic softness as petals of a spring flower.
“I’m Sorry you have to see this,” she whispered.
“Ah, this one has already seen enough.” Souyo substituted my tolerance before I even could, “Remember — picking the bullet out of a Demi-immortal’s head is always slower than waiting for her to rebuild a brain with a bullet lodged in it. Chopping the whole head off is even faster than picking the bullet out with your fingers.”
“Why do you think it is necessary to tell a teenager that?”
“Oh, we just talk about everything.” Souyo curled his upper lip, “Plus, he’s done worse things than beheading people. Is this the first time you met a Hao?”
“Second time — and I met some other Haos before. What did this one do?”
“Ask himself. Our family rule is no one tell on other people.” Souyo tossed the hot embarrassment to me and at least looked innocent.
“Ninety-nine, be honest with me.” Scathach turned to me with serious eyes, “Did anyone force or mislead you to do something you do not want to do?”
“Eh… no?” I hesitated and pulled open every drawer in my brain to find even one piece of file regarding me being forced to do things, “To be honest, it feels more like I am forcing other people to do things.”
“Would you mind sharing?”
”You promise me that you won’t get mad first.” I was worried she would stop being friends with me.
“Of course, piggy promise?” she reached out a hand and curled her pinky finger, “I promise that no matter what you do, I will never be mad at you, nor dislike you.”
“I feel like I already made you mad, that is why I came to apologise.”
“I am merely feeling sad that we adults built a society that works as a bad example for you.” Her pinky finger entwined with mine, “Do you mind telling me what did you do?”
“Well, I believe I misled Souyo to break me out of a hospital.”
“And I need to announce, that I was doing that based on nothing but my own will.” Souyo added, “Just couldn’t help to let him see what I’ve built in these years.”
“So that doesn’t count?”
“I guess that doesn’t count.” Souyo shook his head, “Why don’t we talk about that time, you angered Aunty Suer so much, that she stormed back and beat me, your uncles and your dad up brutally?”
“Ah, so that grudge is where this conversation comes from.” I snapped my fingers, “But that wasn’t my fault, they are dying anyway.”
“Now, remember, Ninety-nine, using violence is not the right way to solve a problem.” Scathach said, “What do you mean, they are dying anyway?”
“He killed eight people on his eighth birthday,” Souyo said first when I was totally confused by Scathach’s words.
“You are not helping, Mr. Normandy.” Scathach treated him like a joke.
“Yeah, you are not helping, Souyo.” I followed her words with more taunting, “And, kill is not the right word to use. They were going to be executed anyway. I just speeded up the process.”
Scathach gasped in horror, “You people allowed a kid to watch an execution?”
“No, he executed. Oh, is it finally my turn to speak now?” Souyo leaned on the wall, “It was his eighth birthday, he woke up at 5 in the morning, stuffed his bed with clothes so we all thought he was still sleeping, woke the driver and drove himself to the airport to pick up his aunt, Hao Suer, somehow convincing her that his eighth birthday gift is a tour to prison. Then he asked the warden to withdraw condemned criminals with a testimonial he stole from his father’s desk — the whole province had only five condemned criminals, and he thought that wasn’t enough, so the warden had to ‘borrow’ three from Jiangsu province. He then let the family guards line up—”
“By the Void—” Scathach sighed in a wear I didn’t know, “Ninety-nine—”
“I admit I have selfish motives,” I said, “my family was copying these American OICW ideas back then, and I wanted to be the first one to test the prototype.”
“OICW stand for?”
“Objective Individual Combat Weapons.” Brian tried to cover his wound with some kind of big instant bandage, but found it hard to put it on the right portion without seeing the wound on his back, “A failed project to combine rifle, grenade launcher and trajectory calculator all in a small system.”
“See? Brian understands me.”
“That isn’t an excuse for you to then further ‘test’ these grenade launchers.” Souyo robbed that piece of bandage from Brian’s hand and slapped it onto the right spot, “These people’s families expected at least corpses, and you sent them back a few cans of ground human flesh thinner than a bowl of Chili.”
“I used Aunty Sue’s pistol to shoot them in the brainstems before I used the grenade launchers, I’m sure they can’t feel anything.” I shrugged, “Also, they were going to be burned to ashes anyway. There isn’t a super huge difference.”
“This is not right, Ninety-nine.”
“And somehow this was our fault — Sue thought we were the wire-pullers, so when we stood outside his room with party poppers waiting for him to come out, Sue drifted an armoured car back to the home, stormed in and slapped everyone in less than five seconds.”
“I was deaf but the scenes of all Haos scuffling with each other were so entertaining that I didn’t even need to hear.”
“Yeah, you should be, that was what’s going on when you hear ten grenades blow up near you with growing child’s ears.”
“But no one was injured, except my ears, so I call that a good ending.”
“It may not be a good ending for these people’s families, Ninety-nine.”
“They were condemned criminals, Scathach, they were going to get shot anyway, I simply speeded up the process and saved them the torture of living a prison life. Isn’t that just merciful?”
“Well, comparing to other things the Chinese government had done—” Scathach stopped herself, like she was choked by her own words, “Why can’t you test your weapons on dead meat or even animals?”
“I was testing them on dead meat.”
“Pardon me, I mean dead meat other than people’s.” Her frown made me shrink myself into an embarrassing ball, “Such as — pork, for example.”
“We already tested them on hogs. As for pigs, it would be a waste of food, and Haos hate wasting.” I explained quietly, “Are you mad at me now?”
“No, darling, at this world.” she sighed, her eyes flickering as the bullet hole on her shoulder somehow started to bleed again with a face of disappointment was palpable. “How did this world turn a charming infant to this?”
“Your shoulder is bleeding.” I reminded her, trying to be helpful.
“Aye, right.” Her action of grabbing a pen and unscrewing both sides to make a metal tube was carefree, “If you wouldn’t mind—”
“Yeah, why the hell are you two in a lady’s room?” I picked up a whiteboard near her desk and covered the broken window with it, “Get out, both of you!”
Brian was a little sluggish, being the only guy in the room without super-healing power or plot armour, so I tossed him out by dragging the handle on his plate carrier and slammed the door shut. “There we go.” I said, “They are gone.”
“I mean, don’t you have places to be?” She asked.
“Come on, I already saw your brains splattered, I think it’s okay for me to see you digging out another bullet with a pen.” I put my hands in pockets and acted innocent, “Do you need local or general anaesthesia? I have lidocaine, adrenaline, alfadolone—”
“I really need to have a word with your parents about your upbringing. How did you get access to these medicines?” She asked with a sigh, tossing the pen away, probably thought it was a cruel thing for a kid to use a pen on a bullet hole, “Never mind that, please. Would you mind passing me that bottle on the table?”
“Whiskey?” I held the bottle in my hand and immediately filled my mouth with it before she could stop me. “White people really love these kinds of drinks with weird tastes, isn’t it?” I spitted it out, immediately felt the numbness of my tongue making my voice unclear.
“How should I supposed to explain this to your family?”
“Explain what? Do you honestly think a Hao needs to follow Canada’s drinking age laws?” I bounced around in excitement, “Plus, I didn’t drink alcohol. I used it to sanitise my mouth so I can suck the bullet out. I saw these people on television do it all the time.”
“Well, you might want to consider suing your TV stations because that's definitely not the proper way to remove a bullet.” She reached out to halt my head from moving forward, “Also, Demi-immortal’s blood is highly toxic for you. In academic terms, we call it ‘Dynamic allergy.’ Do you have a plastic bag to wrap your hand? I have a set of tools there in the middle drawer on the right.”
“It might not be appropriate to take this out, but I have a condom here.” I quickly took the thing out of my pocket, “I found this thing helpful for waterproofing, wrapping the wound or just making a huge air balloon for fun.”
“Cover your hand with it, ensuring it doesn’t leak, put some alcohol in the container and ignite the tools.” She instructed me in perfect order, “Aye, you are doing a brilliant job, now take the scissor-looking thing. Revolve it around until you feel the bullet, it should be around my shoulder joint.”
As she held her shirt aside and exposed a side of her collarbone in an elegant shape, she used two fingers to keep the wound open, making it look like the shape of an eye and the darkness inside was staring at me. “Does this hurt?” I asked while performing, trying to distract her — also what I learnt from television, and she replied by shaking her head with a smile. “That ruby necklace is beautiful. Present from a boyfriend?”
“Girlfriends. Sisters, to be precise.”
“How about the earrings? Your watch? striped suits?”
“These I made for myself.” She maintained her smile, “I never had the chance to see someone.”
The scissors in my hand produced a gentle clicking sound as I finally located the bullet. I raised my head to look at my friend, noticing her thin eyebrows, delicate eyelashes, and a pair of crimson eyes that seemed to pour forth like a bubbling spring. “Why wouldn’t you? You look gorgeous.” I said, “I’m very sure if you walk into a bar on Wall Street, half of the most successful Americans would offer to buy you a drink.”
“Oh, thank you, not many people find researchers attractive.” She casually put the blame on herself.
“Can I interest you with Souyo?” I blurted out. Right now, when I am telling you this, I wish I could go back in time and slap teenager me in the face and tear my jaw off, “My dad used to say, ‘You need to find Souyo a girlfriend now since you two stick together all the time, you won’t be attractive at all when Souyo stands by your side.’ So I am kind of rushed on that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of challenging your claim,” she responded. “I think you are all the thing his eyes can contain — you pinched on the bullet, now pull it out.”
The thing I pulled out bore little resemblance to any bullet I'd ever seen. It was stout and heavy, yet it hadn't managed to penetrate Scathach's body. Furthermore, it had an unusually round shape compared to typical bullets.
“But the relationship between Souyo and I are family love,” I explained, gazing at the bullet’s reflective surface. “Eventually he would have to get married and perhaps even move out, right? My maids all got married and moved out.”
“Perhaps Mr. Normandy should have his freedom of choosing his companion whenever he thinks you’ve grown enough for his care—”
The guy we were talking about simultaneously knocked, and the bullet hole on Scathach’s shoulder closed up before I could turn my head back from that distraction. That face with purple pupils used to hang a faint smile all the time, and it was the first time I saw that face growing into such a massive grave.
“Sorry to interrupt.” he said, “Big trouble.”