Chapter Thirty-Nine

By the end of the series… which we binge watched, Celia was quieter than usual. That’s saying something, because the poor thing was always kind of in her shell, or, used to be. Or… maybe still is… I dunno, what am I? A therapist?

“Other than the whole thing about ‘destroying the world’ he was an amazing teacher.” She said when she finally spoke, but I hadn’t really expected her to say that.

“I suppose he was,” I answered and held my hand out in the direction of the kitchen. A bag of chips appeared in my hands and I ripped it open with a loud yank on the opposite sides of the center, then set it between us, “but then, so were the ones at the ATA.” That’s our ‘Agency Training Academy’ where we learn everything there is to know about cultural mimicry, infiltration, and all the ‘painting’ classes it took to make us into not just professionals, but true artists in our field.

“Says you.” She said with a snort. “Let me guess, you were in an advanced class?”

“No.” I answered.

She blinked at that, until I said, “I was in all the advanced classes.” She sighed.

“Of course you were. Why did I not figure that right away, I’m a fool.” Celia shook her head and thrust her hand forcefully into the bag of melon flavored corn chips and shoved several into her mouth.

“What’s up with that?” I asked, I was genuinely confused, and after grabbing some for myself I started scrolling through genre’s until she said with a mouth full of chips…

“Phat one.” The puffed out cheeks and crunching noises got a little in the way, but I figured out what she meant.

After she swallowed, she looked at me side eyed and I handed her the remote again. That appeared to make her more confident, and she continued. “Look, I’m sure things were great for those of you who were at the top, the gifted artists, the true talents who could do it all and not have to really put the effort in. Am I wrong?” She wasn’t so much as asking me, more ‘demanding’ really, but it was easy to answer.

“Sure. The teachers I had were a lot more like that one we just saw, always ready to help us out, to listen, all we really needed was direction and we were left to our own devices when we weren’t specifically training. That’s actually how I learned about Earth. Of course it was w-a-a-a-ay different back then. But since we could study whatever we wanted, I joined a xeno-lit club. What about you?” I wasn’t just asking to be polite, I really did enjoy my time in school, the tests were easy, I usually finished mine in about five minutes, and even on the ‘practical’ exams, I ‘killed’ my targets with minimal fuss or muss.

“Ours were frankly mean. Struggling? They tell you to quit. Working hard? Doesn’t matter, you get it or you don’t. Need assistance afterward? Forget it. We weren’t a privilege to teach, we were a burden they just wanted to get rid of.” Her knuckles cracked when she flexed her fingers a little, they twitched… I didn’t need to be a therapist to see she was getting mad.

“We could have used a teacher like that one.” She mumbled while she glared at the screen.

“So you didn’t get to do other things?” I asked, and Celia let out a long, loud, barking laugh that was overtly forced.

“Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!” She pretended to find the very idea absurd and hilarious. “Very funny, Kayobi. Of course not. The rest of us got shuffled off to other classes chosen for us, and were otherwise forbidden to leave the campus grounds. If you got caught, you’d be automatically failed.”

“That sounds… awful.” I wasn’t kidding, “So why’d you put up with it for the years it took to finish? Why not just quit and do something else?”

Celia brushed back her dark hair and seemed to think it over. “Did you ever wonder that whenever you were helping me out with an assignment that was a little harder for me?”

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“Nope.” I answered. “I just figured that you wanted to make the job a little easier, and maybe you wanted to socialize a little… but of course I know,” I cracked a little smile, “I spend so much time as a human that their way of thinking probably creeped into my daily thoughts a little bit.”

“No kidding.” She answered in a deadpan voice and then went on. She tipped the bag of chips over her hand, catching the last of them in her palm while she answered, “My mother used to work on a little dwarf planet, she was a xenopologist, studying the primitive life there, it was a stone age culture, it was in orbit around a world run by a vicious religious sect. I guess nobody paid much attention to them since they were only launching small satellites and basic rockets… but one of their manned ships crashed on the dwarf planet. The crew, most of them, survived… when the little xenos who lived there came to see what the noise was?” She shook her head.

“It did not go well. My mother never really got over what she saw, and when we heard that the Agency ended up sending someone to the more advanced world to do some painting and deter their thought to visit that dwarf planet again, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. It was worth putting up with bad teachers and worse company.” Celia said and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest.

“But it would have been nice if our teachers were a lot more like that one.” She snorted and pointed at the screen. She’d chosen a show about a teacher winning over his students one by one, and right at that moment the teacher was saying, “...I would never call my students trash.”

“Maybe you should try getting a job here as a teacher or something?” I suggested, “It wouldn’t be that hard to dummy up something, and you already have the math skills or whatever.”

Her arms relaxed and we watched the ‘great teacher’ get around a kid’s negative emotions by bonding with them over something they both liked. “I thought you said I should enjoy doing nothing and relaxing, now here you are suggesting I get a second job on my vacation? Are you really Kayobi?” She had a smile on her face when she asked that, and I took that to mean she was warming to the idea.

“I’m not serious of course,” I made a mock shiver at the very idea of… getting a job, “obviously NEETs rule and all… but if you just cannot embrace the greatness that is my nothing, well, you still need to take more vacation time, and if you need to do something even so? Then why not something you like?”

“That’s not a bad idea I guess, but I don’t know anything about how to apply for a job here, and I doubt there’s any schools who would hire me just out of the blue like that.” Celia countered, she had a point.

Before we could say anything else, there was a knock at my door. As soon as Celia shrank back down to child size I said, “Come in.” I said, and the door swung open to reveal Asahi and his quiet cousins.

“Hi.” He said, his head was bowed, and behind him I saw that the one named Rin walked in with a big laundry bag over his shoulder, as well as a bit of a limp in his step as he came in. I put a couple of big bills beneath the empty bags of chips… and you know something?

He looked so dejected, so forlorn, so damn desperate… I still struggled to deal with him being mean to my Jin, but… I just couldn’t hold a grudge over it. I couldn’t.

So I went ahead and told him as he and his cousins set quickly to work cleaning up the garbage, “Laundry is just inside the door along with detergent. And by the way, bring your cousins by here in a week.”

Asahi looked my way, “Uh, why?”

“I called in a favor.” I said, “Dr. Stone, he’s this big name medical guy, world renowned brain surgeon, he owes me a favor, and I called it in.” I know, I said it kind of clunky, but I was improvising under the saddest pair of eyes I’d ever seen, gimmie a break. “He specializes in brains, I told him about the symptoms, what happened with your cousins, their behavior and everything, and he’s totally sure he can help them.”

Asahi stopped dead in his tracks, his dull eyed cousins looked at him with a glassy stare, like they were waiting for him to tell them what to do. “You’re not making fun of me, are you, miss Kayobi?”

“Nope. Who knows how much, but it could be anything from a slight improvement to a full recovery.” I promised, but to my great surprise, Asahi didn’t lose his mind with glee.

“I can’t afford much… dad doesn’t make much, and-” He started to explain, but he stopped speaking when I shook his head.

“I said I called in a favor. He’ll do the work for free. Just drop them off with me and I’ll get them where they need to go and bring them back to you afterward. Favors are free, otherwise it’s just business.” I snorted with derision, like he’d never heard the word favor before.

I could see some objection about to be raised, his mouth was already opening and disbelief was etched all over his face, from his plate wide eyes to his still frame, so I hastened to add something else. “If you really want to repay me, other than by the usual chores,” I jerked my thumb toward Celia, “when her mom gets here, she’ll need work. Could you route any job leads this way if they come up?”

“I… I guess. I don’t know how much good they’ll do her but… if I hear something, I’ll tell you.” He promised.

I was pretty pleased with that, after all, it’s always nice when things work out.