Chapter 14

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"What's beyond the Arch?" I decided to ask the question that's been bugging me for a long time.

"You asked!" Daas stroked his chin thoughtfully. "There's space for a Deed... And... No, there's no other way to explain it."

Not wanting to go overboard with the trusting attitude the boss showed me today, I didn't risk asking him any more questions. And so what he told me gave me a great deal of information to think about.

While I wondered once again what I was risking if I decided to go through the Arch, Daas finished the first course. Either he'd listened to my advice or he'd gotten his head on straight, but his first course today was not something complicated, but a classic Japanese salmon soup with sesame seeds. As a result, despite the slightly overcooked fish and lack of salt, I ate my portion without even wincing. However, perhaps it was an accidental success for the boss because he ruined the second and the third course completely.

After Ten Daas's story, I began to see his efforts at cooking in a different way. If before it seemed to me some kind of incomprehensible bliss, now I have come to understand that there is much more behind it...

I went up to my room and took a shower, and I rolled in bed for a long time, replaying the boss's monologue in my head. He told me a lot more than I had asked. The more I thought about the subject of the Pilgrimage, the more I became convinced that going through the Arch to get the Face was not the smartest thing to do. Pilgrimage is a way of being Heard in the first place, so I don't understand Rick's and the other Goon's motivation yet. Why did they pass the Arch at least a few times? They don't look addicted at all. And the personality of Daas himself? Talking so calmly about buying a huge area of land in the capital?! And the equipment of the biker base is obviously worth much more than a few francs. Maybe my initial assumption that the equipment for the restaurant was stolen was fundamentally wrong, too. Lots of questions with no answers yet. I don't know why, but I'm curious about everything going on around Tartar!

Jiro was on duty at the bar today, and since my workplace was the bar stool, I had the perfect excuse to talk to him. At first, the conversation didn't go well, but my curiosity and my desire for a new source of information in the form of the bartender outweighed his lack of company. Of course, I didn't ask him direct questions about anything that interested me. I chatted mostly about nothing, just to get Jiro used to talk to me.

To my considerable surprise, despite his rather hard character, Jiro was quite chatty. He could go on and on about anything for hours, and he had a great sense of humor. He had a very black sense of humor, but because he didn't cross the line of vulgarity, I even enjoyed talking to him. He also happened to be a pretty good player of Go, better than I was, but not much, so the working time flew by.

The next morning I finally had a semblance of a breakthrough in my jogging, managed to run almost half the distance, and my legs weren't humming so badly with fatigue. But that was the end of the good news. Daas was in no mood at all, and he kept silent, absorbed in his thoughts when I tried to ask him a question. In addition, he was constantly getting messages on his phone, distracting him. When he finished cooking, he didn't even offer me a taste, but immediately threw everything in the trash, kicking the waste bucket so that it was flattened and unusable. After which he said:

"Some business came up. I'll be gone for a week. Illea's in charge. If you want to keep up your morning runs, and you'd better keep up your sleeping and running schedule, I could put in a good word with Lance..." Daas picked up the flattened bucket and looked at it with a small amount of regret. "He's just jogging at this time, though, not toward the market, but along the waterfront..."

On the one hand, I really want to say "no," because these morning runs are already getting on my nerves. On the other hand, I was just starting to get good at something, so why should I give up? I don't want to run in dark neighborhoods by myself, because I can't run away from anyone tired. In addition, this is an opportunity to make a closer acquaintance with the leader of the Goons, which is at least a very good idea! The only question I have is, why is the boss running with me and not with him? He was kind of pushing me on the grounds that he's bored alone...

What to decide? Besides, my main motivation for waking up so early, namely, the extra income I had left after buying groceries at the market, was gone for the week. However, my thoughts were short-lived; curiosity overcame laziness by a wide margin, and I agreed to the boss's suggestion. Daas promised to write to Lance and send him my cell phone number.

When I went upstairs, I came up with about a dozen theories as to what kind of business the bosses had, demanding his departure. But since all of them were fantasies not based on facts, in the end, I decided not to fill my head with this, and for the first time in several days, I sat at the computer and downloaded the training modules. To my dismay, there was no breakthrough; all the results were the same as before.

The day's work went by in a mundane way, and nobody seemed to care at all about the absence of the boss. Everyone behaved exactly the same way they did when he was there. Even Illea, who I thought would give us all workers a sort of demonstration week of despotism, did not show her character in any way.

I had less and less work to do each day. Most of the customers came in for more than one visit, and my advice was less and less needed. If it continued at the same rate, it was possible that soon the restaurant would no longer need my services at all. And that would be a loss of work and, consequently, of income, which would be very unpleasant. In principle, Daas can fire me even now, because the girls' waitresses are already fully aware of the system and themselves could give the necessary advice. It's good that Vera and Aloya still prefer to redirect all questions from customers to me. But soon they will realize that this is not necessary at all, and it will put an end to my work and, more importantly, to my salary.

After thinking about it, I asked Jiro to teach me how to mix cocktails. Since the giant had almost no work until six o'clock at night, he agreed, it was all in a day's work. Nor did Illea object, saying only that I would have to pay for spilled or ruined drinks out of my pocket. That seemed fair enough to me, especially since I had agreed to pay for spills at the cost of the drink. If I could learn to be a bartender before Daas realized that the technical consultant position was unnecessary, I would have an opportunity to offer my services in another capacity. This place interested me a lot. And the idea of putting together a game team of bikers was too tempting, despite the very slim chances of it coming to fruition, for me to just say goodbye to it. And losing my job and, consequently, Daas's patronage put a stone on the whole idea.

The more time I spend with Jiro, the more I like the man. The seemingly awkward-looking lout turned out to be a man with a very lively mind. When I talked to him, for the second time since I started working here, I noticed that I was a poor judge of character. I used to think I could read people's motives and desires fairly accurately, but that seemed to apply only to my peers. Here, Daas, Illea, or Jiro - their life experiences were so much greater than mine that my intuition was a liability in calculating their behavior. For example, in the beginning, I had a more intimate conversation with the bartender to get as much information about his surroundings as possible, but in practice? In fact, he turned it around so that I told him almost everything about myself, about uni, about the trauma, about the game, and even about my sisters. He didn't seem to ask about anything, but his jokes led to me telling him another detail about myself.

"I don't want to upset you, but I guess you'll have to," Jiro said after I told him about my plans to save up for the surgery. "Even the best surgeon can't help you."

"Do you have a medical degree?" I snapped. "Show me your diploma."

"What's that got to do with medicine?" The bartender grinned. "Utis, you seem like a smart guy, but sometimes you're as dumb as a corkscrew."

"Yes, yes, and you're an unrecognized genius... " For some reason, I was a little offended by Jiro's words.

"It really surprises me that you think you broke your arm so ridiculously hard just by accident," he tries to poke my wrist with a fork, but I manage to pull my hand away.

"Shit happens sometimes," I shrugged. "There are far more tragic coincidences in life."

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I won't argue with that," the half-breed shrugged. "But I think that your case is more than just a coincidence. But there's no point in arguing about it, so save your money and have the operation, and then we'll see whether I'm right or wrong," he turned away, seeming to think that the topic of conversation was over.

"That's no good," I called out to him. "Tell me, what are you imagining?"

"The fact that you constantly slept on one of the most important applied subjects, whether in school or at uni, is your own stupidity," Jiro clearly revels at the moment.

"Which one is that?"

"The theology, of course." His smile, full of superiority, is annoying. Besides, I never thought of theology as an applied subject and always treated it as mandatory brainwashing.

"Applied science?" My sarcasm is not covered by anything.

"Yeah," Jiro said, folding his arms across his chest, clearly barely able to contain his laughter. "You want me to prove it to you?"

"Go ahead." If it's another batch of his favorite black humor, I promise I'll remind him of it!

"Well, let's get started," he gets up from his chair and starts pacing back and forth, putting his thumbs behind the belt of his kimono. "What's the competition for a scholarship place at TUNJ?"

"About forty people." For the paid department, of course, considerably less, but for the scholarship, it's about the same.

"How many additional students have been accepted on extended scholarship... How did you say...? The extra "cybersports" quota?"

"Seven."

"Has the number of scholarships increased by this number?"

"No."

"That is, because of you and others like you, two hundred and eighty people have lost their chance to get a scholarship."

"Why such a number?"

"I said a chance for admission, and every one of the applicants hoped to get in. This year, because of the new redistribution of quotas in favor of the cybersports team, that's how many people lost their chance to get into the regular order. Seven places multiplied by forty applicants for each, that's almost three hundred. Three hundred offended people. Or rather, many more, since each of the candidates has parents, friends, and other supporters."

"Ahem." No, of course, I knew I'd taken someone's place, but truth be told, I preferred not to think about it.

"In general, I bet one against ten that you were cursed. Or rather, begging for trouble. Or even more accurately, not to you specifically, but begged by those who took a place that should have been taken by someone else. Such wandering curses, not tied to any individual, usually work where the intervention of divine powers would be minimal. You just happened to be the weakest link. If you hadn't broken your arm, someone else on a cybersports scholarship would have fallen badly on a run, or something similar would have happened. The only accident in all of this is that it worked on you, a one in seven chance. Although you're such a nerd that it must have been easier for the curse to work on you than on someone else..."

"Are you telling me that some offended teenager walked the Arch and was Heard?"

"No, I don't think so. But resentful parents, who are sure that some asshole has interfered with their child's happiness, are capable of more than that..." And here I agree with him, I've witnessed a couple of times how in innocuous situations individual dads or moms go nuts when it comes to talking about the good of their child. "The bad thing for you is that if I'm right, you can't cure your arm with surgery. The curse can only be redeemed."

"That's..." My throat was dry. "If I don't make it through the Arch, will I just end up with a crippled hand?"

"I didn't say that!" Jiro interrupts me very sharply. "You can find someone to pray on the pilgrimage for you..."

I've heard of such services. They are not advertised and they don't seem to exist but in fact, they do. There are even rumors of regular groups of people who pass through the Arch to offer prayers for others. Not for free, of course, they say; it is a very expensive service, comparable in price to the cost of surgery. I don't know much about it, though, and perhaps it's all just a rumor.

That was the end of our conversation with Jiro, as I fell into a deep thoughtfulness. I needed to digest what the bartender had said...

When it was closing time, I received a text message from an unknown number: At 5:45 at the restaurant entrance

There was no signature on the message, but it wasn't hard to guess who it came from. So Lance had agreed to Daas' request to accompany me on my morning runs.

Of all the Goons, only two seemed to treat me more or less normally, without the easy-to-read contempt on their faces. They were Rick and Lance. The former, probably because of my victory over him in the game, and the latter, apparently, because of his age. If I'm not mistaken, the biker leader was in his thirties, give or take three years. I think he has already overcome his adolescent maximalism, and for him, the world is not black and white and is not divided only by a clear boundary between us and strangers.

But tolerant at the same time does not mean good. That became immediately clear to me as soon as I stepped outside this morning and saw the look on Lance's face. The whole look on that big man's face literally screamed that he was doing something he didn't like at all, but he had promised someone he would do it.

"Hongi!" I greeted the commander of the Goons.

"And don't you get sick..." The biker shrugged instead of the least polite nod of the head. "The route is simple: to the old embankment, then along the river to the roundabout and back. Ten warned me that you were just starting to run and that you were doing a shit job so far..." Lance's eyes on me made it clear that he didn't doubt my boss's assertion one bit. "I'll run ahead, you follow, if you lose sight of me, don't worry..." He clearly wanted to say "don't be frightened" but held back. "I've got the situation under control, and you won't have incidents like your meeting with Jeans while I'm around."

When he'd finished, Lance turned and strode leisurely toward the river. All my plans to talk to him, to gain his trust in some way, crumbled before they could begin. Because talking to someone while shouting at their back was a bad idea.

The biker ran easily and naturally, without any effort at all, but when I tried to catch up with him, I immediately realized that I couldn't keep up with the pace. So I had to slow down so that I wouldn't run out of steam at the start, the goon's back immediately disappearing into the pre-dawn darkness. All the streetlights in this part of town were broken; the abandoned industrial area was of little concern to the utilities, and they only sent repairmen here on major holidays.

When I started this run, I was going to give it my all, to run as long as I could, and more. It wasn't in my plans to lose face in front of the head of the gang. So, gritting my teeth, I ran and ran until I was completely out of oxygen and had unbearable pain in my side. As unfortunate as it was to realize, this happened after only about three kilometers. At first, I took a step, but then realized that this was not enough and stopped trying to catch my breath. After a minute of breathing, the pain in my side began to subside...

"Who taught you to run?" Lance came running over the concrete block.

"The teacher at the school..." It was hard to talk.

"All the running credits at school are sprints of fifty and one hundred meters, and the longest distance is a kilometer," Goon shook his head. "You're not breathing right for long runs. And for your build and experience, it's wrong to breathe too deeply when you run. Here..." he held out a flask for me. "Have some of this."

In the flask was slightly salted water, took three sips, immediately felt a little easier, and returned the container.

"Try breathing differently. Short inhalations and exhalations. In pairs. Two breaths in a row, then two exhales. For a leisurely jog, this rhythm is appropriate: step-in, step-in, step-out, step-exhale, step-exhale. Then you repeat the cycle."

"I'll try," I told him in a firmer voice. And I take the moment to ask him before he runs ahead again. "Why didn't Ten Daas, when he started running recently, run with you? He said he was bored and encouraged me to do it. But why would he do that when he could have just joined you in the jogging..." I looked at him as if it were a strange thing to do, to say the least."

"Ah?!"

I've seen a lot of people surprised by questions, but I've never seen such an obvious look of astonishment on a person's face! I used to think that this only happened in movies when a person literally puffed up and his eyes widened so much that they were about to burst.

"What?!" he exhaled. "What are you...?! Did you really imagine me jogging with Ten in the morning every day?" his knees buckled, and he sat down on the concrete block. "We're running side by side, me a little ahead, him a little behind, and we have a nice conversation? Is that how you imagined it?"

The biker literally twisted before my eyes, grabbed his stomach with both hands, and started coughing.

"Ahem! Aaah!!! Kha!!!" And then such laughter erupted over the deserted, abandoned waterfront that made the remaining windows of an abandoned gas station about ten feet away ring out unscathed. "Ha ha ha!!! Ghee! GHHHHHHHH!!!" Lance covered his face with his hands and literally groaned with laughter. "GHHHHHHHH!!! Whoo-ee-ee-ee-ee! Ow! Mama!!! Yoo-hoo-hoo!!! Me and Ten run together!!! Aaaaah!!! Gaia, birth me back!!! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! I'm gonna die! Hee-hee-hee!!!" He started pounding his fists on his knees, and I saw big tears rolling down his cheeks. Is he crying from laughing?! "Grrr!!! Y-y-y-y!!! Oh!..."

It went on like that for three minutes, and then Lance got up, staggering a little, and, wiping away his tears, clapped me on the shoulder in a way that made my legs shake.

"Gaia... You... Lad... Take it easy... People can die from such jokes!" Lance said with difficulty.

After taking a few deep breaths, the biker straightened up and waved his hand toward the roundabout.

"All right. Have fun, and it'll be... Try to breathe like I said," Lance said, and launched himself like a sprinter.

Had fun? Did he say "fun"?! No, maybe he was having fun, but I was so scared that he was about to be torn in half that I almost went gray! And anyway, what was that? What did I say that was so funny?!

I stood in one place for a minute, trying to find a logical explanation for what had happened, but then I gave up and ran after the biker.

As he said: step - inhale, step - inhale, step - exhale, step - exhale. In the beginning, it was very difficult to keep this rhythm of breathing, the double breaths and exhalations were too unusual for me. But gradually I began to get used to it, I would not say that running became somehow easier, but I no longer had any side aches from lack of oxygen...

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