Blind Luck2: No Way Back Chapter 7
May. 17th, 2011 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onkoonaBlind Luck2: No Way Back
Chapter 7
It was just after he had checked his watch, which read 2:18, and Sai had decided to wait until 2:30, when the doors whooshed and footsteps came towards him.
'Fujiwara? What are you doing outside?' Ogata sounded puzzled, his voice was barely audible over the rain coming down on Sai's head and, Sai realized as the rain stopped falling on him but still fell beside him, that Ogata held an umbrella over their heads.
Sai got to his feet, helped by Ogata grabbing his elbow.
'Come on inside, you're wet through!' Ogata gently pulled on Sai's arm. 'What are you doing out here anyway?'
/'The door guard wouldn't let me in,'/ Sai whispered, embarrassed, his teeth chattering.
'What?!' Ogata all but yelled as the doors whooshed open again and he dragged Sai inside.
'The door guard wouldn't let me in,' Sai said a little louder, realizing the sound of the door had effectively drowned him out.
The door whooshed shut, cutting off the noisy rain.
'Oh, I see,' Ogata said. At the same time the guard yelled 'Hey, be off with you I said!' Then he continued to Ogata, 'I'm sorry Ogata-san, I already threw him out; his kind doesn't seem to learn...'
Ogata still had his hand on Sai's arm, and Sai could feel the man tremble with rage, matching his own shudders from being cold.
'This man is my honored guest! Your job is to meet the guests that come here, not throw them out!' Ogata took a long breath, unconsciously gripping the blind man tighter.
/Honored guest/, that sounded nice, Sai mused, his teeth starting to chatter.
The guard stuttered, 'I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know, sir, but look at him...'
Ogata interrupted him,
'I want to see you and your supervisor in my apartment, Monday morning at 8:45 sharp, is that understood?!'
'But sir, it's my day off!'
'Be there.'
'Yes sir,' the guard sighed, 'Sorry, sir.'
'Sorry' doesn't cut it,' Ogata snapped as he pulled Sai towards the elevators.
As the lift doors closed, Sai pleaded, 'Don't be too harsh on him, he couldn't know, could he?'
Self-consciously he added, 'Not with the way I look...'
'Grumph, I'll think about it. Let's get you dry first!'
xXXx
The lift deposited them on the 3rd floor and presently they were inside the flat, where Ogata, after Sai had put his shoes away, handed the shivering man a towel.
'You're soaked through, you should take a shower to warm up, before you catch a cold,' he suggested.
Sai felt already warmed by the man's concern, however superfluous. Sai had spent many long days, over the past year, getting soaked, with nowhere to take shelter, waiting until 5:30 when the doors to the shelter would finally open. There had been days where a 5 minute morning’s downpour would take until after noon to dry because the air was so saturated with moisture, only for him to get rained on again an hour or so later.
'Do you need help undoing your braid?' the titleholder offered. Sai nodded and quickly finished mopping up the most active drips around his head.
Ogata was tugging Sai's braid loose when he asked, 'Do you have something to change into?'
'I'll wear yesterday's clothes,' Sai said, feeling stupid for having put on all clean clothing this morning, when he could perfectly well have worn yesterdays. Of course he had done so because he didn't want to embarrass his new friends, but it left him without anything decent to wear.
'Urg,' Ogata mumbled, 'I think not.' He pulled a little hard on a strand. 'Sorry, it's tangled,' he explained.
'Yeah, it does that when it's wet.' Two more hard tugs.
Ogata worked in silence for some minutes before pronouncing Sai' ready for the shower.
'Hop into the shower and hand over everything that's wet. Just drop it on the floor.' Ogata paused, 'You'd better give me your clothes from yesterday too.'
Sai, who had been heading for the bathroom, stopped.
'What am I supposed to wear?'
'I'll lend you something,' Ogata assured.
'But we're not the same size, are we?' Sai argued, feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the thought of imposing on the other man even more.
'I have some old sportswear you can try on, should fit well enough,' Ogata argued, 'You can't go naked, or in yesterday's clothes,' he added.
Sai did see his point; if he wanted to fit in a world where he wasn't homeless anymore, he really couldn't go around in day old rags.
'Okay,' he conceded, opening his bag to get out the dirty clothing, which were a little damp as he expected them to be, but not wet. Sai once again marveled at his bag; his faithful companion of the past year.
'Is that my book?' Ogata asked as he took the clothing from Sai's hand, he must have spied the plastic bag sticking out of the canvas bag.
'Yes,' Sai said and tried to get it out using only his right hand. After some fruitless maneuvering he sighed and just took off the bag, let it settle on the couch and managed to get the book out. He passed it on to Ogata, who took the weight off him.
'Hey, did buy some clothing?'
Sai startled; Ogata had seen the bag from the men's clothing store. He made a grab for it, but Ogata was faster, taking the crinkly plastic bag away from him.
The other man opened it.
'Oh my, that is a nice sweater! Why not wear this, this afternoon?'
Sai hung his head in embarrassment, trying to think of anything to say. But he couldn't tell the man he only bought it to save face, could he? And he shouldn't need to, after all, the titleholder had no business looking in his bag.
'Fujiwara?' Ogata's voice was soft and questioning, 'What's the matter?'
Sai remained silent, chiding himself for his uncharitable thought. Ogata may have over stepped the boundaries of privacy but the blind man owed him, big time. These things should not be weighed against each other of course, but the debt did weigh more.
The stiff bag gave another noise as Ogata did something with it.
'Y7,999?' the pro player said, sounding incredulous. Oh god, he had found the receipt. Sai kicked himself for not realizing there would be one in there. But then how could he have known; he had never bought anything new before.
'That's a lot of money...' Ogata said slowly, '... did you really want to spend so much?'
Sai tried to hide behind his ragged sleeve and shook his head. How could he explain he had felt pressured into buying it? What kind of wimp would that make him out to be?
'I see.' Ogata noisily handled the bag again. 'Did Shitateya-san rail road you into buying it?'
Sai kept silent, his embarrassment deepening. Ogata was too perceptive by half.
'Come on, tell me, why did you buy it if you didn't want it?' Ogata's voice was taking on a hard edge, making Sai cringe. He felt almost like he did when the social worker had come for his visit; small, dirty and inadequate. And cold. His teeth started chattering again.
'I didn't want you to lose face,' Sai admitted.
'Lose face? How?' Ogata now sounded very angry. Sai had thought he had done the right thing in buying the sweater, now he was losing all confidence in his own ability to know what the right thing was. He was so new to not being alone; to having friends. Somehow he got it wrong and his friend was angry, and Sai didn't know how to make it right.
In a small voice the former ghost said, 'He introduced me as your friend. I couldn't leave without buying something, it would have reflected badly on you,' he pleaded.
'What? Who introduced you?'
'The bookseller.'
Ogata was silent for a moment. Sai started to shudder with cold as he felt a trail of ice water slide down his neck.
'Why would the bookseller take you to meet Shitateya?'
Sai felt the blood drain from his face. It always came down to this, didn't it?
/'Because he said I needed better clothing to be around the mall,'/ he whispered. In a louder tone he said, 'And he's right, you said it yourself, I can't be around nice people wearing rags!' He hadn't meant to yell and he certainly didn't mean to start crying, but he had and now he did. He covered his wet face in his very damp sleeves and sat down on the couch, slumping forward.
He jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.
'Fujiwara-san, I don't care what you look like, and I certainly don't care what Shitateya or the bookseller think of my friends,' Ogata said measurably. 'But if you think it matters so much we'll go shopping for some new clothes for you, ones you can afford. But first you need to take that shower, you're freezing.'
With a shocking thought Sai literarily did freeze; he had been sitting on Ogata's couch totally wet! He shot up, effectively dislodging Ogata's hand.
'Oh god, I'm sorry! I've ruined your couch!' Sai was mortified.
Ogata gave a small laugh, 'Don't worry, that happens to me at least once a rainy season, the couch can take it. Go shower,' Ogata shooed him away.
oOOo
Sai had planned on a short shower but as soon as the warm water hit him, his legs seemed to turn to putty and he let himself slip down until he sat on the shower stall's floor. He leaned forward a bit and let the water sluice over his back, letting himself give into its warm comfort, for a while at least.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That second night in the shelter after being unable to find his bed, Sai still sat in the hallway with his arms tightly around his pulled up legs, face buried in his knees, where Kuma found him an hour later as the burly man did his rounds. At first Sai was too upset to talk but when Kuma asked him why he was not in his bed, Sai admitted that he couldn't find it or the even right dorm.
Kuma told him he was sitting right outside it, making Sai frown; had he been looking for his bed in the right dorm after all? Kuma took him inside the dorm to find his bed. The big man counted out the beds to number 17. He stopped where Sai had earlier, and where the blind man had been sure bed 17 was. It was still occupied. Kuma told Sai to step back, and then there was a crashing noise and a load yelp. The blind man took an involuntary step backwards, unsure what was going on.
'Out!' Kuma roared, and Sai heard someone running off on bare feet.
'Go to the office! And don't you dare go anywhere else!!' Kuma bellowed after the man. To Sai he said in more normal tone of voice,
'Don't worry, I'll take care of him later. He can't get out anyway; all the doors are bolted.'
Sai heard the sounds of the big man reassembling the bed and then he said,
'Let's get you settled in for the night. Where's your bag?' Kuma added as an afterthought.
Sai admitted it had been taken from him. He felt his incompetence even more keenly now that someone knew of it. Sai flinched as the big man growled,
'Who took it?!'
Sai recounted the story, and the Kuma stalked off leaving Sai sitting on 'his' bed, still trembling. He wasn't sure what to think of the burly man's actions so far; would they help him or make thing worse?
Just as the grumbles from the other sleepers were getting louder and were starting to scare Sai, Kuma stalked back in. He switched on the lights with a loud click, drawing a lot of protests from the sleepers.
'Listen up all!' Kuma bellowed. 'This here is my friend Mayo.'
Sai was startled; Kuma thought of him as a friend?
'You are to lay off of him or I will sit on you, is that understood?' Kuma continued. There were some affirmative grumbles.
'Now, his bag was stolen, and I got it back for him,' Sai's bag landed on his lap where he grabbed at it before could slip off. It was emptier than it was before, but Sai wasn't about to complain.
'If anybody tries to steal it from him again I. Will. Sit. On. You. So don't try it!'
More grumbles.
'Okay!' with that Kuma switched off the lights and said to Sai, 'I'll see you in the morning, goodnight.'
'Goodnight and thank you,' Sai said, genuinely grateful, as Kuma walked off noisily.
It took some time for the blind man to fall asleep; he kept thinking about how he'd been tricked out of his own bed and belongings. Then he reminded himself they weren't really his to start with; the bed was lent to him so he could sleep somewhere and the clothes and bag were to ensure he didn't break the codes of common decency too much. It was actually quite a responsibility to live up to.
He was still contemplating the enormity of it when he drifted off to sleep.
Next morning in the chow line, things were the same as always, if not worse, just as Sai had feared. The second after the blind man had received his bowl it was taken by someone, and after being pushed twice and tripped once he gave up and carefully crawled to the wall, where he made himself as small as possible, and decided to stay until it was time to meet Miss Kaori in the office.
Sai was starting to wonder what the use of it all was, if maybe it would have been better to never have come out of the drug induced stupor that he'd been in, in the hospital. That way he would never have known this humiliation or this hunger. What was he going to do if every meal time he'd lose the food he was given, if every night he'd be forced to give up his bed and belongings? With a heavy heart he started to realize he was losing the will to try. It grieved him to think of himself that way, but there was nothing he seemed to be able to do about it.
'Mayo!' Kuma bellowed from the hallway outside the canteen. The set up of the canteen was such that you could only join the chow line from the dorms and washrooms, before entering the canteen with its tables and chairs. It was not possible get a second turn in the chow line. The canteen opened up to the small hall just inside the front door, through which everybody would have to have left by 9am.
'Mayo!' The restaurant style doors opened with a whoosh to let the big man in.
'Oh, there you are. What are you doing on the floor?'
Sai didn't answer, couldn't think of anything to say. It was all pointless anyway.
'Where is your bowl?' the big man's voice boomed.
Sai shook his head. Kuma was silent a moment.
'Did they take it?' he asked.
Sai didn't nod but merely let his head sink in shame. Whatever he said or did, he was screwed. If he got Kuma's help now, he'd be worse off when the man was absent, and if he didn't he'd still go hungry and have to sleep in the corridor outside the dorm room. All he could hope for was that they wouldn't send him away, because, as hellish as it was in here, Sai was terrified of staying unprotected outside at night.
'Get up,' Kuma grabbed his upper arm and helped him up forcefully. He pulled Sai with him towards where Sai knew the tables were.
'You, up.' Kuma commanded away from Sai's direction. Someone moved. To Sai Kuma used a much friendlier tone. 'Please, sit here, I'll be right back.' Sai sat as heard Kuma move off towards to end of the chow line.
He felt man next to him elbow him in the side and someone hissed 'Useless bind man' at him. A blob of rice hit his cheek. He wiped it off his face and let his head hang lower. Someone passing behind him, gave him a shove into the table, which Sai braced with his hands. There were more whispers behind him.
It seemed like an eternity before Kuma was back. A warm bowl landed in his left hand and a pair of chopsticks hit his right palm. The person sitting across from Sai scrambled out of the way as Kuma shook the table like in an earthquake as he sat down.
'Eat.' he commanded Sai. Sai did so.
Five minutes later Kuma asked, 'All done?'
Sai nodded, putting down bowl and sticks.
'So tell me what else has been done to you that you've not been telling,' Kuma demanded.
'Uh,' Sai started.
/'Tattletale,'/ some male voice whispered from somewhere next to him. It effectively shut Sai up; he didn't want to get into more trouble.
Suddenly there was a slap, a bang and a load crash, wobbling the table, and a very human woof of air escaping lungs. Where before had been the hubbub noise of the canteen now was a deadly silence, except for soft moaning from close to the floor.
'I told you I'd sit on you,' Kuma admonished.
There was another scramble and Sai heard someone right a chair and felt the vibration of Kuma retaking his seat in front of Sai.
'So tell me,' Kuma tried again.
But Sai felt he couldn't, if he did the people involved and others too would just wait until the blind man was alone and then extract their revenge. Sai kept his mouth shut.
They sat in silence so long the normal chatter of the canteen was in full swing again when Kuma cleared his throat and said, 'Okay.'
The earth shook once more as Kuma got up, scraping his chair legs across the concrete floor with a howl. Sai covered his ears, instinctively.
'Listen all!' Kuma called. The place fell silent. 'Anybody who messes with my friend here will be sat on. So don't say you ain’t been warned.'
Sai cringed. He was so dead.
xXXx
Kuma took Sai to the office and there Mr. Uwayaku worked on him until he told some of what happened. Mr. Uwayaku, while sympathetic, said there wasn't terrifically much they could to prevent this from happening except what Kuma had done, be a bigger bully, and try to keep more of an eye on the blind man. It made Sai feel even more like a useless cripple.
The only practical thing Mr. Uwayaku did was replace the T-shirt and pants that had been stolen out of Sai's bag.
By the time that was all sorted, Miss Kaori had arrived and, not liking the shelter any more than Sai did, was ready to go on their walk.
oOOo
The day was successful enough, they managed to bring down the walk time to just under an hour with Sai needing next to no prompting for directions. On the last lap back for the day, Sai navigated by himself with only one correction from Kaori.
Sai had very been worried there would be reprisals from the shelter inhabitants because of Kuma's threats to them on Sai's behalf. But that evening at dinner he managed to empty his own bowl, sitting at the table, using chopsticks. Even his mug of water was still there when he reached for it to finish it.
He found his bed was empty when he went to it and overall people were not bumping or pushing or tripping him nearly as much as they had been before. The name calling all but ceased.
He shuddered to think what else Kuma and Mr. Uwayaku had done to make everybody leave him alone. And he lived in constant dread of what might happen if he were ever caught by his shelter mates outside of Kuma's and Mr. Uwayaku's protection.
Over the next year that he was there, there were still incidents, some bad ones, but mostly Sai found he was left in peace. He was very careful to either stay in or be very far away from the shelter. He never hung about the building, and managed for the most part to stay out of trouble with his fellow shelter dwellers.
He would forever be grateful to Mr. Uwayaku and Kuma, but since Sai was in effect totally helpless, and felt it too, he could never seem to build up a real friendship with either man, and Mr. Uwayaku for one discouraged any attempt on Sai's part to do so. Kuma used to talk at Sai from time to time about his women, and Sai did his best to sympathize, but Sai couldn't remember ever having had a girlfriend so he really couldn't respond much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sai hoped fervently he would be able to do better with Ogata; that he'd be able to create a more equal relationship between them.
He could admit to himself how it had hurt his pride to owe Kuma, Mr. Uwayaku and Miss Kaori such big debts he could never repay. And now he had new people he owed, most importantly Ogata-san. It was his strongest hope he could make up for his debt with the Go-pro by being a worthy adversary in the game. He just wasn't sure that would be enough to make theirs a real friendship.
xXXx
Don’t forget to review!!!!
Chapter 7
It was just after he had checked his watch, which read 2:18, and Sai had decided to wait until 2:30, when the doors whooshed and footsteps came towards him.
'Fujiwara? What are you doing outside?' Ogata sounded puzzled, his voice was barely audible over the rain coming down on Sai's head and, Sai realized as the rain stopped falling on him but still fell beside him, that Ogata held an umbrella over their heads.
Sai got to his feet, helped by Ogata grabbing his elbow.
'Come on inside, you're wet through!' Ogata gently pulled on Sai's arm. 'What are you doing out here anyway?'
/'The door guard wouldn't let me in,'/ Sai whispered, embarrassed, his teeth chattering.
'What?!' Ogata all but yelled as the doors whooshed open again and he dragged Sai inside.
'The door guard wouldn't let me in,' Sai said a little louder, realizing the sound of the door had effectively drowned him out.
The door whooshed shut, cutting off the noisy rain.
'Oh, I see,' Ogata said. At the same time the guard yelled 'Hey, be off with you I said!' Then he continued to Ogata, 'I'm sorry Ogata-san, I already threw him out; his kind doesn't seem to learn...'
Ogata still had his hand on Sai's arm, and Sai could feel the man tremble with rage, matching his own shudders from being cold.
'This man is my honored guest! Your job is to meet the guests that come here, not throw them out!' Ogata took a long breath, unconsciously gripping the blind man tighter.
/Honored guest/, that sounded nice, Sai mused, his teeth starting to chatter.
The guard stuttered, 'I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know, sir, but look at him...'
Ogata interrupted him,
'I want to see you and your supervisor in my apartment, Monday morning at 8:45 sharp, is that understood?!'
'But sir, it's my day off!'
'Be there.'
'Yes sir,' the guard sighed, 'Sorry, sir.'
'Sorry' doesn't cut it,' Ogata snapped as he pulled Sai towards the elevators.
As the lift doors closed, Sai pleaded, 'Don't be too harsh on him, he couldn't know, could he?'
Self-consciously he added, 'Not with the way I look...'
'Grumph, I'll think about it. Let's get you dry first!'
xXXx
The lift deposited them on the 3rd floor and presently they were inside the flat, where Ogata, after Sai had put his shoes away, handed the shivering man a towel.
'You're soaked through, you should take a shower to warm up, before you catch a cold,' he suggested.
Sai felt already warmed by the man's concern, however superfluous. Sai had spent many long days, over the past year, getting soaked, with nowhere to take shelter, waiting until 5:30 when the doors to the shelter would finally open. There had been days where a 5 minute morning’s downpour would take until after noon to dry because the air was so saturated with moisture, only for him to get rained on again an hour or so later.
'Do you need help undoing your braid?' the titleholder offered. Sai nodded and quickly finished mopping up the most active drips around his head.
Ogata was tugging Sai's braid loose when he asked, 'Do you have something to change into?'
'I'll wear yesterday's clothes,' Sai said, feeling stupid for having put on all clean clothing this morning, when he could perfectly well have worn yesterdays. Of course he had done so because he didn't want to embarrass his new friends, but it left him without anything decent to wear.
'Urg,' Ogata mumbled, 'I think not.' He pulled a little hard on a strand. 'Sorry, it's tangled,' he explained.
'Yeah, it does that when it's wet.' Two more hard tugs.
Ogata worked in silence for some minutes before pronouncing Sai' ready for the shower.
'Hop into the shower and hand over everything that's wet. Just drop it on the floor.' Ogata paused, 'You'd better give me your clothes from yesterday too.'
Sai, who had been heading for the bathroom, stopped.
'What am I supposed to wear?'
'I'll lend you something,' Ogata assured.
'But we're not the same size, are we?' Sai argued, feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the thought of imposing on the other man even more.
'I have some old sportswear you can try on, should fit well enough,' Ogata argued, 'You can't go naked, or in yesterday's clothes,' he added.
Sai did see his point; if he wanted to fit in a world where he wasn't homeless anymore, he really couldn't go around in day old rags.
'Okay,' he conceded, opening his bag to get out the dirty clothing, which were a little damp as he expected them to be, but not wet. Sai once again marveled at his bag; his faithful companion of the past year.
'Is that my book?' Ogata asked as he took the clothing from Sai's hand, he must have spied the plastic bag sticking out of the canvas bag.
'Yes,' Sai said and tried to get it out using only his right hand. After some fruitless maneuvering he sighed and just took off the bag, let it settle on the couch and managed to get the book out. He passed it on to Ogata, who took the weight off him.
'Hey, did buy some clothing?'
Sai startled; Ogata had seen the bag from the men's clothing store. He made a grab for it, but Ogata was faster, taking the crinkly plastic bag away from him.
The other man opened it.
'Oh my, that is a nice sweater! Why not wear this, this afternoon?'
Sai hung his head in embarrassment, trying to think of anything to say. But he couldn't tell the man he only bought it to save face, could he? And he shouldn't need to, after all, the titleholder had no business looking in his bag.
'Fujiwara?' Ogata's voice was soft and questioning, 'What's the matter?'
Sai remained silent, chiding himself for his uncharitable thought. Ogata may have over stepped the boundaries of privacy but the blind man owed him, big time. These things should not be weighed against each other of course, but the debt did weigh more.
The stiff bag gave another noise as Ogata did something with it.
'Y7,999?' the pro player said, sounding incredulous. Oh god, he had found the receipt. Sai kicked himself for not realizing there would be one in there. But then how could he have known; he had never bought anything new before.
'That's a lot of money...' Ogata said slowly, '... did you really want to spend so much?'
Sai tried to hide behind his ragged sleeve and shook his head. How could he explain he had felt pressured into buying it? What kind of wimp would that make him out to be?
'I see.' Ogata noisily handled the bag again. 'Did Shitateya-san rail road you into buying it?'
Sai kept silent, his embarrassment deepening. Ogata was too perceptive by half.
'Come on, tell me, why did you buy it if you didn't want it?' Ogata's voice was taking on a hard edge, making Sai cringe. He felt almost like he did when the social worker had come for his visit; small, dirty and inadequate. And cold. His teeth started chattering again.
'I didn't want you to lose face,' Sai admitted.
'Lose face? How?' Ogata now sounded very angry. Sai had thought he had done the right thing in buying the sweater, now he was losing all confidence in his own ability to know what the right thing was. He was so new to not being alone; to having friends. Somehow he got it wrong and his friend was angry, and Sai didn't know how to make it right.
In a small voice the former ghost said, 'He introduced me as your friend. I couldn't leave without buying something, it would have reflected badly on you,' he pleaded.
'What? Who introduced you?'
'The bookseller.'
Ogata was silent for a moment. Sai started to shudder with cold as he felt a trail of ice water slide down his neck.
'Why would the bookseller take you to meet Shitateya?'
Sai felt the blood drain from his face. It always came down to this, didn't it?
/'Because he said I needed better clothing to be around the mall,'/ he whispered. In a louder tone he said, 'And he's right, you said it yourself, I can't be around nice people wearing rags!' He hadn't meant to yell and he certainly didn't mean to start crying, but he had and now he did. He covered his wet face in his very damp sleeves and sat down on the couch, slumping forward.
He jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.
'Fujiwara-san, I don't care what you look like, and I certainly don't care what Shitateya or the bookseller think of my friends,' Ogata said measurably. 'But if you think it matters so much we'll go shopping for some new clothes for you, ones you can afford. But first you need to take that shower, you're freezing.'
With a shocking thought Sai literarily did freeze; he had been sitting on Ogata's couch totally wet! He shot up, effectively dislodging Ogata's hand.
'Oh god, I'm sorry! I've ruined your couch!' Sai was mortified.
Ogata gave a small laugh, 'Don't worry, that happens to me at least once a rainy season, the couch can take it. Go shower,' Ogata shooed him away.
oOOo
Sai had planned on a short shower but as soon as the warm water hit him, his legs seemed to turn to putty and he let himself slip down until he sat on the shower stall's floor. He leaned forward a bit and let the water sluice over his back, letting himself give into its warm comfort, for a while at least.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That second night in the shelter after being unable to find his bed, Sai still sat in the hallway with his arms tightly around his pulled up legs, face buried in his knees, where Kuma found him an hour later as the burly man did his rounds. At first Sai was too upset to talk but when Kuma asked him why he was not in his bed, Sai admitted that he couldn't find it or the even right dorm.
Kuma told him he was sitting right outside it, making Sai frown; had he been looking for his bed in the right dorm after all? Kuma took him inside the dorm to find his bed. The big man counted out the beds to number 17. He stopped where Sai had earlier, and where the blind man had been sure bed 17 was. It was still occupied. Kuma told Sai to step back, and then there was a crashing noise and a load yelp. The blind man took an involuntary step backwards, unsure what was going on.
'Out!' Kuma roared, and Sai heard someone running off on bare feet.
'Go to the office! And don't you dare go anywhere else!!' Kuma bellowed after the man. To Sai he said in more normal tone of voice,
'Don't worry, I'll take care of him later. He can't get out anyway; all the doors are bolted.'
Sai heard the sounds of the big man reassembling the bed and then he said,
'Let's get you settled in for the night. Where's your bag?' Kuma added as an afterthought.
Sai admitted it had been taken from him. He felt his incompetence even more keenly now that someone knew of it. Sai flinched as the big man growled,
'Who took it?!'
Sai recounted the story, and the Kuma stalked off leaving Sai sitting on 'his' bed, still trembling. He wasn't sure what to think of the burly man's actions so far; would they help him or make thing worse?
Just as the grumbles from the other sleepers were getting louder and were starting to scare Sai, Kuma stalked back in. He switched on the lights with a loud click, drawing a lot of protests from the sleepers.
'Listen up all!' Kuma bellowed. 'This here is my friend Mayo.'
Sai was startled; Kuma thought of him as a friend?
'You are to lay off of him or I will sit on you, is that understood?' Kuma continued. There were some affirmative grumbles.
'Now, his bag was stolen, and I got it back for him,' Sai's bag landed on his lap where he grabbed at it before could slip off. It was emptier than it was before, but Sai wasn't about to complain.
'If anybody tries to steal it from him again I. Will. Sit. On. You. So don't try it!'
More grumbles.
'Okay!' with that Kuma switched off the lights and said to Sai, 'I'll see you in the morning, goodnight.'
'Goodnight and thank you,' Sai said, genuinely grateful, as Kuma walked off noisily.
It took some time for the blind man to fall asleep; he kept thinking about how he'd been tricked out of his own bed and belongings. Then he reminded himself they weren't really his to start with; the bed was lent to him so he could sleep somewhere and the clothes and bag were to ensure he didn't break the codes of common decency too much. It was actually quite a responsibility to live up to.
He was still contemplating the enormity of it when he drifted off to sleep.
Next morning in the chow line, things were the same as always, if not worse, just as Sai had feared. The second after the blind man had received his bowl it was taken by someone, and after being pushed twice and tripped once he gave up and carefully crawled to the wall, where he made himself as small as possible, and decided to stay until it was time to meet Miss Kaori in the office.
Sai was starting to wonder what the use of it all was, if maybe it would have been better to never have come out of the drug induced stupor that he'd been in, in the hospital. That way he would never have known this humiliation or this hunger. What was he going to do if every meal time he'd lose the food he was given, if every night he'd be forced to give up his bed and belongings? With a heavy heart he started to realize he was losing the will to try. It grieved him to think of himself that way, but there was nothing he seemed to be able to do about it.
'Mayo!' Kuma bellowed from the hallway outside the canteen. The set up of the canteen was such that you could only join the chow line from the dorms and washrooms, before entering the canteen with its tables and chairs. It was not possible get a second turn in the chow line. The canteen opened up to the small hall just inside the front door, through which everybody would have to have left by 9am.
'Mayo!' The restaurant style doors opened with a whoosh to let the big man in.
'Oh, there you are. What are you doing on the floor?'
Sai didn't answer, couldn't think of anything to say. It was all pointless anyway.
'Where is your bowl?' the big man's voice boomed.
Sai shook his head. Kuma was silent a moment.
'Did they take it?' he asked.
Sai didn't nod but merely let his head sink in shame. Whatever he said or did, he was screwed. If he got Kuma's help now, he'd be worse off when the man was absent, and if he didn't he'd still go hungry and have to sleep in the corridor outside the dorm room. All he could hope for was that they wouldn't send him away, because, as hellish as it was in here, Sai was terrified of staying unprotected outside at night.
'Get up,' Kuma grabbed his upper arm and helped him up forcefully. He pulled Sai with him towards where Sai knew the tables were.
'You, up.' Kuma commanded away from Sai's direction. Someone moved. To Sai Kuma used a much friendlier tone. 'Please, sit here, I'll be right back.' Sai sat as heard Kuma move off towards to end of the chow line.
He felt man next to him elbow him in the side and someone hissed 'Useless bind man' at him. A blob of rice hit his cheek. He wiped it off his face and let his head hang lower. Someone passing behind him, gave him a shove into the table, which Sai braced with his hands. There were more whispers behind him.
It seemed like an eternity before Kuma was back. A warm bowl landed in his left hand and a pair of chopsticks hit his right palm. The person sitting across from Sai scrambled out of the way as Kuma shook the table like in an earthquake as he sat down.
'Eat.' he commanded Sai. Sai did so.
Five minutes later Kuma asked, 'All done?'
Sai nodded, putting down bowl and sticks.
'So tell me what else has been done to you that you've not been telling,' Kuma demanded.
'Uh,' Sai started.
/'Tattletale,'/ some male voice whispered from somewhere next to him. It effectively shut Sai up; he didn't want to get into more trouble.
Suddenly there was a slap, a bang and a load crash, wobbling the table, and a very human woof of air escaping lungs. Where before had been the hubbub noise of the canteen now was a deadly silence, except for soft moaning from close to the floor.
'I told you I'd sit on you,' Kuma admonished.
There was another scramble and Sai heard someone right a chair and felt the vibration of Kuma retaking his seat in front of Sai.
'So tell me,' Kuma tried again.
But Sai felt he couldn't, if he did the people involved and others too would just wait until the blind man was alone and then extract their revenge. Sai kept his mouth shut.
They sat in silence so long the normal chatter of the canteen was in full swing again when Kuma cleared his throat and said, 'Okay.'
The earth shook once more as Kuma got up, scraping his chair legs across the concrete floor with a howl. Sai covered his ears, instinctively.
'Listen all!' Kuma called. The place fell silent. 'Anybody who messes with my friend here will be sat on. So don't say you ain’t been warned.'
Sai cringed. He was so dead.
xXXx
Kuma took Sai to the office and there Mr. Uwayaku worked on him until he told some of what happened. Mr. Uwayaku, while sympathetic, said there wasn't terrifically much they could to prevent this from happening except what Kuma had done, be a bigger bully, and try to keep more of an eye on the blind man. It made Sai feel even more like a useless cripple.
The only practical thing Mr. Uwayaku did was replace the T-shirt and pants that had been stolen out of Sai's bag.
By the time that was all sorted, Miss Kaori had arrived and, not liking the shelter any more than Sai did, was ready to go on their walk.
oOOo
The day was successful enough, they managed to bring down the walk time to just under an hour with Sai needing next to no prompting for directions. On the last lap back for the day, Sai navigated by himself with only one correction from Kaori.
Sai had very been worried there would be reprisals from the shelter inhabitants because of Kuma's threats to them on Sai's behalf. But that evening at dinner he managed to empty his own bowl, sitting at the table, using chopsticks. Even his mug of water was still there when he reached for it to finish it.
He found his bed was empty when he went to it and overall people were not bumping or pushing or tripping him nearly as much as they had been before. The name calling all but ceased.
He shuddered to think what else Kuma and Mr. Uwayaku had done to make everybody leave him alone. And he lived in constant dread of what might happen if he were ever caught by his shelter mates outside of Kuma's and Mr. Uwayaku's protection.
Over the next year that he was there, there were still incidents, some bad ones, but mostly Sai found he was left in peace. He was very careful to either stay in or be very far away from the shelter. He never hung about the building, and managed for the most part to stay out of trouble with his fellow shelter dwellers.
He would forever be grateful to Mr. Uwayaku and Kuma, but since Sai was in effect totally helpless, and felt it too, he could never seem to build up a real friendship with either man, and Mr. Uwayaku for one discouraged any attempt on Sai's part to do so. Kuma used to talk at Sai from time to time about his women, and Sai did his best to sympathize, but Sai couldn't remember ever having had a girlfriend so he really couldn't respond much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sai hoped fervently he would be able to do better with Ogata; that he'd be able to create a more equal relationship between them.
He could admit to himself how it had hurt his pride to owe Kuma, Mr. Uwayaku and Miss Kaori such big debts he could never repay. And now he had new people he owed, most importantly Ogata-san. It was his strongest hope he could make up for his debt with the Go-pro by being a worthy adversary in the game. He just wasn't sure that would be enough to make theirs a real friendship.
xXXx
Don’t forget to review!!!!
