Kieli, Vol. 5: The Sunlit Garden Where It Began, Part 1 by Kabei Yukako

Author:Kabei, Yukako
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Yen Press
Published: 2018-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

The door creaked open a tiny crack, and then the boy slipped inside and closed it again right away behind him. Kieli was starting to feel fidgety, as though she didn’t quite know what to do with herself, so she was a little relieved to see him.

“Things in town are fine. There wasn’t any stir,” he reported briskly, moving across the room to switch places with Harvey, who was standing by the window. The window was so far up the wall it was practically at the ceiling, and the boy was too short to see out of it; somebody had built a tall pile of hemp sandbags and things underneath it as a lookout perch. He climbed easily up it and stood on his knees as he checked the street outside.

When they’d all spoken at that building earlier, the brothers had said they lived right nearby, so they’d changed locations. Now they were in a semibasement apartment that wasn’t much better than a storeroom. A bare bulb on the ceiling cast murky, yellowish light on its dusty corners. The hemp bags piled under the window had plenty of company: big boxes, little boxes, broken furniture, and all kinds of other debris littered the floor. Kieli sat on the edge of a long box up against the wall that was apparently being used as a bed.

“Want a drink?”

Surprised, Kieli shrank away unthinkingly from the mug that was suddenly thrust at her. The radio hanging from her neck leaked menacing static, and a charged atmosphere swelled all around them.

“Kieli,” Harvey said. “…Corporal, cut it out.”

Chided by Harvey’s quiet voice, all the radio’s menace evaporated immediately. Kieli quickly felt sorry for her obvious rejection. She reached out for the tin mug. But when she took it from him, their fingers brushed, and she gave another tiny flinch. His skin puckered as if it had been melted and then dried out again. His fingers were gnarled, misshapen. On some of them, the nails were just missing, as if they’d peeled off…Kieli went stiff, staring at those hands. Then, with a start, she tore her eyes away and gazed at her own hands instead.

A hand came down over her hair. When she lifted her face, Harvey was there. He sat down beside her, ruffling her hair lightly. “Sorry, Chris.”

“It’s fine. Please, don’t worry.” The man who’d introduced himself as Chris—Christoph—twitched cheeks as puckered as his fingers into an unpracticed smile. He spoke a bit slowly, as if he had to concentrate hard to make the sounds come out right. “It’ll warm you up a little,” he said to Kieli. “It’s cold, in here.” Then he deliberately retreated to a box a bit of a distance from hers to sit down.

Harvey had sat next to her to reassure her, and feeling his body heat close by was a huge relief, but at the same time she was flooded with guilt. She dropped her eyes dejectedly to the mug in her hands. It was filled to the brim with thin, lukewarm coffee.

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