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Rei had been standing out on the balcony for a solid twenty minutes now.
A layer of glass in the form of a sliding door was currently separating him from his cozy living room and his daughter, and he peered inside to look at Miri who was trying her best to drag a chair towards the barrier between them. A sneeze ripped violently through him, and his bodily response was to rub his arms up and down, because hey, who would have thought? Being shirtless in a gym short outside on a windy winter afternoon was not really ideal, to say the least.
“Wait for me, papa, I’ll save you!” exclaimed Miri with much effort, trying to carry an object three times her size.
He cheered her on from a distance; not sure if Miri could hear him, his own ears barely registered his own voice, let alone the kid who was deep in concentration with a layer of glass between them.
The cascade of events that lead him to his current predicament was tragically comical. It was something Rei thought that should have happened to someone like Kazuki, but god seemed to be playing hooky today and He decided, well, why not let Rei be the clown for once?
It started with Miri’s adamant refusal to lay off the console; she had just gotten the new edition of Morio Kart for her birthday, and since there was no daycare on Sunday, she wanted to spend the day playing the game. The thing was, Kazuki and Rei had to leave the house to handover a bunch of sensitive information from their latest job to Kyu-chan. Usually Miri looked forward to their occasional trip to Yadorigi cafe, but her need to talk about playing the new game to Taiga at school was stronger than the temptation of Kyu-chan’s charm and strawberry juice. (It just added to the growing list of reasons why Rei and Kazuki should hunt that boy for sports someday.) She threw a fit when Kazuki took away her joystick. Wouldn’t stop crying until Kazuki returned it to her, so as the third party between this daddy-daughter turmoil, Rei volunteered to stay home to watch Miri while Kazuki settled the remaining part of the job — an absolute win-win situation for all of them, because Rei too would rather stay at home than go anywhere else on his day off.
And for the first hour, it was bliss. Miri got to play with her games. She refused Rei’s help after a while, so he hopped on the treadmill while watching her crash her character’s cart over and over again. But after losing most of her races, she started to get bored. She moved on to gathering all her soft toys in a pile to play with, and then when she was tired of that too, she somehow managed to open the sliding door leading to the balcony.
A gust of cold air hitting Rei in the face broke his stride and concentration, and when he saw Miri peering dangerously close to the railing at the edge of the balcony, he quickly leaped off the treadmill and into action, bolting out of the apartment to get to her. But Miri probably thought they were playing tag.The moment Rei reached where she was perched a while ago, she ran back inside and promptly closed the sliding door. Their fate was sealed in place when there was a sudden click sound, and a beat too late for Rei to realize he was locked outside the apartment.
Rei tried rattling it, just in case the lock wasn’t properly set in place. When that didn’t work, he tried to pick the lock with whatever he found outside — Kazuki’s gardening tools, cloth hanging wire, a plastic hanger –- none of which was useful. After 15 minutes of struggle using pointless tools, Rei gave up. He convinced himself that Kazuki would be back soon, and he just had to be patient.
All the while, Miri was standing on the other side of the glass door on the verge of crying. She watched as Rei tried to get back into the apartment, hands and one side of her cheek pressed against the glass, observing his every move. He wished he had paid more attention when his informal educator tried to teach him how to pick a lock. (“Why do I need to do all that when I could just shoot my way in?” was the mindset younger Rei had.) When Rei dropped the small shovel from his failed attempt to pry open the door, Miri suddenly burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, papa,” the sound of Miri’s cry was heartbreaking. Something was tugging at the pit of his chest. “It's all Miri’s fault.”
“Don’t cry, Miri,” Rei reassured her. He placed his hand on her squished cheek, a glass sliding door separating them. “It’s gonna be okay.”
The words seemed to reach her, and after a few sniffles, she was not crying anymore. Miri aggressively wiped the tears off her eyes and pried herself away from the glass, staring intensely at the lock that she couldn’t reach. Rei watched her warily as her eyes darted around the house looking for something, and he had a bad feeling about this when she dashed towards the dining table, trying to lug a chair towards the door. The chair was dragged for a whole 10 feet before it tumbled backward and hit her in the head. It made her wail even louder than before, and that caused Rei to get restless again.
“Miri,” gasped Rei, half tempted to just break the glass to get to his daughter. But Kazuki might be extremely upset if he did that. They may need to fork out a lot of money to fix it, or worse, get evicted for destroying the rented apartment. “I’m gonna get to you, Miri. Stay there.”
Rei ran towards the railing at the edge of the balcony and assessed the situation. Their apartment was on the seventh floor of a ten-floor building. And while scaling upward towards the rooftop deck to access the side stairs to get back into the building would be the quickest way inside as compared to climbing down to the ground, without proper equipment to hoist himself up, it would be a difficult climb. Not to mention dangerous. His head would split open like pinata from falling to the ground from this height.
For a whole thirty seconds Rei considered taking his chances to climb up, when he heard the neighbor a level below stepped outside their balcony for a cigarette break.
The guy was talking loudly to someone inside his apartment; something about airing the house after cooking dishes with a strong scent. And an idea struck Rei, like a lightbulb moment. There was his chance, he just had to seize it.
With ease, Rei climbed over the railing to stand on the outer side of the ledge of his balcony, bidding for the time to leap just one level below. When the man disappeared back into his house, Rei made a flip and quietly landed on his knee on the balcony. He quickly got on his feet to blend as close as he could against the wall, praying hard that the guy didn’t see or hear him. A minute passed. Neither of the occupants of the apartment went out to check the balcony. Rei breathed a sigh of relief.
The sliding door to their apartment was open. It smelled like someone cooked using something pungent inside, and the smoking guy was right about the need to air out the house. Creeping slowly towards the balcony entrance to the house, Rei sneaked a peek inside. Despite looking more drab than Rei and Kazuki’s apartment, the layout of the house was pretty much similar, with a bigger gray couch and a lot more furniture, of which could be used to his advantage.
Rei’s eyes closed in on the occupants of the house — a couple of husband and wife — who were trailing upstairs with a basket of laundry, still arguing about the food from earlier.
“Don’t cook with shrimp paste if you don’t know how to use shrimp paste,” scolded the guy as he took a couple of steps behind his partner.
“But if I don’t learn how to, how will I ever know?” she retorted, sounding mildly annoyed.
Perfect.
The couple reached the top of the circular stairs, and they were distracted by another argument as they disappeared inside one of the rooms. As soon as there was an audible click to the door, Rei dropped on the floor and army crawled his way inside, hiding behind various objects in the house to avoid being seen. He relished in the comfort of a warm house, after standing outside half naked for god knows how long, even if the strong smell from the kitchen was irritating his nostrils.
For a moment, everything went smoothly. The couple were upstairs, and the coast was clear. Rei crawled at an even and steady pace, not trying to bump into anything that could cause noise and attract the people who lived in the house. Rei could do this. He was a trained assassin. Breaking into someone’s house to access their door for his way out should be a piece of cake, a cake that he would buy and share with Miri right after this, because they deserved something sweet after all these ordeals.
What he didn’t count on was the presence of a kid, who spotted Rei when he crawled past the dining table.
The boy — slightly older than Miri, probably around five or six years old — was just exiting the bathroom with a towel on his head when he caught Rei in action, on the parquet floor of his house.
Perhaps the boy was too stunned to see a stranger in his house. He didn’t make a sound, he didn’t even blink, and as he took a step back, he dropped the towel that was perched on his wet hair. Rei, knowing he didn’t have much time before the boy snapped out of his trance and shouted for his parents, forgo the quiet army crawl and got on his feet, leaping over the kitchen island. He almost crashed against a pot of food on the counter — most likely the cause of the couple’s argument — but with a swift grab of a hand at the edge of the counter, Rei managed to twist his body away from the object and flipped his way to safety, landing with both feet on the ground just as the boy’s falling towel reached the floor.
That was a close call.
This wasn’t the time to rejoice,though, as Rei knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. The door was still a distance away, and without looking back, he sprinted the last few feet towards the exit, unlocking every lock and bolt on the door with the dexterity of a professional gamer. By the time he heard the thundering cry of the boy shouting for his father, Rei already found himself outside the hallway, closing the door tight behind him.
With no time to spare, he raced his way up to his house and knocked loudly on the front door of his apartment.
“Miri, open the door,” said Rei, more desperately than his usual calm demeanor. He did just leave the crying kid unsupervised while he was having a little adventure of his own, trying to find a way to get back into his apartment. “Miri, it’s papa Rei,” he banged against the door a couple more times, looking over the back of his shoulder towards the stairs for any sign of anyone following him.
A beat later, the door opened. Miri was standing at the entrance on tippy toes holding the door knob, with bloodshot eyes and trails of tears and snots covering her face. There was a bump on her forehead, probably from the falling chair from earlier.
“Miri,” Rei muttered breathily to the sight of his daughter, intact in one piece. Relief washed over him.
The moment she saw Rei her eyes started to water again, and before long, it burst like a goddamn busted pipe. Rei swiftly gathered her in his arms to carry her inside after closing the door behind them. She latched on tight around his neck, almost choking him, and he reciprocated the hug with equally strong intensity.
“Papa Rei,” Miri called out, voice already hoarse from crying. She continued crying for a while in his arms before it slowly died down, and her sentence was interrupted by hiccups. She pressed on. “Miri thought papa fell down. One moment you were outside, and then you were gone. I was so scared.”
“I’m here, Miri,” Rei buried his face in her hair, inhaling the strawberry scent from her shampoo and hugging her even tighter. He felt a stab of guilt for not letting her know his plan before executing it. “I was only finding my way to get back to you. I’m sorry, Miri.”
Miri shook her head, and wiped her damp eyes using the back of her hands. She mustered a sincere smile through her drying tears. “As long as papa Rei is okay, everything is alright.”
Kazuki had always told Rei that he was emotionally stunted, not knowing how to properly react to social situations and people around him. But Rei did feel. And right now, he felt his heart clenched tight from the kind of pain that was so warm and big and overwhelming that it was choking him, knocking air out of his lungs and his heart beating painfully in his ribcage. He couldn’t put a name on this emotion, but he was sure of one thing: if he had to give up his life to protect Miri, he would.
Their touching reunion was cut short by the sound of the front door opening and closing, and the voice of Kazuki announcing his arrival home.
“I’m home, Rei, Miri,” greeted Kazuki, carrying a paper bag with him before dropping it on the kitchen counter, “Hey what th —”
Kazuki’s eyes wildly examined the room. At the chair on the floor and toys scattered all over the living room. At the paused game on the TV screen and the running treadmill with no one on it. At Miri clinging on Rei, with a messy face after a cry. At Rei, who was relieved to finally see Kazuki home. Without a word, Rei carried Miri towards Kazuki and slotted himself in Kazuki’s arms, burying his face on the blond’s shoulder. Miri too, quietly shifted her embrace around Kazuki’s neck at an odd angle, the lower half of her body was still being carried by Rei.
Kazuki blinked his eyes a few times, perplexed by the situation but still hugging them back, he asked, “What the hell happened here?”
END