‘I don’t know what came over me’ was an apt way to put it. He knew as he was doing it that he would sorely regret it; yet he did it anyways. He was asked out for dinner, and he had reacted to it immaturely, impulsively, stupidly, as though the officer had proposed him for his hand for marriage. And all for what? “What the hell am I doing, God…”

  He had made a complete and utter fool of himself. No money, no identity—nothing. Everything was lost the moment he had fled. He was still Jane Doe. He was still no better off than when he had first started. Worse, in fact, because now he had run out of time. Night had fallen over the city, and what had he gotten done in the meantime? “You absolute idiot…”

  Everything could’ve all worked out in the end if he hadn’t done anything, anything at all, but that; he would’ve been fine. If the officer had later on down the line made some daring advances, he could’ve flatly refused. It would’ve been a trivial thing to do. After all, women rejected men all the time, no? No reason or excuses needed, just a flat-out ‘no’; the officer would’ve left him alone; politely, too; his first day could’ve come to an end then and there. Instead, where was he, exactly?

  Somehow, someway, aimlessly wandering with no direction in mind but ‘away’, had led him far from King’s Crossing to an affluent suburb. He was in an enclosed courtyard at the moment—for all intent and purposes, a second vestibule—and he had been sat here on a cold and hard bench for more than a few hours. Iron-laced balconies peered down at him—or not at him, per se—but at the courtyard’s center-piece: a life-sized sculpture of an angel standing on a white marble fountain.

  Beyond, were double-doors, leading into the building; while behind it, was the way out, through an arched-passageway, onto the main street, where the relative absence of parked cars had been a sight to behold, at least for Satou, an otherworlder, who had only ever seen streets, wide or narrow, more or less cramped full of cars. Other than a woman smoking on the ninth-floor balcony, too lost in her own thoughts to bother to look down, there was no one else, but him.

  Satou leaned back, and craned his neck towards the night sky. Cloudy and bright, not a star or a moon was in sight. A deep and hearty laughter seemed to grow out of it. And now that he was paying attention, he began to hear more. Listen… The silence was not so quiet after all.

  Clinks of cocktails and ice tumbling in glasses of gin; something about a ‘ten-day vacation to Oben Fal’, a poodle barking in the other room, a piano being played—amateurish, discordant at times, but no less worse for it—life went on beyond the confines of these four limestone walls, completely oblivious to his deceptively unremarkable plight.

  Rich and wealthy folks lived here, in these seven-storeys tall baroque apartments. Not the best people to ask where he could find a cheap hotel, but it was better than asking strangers he might meet along the way, especially at such late hours, who could only point him to the nearest hotel, or not know in the first place. At least the people in their homes, he decided, could consult their yellow-pages, or give the hotels a phone call to make sure that they indeed accepted foreign currencies. And who knows what other hospitality he might be offered? He was well-dressed enough; civilized looking. He did not look like a tramp, did he? No, far from it. He looked like a tourist, an exchange-student, or a young woman from a well-off family, travelling alone; in other words: someone from their own social-class. How could you not be willing to help?

  Optimistic, Satou got up and quenched his thirst from the ornate stone basin that jutted out from a nearby wall. He found it awkward, at first, to try and catch the sprout as it shot up right at his face. He got his shirt-collar wet, but quickly he got the hang of it. Wiping his face with the back of his hand, he admired the life-sized fountain angel as he walked past it.

  It seemed to be a recurring motif throughout this city, these angels. This one—the eighth one he had come across—only had one wing, not because the other had been broken off and never repaired; but because it was done so by design. The one wing without a pair coyly wrapped round his bare shoulder, and his loose-fitted robe teasingly draped across his pale and anorexic figure. A man or a woman—it was hard to tell; but he was beautiful. An exotic beauty. The flat-chested androgynous, white as porcelain, must’ve no doubt been white as porcelain if he did exist or had existed in ancient past.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “I’m in another world, so who knows?”

  The angle, with his half-lidded eyes and a sly coquettish smile, seem to be admiring the ripples undulating right beneath his feet. Or—No. Was he admiring himself, his own reflection?

  “A vain angel, you are?”

  The one-winged Hermes did not reply, but quietly continued to smile, seemingly pleased with what had been said.

  At that moment, Satou felt his heart skip a beat. He realized he was caught in a spell. He blushed.

  “Seriously? Faling for a—? Hahah…”

  He let his hand float over the rippling water. Crystal clear as it looked, it was just as freezingly cold.

  Then, shaking his hands dry, he put his gloves back on, and finally headed inside the building.

  Instantly, warmth enveloped him. Light-fixtures ran the entire length of the hallway; and a couple must’ve entered at the same time as him from the main entrance because an elevator muffled in an argument rumbled up to the fifth floor. The living quarters began from the 1st floor, he soon found out, and he headed up the first stairwell he came upon.

  Right by the superintendent’s office, it was suffocatingly narrow, and dark, probably because it was meant for staff-use only. The stairwell ran both ways—up and down—and downstairs he saw a basement, a boiler room, a maintenance room, a breaker room, and a storage room, buried under all the treasures extricated from wastebaskets upstairs: broken lamps, broken vases, broken chairs, broken perambulators, and so on and so forth, all in one monstrous heap. There was bound to be someone downstairs—napping, probably—but only the hum of a noisy fan drafted up from the dim-lit abyss.

  He was about to climb the first step, but something brushed against his foot. At first he thought it was a rubbish; but it was not dark enough that he could not make out. Right by his foot, unassuming, worn and left-behind: it was a black billfold.

  “…”

  Heat rose to his chest.

  He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t thought of anything yet. But already, he felt like a common thief.

  No, I… No, no…

  It was just his luck that he was in the back halls, where no one came or went. Here, Satou hesitated, not out of indecision, but out of cowardice. He walked up and down the stairwell, making sure that no one was nearby (of course, there was no one; he knew that already, yet he still checked), and—no, just what the hell was he doing? Should he do it or no?!

  As if to tighten his laces, Satou bent down, and whisked the billfold away as he made his way down the stairs.

  There, he thought. The deed was done. The billfold now lay deep within his satchel.

  No one had seen him do it. No one at all, that is, as far he knew. He had done it as naturally as he could’ve made it look, though, this sleight of hand could’ve only looked natural if he had done it while making his way up the stairs, not down. But no matter. No one had seen him do it. No one at all. That was all that mattered.

  Through the same doors he had entered, he walked out in a hurry, with his eyes set towards the ground. At the building gate, a watchman booth was there, encased on the side of the wall. The watchman wasn’t there when he first entered, but now there he was, manning his post. Whether he noticed Satou or not, he gave no signs of it.

  He didn’t see me, Satou reassured himself. No one saw me…

  The watchman, at best, could’ve seen his side-profile. He was clumsy, yes, on his way out of the courtyard, and had almost tripped. No, he had tripped; just saved himself before his knees could hit the ground. The solitary smoker on the ninth-floor could’ve glanced down and seen him then; but she would’ve not seen his face. Even if she did, Satou reassured himself: No one had seen him do it. No one had caught him in the act, red-handed; and he was safe, safe except from his own folly and stupidity he could never truly account for. Like Raskolnikov, Satou thought, his crime was a perfect one.