Chapter 3: Money Made People Do All Sorts Of Things. Same As Always.
The walk from the station to the house was a grim, slow-motion affair. Elijah didn't lead so much as he simply moved forward, and Akari followed because inertia, the simple fact of keeping her feet moving, was less painful than deciding where else to go.
The streetlights here were few and far between, the shadows pooling under parked cars and in the doorways of the duplexes, making the quiet suburbs feel, somehow, less safe than the grimy train carriage had.
He reset the phone as they walked, his thumb moving with a casual expertise that was disturbing to watch. He didn't look at the screen much, just tapping the settings, wiping the history clean, removing the SIM card. He snapped it in half, the cheap plastic cracking with a faint pop that nobody else heard, and dropped the pieces into separate storm drains along the pavement. It was a tool now, scrubbed clean of its previous owner's life, just like the stack of Noxs he still had pressed against his chest.
Akari was dragging, her footsteps hesitant. Every few yards, she'd hitch her shoulder, her face drawn tight with the effort of not breaking down again. He could hear the shallow huff-huff of her breathing beside him, and the sound irritated him.
"You'll start drawing attention if you keep moving like that," he muttered, not turning around. "We're home now. You can afford to stop performing."
She didn't answer. She didn't need to.
They reached the house. It was a modest, two-story structure, set back from the street by a small lawn that desperately needed mowing. It looked tired, ordinary even. Inside, the noise of the city died instantly, replaced by the warm, thick smell of casserole and something vaguely flora-based—like cheap laundry detergent aggressively masking deeper odors.
Elijah kicked off his sneakers without undoing the laces, the worn soles thumping against the worn hallway rug. Akari hesitated just inside the doorframe, clutching her elbows tightly, looking like a wet stray.
The kitchen was brightly lit, a stark contrast to the darkness outside, and two women moved within the frame of the doorway. Elara, his stepmother, a tall, slim woman in her mid-thirties with the kind of sharp features that usually accompanied a very patient temperament, was stirring something on the stove. Beside her, perched on a stool and chopping vegetables with a focused frown, was Iris, his stepsister, nineteen, wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a college sweatshirt.
"Oh, thank Christ, you're back," Elara called out, turning, her face immediately softening into a smile that died the moment she took in the tableau.
She saw Elijah first—the teenage boy looking completely, casually fine—and then she saw the girl clinging to his shadow. Akari's uniform was crumpled, her face pale, streaked with grime and dried tears, and her left cheek was already a sickly, mottled red.
"Eli, what in the..." Elara began, her voice dropping.
Iris put down her knife, the steel clattering against the counter, and her eyes went wide. She looked from Akari's bruised face to Elijah's casual indifference, then her gaze landed on the phone in his hand. It was one of the newer, more expensive models, not the cracked, cheap thing he usually carried.
"Wait, Eli, where did you get that phone? That's not yours," Iris said, her voice rising with an immediate, irritating note of accusation. "The screen's not even cracked. Did you finally get a job that pays, or did you just... steal it?"
Iris wasn't being malicious; she was just being observant, her brain always running ahead of her mouth. But the comment caught Elara's attention like a tripwire.
Elara's eyes flicked to the phone, then back to Akari. The jump was instant: strange girl + unexplained phone + bruised face. It didn't take a genius.
"Elijah, now," Elara commanded, the patient temperament gone, replaced by the cool, hard edge of a woman who didn't tolerate games in her kitchen. "Who is this, and what the hell happened? And don't you dare lie to me."
Elijah just shrugged, tossing the phone onto the kitchen table near a bowl of fruit. No need to lie when the truth is just as effective at shutting down questions, he thought.
"This is Akari," he said, the name sounding foreign and fragile in the bright room. "She's an Eleventh Grader from school. We were on the train. Some dude was assaulting her in the corner. I brought her here because she lives alone and was being inefficiently dramatic." He pointed vaguely toward Akari. "Needed a place to crash, I guess. She lives alone."
He stopped there, letting the words sit, heavy and inert, in the fragrant air. He watched Elara's face cycle through confusion, horror, and then that inevitable wave of pity.
Akari flinched at the word "dramatic," her knuckles whitening around her elbows. Elara's gaze sharpened—she saw the tremor in Akari's shoulders, the way she kept her legs pressed tight beneath her skirt. Iris inhaled sharply, the scent of onions and cheap detergent suddenly sharp in her nostrils.
"Dramatic?" Elara demanded, stepping forward.
Before Elijah could respond, Akari choked out a sound—a wet, ragged gasp that sliced through the kitchen's tension. Her legs buckled. Akari slid against the refrigerator door, her trembling intensifying into violent, silent convulsions.
Elara dropped her wooden spoon; it clattered against the pot's rim. She strode past Elijah, her focus narrowing to Akari's pallor. "Sweetheart? Look at me." Her fingers brushed Akari's sweat-dampened forehead. "Too cold. Iris—get the quilt from the living room couch. Now."
Elara let out a choked, guttural sound, a sound of immediate maternal pain for a stranger's child.
Akari, who had been stiffly holding her breath and enduring the scrutiny, saw the genuine, uncomplicated sympathy in Elara's expression. It was too much. The carefully constructed wall she'd built to survive the last few hours crumbled, the sobs escaping her throat in sharp, painful gasps that filled the quiet house. It was the sound of a trauma finally released.
Iris was already there, pulling Akari into an immediate, fierce hug, stroking her back and glaring over Akari's head at Elijah, her face a mask of furious compassion.
"You airhead," Elijah snorted, leaning against the doorframe, watching the sudden, messy, wholly inefficient overflow of emotion. "What the hell are you glaring for?"
Elara was already shedding tears—not for the situation, but for the sheer waste of pain. She looked at Elijah, her own step-child, with a terrifying mixture of pity and contempt. She caught the faint trace of dried blood on his knuckles.
"You saw that, Elijah? You saw a girl from your school being… and you just watched? And you brought her here, and you are not even slightly ashamed?" Elara's voice was low, trembling with a contained fury that was far scarier than screaming. "Why didn't you stop him? Did you call the police? What did you do?"
Elijah sighed, pushed off the doorframe, walking over to the table to grab an apple. "Stopping him wasn't efficient," he replied, his tone clinical like he was speaking some fact. "It would have escalated things, would have meant a fight, a bloody nose for me, created witnesses, possibly gotten her hurt worse. Or me, and still no justice for her. He would have run, and I would have been injured, disrupting my studies. So, I took the phone and some cash he dropped instead." He nodded toward the device gleaming on the table, yawning. "And now she's here, safe. Problem solved."
"Problem solved?" Elara gasped, utterly appalled. "And the man? Did you see his face? What if he does it again? You have to tell the police!"
Elijah took a massive bite of the apple. "I'm afraid I 'mysteriously' forgot his face," he said, chewing slowly. "It was dark, you see. Look, he's just a man who made a bad choice. Happens all the time in this town. Why the fuss?"
Elara's voice broke. "What if that was Iris? What if that was your sister, and someone just walked past and let it happen, and didn't even remember the perpetrator's face?"
Elijah chewed, finishing the apple piece, his expression utterly neutral. "Then it would be Iris's fault for putting herself in such a situation," he replied, dryly. He dropped the core into the bin. "She knows this is a crime infused town, and if she decides to wear a skirt like that or travel alone at night, she's accepting the risk and asking for it with that body of hers."
The room went silent, save for Akari's shuddering sobs against Iris's shoulder. Iris stared at Elijah, her eyes wide with fresh horror, not because he was evil, but because he was so terrifyingly logical. He would apply that cold, pragmatic accounting to his own family without a second thought.
"And besides," Elijah added, looking straight at Akari, "Why are you still crying? Didn't I help you by bringing you here?" Akari stiffened under Iris's protective arm, her cries hitching into shallow breaths as Elijah's gaze pinned her. The overhead light reflected in his eyes—flat, like polished coins. "You accepted my help. You walked here willingly. So stop acting like I'm the villain. You're safe now, aren't you?"
The tears were still flowing, but there was a sharp, black light in her eyes. "I was new to this town!" she screamed, the sound raw and unexpected. "I didn't know the rules! You just stood there! You're the one who makes this place a hell!"
"Oh, hohoho. You got mouth to talk now, eh? But got none to shout when you needed it, eh?" Elijah snickered, that small, dry, humorless sound. "Keep that energy for the cops when they finally come sniffing. Think about it, Akari. You report? You'll be explaining why you boarded a train alone at night looking like... that." He gestured dismissively at her skirt, her torn strap. "Were you drinking? Was that your usual route? Did you flirt with him? They'll dissect it, piece by piece. Trauma's messy business." He crossed his arms. "Me? I brought you safety. Free."
Elara couldn't speak. She felt a profound, chilling failure. He was lost to this pragmatic darkness. He didn't hate them; he just didn't register them as more than minor variables in his own life.
She pointed a rigid, trembling finger toward the stairs. "Elijah. Go to your room. You are grounded. No computer, no TV, no outside contact for one week."
Elijah just shrugged again, already turning toward the stairs. "Works for me." He paused halfway up, pulling out the stolen phone. "I've got a new one now anyway. And the Wi-Fi's still on, right?"
He didn't hate her for grounding him. It was just a minor, expected cost of doing business in a family where empathy was valued. He walked into his bedroom, closed the door, and the soft click of the lock was the only sound of his dismissal. He connected the new phone to the Wi-Fi and started scrolling through videos, watching the noise and chaos he'd created recede beneath the glow of the screen.
Downstairs, the air was thick with the aftermath.
Elara was massaging her temples, her face etched with a helpless exhaustion. "Iris," she said, her voice strained. "Take her upstairs. Use my room, it has its own bath. Get her clean. Find her something to wear. Anything. Just... help her."
Iris, her cheeks wet with shared tears, nodded fiercely, helping Akari stand.
As Iris slowly led the trembling girl out, Elara watched them go. Her gaze drifted toward the stairs, a cold, hard decision settling over her fear. She knew she couldn't fix Elijah, but she could save the victim he had cynically brought to her door.
She walked over to the kitchen sink and began running the water, scrubbing her hands clean of the day's filth. Akari isn't leaving, Elara decided. I'm keeping her. I will help her get her papers. She is not going back out there alone. I will protect her. She will be my daughter.
Elara was pragmatic too, in her own way. If Elijah's life was dictated by cold, ruthless calculation, hers was dictated by a fierce, messy love. She was planting a moral flag in the ground, and Akari was now standing on it.