After Anas helped Aurora clean the place, he picked up some documents that belonged to the jester's file which he found scattered around, and intended to bring them to the archive to put them back together with the case file. On his way, he felt some gazes swarming his back but he chose not to turn around. As he thought it would be weird not to treat the situation any differently than it was before, or rather it must be treated separately on a whole new scale, but weirdly enough, he didn't feel an ounce of guilt regarding the incident. The worn-out nerves were isolated and left to decay in a distant part of the back of his brain. Like a tree that compartmentalized the damaged area and separated it from its main body, but it's not as if he was doing this consciously. The insensitive and cold air surrounding him froze his head in a snowstorm and pushed it into a defensive stance, where his body is overriding his will against the world and all that could be regarded as a threat by instinct. He walked the hallway while the gazes were left staring at a stone statue.
In the archive room, he noticed two people whispering to each other in secret somewhere between the shelves near the window, and he thought for a split second about eavesdropping but decided otherwise. Acting out of line would bring more unnecessary attention to him and place others in harm's way. He began to understand the weight of his actions more thoroughly, and after a dimension of his movement was added to his field of view even the very act of not doing anything, is an act all the same that has an effect on his surroundings.
He picked up the file and flipped a few pages to where he guessed the documents belonged, and placed them there carefully while fighting the urge to read through them again out of habit, and as he was trying to put it back on the shelf his eyes were drawn to another case file, titled "The king."
While his curiosity almost got the best of him, he decided not to give into the temptation and just do what he is supposed to, but as he placed the jester's file back on the shelf and walked a few steps away, he found his right hand reaching out for the file on its own, which made him stop in his track as his hand was hooked onto several files resting alongside it in hope of pulling it. He grabbed one hand with the other and tried to loosen its grip, just for it to drop all the files it could reach, perhaps out of desperation. He tried to get some of them before they could fall and hit the ground, but all of that was impossible with only one hand in his control, and even when he tried to place his foot before the point of contact to prevent them from making a sound, that only managed to unravel more files and get them back to the air to scatter on a wider scale.
A woman stood right before the mess. At first, Anas could only see her feet next to the pile of files, and when he traced her figure upwards to her face a cold gaze was there to meet him at the top, with long and silky black hair falling like a stream on her back, which made him avert holding eye contact any longer than the split of a second. If he remembered correctly, she was called Serene, the second parent and a child of the grandfather, so he avoided recreating the same situation he found himself in against Hans, and refrained from challenging her presence by lowering his posture and avoiding looking at her straight in the eyes.
Serene lowered her crossed arms and extended one hand and reached for a few documents that were lying on the ground, "You might be more useful for a desk job than joining the battlefield. Why don't you become an assistant?"
Despite the condescending tone she had, what she said wasn't devoid of any merit. Assistants' work is limited to the office and they manage most of the paperwork around the family tree, as they lack any special ability. It's not so different from the job he used to have. It might be said that he was made for a job of such nature, and that is the role he feels most confident fulfilling. But to fall back on watching numbers go up, and sometimes go down, and then go up again, and try to manipulate them in a way that is beneficial to the head of the entity he works for, with complete and utter detachment to how it affects the lives of people that it concerns, to lose his focus on the value of the lives of others and break them down into points and decimals to be calculated and abused for interest, to be stuck in a loop of repeating each mundane task without ever having to think about them, without ever having a thought cross his mind at all. He didn't want to imagine what his life would turn out to be if he kept that up any longer, that is, if his sanity could have endured it any longer.
He twisted the corner of his mouth in something of an awkward smile, to be met with underhanded aggression right from the start, and to return the favor with a passive-aggressive comment in response, all of which didn't seem so pleasant for him to be engaging in, "I'm not sure if I'm any good at it. I don't think I can just deal with that and sit around waiting to hear of the rain in a newspaper."
Serene squinted her eyes when she heard that, as if she was willing to dissect him with her gaze the moment she found a way to justify it, but she closed her eyes and handed what she had picked up from documents that fell the ground back to him, "The recent incident should be enough to tell you what you need to hear." and perhaps before Anas could even hear the extent of to that, she walked past as her daughter followed closely behind like a shadow, without turning her eyes away from her back.
Anas sighed helplessly as he brushed her words right off his head and put the files back together. Having a moment of doubt during a setback would invite only more severe mistakes. And at that point, what good is throwing blame and pointing fingers? Since the damage is already done, why make him the scapegoat for their grief and anger? If anything, he thought, they should curse themselves, then the system they invented, then the world that pushed them to adopt such a tradition. But after he calmed down a bit, he found these thoughts a bit silly, immature, and ultimately useless and uncalled for, so he brushed them off as well.
After he was done, he made his way to the streets as he was on his way to the part-time job he managed to land, at that moment, a number of pigeons jumped into the air and avoided his careless steps as he went out of the front gate to the family tree's tower, and at that moment, an old man that was standing nearby seemed to have a frown drawn across his face at the fact that Anas managed to upset the pigeons, while carrying a brown bag of bread in his hand which suggested he was in the middle of feeding the birds, but when Anas opened his mouth intending to frantically apologize, a number of saxophones started playing from some distance which managed to grab his attention for a minute of time and turn his head to guess at their location, but when he failed in doing so, he looked back to find the old man already gone. An uncomfortable feeling started brewing under his feet. The time, the place, the activity, putting it all together should suggest something even half consciously, but he brushed it off for now.
The walking distance from the 4th district, where the family tree's headquarter is located, to the 8th district, where his job is, would take around 15 minutes, with that in mind he wanted to hurry up, so he wouldn't be late to his new job. He put his glasses on and pulled out a new report on a murder case to make use of the time until he got there.
Over in the 1st district, in a small and humble café, Maj seemed to have an audience of two people as he kept flapping his mouth, while his food was getting colder and colder as time passed. One of his two companions was a young lady wearing modest and somewhat formal clothes, with a long and loose black skirt and a simple white shirt of the same nature, while holding her hair in a braided ponytail. The only eye-catching piece in her clothes was a scarf she was wearing under her eyes and covering half of her face like a mask. She got up without touching her food, and without a word as well, she left the two of them quietly.
Maj had a terrified and confused expression written all look across his face, as he whispered some things to himself in a paranoid tone while watching her fade slowly into the fog.
His other companion was Neon, a young boy, roughly somewhere between 15 and 17 years old from a casual look, and the second child of Aurora. He had somewhat of a calm expression on his face, with a pair of round and big eyes, but it was hard to tell as he was covering the fluffy brown hair on his head, and the soft features of his face were shadowed by something like a bucket of a hat. He took a sip of the mango juice he had as he spat out a comment, "Well, it's not really that surprising, you don't have the best views on women anyway. What did you expect to happen when you can't keep a word to yourself?"
Maj made an expression that suggested something of anger, but quickly swallowed it back as he realized what he was saying was right, which resulted in an expression that fits annoyance in the face of the truth more closely. He searched around his blonde hair weirdly as he was trying to pinpoint a spot somewhere, "Look here! I should have a single white hair somewhere. And what does old age mean? That's right, wisdom! All my words are nothing but wise and thoughtful, you should learn from me some more."
Neon twisted his mouth and looked to the side, as if talking to himself, "Isn't that normal? No.. maybe I should be happy instead that you're already withering away."
Maj put both of his hands on the table and got closer to Neon with a look that suggested suspicion, "I can read it on your face, you know. It says you said something nasty just now!"
As Neon put down his cup down he thought of changing the subject, "Why did you even invite her? Did you really need more victims for your misogynistic radio show?" When Maj heard that, he rolled up his sleeves and flexed his muscles while seething with animosity, but when Neon confessed it was an honest question he calmed down a bit and zoned out for a minute. As he rolled down his sleeves, he lowered his face and blushed a bit, as he barely got a few words out, "I sort of... kind of... ugh I have feelings for her."
Neon had the nastiest look on his face, which caused them to fight over it as he was denying that it had even happened. It wasn't so much of an issue with having feelings for Shams, that in itself wasn't a problem, as Neon thought she wasn't bad looking necessarily, but more so the fact that Maj out of all people would fall for her, being the person that he is. Putting the things he says on one hand with the things he does, and then putting this confession on the other, invites nothing but confusion. Leaving aside her cold and ambiguous attitude, it was impossible to guess at what Maj even liked about her.
In the middle of fighting, Neon's eyes caught a glimpse of something out the window to the corner of a beauty salon, while a naked drunk person was running in the middle of the street shouting random nonsense. He whispered to Maj in a snarky tone, "One person, in an alley." and as if they hadn't stopped fighting yet, Maj replied in the same tone, "There are two cops at the end of the street, let them handle it."
Neon knotted his eyebrows and twisted a strand of his hair and started playing with it as he was thinking, "They don't do anything lately, even less so than before. We can't bet on them not overlooking this and acting deaf and dumb."