Poison Hemlocks

Ch. 03 - Fair Game

Paper has his secrets. And he guards them well, like Cerberus guarding the gates of the underworld, except instead of three heads, three different shed tools would be placed in front of him in preparation to be used to teach a lesson to anyone who dared to even try peering through.

String would know. Not just from observation this time. But from making the same mistake, from getting his fair share of repercussions and still feeling them for the next month. He knows better than to cross Paper, unless a cut is what he wanted. You don't disobey Paper. You follow his instructions - roll over, sit, speak, when you are told to.

And you don't try prying into his secrets.

Hey, it's not all bad, String would remind himself, for in return, Paper gives him the (in a way, limited) freedom to do whatever he wants, so long as it was under his range of control, which is wide. Hemlock is wide. The underworld is a wide territory.

I'd say it's a fair game.

Even so, time and time again does String acknowledge himself to be a greedy man - and he isn't sorry about it. Those secrets are what kept him so interested in Paper. No one's ever piqued his interest like he ever did.

He only gets all the more intrigued when he's seen glimpses of it before, a tease, a hint of the man Paper really is.

No, he did not see a man with feelings. String is aware Paper is way past that, though a part of him did wish that was the case.

Instead, the opposite. Far worse. A man with no feelings at all.

You cannot possibly watch a man decapitate someone with only a string and an iron grip, and not think said man's blood runs cold.

And the very next hour, the perpetrator would be captured for the murder - when the decapitated head is displayed on the desk of the nearest precinct's captain, alongside a letter of the killer confessing to the murder.

The killer detailed wasn't Paper.

It only taught String another lesson. It only gave him all the more reason to stay away from Paper, to not and never cross him.

But it only made String wish to take another step forward, closer to Paper. He wants to know more.

For String is a man taught to keep taking and taking as much as he still physically, possibly could.

But if anything, he'd never expect Paper to be the first to take the step forward, another inch between them erased like a man he hates.

A rainy night. Not too heavy, but not too light either. When the café they run as an excuse to continue their underground atrocities is in its closing hour, the bell by the door rings, signaling it was being opened.

From where he stood behind the counter, String glances up. His eyes widen when Paper closes the door behind him, hanging his umbrella on the coat hanger with no coats, for he doubts anyone would come by on a night like this.

New. This is probably the first time he's stepped into the café in forever. String recalled him even saying he didn't like the autumn palette of the café, and wished for it to have a more blue-ish undertone.

Yet here he is, the heels of his buckled boots clicking on the ceramic floor, rhythmic, echoing, and it followed his heartbeat.

"Hey, boss."

Paper's only reply is a light nod. He takes a seat on the stool at the counter, facing String, though he doesn't look up at him. He doesn't say a word either, String is already preparing him a drink.

"I have a long night ahead of me," Paper then says, the sudden slip of his silk yet slurry voice sending a shiver down String's spine.

He could ask why - why exactly Paper had a long night coming. String had a hunch, from what he's picked up from a couple of nights tailing him. But it could be anything. Then, he decides against ever asking him when he believed things would be better if his head was still intact.