Red Room

16

Later that day, Moloch went to visit Juho. Before leaving the house, he called his buddy to ask for directions and headed towards his block.

"Take the 875 and go 12 stops. My block is at the end of the street.", Juho instructed, "But why don't you want me to pick you up? It's no bother, really."

"No, thanks, but I wanna learn how to get by on my own.", Moloch politely declined.

"As you wish. I'm waiting for you."

After hanging up, the albino made his way to the bus stop.

One of the disadvantages of living in the middle of a street was that the stations were usually located at one of it's ends. And since Spånga-Tensta was pretty long and the bus was to come in few minutes, he had to hurry.

12 stops later, he arrived at the edge of Ursvik, just as he'd been instructed. Once there, all he had to do was walk until the other end of the street.

In no time, Moloch was knocking on his friend's door.

"It's open!", the host called from inside.

So the guest went in. Juho was sprawled on his couch, watching TV. When he noticed the younger boy's presence, he went to the kitchen and returned with 2 open bottles of beer. Moloch took a sip and grimmaced, still not used to the bitter taste. His friend tried not to laugh, but couldn't stop a wide smile from showing up on his face. He didn't want to make the younger boy feel uneasy, but there were times when he just couldn't act like he wasn't amused.

The guest took another small sip and that was when Juho noticed a part of his elbow was skinned.

"What happened to your elbows?", he questioned.

Moloch responded by looking at him in a puzzled manner. His elbows didn't hurt, so why would Juho ask about them?

"You've got 'em skinned.", his buddy reminded him, "How?"

"Ah, that!", the albino exclaimed, remembering the quarrel with Erik.

His elbows did hurt when they met the concrete, but he didn't think the collision had been strong enough to mark him. He didn't even feel any sort of pain afterwards.

"Erik was about to beat me today.", he explained.

Juho rose an eyebrow in concern, "Which Erik?"

"Breiner, from my class. Do you know him?"

Breiner. The older boy was sure.

One of the main reasons Erik was a small celebrity in Stockholm was because his mother had a pretty good function at the city hall. And of course, everybody who didn't really have an occupation killed their time doing research on the private lives of Sweden's personalities; including their children. He was also rather well known for various scandals he'd taken part in. Almost everybody who ever interacted with him had nothing but complaints about his poor behaviour and sometimes violent actions.

"Not personally.", Juho admitted, "Only heard of him. But don't worry, pretty much everybody in Stockholm hates that motherfucker. You're not the only one."

"Then why do people still hang out with him?"

The friend shrugged, "He has a shitload of money, I guess. That, or all of his friends have the Stockholm Syndrome."

Moloch nodded and drank from his beer again, followed by Juho. While silence reigned over them, the newby took his time to process the information he'd just received. Why would somebody only be friends with a certain someone only for their money? Did people literally begin to sell themslves recently?

"Hey.", Juho suddenly broke the silence, "How'd the fight end?"

It wasn't Erik's style to leave the counterpart with an irrelevant injury, such as skinned elbows. Usually, fights he was involved in usually needed intervention from the exterior to end. Or was this how he had normal conversations?

Moloch's face turned crimson with embarrassment in a matter of seconds. It was rather shameful that a girl, let alone a younger one, had to defend him because he couldn't do that himself.

He turned his head away and murmured, "Well... Kata helped me."

"What do you mean?"

Juho couldn't explain why, but he had a feeling that Kataleya wasn't Erik's type at all. Of course, he had never seen her, but judging by what Moloch said about her, she was out of that guy's league. That led to the following question: if the girl didn't use her charm to end the conflict, then what?

"Uhm... long story short, she snuck up on him and knocked him out while he was trying to beat me and knocked him out."

The older boy had to slap both hands over his mouth so as not to burst into a major fit of laughter. It surely had to be a funny household Moloch was living in.

"And what did you give her in return?", he asked, grinning sheepishly.

Juho wasn't expecting his friend to understand the innuendo. But he enjoyed making fun of his naïvity, maybe a little too much. Moloch's cluelessness was almost cute.

The albino was caught off-guard. He knew he had to return the favour sooner or later, but so quickly?

"Well, I...", he started nervously twisting a hairstrand between his fingers, "Does cleaning the blood off her face count?"

It was Juho's turn to be shocked, "Wait, what?!"

"Erik punched her in the nose."

The older boy let his head rest in his palms and sighed, Breiner is nuts.

Kata was a bit younger as far as he knew. So, why go around beating kids? Besides, he could even get in trouble with the police for harming a minor. But that guy was probably too stupid to think about the possibility of having to face the music.

"So, how do I have to pay her back?", Moloch wanted to know.

The older boy took a sip of his beer to make it less obvious that he was thinking about something. And beer proved to be quite helpful, since an idea popped in his mind.

"Let's pull a prank on him.", he suggested.

The other one nodded, "Kay, what are we gonna do?"

Judging his enthusiasm, Juho quickly understood that Moloch was thinking about an that kind of childish jokes that weren't even funny. He seemed to not have realised that, the older one gets, pranks are used for rather harmful than humorous purposes.

"Well... it's not really a joke.", Juho explained, "We have to do something to fuck up his reputation, you get me? Something to make him look like a shitty person."

Moloch nodded again. Making Erik look horrible couldn't be that hard as he was doing it himself on a regular basis.

"I'm in. What are we gonna do?"

"When do classes start?", Juho inquired.

"8 o' clock. Why?"

"You'll see then. Meet me tomorrow at 7.00 in front of your house. Ok?"

The boys high-fived to seal the deal.