Komo-Doubutsu

Chapter 18: It's Always the Tip

By: Midori Ushi Law

This world is full of falsity.

We smile our bleached teeth at any negative nancy for a quick buck.

We hide our true selves in the name of customer service.

We conceal our honest opinion just to make our professors believe we're in agreement with them.

Every act of chivalry for a warm smile.

Every dollar to the homeless for their praise.

It's always the tip that's kept our world in falsehood.

It's always been the tip we've strived for.

Chapter 18: It's Always the Tip

In a mixture between sleep and consciousness, a hairy man lay on his bed in his studio apartment staring at the window in darkness.

I should really start writing these epiphanies down. This is one I thought of before, though, isn't it?

As soon as his mind began to wander and his eyelids were too heavy to naturally hold up, his cell phone on the nightstand beside his bed illuminated, buzzed, and played fast-paced jazz. The man's eyes cracked open. His massive hand slammed down on the phone and flipped it open with his thumb.

A deep, raspy voice emerged from his dehydrated lips as he answered, "Hello?"

"California. We need you at the downtown precinct immediately," demanded a voice over the phone.

The man let out a short chuckle, "It's nice speaking to you again too, Rick."

"I'm serious, Agent! Get down here, pronto!"

"Last time I checked, I was retired. I'm not an agent, and I definitely don't go by codenames anymore," the man explained before yawning. He heard silence over the line, realizing things were serious. "What 'ya got for me, Deputy Chief Trogan?"

A sigh was heard over the phone. "A little over an hour ago, ten individuals appeared in our city on a busy highway, causing three separate single-car accidents. Our units arrived at the scene and they've been transported to our holding cell here at the precinct. We didn't conduct a full interrogation, but from their spontaneous utterances, we are under the assumption that they came from something called the Great Quest. With tattoos on their hands or faces, they seemed like they could be members of a cult, but then I remembered something-"

California's stomach began to warm up in anxiety. "I understand. I'm on my way." All this time I've been able to keep it secret. Why did this have to happen now?

His old, used car sped down the lit streets. Jazz music blared from the speakers, like his vehicle was a portable club. It always calmed him. Jazz had a way of doing that, especially the music from the greats. Music from The Elephant Man was his favorite. Though a high school principal, back in the day, he was a top-notch trumpet player, who found his fame in the military. It's the only compact disc California owned from a Doubutsu country. Regular jazz was fine, but jazz honed by a Doubutsu user had a special kind of kick alongside their Comforter trait. It gave the tense, middle-aged man exactly what he needed to ease his mood and think clearly.

Pulling into the gated parking lot, the former agent whipped the car into a vacant spot and stepped out the vehicle in a quick stride. Crickets scraped their legs together like a bad string musician. The annoying sound only hastened his pace.

Arriving at the bulletproof entrance door, California entered an eighteen-digit code into the familiar keypad and impatiently pulled it open. The door lead to a long hallway filled with rooms varying from interrogations to psychological examinations to polygraphs and voice stress analyzers. The room the burly man headed to was where the holding cells were. It was time.