Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 409. Reciprocation

I turned around and dragged Henry with me to the kitchen/dining room, where everyone had already taken a seat.

The kid was now on the bench where Jordan would have sat; the staff sergeant, Ethan, and the dragon were on the chairs, which made it look as if the children and adults were each on one side.

Accepting that Henry and I were still more children than adults, I went to the bench and sat beside the kid, who beamed at me happily.

"What’s up, buddy?" I greeted him.

Since coming here, he was dressed in children’s clothes; I had no idea why or how my grandmother had gotten them so fast, maybe from the mysterious attic that I hadn’t seen until now.

He looked so much better than in that shabby overall, and with getting fed, he seemed to have gained a bit more weight.

The table was already full of food; this time we had meat again.

After the kid nodded at me happily, I started to fill Henry’s plate while he filled our glasses with water, and I asked my grandma,

"This meat is not rat meat, is it?"

I was stared down by the old woman, but she didn’t answer, while Ethan eyed the meat with a suspicious glance before putting it on his plate.

"I guess that’s a no." I gave Henry his plate before taking the child’s, wanting to fill it with meat.

"He can’t have meat," my grandmother intercepted while Ethan explained.

"The child’s stomach isn’t ready for meat, according to the doctor."

Ah, I thought the old woman was bullying the child, but given that she was much nicer to him than she had ever been to me, I guess I was mistaken.

I put a few vegetables on the kid’s plate, not leaving out a good load of broccoli, and placed it in front of him.

Then I went for my own food, hell-bent on getting into another food coma today.

Everyone ate, and Henry was especially silent and well-behaved until he suddenly spoke up.

"What happened to the survivors of the crystalline world that escaped after the fire?" he asked Ethan, but the staff sergeant answered instead.

"A few ran away; part of the impaired survivors had been brought to the hospital, and the other part had been taken by the FBI. The survivors that weren’t from here had been brought back to their home country—this happened before the city went under lockdown."

With ’impaired,’ he must mean the group of people that couldn’t communicate, neither with words nor with writing—probably sent into a parallel world to test how a body would change inside another world.

Henry continued to eat, even more crestfallen and well-behaved than before.

I nudged his leg with mine to tell him it was okay.

Even if everyone had been questioned and had talked about the shield before they had been hospitalized and sent back (though the majority weren’t able to communicate anyway), it didn’t matter.

"Where did the ’impaired’ people come from? From our country?" I asked the old man.

"No. They had all been sent back. They won’t be able to ever communicate again by speaking or writing. This should have been the sick test of a faraway nation."

Usually, Henry would make a snarky comment about how our military wasn’t any better or something, but he continued to eat in silence.

Just that, as he finished with his first plate, he went for a second, then a third, and a fourth. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

I also ate a lot to gather energy for tomorrow and to work toward my food coma; luckily enough food was provided—though the owner of said food grew increasingly unhappy seeing us eating happily, or in Henry’s case, silently.

"You both will pay for the amount of food you are eating," she finally commented while sipping on a tiny espresso.

"Sure. How about we get rid of the rats?" I asked her with a smile.

"You would have done that anyway..." She waved it off.

"What do you need? Just say the word." I leaned back, patting my stomach.

Filled to the brim, she didn’t seem so pesky anymore; besides, it was true that she went through a lot of headaches because of us.

Stumped into silence by my friendliness, she eyed me suspiciously.

"Go and chop—"

"Firewood? No problem," I nodded, seeing her eyes squint into a slit.

"WITHOUT using abilities."

"Okay."

"And WITHOUT using your inhuman strength."

I chuckled and shrugged helplessly.

"I can’t just turn my strength off."

She tapped the side of her tiny glass in contemplation.

"No... you are grounded until tomorrow and after tomorrow. Peel a ton of potatoes; we will have mashed potatoes for dinner."

"Alright." I nodded, and Henry hummed in agreement, showing he would participate in the peeling.

"Mhm..." A clear dissatisfaction grew on her face, having gotten what she wanted way too easily, without screaming and crying.

She really was someone happy to hunt but bothered by the game.

After lunch was over, we weren’t shoved into a dark room to peel a bunch of potatoes; instead, the kid and I were called back into ’lessons’.

Henry followed after us, and luckily my grandmother didn’t comment on that or throw him out again.

Because he seemed really down, and if she made him cry, I would turn unhappy... no matter how much of a headache we had been in the past and no matter how entitled she felt to go after him.

I sat down on my stool, while Henry leaned against the wall beside the door, looking super pitiful again.

The doctor came into the room when everyone had settled down and asked Henry to sit on the couch because he would get an IV, which was what I had asked for.

Henry complied so much that even the doctor asked if he was okay.

Next was me; I got a shot and a few tablets to swallow, all nurturing blood and stuff like I had requested as well—I didn’t really listen to the explanation in detail because I was thinking about how to cheer up my listless puppy.

I didn’t approve of him sneaking out, but given that I had done the same thing with Dr. Carell back then, I understood it and wasn’t really angry.

And we were long past the stage of implicating anyone in anything.

He and I had already killed so many people; who the fuck cares if some shield would be recognized—and like I said, just because I had been present back then doesn’t make me the big shield-wielder in people’s eyes.

Additionally, the Lawrence family had become our enemy the moment my blood was stolen, so nothing is lost.

If they came for us—no matter the way—we, I, were so much more powerful than them together anyway.

No need for any reproach.

The biggest loss that night was the kid’s mother.

I really wished she could have survived, though I don’t know if she would have been able to take care of the kid, given that I had looked into her mind.

As someone very familiar with losing one’s mind, I can say with absolute assurance that she had been slipping—only a minimal part of her craziness had been an act to get the Lawrence family off her back and to deem her an uninteresting lunatic.

It’s a fucking tragedy altogether.

The keycard had been ready; she had just waited on an opportunity, so my guess is even without Henry, she would have died the same way in which she did in the end.

I hope the puppy doesn’t beat himself up over her death as well...

Looking at Henry on the couch with an IV nurturing him, I had an inkling that only the part where he could have ’implicated’ me in some crazy, fucked-up way was what had made him silent and so atypically well-behaved.

My grandma ignored me as long as I was on my stool while she went through a book for children under seven who had just mastered the first hurdle of writing.

I took a stack of empty papers, a pen, and an unused book from the desk and used my thigh with the additional book as support to draw the brooding beauty on the couch.

Had I been that mysteriously bewitching—the sad aura around me simultaneously adorable and devastating for onlookers—when I had been in my self-hating phase?

Hmm...I doubt it.

Drawing Henry was so much easier than even the easiest doodle, because his lines were either straight or flowing, harmoniously and edgingly growing into the masterpiece his whole body was.

I was finished in what felt like a second; with no doubt nor hesitation, there was no need to erase even one line, because he wasn’t only in front of me, but his picture was also etched into my mind.

He only glanced at me in the beginning, for a long, intense moment, but then he closed his eyes again, being a still model.

I would need acrylic colors to really draw him and use the whole color palette to truly capture him, but I knew it would be just as easy, as the motif was perfect.

When I was finished with the picture, I folded it into a paper plane and threw it at him.

Without opening his eyes, he caught it accurately with the hand the IV wasn’t attached to.

He held the paper plane as if it were something precious, yet he didn’t take a look at it.

So I used the next paper to again draw him—this time with an additional paper plane on his lap, tightly held to himself.

Another simple, mundane copy of the masterpiece was soon born, and I folded it to throw it at Henry.

This time my grandmother looked up and watched the plane fly gently to Henry, who caught it cautiously and without looking at it, holding onto it along with the first one.

She didn’t say anything, so I took it as a silent permission to continue.

This time I drew a Henry with two paper planes.

Then three.

Then four.

Then five.

Then six, ...

And the next time I looked out of the window, I saw that the sun was already setting.

Mhm, yeah... I hadn’t even been able to count how often he wrote down my name in the love letter he had given me, but it was a number so high that it would surely warrant quite a few more paper planes to reciprocate.