【 A candle brighter than the sun 】

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💋 Chapter VII

The sun and the moon traded places once more in the sky as the snow melted ever so gently away. In the shadows it persisted, holding on still like the homeless trapped there within.

A string of golden-yellow Christmas lights flickered on, glittering in a ring just under the lip of the awning outdoors the pub. Little flecks of snow had fallen afresh, but the drift had been off and on the whole night through.

A thunderous clatter rung out through the alleyway as an industrial metal door, and the accompanying cage gate behind it began to open. The door risen, a gust of frigid wind came flooding into the establishment like high mountain streams come toppling over the hill. Mel stepped out in his big snow boots, carrying a good lot of hefty boxes, what leftovers and rubbish were no longer of use to one Midnight Pub, the establishment in which he worked. Face ablast with the strong and bitter wind, nearly losing his footing, he'd take extra care as not to slip on the ice that had gathered in a slippery sheet atop the cobble, hardened there thick from the runoff of the freezers.

Mel tossed the boxes up and over into the mouth of an overfull dumpster -- hopeful that the bin men would be out for it come morning. There in the closest of two dumpsters where the box did land, the pile of rubbish bounced and rubble cascaded down around it. There then, the pile aside bounced as well.

The discrepancy in timing between the two motions was ever so slight, just one jump and then another, but it was enough to catch Mel's attention. Why, it appeared as if some of the garbage and leftovers had shifted about all their own. Not a moment later, he saw the trash part like the red seas, cans and crisp wraps tossing and turning. There a worryingly disheveled young person emerged and, ragged and ramshackle as he was, hastily climbed the lip of the dumpster.

Rather expecting of a large rat or some stray dog, Mel was taken aback by the sight of a person having been burrowed so deep in a dumpster. What was a man to say in that situation? Apologize for disturbing them? Ask if they were alright? Had they been hurt by the trash that he had unintentionally pummeled them with? Shambling into the dark like a roach in the night, the ragamuffin was gone long before any such apology could be carried out, leaving Mel behind in disbelief. Gathering his wits about him about him, Mel hurried off upstairs to tell his boss Henry about what he had seen.

He knew it would was relevant to his interests as, ever since reviewing the pub security footage and seeing a youth of the same description, looming around precisely the same dumpster, kicking about precisely the same trash, Henry had been on the lookout. That was because the boy that had been captured on surveillance looked to be none other than the "drunk" they'd kicked out that same night. The hoodie was the same, the long stringy hair was the same. It was pub policy that they invite in the homeless, that they ate for free, and he needed to right his wrongs.

Why, no one had known the boy was homeless at the time he was removed from the establishment. They served alcohol until two in the morning and so commonly had to tell the drunkards to go home after they'd had their fill. If the boy was homeless, or sick, or surviving on the leftovers in their bins, he really needed to do something to clear his pub's reputation. His actions not only reflected on the pub, they reflected on his livelihood. What's more, he didn't like the idea of being responsible for this. Maybe, just maybe, he had a bit of a guilty conscience.

He had to make good on this.


Not more than ten minutes later and with mind made, Henry began his descent back downstairs. He'd go on to approach the better of his two bar tenders -- Cyane -- with a seemingly out-of-the-blue request. He told him all about the homeless youth that had been huddled in the trash bin, about the security footage, about the incident to which it correlated, and asked if perhaps Cyane could go outside and have a look around for him.

Cyane accepted.

His shift was ending soon, and it was known by now that Cyane tended to walk to and from his work. If he were headed out into the cold soon, well, why not? Even if it was unlikely they'd find the boy, especially given the sheer size of the city, Cyane wasn't the type of person to turn a blind eye to someone in need. And Henry wasn't the type to give up on something once he felt committed.

Deep down however, Cyane knew the real reason he accepted. It was because he already knew about the situation, it had spread like wildfire amongst the staff and was the topic of their break room shenanigans on more than one occasion. But Cyane perhaps thought about the incident more than any other. In truth, he had thought about "the drunk" more or less every day. While not an obsession or compulsion by any means, he found it crossing his mind more and more since the news meant the risk of death to those Londoners "living rough" as they called it.

The feeling he got, over the way the other patrons laughed at the boy. He knew they had no malice in their tone, no contempt upon their faces in that moment, but he thought it very telling of their society as a whole. It wasn't any different than in SoCal, where the homeless were stepped over, where they spoke of the homeless like some pest; like an animal that had gotten inside the building somehow, how they reveled in the thought of having it done away with so justly. He thought most of the problem was Los Angeles, only to come here and find anti-homeless spike strips and further ill-will.

Cyane was a lot more troubled by it than he'd like to be. But it motivated him to do right where the others did wrong.

Before clocking out, Cyane plucked a few snacks from behind the bar that he thought he could offer the stranger should their paths indeed meet, and then he suited up for the cold. "If I hurry it up, then we can both die out here -" His thoughts chimed, trying to lighten his mood with a little morbidity. But he cringed through the thought, wishing he could try to be more positive as he ran the zipper up the toothy track of his leather jacket, and affixed a black knit cap upon his head.


The first stop was the coffee shop. They made only black coffee at work, but he liked to treat himself to something warm. If he did run into the boy out here, he knew he'd having something warm and comforting to share. Getting there was quick enough, and he happily retreated into the lovely warm cafe type environment wherein a few scattered citizens were nursing paper cupped coffees and using it to warm their fingers. That was what he wanted, and decaf was crucial at this hour of the night. Paying and thanking the barista, he headed out.

He took shorter strides, and he'd do so quickly in order to keep warm. The first place he checked was around the building and the dumpsters, but his search came up empty. From there it was just ten minutes to get to the Waterloo bridge, and as he came to it, he looked down to the water and he tried to put himself in a homeless man's shoes or the lack thereof. Where would he be to escape this? Somewhere with a lot of cover from the freezing winds, for one.

Aside the eerie echoes and hums of the city and its traffic, the air felt stiff and still, the sounds all dull and muted. It felt like it was definitely going to snow again, sounded as if it had. Still, the city was just as busy as it would be any day, and it was difficult to discern any sudden movements from any others. The boy could be anywhere. He could be anyone. There were cars, machines, and foot traffic in the area.

He did then notice that the back roads were essentially a ghost town. There seemed to be no one about on the street corners or huddled up in the usual places one might expect to see beggars with hats. No one who looked to be homeless anyway. It seemed too cold for anyone to want to be out in these places. It was too cold for even Cyane to want to be in these places.

Rather than wander those perilous alleys aimlessly -- what a big city to get lost in at night, and in his weather, he thought -- Cyane figured it best to start simple and ask around first. If someone had seen a boy of the dumpster-diver's description, why, it would point him in the right direction if nothing else. It seemed a good idea at first, but in his attempts to grab someone's attention, he noticed one of two things and neither good. Firstly, it seemed the vast majority of people were not in the mood for small talk as they too were coming home from late work and wished to be out of the cold. Secondly and most dishearteningly, he noticed a couple people wore orange hoodies or had long dark hair. It wasn't a detailed enough description to be of any use. Cyane himself had never even seen the boy up close.

Cyane's nose felt at risk of frostbite, and his fingers had become riddled with the pickling of needles. He knew he couldn't be out here all night. The once warm coffee he nursed, that warmed his insides like a hot drizzle of wax now became tepid and devoid of its once rich and alluring smell. It was little comfort now. Cyane could only wonder just how this poor kid might fair in this increasingly cold.

With no sign of the boy yet, and Cyane quite literally shaking in his boots at the thought of getting lost, he finally began the long trek o back to his apartment; only truly calling it quits after the frigid air saw him sneezing a whopping six times over. "Dammit, kid.." He mumbled, pulling his cap down to cover his ears, sniffling as he did, a couple of locks of jet black hair poking out from the hem of his hat. His ears had gone red from the cold and the soles of his feet did hurt from a long day's work. He so wished to be at home in bed. The thought of the warmth of his comforter and propping his feet up on a pillow were much of what kept him moving.

As he pressed ever on by his lonesome with the lukewarm drink, he felt himself aware of all the little sounds ringing out around him. The crunch of the occasional pebble underfoot, the rush of the wind betwixt each building that he likened to the sound of crashing waves back in his childhood home of California, and also the soft distant groans and howls of unseen vehicles calling out in their eerie wails, engines distorted by distance and a city echo throughout.


Briefly then, something caught his eye; a little flash of warm yellow light in the sea of black and midnight blues. It was as he looked up to check the familiarity of the road on which he stood, and the name of the street so that he knew he hadn't taken any wrong turns, that he saw the figure huddled in the splash of amber light.

Directly across the street and partway down an alley, lay a scene painted in a tiger's eye pallet. It was the outline of a person shielded by a layer of cardboard and a sheet of damaged plywood. That particular someone had lit some papers and the contents of can of tuna in order to provide themselves with a bit of light, heat and perhaps a bite to eat. That unmistakable flickering glow framed the edge of the youth's form like a bonfire in the night. His shadow dancing along the brick wall so faintly behind him.

At first Cyane tried blinking it away believing the spot of light to be a trick of the eyes. But as his eyes adjusted to the change in the temperature of light, he found himself slowly gravitating towards the other side of the street, like a leaf atop a pond, gently coasting in the direction of the light and in hopes that he could get a better look. He could in fact!

A young looking person alone and surrounded by rubbish like this -- Was this the kid he had been looking for? He seemed to be a little older than what Henry and the others had made him out to be. Perhaps that was because this young man looked tall and slender, gaunt and lean. Words like "kid" and "boy" conjured up something much more jovial, but perhaps still fit.

The boy's hair had long frayed up, wisping into a curl of what looked like steel wool around his head. He was ratty and unkempt, facial features lit unflatteringly from below via the light of his makeshift candle. His eyes stood out from the rest of his face, made larger by the lack of fat around them, and framed further by a scattering of frost on his lashes.

As Cyane took in the scene, he noticed those haunting eyes affixed to him. He had been spotted, but the two said nothing. Rather, staring at one another in a standstill with both young men trapped in one another's gaze.

Cyane didn't know his name, but it was Percy, and Cyane was almost completely certain he had found precisely who he was looking for.


In an instant, Percy cast aside his plywood pallet and cardboard fastened home, stood up tall and wiry like a young sapling tree, and then without any warning, he ran -- taken far and surprisingly quick by what little muscle he still had on his frame.

"Wait!" Cyane called out, watching in a sudden rush of guilt over having startled the boy.

Right as Percy bolted, Cyane spotted the cast on his arm. Was Cyane mistaken about the boy's identity or had something bad happened to him in the last few weeks? That cast certainly hadn't been there before.

The next thing Cyane knew, Percy had slipped on the icy streets and came crashing down. Cyane quickly dropped his belongings to go and help him up. The splash of the discarded beverage extinguishing the campfire in some happenstance of poetic irony.

"Hey! I'm here to help! Are you cold?" Cyane spouted in an attempt to find the least threatening way to explain himself. His lungs burning on the crisp cold air as he slowed to a jog, but Percy trashed and gathered himself to his feet, building himself into another sprint wherein he was just quick enough to evade Cyane and his kindly intent.

However, Percy hadn't the stamina to keep going for long, and he couldn't power his thin wiry legs for very long. His speed fell, and his legs misstepped continuously on the slippery cobblestone streets, and then when he turned to climb a fire escape, he found that even his arm -- the only arm that he had -- hadn't any of the strength necessary to hoist himself up; he simply wouldn't be able to climb it. Percy then made a weak attempt to jump to a higher position, and wedge the tread of his shoe onto the first metal rung so that he could get a head start up the ladder, but to no avail; he was far too exhausted.

It took every ounce of the skinny, lean muscle he had just to hold on. Every subsequent attempt had Percy looking quite like a lanky frog desperately trying to escape a pvc bucket only to slip back down to the very bottom.. leap after pitiful leap. As he ran out of breath, the toes of his trainers came down again and they missed the cobble beneath him causing him to slip. From there, hitting his chin on one of the steel rungs and cringing up in pain.


Cyane had no trouble catching up. In fact, he had slowed to walking pace and still arrived in time to witness the pitiful display before him. "Hey, easy!" He said with a tinge of concern. "I don't know if you remember me, but I'm from the pub back there, I wanted to ask if you needed any help-" and without an answer, Cyane stripped his jacket off, fumbling a little in the process. "Here- it's cold.. and you look like you need it more then I do."

He didn't know it, but it wasn't exactly hard winning the boy over when it came to gifts as soon he would find. Percy sat still, watching silently as Cyane laid his jacket around the boy's shoulders, then taking off his knit cap to fasten it atop Percy's head. Percy's ears were ice cold, reddened, and looked to be somewhat large for his head. They of course seemed to only stick out more because of how thin he was. As such were more at risk of frostbite than the rest of him, lacking any body fat or muscle and poking through the warmth of his hair. It was a wonder they survived this long at all.

The warmth that the hat -- still retaining that of Cyane's head -- provided was quite soothing. The way the jacket that was much too big for him shielded his shivering frame.

"There you are." Cyane said with the faintest twinge of a smile but it melted off as he was met with Percy's continued blank stare.

In the way Percy sat, stood, ran, and even carried himself, as well as in the unblinking of his eyes, the boy looked positively feral. And if there was any emotion to be read on his face at all, it was that of aggravation.

Cyane couldn't begin to fathom why his generosity was met with such a look. Was he perhaps being rude? His mind searched for reasons, for explanations without pressing the boy with further intrusive questions. Why, he had already intruded upon the poor kid's life. This must all have been very embarrassing for him, Cyane thought, and it was almost enough to make him rethink his actions.


Quick to try to remedy the situation, Cyane broke the silence. "You uh.. Took a pretty gnarly fall back there, are you alright?" and his hands then gestured to look the boy over. But Percy only continued to stare somewhat flatly at him, remaining in silence.

Oh what a dreadful silence.

"Here, I brought you these." Cyane then awkwardly jaunted over to gather some of the offerings he had meant to bring as good tidings, only to find that the coffee was no more. Instead, snapping back up the snacks he had cast aside, and bringing them over to where the boy sat l.

"S-s-so you're f-followin mey?" Percy spoke at last, his jaw still in pain from the blow it took on the fire escape. His words cut sharp and precise, but chattered from incessant shivers.

So he could talk. Cyane exhaled in surprise, already regretting having come out this way and having removed his jacket as he had quickly become cold. "Yes! I mean, not to here -" what was he saying? Was that even a proper sentence? "I'm from the pub- you were there last week- " Oh. Oh god, this whole thing was going to seem much more stalkerish the more he explained it all, wasn't it?

Percy continued to watch in that judging, scowling look that made Cyane just want to recoil all the more.

".. We're sorry" Cyane said with a heavy breath. "We saw you outside and we didn't invite you in. The boss wanted you to know that food is free."

The words "the boss" clicked in Percy's head and his eyes widened. A flash of recognition briefly crossing his face.

Cyane had started to shiver a great deal himself and by that point in the night, he just wanted to head back home.

"I'm sorry if I startled you, here -" Cyane laid the snack foods down on the ground in their packaging, placing one such package down as a paper weight upon some bank notes so that the wind could not whisk them away. It was all the money he had in his pocket. "Please stay safe out here, alright? - you're welcome back if you ever stop by."

With that, Cyane retreated and slipped his arms around himself in an attempt to keep warm.

Percy watched cautiously like a stray cat that had been approached by a human, and he kept until he believed Cyane was just far away enough. As soon as the blue haired man left his sights, Percy hurriedly stepped over to swipe up the offerings of food and money.


For Cyane, well, it was a long and what felt like fruitless trek back to his apartment. He still felt quite bad for the kid, but

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