The Dead Tenants

Next morning finds him in Moe’s apartment – Darling, Natasha and Charles are cleaning outside and he can even hear them chatting on the first floor. He decided that his definition of chatting should be broadened: now it includes Darling’s insults to both Natasha and Charlie. So much for liking the latter. Maybe “overgrown, stupid and useless lump of bones and muscles” is how Darling expresses his sympathy.

Moe seems to listen in the conversation too, not too fond of what’s going on outside – but she shoots Ramiel questioning look and he shrugs. Those three will be fine.

Carefully, the woman tips a small white teapot into his cup until it’s filled near to the brim and then repeats the same process with her own, ever the careful. The teapot is almost ornate – it’s porcelain and the tea cannot be reheated unless poured into a metal one, but she’s not made much tea anyway, just for the two of them and a little bit over.

“How was your trip with Simon?” She asks, genuinely curious and Ramiel sighs without even meaning too. Moe doesn’t say anything. She just raises one eyebrow. “That bad?”

“It wasn’t bad.” Ramiel says defensively. “He’s just... something.” Moe laughs at his statement, nod slightly. He never went to the bookstore, either, but at least they’ve lost some time.

“He is, he is.” She confirms, purple eyes crinkling. Ramiel remembers his own when he sees hers. The spread hasn’t moved much yet. “But he’s not a bad guy, you know. A little bit grumpy, but all in all, he’s a good guy.” A little grumpy is an understatement. Ramiel doesn’t want to comment, so he keeps it in. “Charlie talked to me about the little research party. Did you talk about it?”

Ramiel’s not sure what to answer. Simon’s words are plaguing him. Should he say anything? If not, should he lie? He’s not sure if he should trust Simon at all. The other knows Moe better than he does and Ramiel does, truly, trust Charlie’s judgement – but he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t. The man was driving out monsters for fun and he slipped on Natasha’s railing.

“Yeah.” He nods, blows into his tea. The stream rises from the cup and he doesn’t try it yet. “He suggested we go tomorrow. He asked if I’ll go with them. I haven’t yet decided.”

Moe nods. “Could you let me know by tonight?” Ramiel startles for a moment and then remembers the Simon’s magical solution – if Moe goes with them, only Natasha is supposedly dangerous. When Zero is counted out. The females are far more deadlier than males here, or so Simon seems to want him to believe. “If you’re not going, then I’m gonna have to stand in for you. It’s too dangerous for just the two of them to go all on their own.”

If they truly believe these two are so dangerous, maybe they should’ve gone to the outskirts before Ramiel arrived. Left Natasha and Moe on their own and see if they’d try to put each other out, despite being, as far as Ramiel could make an analogy, immortal. It all sounds terribly fake to him – Darling would have to remain in here, too, but Simon seems to believe Darling is able to hold his own.

“Yes, of course. I’ll drop by this evening if that’s okay with you.” He suggests instead of making a rushed decision and Moe nods. She doesn’t seem to be terribly phased and she seems like she doesn’t mind.

“Darling was so very vocal about not going.” She lets out a barking laugh. “I mean—you’ve met him so you can probably imagine it anyway.” She looks towards her own cup, but makes no movement to even feel for the heat of it.

“I can hear him right now, so I can imagine.” It’s true. Darling’s hissing something about black eyes and making them and not regretting a thing – and repeated performance. Ramiel doesn’t know the details but it intrigues him still. He’s not sure he wants to find out from Darling and his condescending tone, though.

Moe hums then finally picks up her tea cup. It’s steaming still but she takes a large gulp anyway. She grimaces, but only for a little bit. Perhaps she’s establishing dominance or something. Ramiel feels that there’s no need. Moe has proved herself superior to him the moment she’s had her gun on him. Even now, he can see it – not hidden, on the counter right where she can quickly get to it.

He ignores a voice saying things about conspiracy theories.

“Now’s the right time.” She notices then looks out of the window. The sky is bleak and air heavy and she squints but when Ramiel follows her line of sight, he can’t notice anything. Belatedly, he realises that she’s looking at the calendar at the wall and his apparent miscalculation was understandable.

The calendar is hand-made – straight lines drawn with ruler or book or other flat surface and days and numbers added by hand, months neatly printed out one beneath another and days gone by crossed out. Nothing is circled, nothing stands out. Numbers on Sunday dates are put in brackets. It’s the rest day, they told him. They rest from everything, including each other. Simon does that every other day anyway, but Ramiel never went inside of his apartment so he’s not sure what his calendar looks like.

The writing on elevator and the apartment doors doesn’t belong to Moe. Her handwriting is all tall and narrow letters printed out neatly and leaning onto the right – too thin for the near round handwriting. Her numbers don’t resemble the ones at the doors.

The living area of her apartment is very cute, though – there’s origami in various colours and shapes everywhere and there are rectangles of coloured glass hanging on the second half of her window. They’re even fitted so that she doesn’t have to move them out of the place when she has to pull down the metal plates. Very colourful. Mainly red and purple.

“Yes, yes.” Moe nods, eyes still glued on the calendar. “This is a very good time. It’s halfway through November already. If it snows, the search’s going to be useless. Everything will get soaked and wash out.”

A tentacle of dread shoots through him – what if it already happened? Collectively, they’re been here for over two years. Maybe even nearly three. It has snowed before. This isn’t the unrealistic suggestion. He squashes this and tells himself they’ll find something else. There will have to be something that can withstand the weather. Graffiti, maybe, and other things. There has to be something.

“We’ll be on time. We’ll finish this up before it starts snowing.” He assures her. “We can even switch places if you wish to explore too.”

Moe shrugs and sips on her tea. Ramiel touches his own cup, but it still seems too hot for his liking still. He doesn’t lift it up.

Simon’s words are still worrying him. He knows, true enough, that Simon’s warning was said because Simon doesn’t know him. He doesn’t know a thing about him, other than his name, and even that’s pretty questionable. He has no idea how old Ramiel is, how he died, what he did, what he could and couldn’t do and if he had any way to defend himself against both monsters and other residents. For all Simon knew, Ramiel could’ve been a mass murderer in his life.

He wasn’t, of course not.

But he could’ve been.

If there’s one thing Ramiel has learned in his short while here, it’s that there are some unwritten rules. Zero is always asked to accompany them but never pressured into it, mainly because they do it out of courtesy; nobody can even come near Darling’s apartment if not invited beforehand; Charles’ own apartment is free reign and Natasha doesn’t want anybody on her entire floor. These are small, individual things.

But the most important thing of all is – do not talk about before.

The life before is a huge no. The red sign is painted across it and nobody says a thing. On the rare occasions when he would attempt to start a conversation, the others would recoil and change topic in the same instance and every attempt to get back to his original topic was directed to something else.

After the first two times, he got the hint and stopped asking. In turn, he kept that to himself too.

“It’s Japanese.” She startles him out of his thoughts with her speech and he realises he’s been staring for a long time at one spot – a poster on the wall. Indeed, he’s not sure what it says because it’s not written in a language he can understand. The poster depicts a shirtless male. Ramiel’s never seen him before, so he’s not sure what he is by profession. “Loved his movies when I was alive.”

“Oh.” Ramiel lets out a small, choked laughter. “I’m sorry. I zoned out. He... he looks good?” It’s more of a question than anything else. Moe’s laughter fills the living room quickly and Ramiel feels extremely awkward. Not for his comment or unintentional staring; she’s just laughing at him.

“Of course he does.” Moe says with a shrug. “The poster is actually from the action movie. No plot, but... I’m not watching for plot.” But he’s not the only one adorning Moe’s room – there are others, too, dispersed throughout the space here and there, both males and females, and all of the posters are in Japanese. There’s only one shelf with books; only one is in English and it seems to be a geography book.

“Maybe you could borrow me some of the movies?” He tries to shift around, see if there are any CDs, but he spots none. “I mean—if you’ve got them. And if they have subtitles. I don’t know Japanese.”

Moe laughs again, but it’s not as cheery as it was just moments earlier.

“I have it. I’ll dig it up for you by evening if you wish. There’s option for subtitles, yes. In several languages, too, if you want to brush up on some. Do you know anything more than English?” This is the closest to the personal life that he’s ever gotten with anybody – the closest to before. She liked this actor, before. She liked all of the people on her walls, before. It seemed like such a childish hobby, posters, and yet...

“German. German is actually my mother tongue. I’ve lived only for five years in Germany, thought.” He admits and Moe nods.

“I’ve been to Japan for thirteen.” She says. “But that’s not important right now, huh? We’re dead anyway.” The look on her face says that, indeed, it doesn’t matter, that it shouldn’t matter and that, first of all, he should let it go. Ramiel doesn’t want to waste his time fighting a lost battle.

He nods, touches his cup of tea and downs half of it in one gulp. It’s bitter, because he forgot about the sugar or honey or cream and it’s lukewarm. He doesn’t mind and downs the rest, too.

“Thank you, Moe. I should be running away now I’m afraid—but I’ll swing by this evening. To let you know what I decided about tomorrow and take that disk, if you manage to find it.” He gets up hastily and he’s sure he sees her flinch uncertainly, moving behind – towards the gun. The movement halts, however, and the blonde is left wondering if he’s the insane one here. “If not, don’t worry about it.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll find it. I have nothing to do today anyway.” She sounds genuine, but she rushes him out of her apartment a little too quick for how comely she’s been only moments before.

Ramiel’s not sure what he did wrong.