Endling - Chapter 2

Against his wishes, Kaito couldn’t return to the museum until a couple of days later. To his annoyance, the records department at campus had some trouble with his paperwork (why they still used actual paper to store important information was a mystery to him). As Kaito tried to sort out the issue, he found himself undeniably anxious to see the fae again. Would the endling be upset with him? Or would he be glad to see Kaito, if only as a diversion from his boredom?

Finally on Thursday afternoon, Kaito was able to visit the museum with a longer, thicker turquoise and silver ribbon in his pocket. He went straight towards the exhibit of the winged fae, walking quickly. However, as soon as he laid eyes on one of the display screens before the cage room, he stopped dead on his tracks.

Evidently, the footage being looped didn’t stop with the capture of the endling. On the contrary, the screen displayed the endling kneeling on some kind of low stage in front of the museum, with his arms tied behind his back, a muzzle and a strange leather mask on his head which covered his eyes and the sides of his head, pushing the feathery protrusions backwards. The naturalist was behind him, forcefully extending one of his wings so the crowd around them could see it more clearly.  The video then displayed a close-up of a feather, presumably as part of a discussion of their properties.

However, it was the image of the fae on the stage that struck Kaito. It was hard for him to picture how that would feel: tied up, muted, blinded and unable to understand the words of his enemies. Kaito shook his head, trying to dispel the unsettling feeling that suddenly overcame him. He pressed on into the next room, as fast as if someone was pursuing him.

The endling was sitting in the same position as the first time Kaito saw him, hugging his knees with his eyes closed. The room was empty again, except for a grim-looking man in a dark suit. Kaito immediately sensed something off about him: he seemed too serious and businesslike to be in what was essentially a freak-show, disguised as a scientific institution. He stood there, taking notes on his data assistant, and then unenthusiastically snapping pictures of the fae.

The endling opened his eyes and all other thoughts left Kaito’s head when their eyes met and the fae smiled. He jumped to his feet in one swift motion, pleasantly surprised. The man in the dark suit did a double take at the sudden change and observed the pair suspiciously as they stood in opposite sides of the bars. Kaito showed the fae his present, smiling apologetically, and the fae’s eyes twinkled with joy.

Only after the ribbon went through the chute Kaito noticed the man’s strange behavior. He was quickly taking images of the endling from various angles, reminding him oddly of paparazzi. Kaito managed to peek at the man’s data assistant right at the moment when he snapped a close-up shot of the fae’s scarred arm, before the endling began to tie the new ribbon around it.

Is he some kind of government inspector or something? Kaito wondered, intrigued. The thought of the man slapping the museum owners and the naturalist with a huge fine for mistreating the endling was incredibly appealing.

His work apparently completed, the man simply walked out of the room. Kaito was tempted for a moment to follow him, and figure out who he was, but then decided against it. He and the endling had a long afternoon ahead of them, and he wanted to enjoy every second of it.

***

Time passed. As the days went by, Kaito did his best to balance study and his peculiar new friend. At first, he tried to dismiss the latter as a passing interest, but soon there was no denying it: their time together was the highpoint of his daily routine. Perhaps it was the famed charm of the fae, but every single day Kaito ran after classes to the museum, where he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to communicate with the endling. Even when he had an important assignment, he simply carried his laptop with him and sat working beside the cage while the fae watched him curiously.

Kaito had often heard of ‘companionable silence’, but it was a mostly unexplored phenomenon for him until those peaceful afternoons. People were very loud and frantic in this country, even more so than the youth of his native land. Whenever they weren’t talking, at least one data assistant nearby played music or net shows of some description; it was as if people were afraid of silence itself. Of course, inside the cage room silence was forced upon them, and most of the time it was just a hindrance. But Kaito had the feeling that even if the two of them were suddenly transported to a completely different setting, he would still be able to sit by the fae’s side and study without either of the two feeling obligated to fill the void with pointless chatter.

The fae’s figure slowly began to form part of Kaito’s mental landscape, as much as the few friends he had and his father’s distant but warm presence. The endling’s little gestures and moods became familiar through sheer repetition, drop after drop of him slowly revealed before Kaito’s eyes. Nobody else valued who the endling was, instead of what he was; Kaito felt like the owner of an extremely rare treasure.

***

One morning, Kaito sat eating breakfast in his tiny apartment, nestling a nice fantasy: someday, he would return with the endling to his native country and show him the sights. With so much mountainous land still untouched in the main island, he was sure to love it. 

“Imagine Dad’s face if I came home with a real fae,” Kaito muttered impishly. Although his father was one of the most understanding people the young man knew, it seemed like the perfect way to give him a heart attack. With a wry smile, Kaito finished his toast and got up to find his backpack.

As he commuted aboard the express train, he casually flipped through the collection of photographs of the endling he had on his data assistant. He stopped on a particularly adorable image of the endling, posing with a new necklace and bracelets. Earrings were out of the question, due to his anatomy, but Kaito had plenty of shiny things to buy for him, and his winged friend seemed really happy with the attention. Thankfully, the museum owners didn’t care enough to seize his gifts to the fae.

I wish I could tell you how beautiful you are, Kaito thought, unconsciously running his fingers over the screen. The data assistant interpreted this as a request to go to the next image, which was a shot of the endling lapping the water from the artificial cascade that fed the pond inside of his cage. Kaito chucked.

‘Talking’ with the endling was proving to be very difficult.  Anything beyond cataloging simple concepts transformed in a complex and frustrating experience, exacerbated by the complete lack of sound. Kaito’s father hadn’t replied to his mail yet, except with a short message stating he would look into it, and requesting more examples of writing. Kaito had sent every word he was reasonably sure he knew the meaning of, each day hoping to see the glowing icon on the screen as he woke up. Until then, there was nothing else to do but keep putting together a dictionary. Kaito hadn’t found any known fae language that used the same symbols during his own research, but he didn’t have that much time to devote to such extracurricular activities.

***

That afternoon, Kaito found the endling unsuccessfully trying to remove two pieces of gum from his hair. There were several balls of gum littering the bottom of the cage, and a conspicuous pink stain decorating one of the fae’s pant legs; obviously, some jokesters had chewed through several packages and then decided to pelt the prisoner with the result.

If I had been here, I would’ve punched their damn teeth out, Kaito thought, seething. What type of idiots could derive amusement of harassing someone so utterly defenseless?

The endling gave him a despairing look, and then pointed at his hair.

I know, I know. But there was little Kaito could do. Even if he had scissors or even a penknife (which he didn’t) there was no way the chute would let a metal, bladed object pass through without alerting the authorities. He suspected that regular shampoo wouldn’t be that effective, but maybe that would pass impeded.

He was still debating whether a trip to the drugstore would be a good idea or not, when suddenly a lanky, tanned man wearing brown overalls came into the room. He was carrying a big toolbox, and had a rod hanging from his belt: a long tube with a couple buttons on one end, similar to a police baton. 

When the fae saw him, he visibly bristled and backed away. The man pointed the rod in his direction with a bored expression, and the endling twitched weirdly, as if having a seizure. He fell down on all fours, panting.

Kaito grabbed the man’s arm angrily. The man looked him over, unimpressed, and pointed to the tag on his overall. ‘Museum Maintenance’, Kaito read. Evidently, someone had seen the attack through the surveillance system and had sent the man to clean the endling’s hair and cage.

The man’s methods were despicable, but Kaito knew better than to disturb his work. If he did, he might get barred from the museum. He released the man’s arm, but then a sudden idea made him quickly type a message on his data assistant. The man looked at the screen with a raised eyebrow, but nodded. He then ordered Kaito to stand back with a gesture and opened the cage. The endling was still on the floor, breathing heavily.

Kaito grudgingly sat on a bench and watched as the man approached the endling. From a pocket of his overalls, the man produced a small tube; mercilessly, he grabbed a handful of purple hair and yanked the fae’s head back. The tube was revealed as a container for some kind of aerosolized anesthetic, when he puffed a small cloud of its contents into the endling’s mouth and nose. Almost immediately, the fae crumbled into the man’s arms, unconscious. The maintenance man dragged the endling to the den’s entrance, only slightly hindered by his big wings, and laid him on his stomach. He quickly cut a couple of locks off his head and sprinkled the rest of the hair with cleaning fluid. He stored the locks of hair in a small plastic bag and then proceeded to clean the cage.

After his work was done, the maintenance man exited the cage, locked it and gestured Kaito to follow him. The young man obeyed after giving the unconscious endling a last glance. The older man lead Kaito all the way to the end of the room, where a door was partly hidden, painted over to continue the motif on the wall.

Behind the door, there was a dusty and narrow corridor, with exposed pipes and several control panels for the ambient and surveillance systems of the exhibit rooms. The man went through one of the doors, labeled ‘Staff 2.’

“Excuse me, I’m coming in,” Kaito whispered, rather uncomfortable. It wasn’t a custom of the country to announce one’s entry to a place, unlike his homeland, but it felt a bit weird to go in without saying anything.

The maintenance man ignored him. He sat down on a ratty office chair and lit up a cigarette, a rather uncommon sight in that day and age. Kaito stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking around him discreetly. The space was part storage, part break room and part office, with peeling paint, an ancient heater in a corner, a dilapidated couch and desk, and piles of haphazardly stacked boxes. Everything irradiated melancholy and tedium.

“It’s a cute little thing, that one,” the man commented exhaling cigarette smoke through his nostrils like a dragon.

“Excuse me?”

“The specimen, rich kid, what else could I be talking about?”

“Who says I’m rich,” Kaito said guardedly. He didn’t much care for the man’s tone. Perhaps it had been a mistake to offer him money for a lock of the ending’s hair.

The man sneered. “Right, like I can’t see how you’re all dressed up in those fancy clothes.”

Kaito sighed. “Fine, yes, I have money. Can I have that bag now, please? Give me your account details and I’ll transfer the money right away.” He set his data assistant to record and held it before the man.

“Theodore Jasper Gonzalez, at your service,” the man said with a sour smile and puffed some more smoke. “ID 12445-AA011-88, Account 777465-88-055, validation Taurus 07.”

Kaito’s data assistant chimed, indicating the data had been collected successfully. Kaito transferred the money without comment, and an instant later the man’s own data assistant vibrated inside of one of his pockets.

Gonzalez took it out, glanced at the screen and nodded. “All yours, Mr. Fuuga,” he said, gesturing with the cigarette towards the desk. The small bag was resting on its surface alongside the maintenance toolbox.

Kaito picked up the bag and slipped his hand inside. Soft, very soft hair greeted his fingertips. It felt slightly different than human hair to the touch, but Kaito couldn’t tell exactly why. Perhaps it was a magical effect, distorting his perception. He decided to get a smaller bag for it the next day, something he could hang around his neck.

“Hey rich kid, tell you something. You fancy the little thing, right? Looking for new experiences or some such? How about, for a small amount of course, I let you inside the cage for the night? I can make sure the cameras are down.”

“What?!”

“Don’t give me that look, kid. I saw the way you were staring at it. You want to yank that little tail and have some fun,” Gonzalez laughed nastily. “It’s not like that sort of thing is new for you loaded types. Ever heard of the Pale Line Houses?”

Kaito frowned. “No, and I don’t think I want to know about them.”

“Really? Well, never mind. You should take the chance if you want to taste this one, though. They don’t last long, caged like that. Very sickly and fragile, the pretty ones, and still they managed to outlast the big lizards and the squat uglies.” The man shrugged. “Or perhaps I should say we made them last this long.”

Kaito hung his head, very much aware of the redness of his cheeks. Not only were the words of the man disturbing, he was watching him intently with a big, malicious grin in his homely face. The worst thing was that Kaito felt somewhat tempted by his offer. The mere idea of holding the fae’s hand or touching his face was enough to make his heart race, even framed in such a twisted manner. But he felt too embarrassed to say anything.

“You don’t have to answer right away, you know?” Gonzalez exhaled a long smoke serpent. “Think about it; tell mom and dad you want an early birthday present, whatever.” He waved in the direction of Kaito’s data assistant. “You have my ID number; you can contact me later if you want.”

“…I think I want to leave now,” Kaito said haltingly.

“You know the way out.” Gonzalez didn’t move from the chair.

“I do,” Kaito agreed and quickly left the room. He briefly paused in the unkempt corridor outside, trying to compose himself. He took deep breaths, until he guessed that his face was back to its normal hue. As calmly as he could, he returned back to the cage room.

The endling was still lying down, looking as peaceful as if he was taking a nap. Kaito leaned on the railing in a seemingly relaxed pose, but inside he still felt deeply uncomfortable. Not five minutes later, he abruptly walked towards the entrance, without looking back.

***

The following day, Kaito was eating lunch outside, under one of the trees that surrounded the campus. As he munched on his sandwich, he turned the pages of a thick book on his lap. Next to him, his data assistant played a calm tune. It was good sometimes to read things in old formats like newspapers and books; it gave them a certain nostalgic feeling, the faraway events depicted in them made more real with the touch of a page under his fingers.

“So how’s the boyfriend?” Hiroshi plopped down next to Kaito on the bench, causing his friend to almost drop the book to the ground. His friend grabbed Kaito’s data assistant and observed the slideshow of pictures acting as screensaver, nearly all of them of the fae.

Kaito hurriedly swallowed the food inside his mouth, frowning. “Put that down, please.”

“How often do you go there, anyway? Maybe they can give you a special discount.” Hiroshi grinned and tucked a strand of his eternally tussled dark hair behind an ear. “You know, if what you wanted was to meet a cute guy, you should’ve said something. I’m sure Akane can find someone to your liking.”

Kaito looked away, pursing his lips.

“…I won’t tell anyone, if you aren’t ready to come out,” Hiroshi said softly, in a completely different tone from his usual loud, jokey voice.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Kaito asked after a while, still carefully observing the buildings to his far right.

“Hum? Nah, more girls for me, mate.” 

“I’m not… I like girls too, from time to time.”

“Ah, ambidextrous. Akane will like that, more people to choose from,” Hiroshi said good-humoredly.

“I don’t need a matchmaker,” Kaito said, pouting.

“We just don’t like seeing you alone all the time, that’s all.” Hiroshi held the data assistant upright. “And this is not healthy; you have to know that!”

“Oh, do I?” Kaito couldn’t avoid slipping some anger into his voice. At the same time, it wasn’t surprising that Hiroshi’s tolerance didn’t quite stretch that far.

“You know it isn’t! He isn’t human; you can’t have a relationship with a fae! You should know this even better than me, you’re always reading about this sort of thing. At best, their mind works on a different level than ours; at worst, they are always trying to deceive humans. Don’t fall for his tricks.”

“Ever heard of the saying ‘history is written by the victors’? There has to be a good percentage of lies and exaggeration in the literature about them.” Kaito slammed his book shut. “Besides, who said anything about a relationship? I just find him interesting, that’s all.” He looked away, to hide the growing blush in his cheeks.

“Uh-huh, right. That’s why you have…wow, a lot of pictures of him inside of this thing.” Hiroshi thumbed through the image gallery with a look of disbelief. “And I don’t even know what this is.”

“We’ve been trying to put together a dictionary so we can talk.”

Hiroshi made a face. “Honestly, Kaito. If you’re skittish about going out on your own, we’ll accompany you to a bar or something. Don’t waste your time on this.” He placed back the device on the bench with a grimace.

“I appreciate your kind words,” Kaito replied in a formal tone after a moment. “But this really doesn’t concern you.”

Hiroshi shrugged, his usual cheer tinged with bemusement. “Sorry for trying to be friends, then. But we’ll be around, if you change your mind.” He stood up and waved as he walked away.

Kaito stared at the cover of his book, annoyed. He wasn’t in any condition to focus on the text now, which meant he’d have to study harder after class.

“Perhaps I should stop going to the museum for a few days…” he pondered. It’s not like he was lacking on things to get done, and working at home was considerably more comfortable.

The endling might get a bit antsy if he didn’t show up, though. But on the other hand, Kaito was under no obligation to go every single day. If he thought about it rationally, there were no ties between them; Kaito didn’t even know what the name of the fae sounded like. For all he knew, the endling was only showing interest to convince Kaito to set him free somehow.

The thought was surprisingly hurtful; but if considered carefully, it was really unwarranted. The fae just acted like a lonely individual, happy to have found a friend. Kaito was the one bringing confusion into their relationship, such as it was.

“What do you mean to me?” Kaito said, looking at the smiling face on the screen. He suddenly felt cold, despite the sunlight touching the gardens all around him.

***

Several days passed. Kaito spent every afternoon holed up inside his apartment, reading in bed. He felt a strangely paralyzing fear that manifested in an unwillingness to talk and see anyone, specially the fae. It was hard to put into words exactly what was bothering him, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was an amalgamation of things, defying a simple label.

It was one thing to feel physical attraction to the fae. Kaito had no problem accepting that, he knew his own tastes well enough. But an emotional attachment was another thing entirely, and in the current situation, completely preposterous. He knew nothing about the endling!  Why was he so willing to dive into something so uncertain?

The image of the winged youth kept intruding in his thoughts, wrecking his attempts to study. Comfortable environment or not, having an unresolved business of any sort made concentration difficult. Once the weekend arrived, he had to finally concede that sitting next to the cage under the inquisitive gaze of the fae would’ve been more productive in the long run.

It was Sunday evening. Rain was pounding against the window, with a constant sound that Kaito usually loved to hear as he fell asleep. But now he morosely stared at the ceiling, wasting time. The chime of the voicemail notification was a welcomed distraction, when it chirped from the screen on the wall.

“Voicemail, please.”

Again, the placid smile of the father stared at him. “Hello Kaito, I hope that you are doing well. If I sound hoarse, it’s because I caught a cold. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.”

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that winged fae, and your comment about the Rosetta stone gave me an idea. Even if we don’t have conclusive studies about his specific dialect, we do have a couple of well documented languages used by fae. He could recognize one of them.”

Kaito straightened up in his bed, eyes wide.

“I’ve uploaded all the information I could find to our shared drive. Let me know how it goes. Take care, son.”

That was it, finally a chance to overcome the gulf between them! Kaito jumped out of bed, his earlier apathy forgotten. He ran to the big screen in the living room and pressed his hand to it. The surface reacted to the touch, displaying a simple interface. It was perfectly possible to use only voice commands (in fact, some people Kaito knew were barely capable of fast typing thanks to this), but for some things he preferred tactile input. He quickly accessed the cloud storage service and examined the files left there by his father. The languages represented included deep dweller runes, the elegant script of the Warm Isles, a compendium of house spirit ideograms and more. There was also a treatise on comparative grammar and a primer on pronunciation his father had assembled, just in case.

Kaito pulled up a chair to the screen and began working. He first opened a new document and dictated a series of phases and questions he wanted to say to the endling.  After that, he began to translate the sentences into the various languages, hoping that his attempts at following the grammatical rules weren’t complete rubbish. Some of the languages followed a similar structure to English, although Severii had more in common to his native Japanese, in terms of sentence order and lacking certain sentences markings. Others were notably more complex, with verb conjugations that made his head spin. He dearly hoped that the endling was familiar with one of the comparatively easier ones. All in all, he wasn’t sure his attempts at coherency were completely successful, but he still felt rather hopeful when he finally went to bed. With surprise, he realized he had stayed up until three in the morning, completely focused on his task.

His enthusiasm was still there when he woke up, despite a fatigue-induced headache. As he went through his schedule for the day, he realized that he had no interest in going to classes. After a moment’s deliberation, he sent a message to Hiroshi, telling him he felt sick, and was going to stay home. Half an hour later, his friend replied promising a recording of all the lectures by the end of the day.

“For all his joking around, he’s been really kind to me.” Even if Hiroshi didn’t approve of his interest in the fae for prejudiced reasons, he meant well. Perhaps an apology was in order. After all, he had been the first person to approach Kaito and show him the ropes in this new country.

But Kaito had a more exciting issue to attend to first. After some consideration, he decided to code a little dictionary program for his data assistant. It was going to get tedious to search the words lists manually every single time, if the endling recognized one of the languages. The program wouldn’t help with more complex things like sentence structure, but it could speed up the process of searching individual words. It was telling that nothing like it existed in the app store, whereas human languages dictionaries and artificial interpreters were commonplace. He sat down still in his pajamas with the laptop and spent a couple hours putting together a basic interface, then linked it to the voice recognition and OCR modules already installed.

By the time he was satisfied with the results, it was time for lunch. He quickly put together and ate a sandwich in the kitchen, then finally showered and got dressed.

As Kaito combed his hair in front of the bathroom mirror, he paused for a moment to look at his face. He wasn't the type to obsess about his looks, but suddenly a simple question arose from the bottom of his mind: did the fae think he was weird-looking? He had never thought of himself as someone out of the ordinary, aside from the bluish tint of his hair, which was admittedly uncommon in the human population. But he had to appear strange, perhaps even grotesque, to someone with a tail, wings and tiny scales that changed hue slightly in the light.

In his eyes, you must be the exotic one. The Kaito in the mirror adjusted his muffler and smiled encouragingly. Make the most of it.

He hummed as he placed everything he thought he needed inside his backpack, including two more sandwiches, his laptop and a folded white hoodie.

Kaito reached the museum without incident, and followed the familiar path with mounting excitement. Curiously, not for a moment he doubted that the fae would recognize one of the languages. Normally, he would've stopped for a moment to examine his odd certainty, but now he felt like an invisible force was propelling him forward. He had his own wings, in a way, made of expectations and hope, and they carried him towards the one that had so easily transformed his life.

There were others in the cage room, but Kaito barely registered their presence. The only one that mattered was sitting up high, on a long branch of dead bleached wood. The fae saw him and dropped down, and for a moment Kaito thought he saw a glimmer of the same emotion inside of him reflected in the endling's eyes. It made him feel an overwhelming desire to climb the railing, step precariously on the portion of the chute protruding the bars of the cage, and extend his arm inside- just a second, just to hold the fae’s hand. It was such a little thing, and yet it would make him so happy...

But no, they would call the police on him, no doubt about it. So he neared the cage with a pounding heart and opened the file in his data assistant with the premade phrases he typed the day before.

Let’s rule out the most unlikely ones first, Kaito thought and showed the fae his attempts at a simple question using house spirit ideograms. ‘Do you understand this text?’ the screen said (or at least attempted to say).

The winged youth tilted his head, with no signs of recognizing what it was. It made sense, house spirits had little to do with wind fae. The same thing happened with Volkarre runes. Severii sparked some recognition, but the fae shook his head immediately after, presumably trying to convey that he wasn’t fluent in it.

The last one, the language used in the Warm Isles, was Kaito’s strongest bet. It was the language the last queen of the fae used, according to the texts. If the queen of queens used it, there was a high probability it served as a lingua franca for all the disparate types of fae.

Kaito raised the data assistant once more, and a shiver coursed through him as he saw the fae’s eyes lit up. An overjoyed expression slowly spread on the endling’s face as he nodded several times, and he crouched down to etch new characters of the sand of his cage. He then turned and placed a hand on his chest, tail swinging from side to side excitedly. Kaito quickly consulted the symbols table, heart beating fast in his chest.

Gakupo…your name is Gakupo. The syllables lit a small, warm spark of joy in Kaito’s heart that spread slowly throughout his body, all the way to his fingertips. He tried saying it out loud, forgetting for a second the enforced silence of the room. The fae watched his lips carefully and nodded, smiling.

Kaito’s fingers were trembling slightly as he typed his name using the symbols. He held up the data assistant for the fae to see, and his heart almost leapt out of his chest when the fae wrote down a new phrase for him. As far as Kaito could tell, it was a very straightforward message…

‘Thank you, Kaito.’