[ 1:59 ]
It was already two in the morning huh.... Late night shifts can be annoying yet pleasurable in of its own right. I believe some of my own co-workers would agree with me. Well atleast work is over for tonight...or today? I'm too tired to figure out term for right now. I sighed and pocketed away my phone into my back pockets and stared into the night sky like a visual novel protagonist.
The outside air was chilling yet refreshing for my skin. I didn't work too hard to particularly break into a sweat or anything.....
...wait scratch that....
After enjoying a momentary break by one of rest benches along the street, I got back up and resumed my walk. Home wasn't really far off from where I worked since the neighborhood was a kilometer or two at most. While the walk could get aggrivating at times, it was a small price to pay so that I can bring food to the table.
However the walk wasn't something that rubbing my nerves the wrong way. "This is getting annoying....." There was one detail that stuck out the most. It was something I'm surprised Zeno could pick up on earlier.
Like he had thought at one point, a couple of paces behind me I could 'sense' a person stalking me.
It wasn't no sense like a ninja could, but rather I could tell there was someone tailing me with rather sloppy movements.
Every now and then I glance around my back, the person would dive into the nearest corner for cover.
It was pretty late in the night and my only source of light would be the dim street lanterns. Some were flickering so badly you would think you walked in on someone filming a horror flick by accident. Even still I could make out the stalker's attire.
He wore a black suit and blue speckled tie with a plastic communication device in his right ear. Thick black sunglasses covered his eyes preventing his real identity from being exposed. Despite this professional attire, his movements was that of a comedic amatuer. Not like it mattered anyways though.
If he works with the people I know, then he could be walking side by side with me taking all the photos he wished for and I wouldn't be able to hide behind the authorites. Having this man following me outside arm's length is honestly a blessing in of itself.
About half an hour give or take some change, had passed before I arrived on the front doorstep home. Mother's cheap Acura was parked in front of the garage so I guess she was home. Before entering the patio, I threw out one more glance over my shoulder.
The stalker was across the street standing in the front yard of a parrallel house. From where I could see, his hand reached out to fold his ear slightly before moving his lips as if he speaking into the device. If I have to have a guess he was probably reporting back to headquaters with words along the lines of 'target has successfully returned home without trouble, over.'
I rolled my eyes at him, even giving him the middle finger. It was aggrivating to know that a pair of eyes was trained on me twenty four hours, seven days of the week, and knowing them he probably wasn't the only 'cameras' they got on us. Unfortunately I was too tired to care much right now, and even if I did I don't have the means or the power to flip the script.
Heaving in a heavy sigh, I reached inside my purse and pulled out a series of household keys, one for each lock on the front door. After a few obnoxious turnings, I was inside mumbling a monotone half assed 'I'm home' with no one to reply back to.
Odd.... From outside I could there was a couple of lights on. Especially around the kitchen area. There was even visible steam rising to the air from there.
I dared not to take another step before taking in the details of my surroundings. There wasn't no sounds of running water from upstairs so she wasn't in the shower.... The TV was on since I could hear a series of reports coming from the living room, but there was no sign indicating a person was inside. I reached into my other back pocket, my hand firmly grasping the handle of a concealed pocketknife.
"Relax Mom. Its just me." I follow up in a relaxed tone as I could put it. I was in the front linear lobby, but I took a few steps forward, my eyes darting about in every direction. I entered the kitchen slowly and thankfully to my surprise I saw Mom minding her business by the stove. The delightful smell of boiled vegetables and sauteed meat chuncks careesed my nose.
Why the hell was I so damn tense? Of course she was in there just focused on cooking!
She turned about and reached for a plate by the nearest cabinet. When she went for it I seem to got caught in the corners of her eyes.
"AH!" she let out a small shriek of surprise. Most likely my figure suddenly coming into view threw her off her guard. "When the hell you came in!?" Her sudden shriek made me flinch, but atleast the tension in my body lowered a bit.
"Just did..." My hand slipped out of my pocket and relaxed. "Don't be sneaking up on me like that. You almost gave me a heart attack."
Responding with a 'well pay attention then' or 'I spoke out to you twice' would just drag out this pointless converstation and make it become a pain in the ass. Instead I replied with a mere 'I'm sorry' to drop the subject. "Whatchu' cooking?" I followed up a minute after. Mom walked towards the cabinets again and grabbed a couple plates, ultensils and some short iron rods.
"Shish kabobs." she eventually replied. "How was work?" she added on. "Decent I suppose...."----"Anything interesting happen?"
It was work. Nothing worth noting never happens in a workplace. Especially in a simple convience store...well unless you want to talk about retail customers but I rather listen to a horror story.
I glanced over to the closed window pane near us. "The only thing that came up to my mind was just 'him'." Mom knew the exact person I was talking about.
Obviously it was the man who had been maintaining survillience on us. After a specific incident occured with me and my mom this man, to our knowledge, was hired to keep an eye on the two of us.
However during the early days when we had to 'cut ties from our past' this man kept a farther distance from us and only checked in on occasions. However as the months had past the occasion of him snooping around have increased in intensity.
Every so slightly he begins to worry less about hiding his presence and becomes much more open about his tactics.
What the hell was he even trying to gather? What information did higher ups demanded out of him? Was it so important that he needs to scarifice the sublety?
All of these was legitimate questions that needed to be answered. Unfortunately we don't have the power, resources or even the courage to research that. At this rate though if this contiuned any futher then we would have to be concerned about safety issues.
In fact the very reason why I was running so hard earlier was just so I could put some distance between us. Thankfully I managed to lose him in the process, however it won't amount to much since he knows what school I go to, where I work and where I live.
On the idea that he may try to break into our house and grab even more information on us we decided to install three extra door locks, all which required different keys.
A hassle to endure through for sure, but its a small price to pay to hopefully ensure some more privacy. "He hasn't made any extra moves has he?" Mother asked me in a more serious voice, almost inclined to peer out the windows. What she did do though was reach into the side of her pocket and grabbed her pistol. She checked the revolving chamber to make sure all seven shots was loaded, gave it a spin and slipped it back into place.
"No....but he's following rather closer these days. He still tries to hide himself, but he doesn't even put so much an effort.....I want him gone Mom...." She sighed and scratched her head. With the way that things are my voiced complaint is nothing more but wasted breath. We both knew that but I couldn't just keep that bottled inside.
With no way to remedy the situation directly Mom decided it would be better divert my attention elsewhere.
"Go get cleaned up. Food's almost done okay?" Without a way to properly end this topic she decides to sweep it under the rug for now. All we can do honestly. Agreeing to her demand I went about my business and got myself ready for a bath.
For some reason somewhere down the line, my mind eventually thought back to when I talked with Zeno. "Sorry, I'm no hero." I believed he said.
.....hero huh.... Heh.
~~~
Thirty minutes had passed after I got done cleaning myself. When I came downstairs the whole first floor smelled of delectables. By the time I entered the kitchen she had just finished placing the food on the table.
"Oh hello there." She was about to shout out to me thinking I was still upstairs, but here I am.
"How was your work?"------"Boring as always. Nothing but paperwork and crunching away at numbers."
My mom, Clair works at a local bank close to the outskirts of the city. Compared to the others in size its relatively small, but it has a "profitable rich enviroment" according to her.....whatever thats supposed to mean. If I had to guess she was reffering to the check. Which isn't half bad since every so often they would pay her by the hour. However unlike my job she has to wake up very early into the morning and work very late into the night. Its really thanks to her we still got a roof over our head with running water and lights. But its obvious it becoming taxing for her.
.....no pun intended.....
"There something on my face?" She asked me. I just realized I was staring at her with a concerned expression. "Have you been getting enough sleep lately?" Compared to Zeno it was pretty subtle, but I did notice that there were eye bags forming.
"Not exactly, but nothing no sleeping pills can't fix right?...haha." She replied being honest with me, even trying to assure me with a following chuckle. It wasn't funny though.
Sleeping pills huh.... now that I think about it there was a prescripted bottle or two in her room as I passed by to take a bath. "Take it easy okay?" I replied with a lack of better words. She nodded before we went back to eating.
"And on to today's main headlight. Bloody Murder, or a Raid Gone Wrong?" ||
I forgot our TV was still on. Honestly with the way how depressing the news has been lately, I rather not hear descript words of corpses while I'm eating. Also what type of title was that? Even the reporter almost snickered while saying it aloud. I reached out for the remote on the kitchen table and planned on turning it off, but...
"Wait hold on!" Mom called out to me. "Turn the volume up!" Seriously? I really don't want to lose my appetite tonight, but whatever.
After turning up the volume by a few decibels, we could hear the news reporter more clearly. Looks like some sort of incident happened down by some harbor at the city bay. Some small looking warehouses seemed to have been pillaged and vandelised. With the corpses, blood and bullets littering the ground it was plausible that it ended up turning into a gruesome gunshow... but what really caught my mom's attention was WHOSE warehouses were those?
"Heh... so those bitches in Takashi took a hit. They had it coming." Ah now it made sense. You see my Mom has a huge grudge to those in the Takashi Enterprises. So to see them suffer damages like this was somewhat pleasing to her.
"Coming? I guess? I wonder who or why they did this though."-----"It probably was a raid from some rival business looking to pull a naughty prank. Most likely they came armed to look and feel intimidating and that rubbed those on guard duty the wrong way."
....That kinda makes sense I guess?...but for some reason I feel like there is more to this then someone trying to be petty.....hmm?
"Hey what's going on with the TV?" I asked. All of a sudden the TV screen was shifting in and out of static. It only took three seconds before the 'technical difficulties' pop-up permanantly arrived. Though when I looked back to my Mom, she was smiling with a small chuckle.
"Damn. They worked quicker then I thought."-----"What you mean?"----"Takashi is a huge enterprise with a reputation twice as big. I wouldn't be surprised if their "higher brass" felt the need to keep it crystal clean and sweep any important matters under the rug....atleast in the eyes of the public."
"Higher brass" she says.....they are nothing more but perverted bastards who values a person life in accordance to the dollar bill they bring in....and for women.....nothing more but breedable livestock.
"....so they paid someone off to hack and cancel the feed?"----"For sure, and I betchu we are not going to see this being reported ever again." Her chuckling stopped and her grin slowly shifted into a sigh.
"Alright you can turn it off."