After the bell rang at the end of the school day, several people approached Cardin to ask if he would care to come by and check out their after-school clubs and activities. He received invitations from several of the sports groups, including the teams from track and field, baseball, judo, kendo, archery, soccer… not basketball, sadly but not unexpectedly, because of Cardin’s relatively petite height. Some of the cultural groups invited him to join them as well, but all the people from those groups who came up to speak to him somehow seemed to be female students who blushed and stammered, or mumbled their requests in the vague direction of the floor, such that he couldn’t quite make out exactly where they were from or what they were trying to say.
To their great disappointment, Cardin turned them all down with a polite smile.
"I'm sorry, I'll have to take you up on that another time," he apologised. "My family is still in the middle of settling in, so there are some errands that I need to run quite urgently. Perhaps another day?"
It wasn't entirely an untruth. He did have tasks to complete, actually just one in particular that required him to travel to the other end of the city, which needed to be accomplished before the end of the work day.
He took over an hour to make the journey across, changing out of his uniform in a public washroom along the way, and then a little longer to locate the place he was looking for. The sky was already beginning to turn a beautiful shade of dusky pink, the sun starting its descent toward the horizon, by the time he reached the top of the hill where the kindergarten stood.
Standing a short distance away, he retrieved the mobile Keary had given him—which, incidentally, his classmates had informed him was currently one of the latest and most expensive models in the market—and took a few photographs before venturing closer. He found the playground empty, but some of the lights were still on inside the building. The words of a nursery rhyme were carried to him on the breeze by a woman’s voice, punctuated every once in a while by a chorus of young voices in response.
After-school care at such schools wasn’t unusual. Parents needed reassurance that their beloved children were being supervised and kept safe while they were busy at work. But this was an exceptionally prestigious kindergarten, located in an expensive neighbourhood, and the limited after-school slots were reserved only for children from the most distinguished families.
Cardin wondered how he could get the pictures he needed before parents and guardians started flocking in to collect their young wards. He had of course prepared an excuse. In case of confrontation, he would just be a tourist, who had wandered off the beaten-track of the usual hot-spots to take photos of the scenery. But the alibi sounded flimsy and suspicious, even to him, and he would much rather avoid any situation in which he could be identified.
“What are you doing?”
Jolted out of his thoughts, Cardin whipped his head towards the direction of the voice. A tiny girl child stood at the corner of the playground, her head tilted to one side as she stared at Cardin with curiosity.
It was the exact child he had travelled all the way here to see.
The blue-eyed boy blinked in disbelief at his perfect luck, then smiled. “I’m taking pictures of the sunset. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He turned to the skyline, raising a hand to shield his eyes and letting the other fall to his side, as if he wasn't still snapping photographs on the phone he held.
The girl’s bright gaze didn’t follow his, choosing to remain instead on him. After a long, pondering moment, she sidled closer to the golden-haired stranger, seeming to arrive at a conclusion about something.
“Are you an angel?”
Surprised, Cardin chuckled. “Why do you say that?”
At the sound of his gentle laughter, the girl stepped right up to the fence to peer at him. This close, he could see that the child came up to less than half of his height. “You have gold hair and blue eyes, like in my storybook. You look kind. Only, you don’t have wings.”
Her words made Cardin falter, but he kept the smile on his face as he knelt in the grass to better match her eye level. Quietly, he asked, “What makes you think I’m a kind person?”
The girl shrugged. “Feeling. You’re pretty.”
The simplicity of her naïve logic twinged guilt into his heart. “If only the world were that simple,” he murmured.
Movement behind the windows caught his eye, and he glanced up to see one of the teachers going through the rooms one by one, looking for her. The little girl’s absence had finally been discovered, and it wouldn’t be long before they expanded their search outdoors. He had to be quick if he didn’t want to be caught talking to her.
Turning his attention back to the little girl before him, he said, “You can’t see my wings now, but you know, I can fly. Do you want to see?” The child nodded eagerly. “Okay. But you have to help me, alright? I need you to encourage me with your biggest smile. That’s great! Can you smile bigger? Bigger? EVEN bigger?”
He laughed as the child beamed wide, showing him all the tiny pearls of her precious baby teeth. While she had her eyes pinched closed in that expression, he quickly took a shot of her on his phone, then noiselessly spun away and headed for the nearest path that would take him almost immediately where he could blend in with the darkening landscape.
Just as he was out of view, the door to the kindergarten swung open. The teacher, having finally found her runaway charge, called out to her with a mixture of relief and reprimand.
“Nessa! Don’t run out by yourself when it isn’t playtime! Come, come back here now!”
The girl’s eyes startled open at the summons. She looked around in some confusion, then pattered excitedly back to where her teacher stood waiting.
“The angel!” she squealed. “The angel flew away!”
……
On the ride home, Cardin tried his best to sort out the churn of emotions from his short interaction with the child. The plan had made perfect sense when he had put it together, but that thing she had said about him being kind had stabbed unexpectedly deep into his conscience. He had gone there for decidedly unkind reasons towards her family, reasons he fervently hoped this child would never have to know.
A few days ago, they had received a commission from a woman, who claimed that she had lost her baby due to professional negligence of the staff at a hospital. She had filed a suit, and although a settlement had been drafted, it was now being delayed, blocked by one of the most prominent directors on the board. The woman and her family needed the money, but were afraid of going to the authorities or the media in case the hospital retaliated by voiding the agreement, on the grounds that she had broken the condition of non-disclosure.
“And? What is it exactly that you want us to do for you?” Keary had asked.
“Force them to pay up,” had come the response. “I don’t care how you do it. An eye for an eye. I will never get my child back, but the powerful need to be held to their promises.”
“Big rich baddies bullying victims into helpless silence,” the dark-haired boy had murmured, eyes lowered to where his fingers drummed lightly on the table, before raising his silver gaze to Cardin.
And so Cardin had gotten his first official solo assignment: Extortion. There was no sugar-coating it.
He didn't want to resort directly to violence if it could be helped. He could have found some way to cause trouble for the hospital, but the healthcare system was running short on resources as it was. Even if it wasn’t a public hospital, Cardin rejected the idea of risking the welfare of hundreds of innocent patients just because of one asshole, who wasn’t even going to have to deal directly with the problems on the ground when shit hit the fan.
So, with some help from Mikka, he had tracked down the problematic director’s granddaughter to the kindergarten she attended everyday. It had seemed like a solid idea at the time: take some photographs and send them to the target, to show him that they knew where his most cherished, most vulnerable loved one was, with the implied threat that they wouldn’t hesitate to mete out justice on their client’s behalf if the hospital did not hold up its end of the bargain.
But Cardin hesitated now. What if he had made a wrong call?
What if the hospital still refused to pay up? What if the man didn’t budge?
What if Cardin was forced to follow through on the threat he was planning to make?
He thought again of that young girl’s cheerful, pure smile, and closed his eyes. But the image persisted behind his eyelids, and beyond that, the haunting thought that made his heart ache even more:
Why was Keary doing this? What exactly had happened to him that had led him to resort to such a business as his livelihood?
……
