‘I don’t know what came over me’ was an apt way to put it. He knew as he was doing it that he would sorely regret it, yet he did it anyways. He was asked out for dinner, and he had reacted to it immaturely, impulsively, stupidly, as though he had been proposed for his hand in marriage—and all for what? He had made a complete and utter fool of himself.

No money, no identity—nothing. Everything was lost the moment he had fled. He was still Jane Doe. He was still no better off than when he had first started; worse, in fact, because now he had finally run out of time. Now there was nothing he could do, was there, but to brace himself to spend a night outside? He couldn’t think of how else could it go.

“What the hell am I doing, God…”

The sheer embarrassment he had put himself through had paled much of the jubilance of the afternoon for him. Still, it was a jarring thing to realize just how quickly he had fallen into the throes of destitution. All it took was for him to have the wrong sort of currency. Then, situational poverty followed suit. Having lived his life so far in the relative comfort of a lower-upper-class household where he seldom had to worry too deeply about his own well-being—food, water, shelter were just one of those things he had, like everyone else in his life, taken for granted. To be deprived of these basic essentials, these basic essentials he considered to be his inviolable human rights, and for such a stupid reason—He was too confounded to even know how to respond it.

There was a lesson to be learned here, to be sure.

While most people live their lives intricately secured to the world by friends, family, lovers, pets, debts, inheritance, job, aspirations—Satou, as things stood, had no one but himself. Untethered, and worlds apart, he had no one to fall back to; and if he messed up, like he had messed up, he was falling straight down to the bottom, with little to no means to pull himself up. He had known that. Even as he had walked out of that bakery, trying to keep himself level-headed, he had known that. And yet…

And yet somehow, everything could’ve all worked out in the end…

Yes. Somehow, everything could’ve all worked out if he hadn’t done anything, anything at all, but that—he would’ve been fine. If the officer had later on down the line made some daring advances towards him, he could’ve just flatly refused. It would’ve been a trivial thing to do. After all, women rejected men all the time! No reason or excuses needed—just a flat-out ‘no’—the officer would’ve left him alone; politely, too. His first day’s journey would’ve concluded then and there, and he would’ve been a hotel room right now, looking forward and planning about his adventurous next day.

Instead, I go ahead and do that! Just what the hell was he thinking. Idiot… You absolute idiot…

Vague images and intrusive thoughts came by and went. The officer and what he had done kept recurring in his mind.

After some time passed, Satou tried to lie down on the bench he was sitting on. As expected, his clothes did nothing to dampen the cold hard wooden splats. The edges poked him right where it hurted him: on his pelvis and on his ribs; and he had to curl up to properly lie down; and even then, his legs had to dangle out the handrail for him to fit.

“I can’t sleep like this, what am I thinking…”

He remembered the park. “Maybe I could go back there.” He could sky gaze. With a satchel for a pillow, he could lie down on the grass and sleep there. But then, it would be prickly, uncomfortably cold and wet with dew when morning would roll around. No, let’s not… He wasn’t even sure if the park stayed open at such late hours. Probably not… What time is it?

No, wait—What kind of line of thought was he pursuing here?! Why was he thinking about where he should go to sleep? I still have money… It’s not like I’m broke… He could not give up, no—not like this, not yet. If only for the sake of his pride, his self-esteem if nothing else, he could not for the life of him resign himself to be sleep outside, even for a night.

“But what the fuck do I do!”

The frustration was pushing him to the verge of tears. He wanted to cry.

The florist came back to mind; and an idea he had discarded earlier suddenly sounded feasible again.

If he had failed with the florist, so what? There were plenty others still, better willing.

If he was frank with them—and why should he be not frank with them—should they not be more than willing to help him out? If he made his circumstances clear, made them understand that, without their help, he would have helpless, have no means to support himself, no money to check-in to a place to stay, buy his dinner, or buy anything really—should they not more than take pity on him?

They wouldn’t suspect his pleas for foul-play, would they? He was well-dressed enough; civilized-looking. He did not look like a tramp, did he? No, far from it. He resembled a tourist, an exchange student from a well-off family, a traveler—Yes, a traveler! He should go with that! A traveler! It wouldn’t even be a lie to say it. “A traveler from a faraway land.”

Alright. He had an idea. “Ask.” Go flat to flat, knock on doors, and ask strangers in their homes if they would be kind enough to exchange their ducats with him for his riyals. Beg, in other words; though he wouldn’t use that word for himself. The possibility that he would be met with frowns and winces was ever-present, even if they would reluctantly relent out of politeness’ sake in the end, which did perturb Satou who was reticent to face any more awkward scenes. The possibility did make him waver; but there was no dilemma here. If Satou noticed them shrink, wince, curt their tone, show reluctance, timidity, or if they outright refused him—he would just ask them for their spare change instead—only then. That should seal the deal. Making them see that he had lowered his bargain was a sure-fire way to make them diffident to refuse.

“A classic salesmen tactic, if a bit scummy.”

And what better place to start than where he was holed up currently? Somehow-someway, aimlessly wandering through this unending wen with no direction in mind but ‘away’ had led him far from King’s Crossing, to one of its affluent suburbs.

Craning his head backwards towards the starless moonlit night sky, a deep and hearty laughter grew out of it. Now that he was paying attention, he began to hear more. Listen—the silence wasn’t so quiet after all… Clinks of cocktails, ice tumbling in glasses of gin, something about a ‘ten-day vacation to Oben Fal’, a poodle barking in an adjacent room, a piano being practiced—slightly amateurish and discordant at times, but no less worse off for it—life went on beyond the confines of these four limestone walls, completely oblivious to his deceptively unremarkable plight.

He had taken up his refuge in an enclosed courtyard—for all intents and purposes a second vestibule—and he had been idling here for more than a few hours. The residential apartment freckled with iron-laced balconies peered down at him—or not at him—but at the courtyard’s center-piece: a life-sized sculpture of an angel standing atop a white marble fountain.

Past the fountain from him was a double-door. That led you inside. Behind him, was the way out—through an arched-passageway and onto the main street, where the relative absence of parked cars had been a sight to behold for Satou who had only ever seen streets, wide or narrow, more or less cramped full of cars. Here in Ednin, it was rare to see more than three motorcars parked across an entire block, and here in this neighborhood there were only about five. Other than a woman no longer so young smoking on the ninth-floor balcony, too lost in her own thoughts to bother to look down—no one else.

Rich and wealthy folks lived here, in these ten-storey baroque apartments. Besides the staff it must’ve taken to man and upkeep such an impressive building, the tenants here, mostly the ones with larger families, had also employed under them their own personal stay-in cooks, servants, and maids, who had their own quarters. No doubt the people who lived here spent their wealth and riches not too infrequently on leisure, wisdom, relations, and charity that sought out their empathy. Would a hundred riyals really be a huge sum for such a gentry with such deep pockets?

Now that he had put his thoughts into words, he began to feel a lot more optimistic. Then why the wait? He didn’t know the time, but he knew it was getting late, a bit too late. He needed to hurry, before only night owls bothered to open their doors, and even they wouldn’t be too friendly to welcome late and unexpected visitors.

“Yosh!” All fired up, slapping his knees, Satou sprung up. “It’s now of never!”

Before he left, he quenched his thirst from an ornate stone basin that jutted out from a nearby wall. He found it awkward at first, to try and catch the sprout as it shot up right at your face, but quickly he got the hang of it. Then, wiping his face half-drenched with the back of his hand, he admired the angel of the fountain as he walked past it.

It seemed to be a recurring motif throughout the city—these angels. This one—the eighth one he had seen so far—had one wing, not because the other had been broken off and never repaired, no; but because it was so by design. Whether the angel was a man or a woman was hard to tell, but he was beautiful; an exotic beauty. With one wing without a pair coyly enveloped around his bare shoulders, his loose-fitted robe revealed the outlines of his pale anorexic figure. The flat-chested androgynous white as porcelain must’ve no doubt been white as porcelain if he did exist or had in the past, which, given that he was in another world—who knew? With half-lidded eyes and a sly coquettish smile, the beautiful one-winged Hermes admired the undulating ripples just past his bare feet. Or—No. Was he admiring himself, his own reflection?

“A vain angel, you are?”

Beauty enamored him. Wherever Satou saw it: either in people’s faces, figures, gestures, places whether urbane or sublime, or in pieces of music or in works of art—wherever he saw it, beauty enamored him. It made him want to pause to admire it. Beauty was his bane, and it was his bane tonight, when, despite knowing that he had to a hurry, he stood there longer than he probably should have. He let his hand float under the undulating pool of water.

Crystal clear as it looked, it was just as freezing cold.

Then, shaking his hands dry, putting his gloves back on, he finally headed inside.

Instantly, warmth enveloped him. Light-fixtures ran the entire length of the corridor on either side; and a couple must’ve entered at the same time as him from the main entrance, because an elevator muffled in an argument rumbled up to the fifth floor; not that it mattered much anyways. The living quarters began from the 1^st, and he could take the stairs for that.

The first stairwell he came across was right next to the superintendent’s office. The stairwell was suffocatingly narrow, likely made to be used only by the staff. It went both ways, up and down, and downstairs when he peered, he saw the basement, the boiler room, the maintenance room, the breaker room, and the storage room, buried under all the treasures extricated from the wastebaskets upstairs: broken lamps, broken vases, broken chairs, broken perambulators, and so on, all in one monstrous heap. There was bound to be one person down there, but only the hum of a noisy fan drafted up from the dim-lit abyss.

Mindful of how he cushioned his footsteps, furtively he made his way up to the 1^st floor. He leaned his head over the drop so he could see how far the penrose went; and if his foot hadn’t grazed by it on accident then he would’ve never discovered it. “…” Right by his foot, there it was, unassuming, worn and abandoned—a black billfold.

Heat rose to his chest. He hadn’t even done anything. He hadn’t even thought of doing anything. Nothing concrete had yet formed in his mind. Yet already, he felt like a common thief. He knew what his body was thinking; and anyone who would’ve seen him look so solemnly at the billfold would’ve thought the same: This woman was thinking of stealing it!

It was just his luck that he was in the far-back of the back halls, where no one came or went, not at such hours.

He hesitated, this time, not out of indecision, but out of cowardice.

He walked up and down the stairwell, making sure that no one was around (of course there was no one; he knew that already, and yet he still checked), and—No, what the hell was he doing?! If he was going to do it then do it already!!

With a swift deft gesture as if he had bend down to tighten his laces, he whisked the billfold as he made his way down the stairs. There, he thought. The deed was done. The billfold now lay deep within his satchel, and no one had seen him do it. No one, as far as he knew. No one at all. He had done it as naturally as he could make it look, though, this sleight of hand would’ve only looked natural if he had done it while he had made his way up the stairs, not down; but no matter. No one had seen him. No one. That was all that mattered.

He left through the same doors from which he had come in, and walked across the courtyard.

Furtively, with a heavy heart, he bowed to the angel on the fountain; apologized to him for ‘doing this’ but ‘I was desperate’, and “I don’t have much of a choice so please, don’t curse me, if that’s something you can do…” and he also began to wonder since when had he grown so superstitious.

Right before the gateway was a watchman’s booth encased in the arched-passageway itself. The watchman who hadn’t been there when he had entered was now there. If his presence had been noticed, the watchman gave no signs of it. Just a swish—a newspaper turning to the next page—which almost gave a suspicious someone a heart attack.

He didn’t see me, Satou had to reassure himself. No one had seen me…

The watchman at best could’ve seen his side-profile. He was clumsy on his way down the short flight of stairs that led out into the courtyard, and he had almost tripped. No—he had tripped; just saved himself before his knees could hit the ground. The solitary smoker on the ninth floor balcony could’ve glanced down at that moment; but even then, she could’ve only made out her silhouette at best, just as he could only make out the vague silhouette of her’s. She couldn’t’ve seen his face, and even if she did, Satou consoled to himself: No one had seen him do it. No one had caught him red-handed, in the act itself, and he was safe, safe except from himself and his stupidity he couldn’t account for.

Like Raskolnikov, Satou thought, his crime was a perfect one.