Chapter 6: Scout

"Turn right," she instructed, and therefore with tighter grip on her legs, he followed what he was told. His phone on her hand, she peered at it, to the lines, to the dots, to the labels on the map, until they reached the actual place, after minutes of his silent walk against her authoritative voice.

"Finally," he exclaimed, his warm breath suspended on air like smoke. It seemed like the northeast monsoon was already around the corner, almost vanishing. The summer heat already brewing in a far distance. He carefully settled her on the empty wooden seat outside a convenience store.

She traced the outline of his weary face against the artificial lights nearby. "Are you okay?"

He looked back, a blink, inquisitive. "Of course," he said, "you're not that heavy anyway."

She nodded, satisfied. She didn't know if that was a praise exactly, or a criticism, or both. He placed his backpack on the small wooden table, then started absent-mindlessly removing buttons of his uniform before her, and thereafter while walking slowly heading inside the store he told her that it won't take a while. She looked at the sleeping cats, fascinated by their cuteness. "And please look after them," he added.

Sure she did, pushing his uniform against her tighter as she nodded. She wouldn't let a heat that came off from his body escape from her cover, no fucking way. Currently, she was relishing their sleepy innocent faces, their pink noses. Young, so little, she wanted to carry them but afraid it might hurt them, so she just caressed their fur, slowly, so soft like their owner's warm heart between her fingers. She envied them. They were so lucky, unlike her. She had questions on her mind she'd accumulated just from their brief encounter. She didn't know where to start. Questions like what is his name? How old is he? What was he doing there? Was he lost too? Did he run away? Are they his? To name a few. Probably these would never be answered. She was aware she would never have the courage to even ask.

Against the transparent glass wall she could see him looking at her at any moment his curiosity arose, standing before an aisle with a pile of snacks, probably thinking she might escape. She just smiled each time he looked at her, to assure. He did smile back, bright and expensive, as if he was absorbing all the lights passed through him and nothing escaped, like a blackhole. It was too much and too difficult for her to reciprocate, his gallant and unashamed display of affection, so she hoped visible nod would do the compensation. Somehow it looked like it did, with a little shake of his head as if laughing at a joke he told himself and deemed it funny enough but otherwise corny at all. It looked like he was imagining things, something that every child forgot growing up, once a boy finally became a man. As it seemed he was the exception, then.

They were stupidly smiling at each other, without reasons at all, both were unaware of it, or just they didn't care. Realizing something, they looked away from each other, ashamed of themselves, of what they were thinking of what people were thinking about them. They were nothing, yet. And there was nothing to hope for, still.

Around the place she was still watchful, despite she was with him, even the threat was not here any longer. The sky was conceiving another light out of the night. The cloud was done with the earth today, it seemed. Still-empty streets. Lampposts now in idle to recharge. Occasional cars gradually increasing in numbers. Hurrying strangers in jackets sometimes, sipping just-boiled coffee. The raw wind of dawn rested on the branches, cold on the moistened leaves. Yawning birds ruling the morning in their flight. Rattling plastic, tumbling. Cats' purrs. Dog's sniff with the athletic owner. An early street sweeper nearby began her work. Indeed, the Earth was being reborn right now, once again, more.

She sighed, not out of exhaustion nor because of sleep-deprived body, but simply an exhalation of relaxation, as the glass door revealed the man and thudded back to its place as he went out. He was only in white shirt now, undeniably muscular, visually stimulating. His pants and tucked-in shirt were secured firmly by his leather belt around his waist. A folded carton secured on his armpit by the fair arm. Two paper bags on a hand, then a plastic of ice cubes on another. He offered one of the first one to her.

"It fucking sucks..." he mumbled, complaining at her like she was his mom. He was saddened and angered by the fact that they weren't selling any footwear here. But anyway he enthusiastically said, "Eat," standing closely right in front.

The curiosity was too overwhelming she couldn't look away from his manhood getting hard unashamedly, pushing itself out of its owner's imprisonment for visibility. But it didn't seem as if he cared, or that he had the control over it at all, so there was not a point of actually hiding his very feeling anymore. Or he was just really unaware of his own flesh's autonomy. Since his face was so nonchalant right now (his face still unsatisfied with the result of his undertaking which was not getting what he wanted) she would never know if he was currently aroused or it was just still really on its respite. Probably it was just simply because it was morning already, and still quite cold around here. "If you don't want it just tell me so I can buy you something else."

They were already too much, she thought, this and that. She shyly took one of the paper bags, shaking a bit, this burgeoning feeling was profound for her to feel. "Thanks." While she was busy looking at the food inside it (it was a puffy siopao so white like cotton and a water bottle), he vanished from her sight and fell into his knees, a hand asking for her busted ankle, no words spoken. On another hand, the ace bandage out of another paper bag. A realization: she had no rights to resist, so she offered herself and he cradled her feet on his palm, gentle caresses by his deft fingers.

"Does it hurt?" he asked her, slowly massaging her feet, rotating the joint cautiously, stroking it with his thumb, assessing the epicenter of the ache. "What about here?" He touched her sole. Then the terrifying and scrutinizing gaze commenced. She glanced back, fighting.

She bit her lips. "No, not at all." She was trying to minimize the guilt. Although it was really faintly aching and sore.

"Hmm." A slight nod as the response. His head now was bent, showing the swirl of his crown, the sweat in the follicles, the protruding tip of his sharp nose, barely breathing, steady closed lips, his gaze of  attention undivided like he was back again as a boy, way back the very first time he touched a toy, figuring  out how it worked. Even his eyelids were thinking too, participative in the mystery of this thing's inner-working. He took a gray handkerchief out of one of his pant's pocket, then a handful of ice cubes on the plastic bag, putting them inside it, then wrapped the corner to make a diy ice pack. The first intact made her flinched a little, but his other palm charged with an electrifying warmth, supporting the back of her leg, was easing the ache, but not something else that was more than in need to assuage. A moment later on, finally assured of his own understanding to its mechanism, as if trying to remember something, he began the wrapping: once, twice, three times, rolling it over in different angles until satisfied, in full unyielding concentration towards devotion. All this good deed, she finally realized, was simply for the sake of her not getting hurt anymore. She didn't know what to make out of that knowing.

There was certainty in the way he worked it out. And he was glad to share it why it seemed that way.

"I was a scout, once," he explained, as if knew what she was thinking as of the moment. His care and attentiveness to her feet resembled her mom's. The way he held it so cautiously, not too much nor so loose or out of his touch, but just enough to feel the warmth of his hand oscillating towards her heart. She couldn't swallow what she was eating and just chewing it in micro pieces. She felt nauseous. Instead, she offered it to him. He looked at it a moment long and shifted unexpectedly, biting on the the very area she had eaten it. Clenching jaw, puffy cheeks. His huge bite revealed the meaty insides, like a feral predator on its helpless prey. Thereafter he continued his labor with the same intensity of attentiveness as before, in silence. To sustain his vitality she offered the food once more, and he yielded. Another bite from her bite, a tamer one. Then a full-blown swallowing. Then back to his work.

The water was given later on, with her own hand as his were still busy with the post-care of simply stroking her feet like his pet, in her full control over the angle. It was clear he was so thirsty, the way his soft lips never let a drop escaped from his mouth, the way he pushed the water down his throat, the way his slithery tongue taking a trip on his white teeth. The way the water rippled back and forth inside the clear water bottle, offering their whole selves merely for his sustenance, like an animal on a lake finally out of danger away from wilderness, reflecting itself. In the whole duration of drinking his ferocious eyes were at her eyes alone, as if enjoying the burning field crackling behind them, smoke rising to unheard-of heights like a plea to heaven. Clearly it was from his own doing, and undoubtedly he loved it very much. It was the first time he smirked from their whole moment together, in so unapologetic sort of way, and reveling on his own self-made satisfaction like a victorious boy in an arcade game against an arrogant grown up man who had belittled him before. She didn't know she had this part on his character. A sense of mischief. She didn't know he was more than what he seemed, more than what she assumed he really was. She didn't know anything about him. She was still frightened to speak knowing she didn't know anything at all.

Few people walked by casually, then slowly once seeing him, but mostly women took a longer time to fully intake his whole being who was almost kneeling before Madeline, like a brave knight before the royal princess. Some even glancing for the third time in a row just seeing his face when going inside the convenience store, just so to fully soak themselves to his simple gorgeousness, his dominating physique. But unlike them, the subject of their affection and admiration didn't seem equally as interested to them, this handsome boy who never lost his sight away from her, like he had already owned the most precious treasure, the secret of the universe before his very eyes. His eyes must've been drying too, for never closing it, as if scared that she'd be gone in a blink, in a snap of the fingers, with the wind.