#eugenocchio

Days were a lot more interesting for Eugenie with P around Hotel Krat now, especially considering he was such an amazing creation. She couldn’t deny that she liked keeping busy this way, thinking of different ways to improve his weapons and sketching out Legion arm concepts.

Admittedly, the silence around the Hotel, pleasant as it was, might make one bored after staying for days there. Eugenie was one of the first people to have made it to the Hotel when the Puppet Frenzy started. She nearly went at Polendina after she came through the doors with a nearby lamp before Antonia shouted for the panicked girl to stop and explained her butler’s status to her. Interestingly, Polendina had resisted the surge in violence, as if this rage just did not cross his mind.

It made Eugenie think, wondering if the rumors of the puppets becoming more human had some truth to them. Being one of the lucky mechanics to have worked in Geppetto’s Workshop Union, she hadn’t had much hope in the theory at the time. She worked up close and personal with many artificial bodies, and no evidence was found, not by her. Then again, she had only been around the ones in the street that were activated. Seeing how Polendina spoke and interacted with Antonia at times, she could almost see how doting he was, affectionately so. And she knew this was not much of a feature they had put into those creations.

She kept it to herself until P came along. At first, the boy had come in in a soaked white shirt, sheer from rain and a bit of mineral oil, and she had thought that he was merely a newcomer. A split second later, she realized the resemblance he had to Geppetto’s late son. Then the rational conclusion that was true, this was indeed the puppet that Geppetto had mentioned once to her of making in the likeness of his son. And she had never seen anything like him. He was beautiful, accurate down to every freckle on his face. Except she never recalled Carlo having cornflower blue eyes.

Even after their introductions, she never passed up an opportunity to watch him walk down the hallway past her makeshift workshop in the hotel. Hearing him practice on the training dummies outside. If it wasn’t weird, she might have sat him down and closely examined all of his details. Every strand of hair, how his skin felt under her fingers, wondering how he could have been made. He had to be Geppetto’s best creation yet. And even then, she felt he was more than a puppet.

She had heard him playing the piano once, a simple but pretty melody. She wondered if Antonia felt well enough to scoot herself into the bench but when she less than sneakily peeked around the corner and saw P pressing the keys himself, her eyes widened behind her glasses. He played as if he had for years. But that wasn’t it, given some puppets training required piano simply for hand coordination. It was how human he looked. Swaying slightly to the music, eyes closed and a small furrow of the brow as he pressed a different chord. It was mesmerizing, beautiful that he could feel or at least mimic feeling the music in a way that only humans could. It only got more amazing from there.

P would make an effort to bring back vinyl records for the gramophone collecting dust in the hotel lobby, not even knowing how refreshing it was for Eugenie to hear different songs, the fact that P even thought of wanting to listen to music. She’s never seen that in a puppet before, he couldn’t possibly be all artificial.

Eugenie had been comfortably in her seat, sharpening an old blade P dropped off before in the day, admiring her handiwork at the repaired handle. She looked up upon feeling a presence, seeing P walking into the rather muted room.

“Hello, come to pick up your sword? I just finished it.”

She presented it to him with both gloved hands. P’s eyes flickered down, taking the blade gratefully and merely pocketed it into a sheath on his belt. Thinking that was that, Eugenie went back to the various concepts she had been brainstorming for a few days before she realized she didn’t hear his footsteps retreating. She looked back up, seeing his gaze boring into her comfortably. The staring was something she had to get used to but there was no malice behind it, as if he was simply admiring a painting. The thought almost made her blush.

“..Do you need anything else?”

P walked around the work desk, his looming form now in front of her as she turned her chair to face him. His expression stayed stoic as he carefully withdrew a small flower from a pocket in his tailcoat. Metal hand extended to her face, she could feel her own breath nearly catch in her throat as he tucked the stem gently behind her ear. He cupped her cheek, steel fingers lingering on her warm skin and trailing her jaw as he pulled away. There was almost a warmth in his eyes that Eugenie could not look away from.