#surrise

Early morning on the mud flats #3.

It's all about the light and how it changes.

“Well aren’t you just a wonderful teacher~” Here they were again. While Kawakami slumbered, she had entered the strange city and met with the Kotone who wasn’t Kotone. But they weren’t on the sidewalk like before. No, they were on top of a building about four stories high. The rooftop had a chain link fence going around the top, the shadow speaking to the teacher from the horizontal bar on top. Seemed she had been right about pulling the teacher in when she wanted.

“You’ve really gotten her to open up a little more. That confiding in you that she gets discouraged... Oh she doesn’t do that much. Always acting so positive so everyone is happy without being dragged down.”

Alfred is nineteen, and very much convinced of his own cleverness, of his wits and smarts and his ability to manipulate people into giving up their secrets by playing the hapless teen with dreams of being an astronaut.

(Who would want to be an astronaut, he’d asked his brother all those years ago, when space is cold and alone? The people are here, on earth, and that’s where he needs to stay to be able to work with them.)

It is sad, Matthew thinks, watching Alfred tend the community beehives with the stubbornness of a man enthralled. His baby brother could have been so great, but instead he has been shoehorned into the role of “consulting detective” by his arrogance. Honestly, inventing a whole career in order to satisfy his ego, what a child his mother raised! He watches Alfred for a while longer before approaching. His feet crunch the leaves underfoot, but Alfred doesn’t seem to acknowledge his presence until Matthew coughs.

‘Stand closer,’ Alfred scoffs, not looking to his brother. ‘I don’t think you’ve completely moved into my shadow yet.’