Paige Stevens
"Hey, I have a little money and I'm starving, I haven't eaten anything beyond your Bento since." He fell silent and stared up at a wall, unmoving, unblinking, eyes watering. "Well, I want real food."
They stopped outside 'Jin's spot'. One of the few selling a mix of the cheapest foods in the world, ramen, bento, buns, eggs, noodles, rice, processed meats, pastas. The type where one who couldn't afford variety could get some without the feel of being exotic or rich… or classy. Not with rows upon rows of sales stickers, staining clean glass with reds on whites, blues on whites with blazing yellows, a single floor structure but deceptively long.
They turned the corner to see a large teenager, the type born with a rugby ball in his hand. His short hair, cut for speed, was covered with a black 'hand-me-down' hoody and baggy jeans. Baggy being an achievement considering how dense his stumps were. On his broad shoulders sat a salmon, dropped into a bucket on a folding nose trolley where a wiry, old man with skin so tan it was leather waited, cigarette on the edge of his lip like it would always be there.
Drake strode back to the truck, finding Jin carrying a crate. He stared wide eyed at a ghost. A dark premonition of a better part of his life. His eyes glistened, mouth slack, closing when Jin gave one of his sly grins. What words formed, what awkward reaction had bubbled diffused instantly, settled and pushed aside to do the work.
Sprinting, Paige bounced on one of the empty crates, rising over their hunched backs, launching right into the truck. Her shoes had nowhere near the traction to handle the chunks of ice on the floor.
As a reward for her agility, she slid into the truck, disappearing into the darkness with a thud and a crash.
"Paige!" Jin cried out.
Her awkward hiccup/snort/ laugh echoed within the inky blackness.
"I'm fine. I just need better feet!"
"I'm sure there's a docking boutique somewhere 'round the corner." Jin laughed.
Paige grabbed the end of a large blue tail tuna, the oil from the scales oozing between her fingers, the chill of its iced state running up her arms, making her shiver as she threw her back into launching it onto a crate the boys lifted.
An hour passed in silence, grins shared, savoured.
Finally Drake addressed the colossal mammoth, bumping their elbows.
Jin took pause, looking to Paige then Drake.
"Somehow I feel shrugging won't be enough." Jin said.
He smiled but got blank stares.
"Fine, you win but you have to believe me, otherwise there's no point."
He leant against the truck, Sweet Mag pose locked in, waiting.
Each found themselves a spot. Drake between the icy crates, Paige on the lip of the truck's rear. Jin sighed fighting something no one could help in.
"You know, you don't have to do this." Drake began.
Jin shrugged and grinned,
"I do."
He was right, there was no chance, no hope in hell she'd be satisfied with a shrug. The pangs of shame had grown dull, leaving a void only his answers could fill.
"I don't know really, I remember a heavy pulling sensation as though the centre of the earth had opened and pulled me in. All I could see was black but I started to see hundreds of thousands of falling bodies, all burning in whites, blues and reds, burning them up like they were twigs."
Paige crossed her arms, her knuckles turning white. People burned? No one died?
"The light became an afterthought because, well it didn't burn, it just sort of… Was. I hadn't been set alight I just had an inner light exposed. It was crazy, I wish I could explain it better."