Chapter 101: 101 Hello World, Part Five

Jin woke up to Freya tugging on his arm. It wasn't the first time she'd woken him up by dragging him into the waking world, and for a moment he was confused about where he was, and what was happening, the last days of the war blending into the last days of Zapville in his head.

"Come on," she said, pulling him upright.

He blinked until reality settled in around him.

She dragged him into the bathroom, a small space with faint light filtering in through the frosted glass window, and propped him up against the vanity.

He woke up the rest of the way when she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. He grabbed at her waist and kissed back with a sense of relief.

The light was stronger through the window when she drew back and said, "You'll have to wait until I have time to do that again."

"Okay," he said. "I'm willing to follow your orders about that."

*

The starlings were a special war only unit, and the people in charge had no interest in helping Jin move into the regular military once he was of age.

"I don't believe we have need of someone with your particular skill set at this point in time," said Major Deng, as he pulled his notes closer to his end of the table.

"What did Major Keating say?" Jin asked.

"Major Keating indicated an interest in pausing her service to spend time with her family. She has no interest in speaking up for you," Major Deng said.

"What about the progress of overturning the presumption of my death so I can get my money back?" Jin asked.

It was the local government minister who spoke next, Smith or whatever his name was. "Before you can start legal proceedings of recovering your name and legal entitlements as a citizen of the Northern Construct you'll need an adult citizen to vouch for you and your belief that you are the same person of your name who was legally declared dead by the supreme court decision three months after the gate sabotage incident."

"And my..."

"Any money or property are non-recoverable. Your entire estate would have gone to a family member upon declaration of your death, or if none were forthcoming, to the state. All such transfers are final," the minister said.

"But..."

Deng leaned forward over the table. "I don't have the authority to ask you to officially leave the service given your spotless record, but you cannot currently serve and nobody has a use for you. This leaves you in limbo until you make the sensible decision to leave of your own will. Until such time, I suggest you bother other people with your pointless questions."

They had the receptionist order him out.

*

The day was still early when Jin left the building. The streets were busy with cars and the skies full of yelling birds. Jin didn't want to call Freya on her new phone number and tell her how shamefully bad that meeting went yet, so he walked to her house instead, a slow meander over the space of an increasingly quiet hour.

The world outside was beautiful, busy. And Jin didn't feel like he belonged to any of it in that moment. Was this the home he was desperate to get back to? How could it toss him away like that?

When he got back to Freya's home, he let himself in with the spare key her sister had given him, and sat on the couch to wallow in his feelings. He even lay on his side for a while, arms dramatically thrown over his face, to really commit to the wallow. But even that got boring eventually, and he wandered into the kitchen area to make lunch.

When Freya came home she found him there, cleaning up his mess.

She smiled at him, eyes bright, but the sight of her red uniform made him want to look back down at the saucepan he was washing.

"So, how did it go?" she asked.

"Terrible."

"Come on, it can't be terrible."

Jin, hands deep in suds, took a moment to breathe in so he wouldn't get in an argument over it. He didn't want to argue with Freya. He knew, deep down, she was in his corner and it wasn't her fault he was angry all the time.

"It was the worst possible outcome. They don't have any use for my skills, whatever that means. I can't get my money back. I have to have an adult prove I'm who I say I am and I have no one."

"Well, that's not all bad," she said. "That last thing can turn out fine. My parents have already started on my application..."

"Your parents don't like me."

She leaned against the counter, so it was impossible not to see her through the corner of his eye.

"It's not that they dislike you. They're just freaked out by the whole situation. I am, too. You know, we thought we were away seven months but it was actually ten years. It's enough for them to deal with accepting their oldest daughter is alive after all, and is now technically their youngest daughter. It's just... they don't know how to deal with you."

He finally looked her straight in the eye. "You know they won't help me with this."

She looked down, sighed. "You're right, I know." Then looked up again and clapped her hands, eyes wide with glee. "But I know who will! We can definitely convince my sister to help. It will make her feel useful, and maybe we can distract her for so long she stops asking for Andrew Nguyen's new phone number!"

He wanted to argue, he wanted to yell, but there was no reason. She was right. So he nodded.

Freya slapped him on the shoulder. "See! Things are looking up already. And I know who you should talk to to make yourself really feel better, while I dry all these dishes."

"Who?" He wiped his hands on the towel Freya gave him and let her steer him back to the couch.

"You should call Angharad." Freya's voice and smile were almost too kind. Her concern scraped on his every nerve.

"I don't have her phone number," Jin said.

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"Silly! Of course I've already tracked her down. Angharad and I talked already! As if we were going to let the grumpy mood of a silly boy get in the way of that."

"And she's okay with that?"

Freya patted Jin's knee and leaned forward. "Why wouldn't she be okay with that?"

"How did you not notice how weirdly paranoid Angharad is?"

"Oh, Jin, you worry too much."

She handed Jin her phone, the number already dialling. He took it with trembling hands.

"Hello," said the voice on the other end of the line.

Jin didn't know why he was nervous.

"Hello, it's..."

"I know who it is! Please, as if I wasn't going to recognise your voice," Angharad said.

Jin breathed out, overwhelmed. He'd started to think of her as some kind of spirit he couldn't touch, and he didn't know when or why. And yet there her voice was, real and... okay, not tangible. She was still too far away to touch. Not that he was thinking about touching her.

"It's been three weeks. You better still recognise my voice," he said.

Freya got up and left the room at some point during his phone conversation. By the time he realised, he was deep into teasing Angharad over nothing.

"So, like, did you do all those things you said you planned to do?" Angharad asked.

"Did you?"

"I don't even remember what all those things were. Like, I guess I'm getting my life together and stuff. But, you know, it's all super weird. I drank coffee again and enjoyed the outside. Those are things we couldn't do in Zapville."

"I don't think I've enjoyed anything. Everything sucks," he said.

"I mean, not absolutely everything..."

"No, everything! I have no money and no family and no... Did you know that you need to pay for headstones and they're not just put there automatically?"

"Yeah, of course I did. I've been to funerals for all of my grandparents and daddy had to organise that, like, half the time."

"Well, I didn't know! And now I know my family are just lying there in basically unmarked graves like they're nobody. Well, they're numbered but they're not..."

"Do you want the money?" Angharad asked.

"No! I want to complain about this injustice. I want to be angry about this!"

"Sure, but while you're angry about the injustice, do you want the money to pay for the headstones? Daddy got me access to money that was held in trust. I could, like, give you some."

He looked down at his legs where his hand was clenched into a fist against his thigh. "I'm not going to take your money."

"So, what are you going to do? Just work until you have money to put headstones on all the graves? They cost thousands of dollars each. It's not cheap."

"That's not the point!"

"Why isn't it the point? You want to honour your family by doing this, right? I know if I were in a situation where people I love were buried in graves that had no headstones to mark their resting places and someone offered me the chance to take care of that, I'd take it."

"It's different for you." His fingers unfurled against his knee.

"If you say so. But I'm just going to get Freya to nag you into it."

"What if I'm more stubborn than you?" he asked.

"Now that I don't believe."

*

Once Freya explained his situation it wasn't that hard to convince Minerva to help.

"Of course I'll vouch for you!" Minerva said.

Jin leaned forward on the couch and raised an eyebrow at her. "Really?"

"You look and act exactly the same way as you always did. You're definitely you, Jin, and anything I can do to help I will do," Minerva said.

"Oh, Minnie, you're the best," Freya said, and threw her arms around her sister. And then Minerva hugged her back and said, "I'm so happy to have my sister back." And then they both started to cry.

Jin just sat there and let them.

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