Chapter 68: 68 Suspicious Minds, Part Two

Dr Yeoh was still skulking around the hospital, wary-eyed, but Tsuyoshi had already forgotten whatever drunken rant had lead to her awkwardness. He didn't even care. Things were awkward enough in the hospital with Tabitha turning the full force of her awful attitude on anyone who stood still. Even Angharad once, though Angharad just laughed and said her grandmother liked to talk the same way.

Then there was the interloper, Niall Turner, who never seemed to shut up about his medical opinions when Dr Yeoh was around. It was like he wanted to start a fight.

Sometimes Tsuyoshi saw Milo hanging around in the hallways, talking to Ibrahim about who even knew what. And then Ibrahim would notice Tsuyoshi and look at him with that small, fake smile and those terrifying steady eyes and Tsuyoshi would find somewhere else to be. Ibrahim might be polite, sometimes, but he was definitely a predator, and Tsuyoshi didn't want to know what those steady looks of his might mean.

None of which mattered when more people started walking up to the front door of the hospital with minor scrapes from little fights, or broken skin from fights that got a little bigger.

And almost all with the same theme – Zapville had shown one something the other had done and neither liked it.

Almost all only because everyone knew Yong Jie and Neo were only fighting because they wanted to. Yong Jie never let anyone treat him but Milo or Ibrahim, anyway.

The first time something like that first kind had shoved its way into the hospital had been some guy stumbling through the doors and then Milo stumbling in after him, scowling, looking like he was ready to start another fight. So easy to provoke, and so boring. Angharad, where she stood next to Tsuyoshi, barely reacted to Milo's presence, and she usually couldn't stop herself watching anyone.

Ibrahim strode straight in after and said, "Now, now, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, my dear friend. There's no need to start another fight."

The other guy, whoever he was (all Tsuyoshi knew was he was pretty sure that guy was one of Colonel Huppert's smug buddies and he didn't want to form a strong feeling about any of them), stood straight up and tried to pretend he wasn't shit-scared. Tsuyoshi was pretty sure nobody in the room was fooled.

"I didn't take anything. You hallucinated it," the guy said.

"I know what the hologram showed me," Milo said. His voice got flatter and colder the longer he was angry. He was halfway ice already.

"Then it was an invention of this place that shows us things we all know we can't trust," Ibrahim said.

But the smug guy shuffled back toward the wall like he was trying to get away.

"Hologram?" Angharad asked. She looked at Ibrahim like she expected him to give her all the answers. Or maybe she just expected him to act like less of a moron than Milo, which at least Tsuyoshi would understand.

"Ah, yes," Ibrahim said, voice light as he put a restraining hand on Milo's shoulder. "Milo and I saw a projected image of what might have been this man here in our room stealing a picture of Milo's sister. Who I understand is a great beauty, though I personally have never looked at the photo. I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding."

"It's real," Milo said. "That photo is missing."

"That's as may be," Ibrahim said, "but perhaps you misplaced it, or the video we saw was misleading. Milo, my friend, you are a very dangerous man, but nothing is gained by your display of masculine aggression in this hallway in front of such malleable young people."

"I don't care," Milo said.

Ibrahim squeezed Milo's shoulder so hard it had to hurt and whispered, "No," just once. Milo stopped where he stood. What the hell was their deal?

Angharad laughed, and Tsuyoshi tore his gaze away from their weird friendship to the expression on her face. She looked somehow both clever and rueful, but not really amused at all. His bright-eyed girl, always thinking too fast for her own good.

"Oh, it's so clever," she said. "It's a threat. That whole puzzle I solved was a threat. This place can choose to show anyone any of those things at any time. It's like a truth bomb that it wants to set off and we just have to wait."

"So he did—"

But she cut Milo's voice off by saying, "Oh, I mean, it's not guaranteed that it's the truth because Sophie saw a hologram once and it, like, spoke with my voice and stuff but it wasn't, you know, actually me or anything. It could be false images. But this is definitely a test. It wants to know how we'll react to knowing it can show anyone at any time anything we've done here that I definitely don't want people to see, and all those things it showed me were like bombs it can totally set off. I mean, metaphor bombs, because they weren't actual bombs. The not being actual bombs is important."

"No more metaphors for you," Tsuyoshi said. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and rubbed at his face. He felt tired down to the skull.

"So then, let's not react," Ibrahim said, his voice so reasonable it made Tsuyoshi want to hit something just because he could.

"Are you kidding? It's going to make us react. And if we don't it's going to find another way to make us miserable. There's no fucking way out," Tsuyoshi said.

The smug guy was already sliding back away from them, into the bowels of the hospital.

"Well, I mean, we have the power of friendship and stuff. So we don't have to give in. We can try to smile our way through it instead, and stuff like that." Angharad nodded at herself.

"I've noticed that you talk about this place as if it's alive and has its own will," Ibrahim said.

"Um, that's because..." Angharad looked up at Tsuyoshi just as he looked down at her, and then shrugged.

"Convenient metaphor?" Tsuyoshi suggested.

"You don't think it's possible the whole place is a machine, do you?" Ibrahim asked.

But then Zelko came blundering down the hall, loud boots and smile like a bonfire, and distracted them from Ibrahim's words.

The smug guy had already fled somewhere past them. Good riddance.

"That guy dropped this. It looks like someone's girlfriend." Zelko held a picture in his hands of some woman, dark haired and scantily clad in a frilly bikini, presumably Milo's sister from the look of murderous rage in his eyes. "She's hot."

"Oh, ha ha, well, all's well that ends well," Ibrahim said, hand even tighter on Milo's shoulder. "Don't kill him."

It was Zelko that Milo glared at.

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Tsuyoshi thought, Oh, of course, at Zelko grinning even more smug than that guy before, because obviously he knew that was Milo's sister and just wanted to be the one to start a fight. Tsuyoshi rolled his eyes.

"Baby, let's not," Tsuyoshi said, and was ignored.

"Why are you all here?" Zelko asked. "You should always invite me to a party."

"Oh, uh, we were talking about the power of friendship?" Angharad said.

"Friendship!" Zelko said, face amused as he stared at Milo. "That's interesting. How close would you say yours is with this guy?"

"Not at all," Milo mumbled.

"Oh, don't be so mean," Ibrahim said. "Our knowing each other is destiny."

"Don't say it," Milo said. "You're going to make this weird. Don't make things weird."

"But to meet here after such auspicious meetings before was surely a sign," Ibrahim said. He gazed up at Milo, and Tsuyoshi had the uncomfortable feeling that he agreed with Milo that things were going to get weird. "All those times we tried to kill each other. I stabbed you with my favourite knife," Ibrahim went on, "and you tried to choke me to death. I believe that's as close as two men can get."

"Have you tried fucking instead like a normal person?" Zelko said.

"Sex is boring," Milo said. “And so are all of you.”

"This is too weird. I'm leaving," Tsuyoshi said. He manoeuvred around them so he could walk straight out the front door.

"Wait for me!" Angharad called out.

He didn't slow down his stride, but from the sound of her quick, skipping steps, he knew she'd catch up.

Outside the air was crisp but not too cool. The hospital got stuffy sometimes. And absolutely fucking crazy. He needed the fresh air.

Angharad shivered when she caught up, so he reeled her in and pulled her into his body heat.

"That was... I mean, at least they value that friendship. I guess," she said.

"Even you struggle to say something nice about whatever the fuck that was."

"I guess not everyone can have a friendship as beautiful and pure as ours," she said, her voice bright and chirpy again.

He looked down at the flow of her hair, at the too bright smile she gave him, and tried not to let what Tabitha had said poison the way he looked back. "...Yeah."

"What was all that even about? I mean that stuff with Zelko, because it's not like I expect you to explain those other two guys."

He steered her to lean against a wall, so they could watch everyone else in their little world walk past. All these pointless little errands to break up the aimlessness of life in a cage.

"He's just an idiot sometimes," Tsuyoshi said.

"But why is he always trying to start fights with Milo?"

"It's just regular male bullshit." But as he breathed the cool air in the space between buildings that explanation seemed a little too simplistic to offer. "I don't know, but maybe... Not that it's anyone's business but Zelko wasn't ever with another man before me. But it's not like he hadn't thought about it. I'm not so beautiful that the sight of me made him bisexual." He paused for a moment to let her laugh, because he knew she would, and she didn't disappoint. "Anyway, it's... you spend all those years knowing not everyone approves that when you start to come out you want to know who's going to be a dickhead first. You know?"

"I guess."

"Maybe he thinks if it's Milo he can handle it, but Milo doesn't give a shit so he all he does is start pointless fights."

"Okay, that does make sense."

"It's just a guess. I haven't talked to him about it, so don't take my word for it."

She looked off into the distance and stared at nothing. "No, okay, but like, you understand him so you totally have insight into who he is as a person, so I pretty much will take your word for it. Anyway, it's different for other people than it was for me."

It took him a moment, but. "Because your dad isn't straight so you never had to be, either?"

"Yeah, I guess. There's a lot of things people will say if they don't realise you're one of those people they don't, you know, totally hate or anything, it's just that they don't think we deserve to have civil rights or exist in the world."

"The things they say when they actually know you're a fag aren't great, either."

*

The second time he'd seen something like that was Mac running into the hospital, days later, blood under her fingernails because some hag from the other side was sure she'd heard Mac's voice saying something awful from halfway across the camp.

He turned around and let Niall Turner deal with it instead.

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