Chapter Text

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

2 Corinthians 4:16

A scent of warm, freshly baked bread fills the room like a fog, outright potent by the time Welt stands before the counter and asks the cashier for bagels and a bottle of water. It's a ritual at this point, and the water helps the smell of coffee on his breath. Himeko has successfully converted him after all. Setting aside the thoughts of his friend-maybe, Welt notes how the rain begins vigorously, without warning, and shows no signs of letting up when he steps outside. 

He has no umbrella because the forecast did not say a word about rain. Oh well. Just to be somewhat prepared when he arrives at the office, he takes off his glasses and puts them in a case stored in his jacket. 

There's a thirty-minute walk between his apartment and work, a journey he embarks on every day. If he's fast, it's fifteen. Halfway, he spots the side of the first office building blocks and looks up when the rain ceases, then slows down to put on his glasses. By coincidence, he stands on the side of the street and looks upwards to see if the lenses have smudges on them. 

It just so happens that something else catches his eye entirely. 

Nestled behind a row of innocent apartment blocks, there stands a building that arrests his attention. Not so much because of the locale itself; it's glum and dour-looking with an unlit neon sign that's borderline unintelligible, even at night. Welt has always had an off-putting feeling about that place ever since he laid eyes on it for the first time. It’s taller than the apartments before it, which just highlights its general creepiness. It’s old, borderline run-down, and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. It looks so pitiful that Welt never thought that it belonged to anyone or even housed a living person. Somehow, it has electricity due to that neon sign, but that could just as well be someone using the space for easy business exposure.

Suppose they don’t get chills like Welt does.

But for some reason, he’s staring at the building now. Not directly, but rather a person sitting in a window on the top floor. An actual living human being.

A young man with his legs drawn to his chest, head resting on his knees, stares at nothing in particular. Be it the light color of his clothes, the silver hair, the golden color of his eyes, or his fair skin, he looks ethereal. Otherworldly even. Welt stares at him for what feels like an eternity, completely paralyzed by his mere existence and the dignified detachment in his expression. He wasn't there before. It's almost as if he's not supposed to be there. He doesn't belong in such a dour cage, or a cage at all. Who is he? Where did he come from?

Regardless of what the answers are, his mental presence is currently anywhere but whatever room he’s in. Amidst the gray weather and dilapidated old shady building, he looks like the purest thing in existence. Is he alone? He looks lonesome. Miserable.

He lifts his head, and tufts of hair behind his ears reveal themselves to look like wings almost. It’s a simple, basic movement that everyone does in their lives, but he does it so oddly elegantly, it’s unreal. Welt swallows, his heart races, and he looks away before his staring is noticed. When he tries to spot the stranger again, the window is empty. 

Oh.

The encounter has burned itself into Welt’s memory, but he wonders if it was even real. He has never actually seen anyone in that building, and he doesn't feel comfortable looking up anything about it. According to gossiping locals, it's a massage parlor and a therapist's office, but Welt would reckon it’d give people some type of anxiety disorder. Maybe it’s adjacent to actual living facilities. Welt doesn't think any further about it, despite the young man comfortably residing in his memory bank, like a force of nature so powerful, he demands whatever ecosystem that strikes him fancy, whether or not he’s even aware of it.

It’s curiosity, Welt rationalizes with a scintilla of thrill and a whole ocean’s worth of horror. Or well, it’s beginning to look like that. Embarrassing; Welt has Himeko, sort of. He doesn’t want or need this. Shoving all the frustration, the shame, the confusion into some deep, dark corner of his head, he makes his way to work, walks up the stairs, and feels as if he's aged fifteen years momentarily before he pops open the door. There's a cleansed scent lingering in the office, so the cleaning staff must have been here only hours ago.

He's early as usual, so his boss is the only other person present. Herta, the editor in chief of The Erudition, is having a meeting in her office. Monday investors meeting, probably, which is not as shocking for an online newspaper publication as one might think. Welt can hear her speak with a tone situated between corporate but soulless politeness and genuine but bored snark. He can't hear what she's talking about, and it's not his place to eavesdrop, so he hangs up his coat, heads for his desk, and sits down. He has twenty minutes, so he rotates his chair to eat his bagel. 

The art of drawing comics in newspapers is a rare practice these days, and Welt, through sheer nerdy love, is one of the people who does his due diligence. He can write articles. He can do interviews. He has two master's degrees in astrophysics and animation with a minor in creative writing, but that's beside the point. Currently, he draws comics and satirical artwork between ghostwriting articles. It might be a dead-end job, but it makes him happy, and the pay is decent enough for savings and a good amount of disposable income to boot. It makes Herta happy, too because it sets her newspaper apart from her competitors. 

Doing the sketches for today's commission, Welt switches between a bunch of papers and the finished product on his drawing tablet. He's facedown in work, fully occupied and focused, and everything goes smoothly. 

Until something happens. 

Instead of a four-panel strip based on politicians doing blunders that screws over everyone else, Welt doesn't draw a comic at all. He doesn't even draw a politician. 

He draws the stranger in the window. 

A messy sketch that is fine-tuned with shadows and light, and detail, and the same expression, and the wings that are not wings but become wings. For some reason, Welt adds a halo. He draws as if possessed by some force that will not let him stop until he has immortalized this person on paper. 

Oh. Oh no. 

Welt stares at the finished work in horror, then shuffles the papers so his senseless display of Insanity is hidden from the world. He takes off his glasses to bury his face in his hands. 

“You look like garbage. Go get some battery acid,” Herta says as if she teleported from her office, unamused and bored in a way that inadvertently sounds like she cares. 

Welt can feel his shoulders jump to his ears as if she startled him, and he looks up at her, and her raised brow, lightyears away from processing what the heck she just offered. “I thought you banned coffee from the office.”

“Yeah, well, HR got on my case and investors demand that stuff for meetings, so I reversed the ban,” she shrugs. Welt is thankful, so he gets up to make himself a mug of instant coffee – only to come back and see Herta shuffle through the papers on the desk as she tends to do before he can stop her.

“Ah, Herta, don't-”

She has the drawing of the stranger in her hands and scoffs. “Original character, donut steel.”

”Herta…” Welt presses a hand against his face. He sits down with a sigh and tries to get some work done, while she stands there and studies the drawing.

“It’s not bad, actually. You can really tell this person hates life. An angel scorned by the sins of us mere mortals,” Herta muses, and Welt wants to sink into the floor as she hums and finally puts the drawing down. “Oh, watching you all flustered is amusing.”

“Glad you’re having fun,” Welt sighs, and suppresses any and all thoughts of the stranger. No doubt they will never meet anyway.

At this time of year, it’s already dark by the time Welt is on his way back from work. He takes the same route as he always does, and the world around him has hardly changed as a result. The bakery is closed, small stores are closed, there’s a pizzeria that’s still open, and so is the corner store that doubles as a gas station. And then there’s the creepy building.

Tonight, its neon sign is lit, and a dim version of its glow reaches the top floor where the stranger is, thus cementing the fact that Welt wasn’t having the calmest hallucination known to man. Instead of just sitting there, the young man has his head resting in his hands as he stares at the night sky. The room behind him is alit, but Welt can’t really see anything aside from him. He doesn’t want to either.

Welt can’t stay and gawk for too long because he has a hangout with Himeko tonight, and it occurs to him how bad of a look it is that he’s getting preoccupied by a complete stranger rather than the woman he has known for years.  It’s all a bit sudden and alien and childish because Welt is a grown man, getting hung up based on looks alone like some teenager.

He forces himself to walk home faster than usual. Practically running so that when he returns home, he’s panting. His mind and his thoughts are still standing in the streets, looking up at a guy ten or so years younger than him. It’s pathetic. Welt can’t unlock the door to his apartment fast enough; he shoves himself through the door and closes, or slams, it shut, which causes a dog nearby to bark like mad. He has to look presentable, but all he really does is collapse onto his couch in a confused mess and tries not to close his eyes for too long, or he’ll fixate on silver-haired strangers. So he climbs to his feet and throws himself under a cold shower to reset his thoughts.

Afterwards, he sits on his couch and stares at nothing in particular until the doorbell rings. It’s so sudden that it distracts him enough to get up and answer, opening the door for Himeko waving at him with a bottle of wine in her hands. Himeko is…a friend. Welt met her through a dating app after some pressure from friends; they had a casual thing that didn’t entirely work out, so now they are just somewhere in between. Friends with benefits-maybe. Welt still feels something within his veins every time she hugs him. It’s not love; attraction, possibly. Yes.

“Won this as part of employee of the month,” she says while he searches through his cupboards for wine glasses. He’s not huge on wine or alcohol in general, but Himeko is in a good mood, and so is Welt by proxy.

“Didn’t you win four times last year?” he asks, and she chuckles as she pours.

“It’s my fourth this year, too,” she’s gentle but thoughtful, if not a little sardonic. “That’s my accomplishment for being an attorney.”

And she’s good at her job. At times, Welt wonders what force of fate decided he, a mundane cartoonist living in a cheap apartment building, would end up in a close friendship with a lawyer graduating at the top of her class. She’s being entirely factitious, but Welt still shudders at some of the cases she had to handle. The topic quickly shifts to something less dour, like the politicians Welt is meant to parody. It’s a casual evening that ends as most nights they spend end, with sex. Pure and simple. It’s routine, it’s familiar. It’s nice.

Later that night, as they lay in bed, Welt finds himself having faint musings on silver-haired strangers and has to stop himself from theorizing why the young man looked so miserable.

Today is Welt’s day off. And that is both a good and a bad thing. It’s been a week of normalcy despite how Welt sees the stranger more often. Unadvisedly, he thinks about him. So much so that he begins to get some kind of thrill from seeing the young man. It’s a sad state of affairs when Welt feels a modicum of a rush just because he sees some guy whose name he doesn’t even know. Today is another gray day when Welt takes to the streets.

Despite being able to do whatever he wants, he just goes to the bakery for lunch instead of breakfast. The wind picks up in intensity, flapping his scarf around his head. Some trash flies by his feet across the sidewalk when he sees the frame of the bakery. He enters, and the cashier greets him as she usually does.

“Hello, sir! The usual?” she asks, bright and cheery in a way that has probably brought some hapless hobbledehoy courage to ask for her number.

“Yes, thank you,” Welt answers and gets an impulse that draws him to say; “A muffin too.”

After he gets his order, he’s back outside and wanders aimlessly with a passing thought about going to the harbor until he stops within view of the shady building. Once more, the stranger is there. He’s not gazing upon the heavens. Rather, he’s reading. It’s impossible to tell what exactly he’s engaged in, but it appears to be a thick work. It only helps to add another mountain of questions to this person’s very existence. Something in the room suddenly demands his attention, and he puts the book on the windowsill in a rush, but by doing so, he must have hit it by accident as it falls out of the window and vanishes behind the buildings in front.

It’d be a herculean task to explain the feeling that comes over Welt now. Opportunity, curiosity, insanity. More words he’s not quite identifying. All of it at once floods him and carries him to the back alley where the book lies, like it’s begging him to pick it up. He does – and finds out that the stranger is studious enough to engage in the history, philosophy, and teachings of music theory.

Welt looks at the building from which it fell, then at his immediate surroundings; the buildings here are all rather poor-looking and run-down. Graffiti litters the walls, and there’s trash everywhere. It’s crazy to think that such an area exists right next to the main street, which is like a luxury shopping strip in comparison. And that says a lot because this city isn’t exactly paradise on Earth.

And yet, Welt, despite himself, continues to gaze upon the mysterious building, the massage parlor, or whatever it is. He has no idea what comes over him, but something possesses him to aim for the main entrance, finding it unlocked and drawing him to enter. Inside, a narrow entrance greets him with a single short staircase bathed in light from cheap chandeliers greets him – and gaudy carpets on the walls. It’s dim, there are no windows, and Welt wonders how long it takes before someone jumps out to mug him at gunpoint.

He ascends the staircase to what appears to be a receptionist’s desk where an old woman sits, writing in a small black book. She’s churning through cigarette after cigarette while doing Sudokus in a magazine like grannies tend to do. Upon hearing footsteps, she lifts her head and tries to smile. It’s not a smile that Welt likes, but he returns it, albeit strained.

“Welcome to the Golden Touch. How can I help you?” she asks and tosses the cigarette bud in a nearby ashtray.

“Erhm,” Welt has a ruthlessly sudden moment of self-awareness and really, really wants to hide in a hole somewhere. “The rooms above - are they apartment buildings?”

“Nope. They are the offices of our employees. We offer therapy and massage services. For new customers, we offer an opening consultation of an hour, fifty percent off. Would you like a brochure?” she fiddles with a drawer under the table counter, and Welt has to gesture with the book to stop her from trying to entice him.

“Uh, no, thank you. One of your employees was reading and happened to drop this from the window in his office. A silver-haired man. I’ll just leave it for him, if that’s okay?” he’s about to put the book on the desk, but something in the woman’s expression makes him hesitate.

“Ah, he is very popular when it comes to the sessions. But he’s free at the moment. You can hand it to him directly so that he may properly thank you.”

A weird feeling settles in Welt’s stomach as he feels very off by the current conversation. What even is this conversation? Is the stranger a minor? This feels rather pedagogical. “…That won’t be necessary. I wouldn’t want to disturb his workday.”

Whatever his job actually is.

The woman laughs, amused for some reason. “I’m certain he’d appreciate the visit. Actually, how about this: you get thirty minutes for the price of fifteen since it’s your first time. A special deal; how about it?”

How about no.

Welt should walk away. There’s something about the situation that triggers all the alarm bells within him, screaming at him like a siren. If the red flags could be redder, they’d be waving above his head while he’d be covered in red paint in the middle of a communist parade. This place doesn’t feel welcoming or relaxing for what its function is.

And yet…there’s a part of him that quivers at the chance to meet the object of his fixation.

Fine. You only live once. He can afford one mistake in life. He’ll make it quick, thirty minutes at most. Although returning something a person dropped shouldn’t take more than one and he sure as hell shouldn’t pay for it. Welt nods, takes out his wallet, and the woman smiles genuinely. She opens another drawer, searches through it until she finds a key, then moves off her chair and beckons Welt to follow her. 

And he does, his stomach bottoming out as he finds himself in an elevator with the woman pressing a button to the top floor. His heart sinks as he physically ascends. Before long, they enter a hallway with doors on either side of its walls. It does really look like your average cheap apartment building – or a drug den. The floor is dirty, and the air is oppressive in its decadence. More chandeliers, more carpets. Covered in dust and cobwebs.

There’s a weird smell wafting about. They stop in front of a door in the middle of the hallway, and the old woman unlocks it. Welt feels like he’s about to get jumped one way or another, swallows hard, and tries to appear moderately calm while she ushers him inside.

The door slams behind him, and he feels isolated, adrift at sea. Five different emotions all hit him at once – then cease as if someone pulled the plug. There’s nothing but silence, a weird moment where everything stops entirely. Even time itself.

And there he is, standing in the middle of the room, bathed in light as if sent down from the heavens. As this is the first time Welt sees him up close, it’s a painfully powerful fact that he is mythically beautiful. But he doesn’t fit this room. This…cage. It’s not an apartment but more like a dorm room. There’s a wardrobe and a shelf with countless heavy-duty theory books and an open door to a bathroom, that’s not much bigger than Welt’s storage closet. But Welt isn’t interested in his surroundings, only the stranger standing there and looking directly at him.

“Welcome to this side of paradise,” he says with the softest, smoothest voice Welt has ever heard from a living person. It is as transcendental as the rest of him. There’s a tiny smile on his face then. “For how long will you be here?”

“Ah-“ Welt’s mouth hangs open before his functionality kicks in, and he answers after clearing his throat. “Thirty minutes max. I’ll make it quick.”

“I see,” the stranger muses. He steps over the bed’s nightstand, fiddles with a clock there, and crosses the floor until he stands in front of Welt. At this point, everything can happen, and the thought of the unknown causes a slew of conflicting emotions to surge through Welt like a power line. 

Then the stranger reaches for the buttons of his shirt, slowly pulling each one apart with every step he takes towards Welt. “You can do as you please with me. Perhaps it will bring you peace.”

Welt’s heartbeat races horribly, and he holds the book in front of him like it’s a crucifix warding off the devil. “Ah, n-no, please don’t – don’t do that.”

The stranger stops, halfway bare-chested. “Do you want to undress me yourself?”

“I don’t want to undress you at all. I thought this was a massage parlor. Or therapist's office.”

The stranger looks at him. His eyes widen then, and his arms drop to his sides. And he snorts. And laughs. It’s a bit hollow and mocking, like he’s a prince laughing at the follies of the commoners. “Goodness. You actually bought it. Ah, amusing.”

Glad to see he’s having fun, but Welt is not freaking laughing. “…I’m happy to amuse, but what exactly is this place?”

The stranger doesn’t answer him at first. Instead, he walks over to the window and sits there, resting his head on a closed fist. “Did you know ‘’massage parlor’’ is actually code? You’re standing in a brothel. And without meaning to, you paid for a whore. That would be me.”

His eyes are truly golden, his irises almost navy. His gaze is sharp and heavy now, like a weighted blade that cuts the legs out from underneath Welt to the point where he has to sit down. He tries to open his mouth, but his mind is still catching up with the situation. He puts the paper bag on the bed with a sigh. “Ah, well, that wasn’t on my bucket list…”

“Why did you come here?” the stranger asks after a brief pause.

Silence follows the question while Welt feels like he’s being held at gunpoint. He looks up at the young man, wary and suddenly very ashamed. He tries to answer still, fumbling over his words and pointlessly waving the book around – until it hits him that he’s actually holding on to the damn thing. “I happened to see you reading and saw that the book had fallen out of the window, and wanted to bring it back to you. Errhm, I have a muffin if you want. As an apology for the inconvenience.”

The stranger narrows his eyes. His tone is even, but it carries a little edge to it now, jaded and just really exhausted. “People coming to me is my job. So, what now? Do you propose we entertain the farce of therapy?”

“I don’t know. Sorry. This is very awkward for you, I’d imagine. But I’m not-I won’t take advantage of you,” Welt shrugs and rambles off in a rush. “I mean-I’m not here for sex.”

The stranger has his knees pulled to his chest again, and he cradles them like body armor, but there’s genuine sincerity behind his next words, like Welt just fed his starving mother. Given his general mood, one has to wonder if this is the only act of kindness he has felt in a while.

Maybe it’s because he smiles. The sight of it makes Welt’s heart flutter at how divine it is. Yet it’s so sad at the same time. That too is beautiful, tragically so.

“Thank you,” he means it – maybe, but it comes with a sigh as if he’s tried this one too many times, only to taste disappointment afterwards.

Then silence. Again.

“Welt, by the way,” Welt says, apropos of nothing. It becomes a little easier to breathe, and he doesn’t know why doing a rudimentary introduction is making things, whatever they are, better, but it does. Maybe it’s because it feels like the only speck of normalcy in a wholly abnormal situation that prevents Welt’s brain from wringing itself like a wet tea towel in the horrible awkwardness of it all.

The stranger unfolds himself, but his expression is tight as if uncomfortable. Probably because Welt has stared at him for ten or so seconds straight without meaning to.

“…In that case, I am Sunday. Your humble misunderstanding,” the stranger-Sunday says with less edge and more warmth – and more pain, though he seems to appreciate the levity regardless of how minuscule it is.

They sit there, apart for another pause, then Welt throws a question there that feels warranted, albeit intrusive. “Do you…like it here?”

“Are you about to ask what such an eloquent, well-mannered young man is doing selling his body for a living? What tragedy occurred in his life that he’d resort to such a degrading occupation, far below his person? That is a story beyond the length of fifteen minutes. But to answer your question vaguely, I do not. That said, I chose this out of my own volition. Hating your job is part of the human experience, yes? Our hearts are filled with contradictions at every moment,” Sunday says, more honest in some kind of blunt scathe that only comes from a jaded life filled with bitter experiences.

For the record, that is quite a long-winded way of saying no, but it begs the question of what actually makes him do this despite hating it. The answer would be monetary issues, but he doesn’t come across as someone who comes from a broken home or a poor upbringing. Rather, he seems like a well-educated elite – unless he reads so much that his speech mirrors the books.

Welt then remembers that the door to the room is otherwise locked unless ‘’patrons’’ are present.

“Are you held hostage?” he asks bluntly, and Sunday makes the softest sound possible that can liberally constitute as a laugh, but he doesn’t answer, which is concerning. He smiles, but it’s empty.

Then the alarm on the nightstand goes off. Oh great.

Welt stands up. He has completely abandoned the paper bag on the bed. He can hear someone knocking. Quickly, he throws something out there. “I’ll visit you again if you want - you know, for the company. You look like you need someone to just…talk to.”

“Would that be the time when you overcome your shock and do what everyone else who comes here does?” Sunday asks with a miserable sigh. The smile has dropped off his face, and the melancholy radiates off him so strongly it could feasibly be picked up by satellites.

“I already told you, I’m not here for sex,” Welt stands his ground, a little annoyed by the unfairness of this entire situation and vaguely aware of what path he’s striding on.

“Your empathy is appreciated,” Sunday says earnestly, but he’s not happy. “Prostitution is legalized, although I’m afraid to say, the risk is sizable to your personal life and reputation, should you engage with me, but that is within your power alone to evaluate.”

Welt hasn’t evaluated a single damn thing about this. If he did, his rationale, his maturity, his everything would kick the door down to his heart, yell at it for being foolish, then order his brain to find a new route to work and repress the very notion that Sunday can be a given name.

Unfortunately, being educated does not equate to making good decisions. Not to mention that; “I don’t think I can go back and pretend this never happened. I’m not heartless enough for that.”

“In that case, you will have to pay in full upon your next visit. Just so you know. But there’s a discount on Sundays, so take that for what you will,” Sunday says as he brushes past Welt to answer the door with a pleased smile on his face. It lasts for a second, but Welt catches the smell of him and hates how it lights up his every nerve. It’s probably hair wash and deodorant, but it’s horribly and vividly good to the point where Welt sort of wants to bury his face in a headful of silver.

He’s too busy zoning out on the idea that the amusement at Sunday’s dry humor fails to make him laugh.

“We all walk our own paths. Though it may be painful, as long as the circumstances are right, I suppose there’s room for sincerity. Until we meet again,” Sunday has his hand on the handle, and he smiles again. It’s sad and weary, but it’s like a tiny speck of actual comfort breaks through him.

Welt wants to know what it looks like when he’s genuinely happy. One can only imagine, it’s a sight as celestial as he is.