Daybreak | F. Dostoyevsky

12 | All That Brings You Grace

All was quiet in the hidden room beneath Kishinekoen Station, save for the muted sound of Fyodor's fingers on the keys of a keyboard.

The room was dark—it was always dark—but at that moment it felt even more oppressive as he tried, and failed, yet again, to attempt to locate any small piece of information that there was regarding the fact that there had been a bomb at the firework festival at Suwa, the festival they both had been in.

It hadn't been an unfortunate fluke. It couldn't have been. Someone—or someones—must have planned it, but who? Fyodor didn't know. And Fyodor never not knew, which presented a rather unique sort of problem. There was nothing. Nothing at all.

Fyodor rubbed his eyes, turning his chair away from the monitors for a second. He knew he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be doing anything at all, except resting, but never has he done what his body needed and he wasn't about to start then.

Behind him, Mayumi laid unconscious on a small couch, his black cloak draped over her as a makeshift cover. Fyodor could barely see her face in the darkness, but light from his monitor was reflecting on her hair, and he noticed how it was more curled now. It made her look less....Japanese, for a lack of a better description; it made her stand out more, which he supposed was why she straightened it.

After all, he knew all about why Mayumi Shimei—or rather, Maya Castillo—would not want to be noticed and identified by certain groups of people.

Fyodor hadn't planned for any of this to happen. Not the bomb, but everything after. From the moment he saw the woman running towards them, he knew they'd be in too close a range to escape, or do anything else, really. He had been prepared to die, and that was why he hadn't moved a muscle in the seconds before the bomb's detonation. Yet here he was, still alive and, not quite well, but not dead either.

He ended up burning down the home to destroy any evidence of their having been there. Watched, a few street corners away, in the dark, barely able to hold up Mayumi, as the house succumbed to the flames, blocked any calls to the fire department, until he was sure that they wouldn't arrive in time to salvage anything. Then he took her here, with the help of the ever-loyal Ivan Goncharov, and then dismissed him. He'd been trying to find out who'd been the one who planted the bomb ever since, to not much avail.

But that wasn't his only problem.

Because Mayumi had seen him in such a vulnerable state, possibly accompanied by nonsensical or too-sensical mumbling; she's taken care of him, seen his scars.

For the first time in a long time, Fyodor Dostoyevsky didn't know what to do.

He didn't know what to do at all.

I should kill her, he decided. He should kill her now, as he was asleep. But every single time he got out of his chair, still a little disoriented and very much weak, the prospect always seemed much less attractive to him than in theory.

In truth, there was something freeing about it all. About being afraid of something, for once. About letting himself be vulnerable. He wouldn't want to repeat the experience any time soon, but there was something about being taken care of, when you were someone like him, that just hit different.

Fyodor turned back to the monitors in front of him, and placed his fingers back on the keyboard.

Nonetheless, he told himself, this is the end of it. Mayumi Shimei was a pawn to be used, and that was all she was going to be.

But if that's all she is, another part of him whispered, then why is she still alive? People who knew his weaknesses all either ended up dead, or incapacitated enough that they weren't ever going to be able to use any of it against him.

"It's a gamble," said Fyodor out loud, his voice low. "A very risky gamble."