Why must sin taste so bitterly sweet (fyozai)

Chapter 4

Word count:2130

The past week has been anything but dull for Fyodor; upkeep duty had been seeming less and less like a chore to him with every morning he woke up early to do it. He felt like a young child whose parents had finally relented to their endless pestering for a pet, cleaning up after it, feeding it, and keeping it company with no complaints whatsoever, enjoying each horribly mundane task as if they were some new game he'd been given to play. He enjoyed spending time with the sinner, observing it and asking it all sorts of questions about itself, the place it had come from, and the people it had known. A few days ago, he'd gone out to their local stationary store and purchased himself a miniature leather-bound notebook and a fresh fountain pen with a beautiful marbled design, recording the details of what the sinner had said that day and observations he'd made on it himself.

Fyodor glanced over at the book lying open on his desk from his bed, having not yet been able to separate himself from his warm mattress to face the bitter cold of the morning, the book lay open to a fresh page with the sapphire blue pen sitting beside it, ready and waiting for him once he'd returned from his duties. Fyodor thought back to some of his previous entries as he stared up at the ceiling. He'd managed to find out quite a great deal about the sinner just within the past few days. The first thing he learned was that (unsurprisingly) the sinner was a foreigner, originally hailing from Japan within the continent of Asia, so it had said, it explained quite a bit about the sinner, from its unique appearance compared to the people Fyodor had grown up surrounded by to its sometimes incorrect word choices and pronunciations thanks to Japanese apparently being its mother tongue. The second was that back in its homeland, the sinner had both an older sister and two younger brothers (twins), it had told him all about them and some of the antics they had all used to get up to, such as the time its brothers apparently once stole some of the housekeeper's dresses and aprons and paraded around through the streets in them, managing to earn a couple of coins here and there from people that mistook them for beggars gallivanting around for money.

There was a lot that he had learned through their conversations, but by far the thing that stood out the most to him was that the sinner was more similar to himself than he'd ever imagined it could be. Most of the times he'd gone down, he'd engaged in idle chatter with the creature for a little while to pass the time, but some days were reserved entirely for him to observe. He'd simply sit there in front of the sinner or outside of the cell's barred entrance and watch it, observing every little muscle twitch and irregular breath it took, completely enraptured, like a child pressing their face upon the glass in a zoo exhibit to gawk at the animals as they went about their lives. He wanted to know everything. Everything he could about this fascinating specimen before it disappeared from his grasp.

Eventually, the warmth beneath the covers began to feel more irritating than comfortable, and at that point, Fyodor decided it was time to haul himself up and get himself ready. He peeked his head out of his door and ventured a little ways down the hallway towards the stairs, trodding down a couple before stopping and peering down into the hallway to catch a glimpse of the grandfather clock they owned, its face reading that it was currently 8:33 am, just 27 minutes before he was due on duty. He trudged heavily back up the couple of steps he'd gone down and stumbled back into his room, groggily pulling on some warm clothing with a near silent yawn, he much preferred being warm and losing his reading time over freezing to death in the basement wearing his uniform, for some reason it always seemed like it was just cold enough down there to cause a sharp stinging pain with practically every movement but not quite cold enough to cause him any actual harm a.k.a not cold enough to give him an excuse to actually complain about it. He pulled his black gloves over his hands and fitted his ushanka over his head again before heading downstairs to find his.. delightful.. breakfast waiting for him at the table. His father was nowhere to be seen, but judging by the empty bowl sitting in the wash basin, he assumed he'd been there earlier at least.