P.I.E - A Limey Rivalry

Part 18 - A Characterful Study

If time had been absolutely apparent to Ghost, his curiosity would have been eased. It had certainly felt like hours, but there was no way of knowing in the pitch-black environment of the basement. He should've started carrying a watch. Why wasn't he? Perhaps it was because he would put his faith in Toast and his pocket watch, most of the time. Without him, he had nothing to alert him. He pondered over what to do, before shrugging and deciding to do the obvious thing.

"Hey, Bryn," Ghost called to the man behind him.

He had been fairly quiet over the last while. If they hadn't have got used to the basement's eerie quality, Ghost would have found the silence surrounding them to be rather disquieting and uncomfortable. Thankfully, Ghost had grown past any need to worry. Of course, they still were not sure if the ghost that they had come across was capable of affecting things in the physical realm yet, but they hadn't felt any aura of the paranormal and their detectors were steady. The ghost must have been leaving them be, for the time being.

"You called," Bryn answered back, coming out of his trance-like stupor.

"Ugh..." Ghost stammered for a moment. What did he want, again? Oh, right. "Do you know the time?"

"You have no watch?" he asked, as if it was weird to be lacking one.

"Well, no, not really," Ghost answered, feeling strangely embarrassed. It was the first time anyone had been so befuddled by his absence of simple time-telling gadgets. "Toast usually tells me the time, whenever I ask. He's good at time managing."

Ghost thought back to this morning. That was the first one in a long time when he had awoken and readied himself long before Toast. In their typical routine, Toast would make sure they would be on time for everything: getting up; getting ready; taking breaks throughout the day for teas and coffee; going to bed at a suitable time, so they could be alert and ready by the next; etc. He was quite maternal, in that regard. Ghost really didn't give him enough credit.

Ghost sighed at the thought. The thought that Toast might feel used by him.

The release of breath caught Bryn's attention. "Penny for your thoughts," he asked with half-interest, his mind still sorting through information at the back of his brain.

"Oh. It's nothing, Bryn. I was just thinking." Ghost did not really want to start expressing his feelings at that moment.

However, Bryn continued. "It's about that partner of yours, is it not?"

"What makes you so sure?" Ghost turns his head to look back at the man.

"I put two and two together: you mention that you depend on him for your time-keeping, then you trail off and then sigh out of the blue," he smirks and looks straight into Ghost's wide eyes, "If I had to guess, I would say that you feel you neglect him for the most part."

Ghost's breathing hitched. He was aware that Bryn would have been intelligent and deductive; his choice of job would have been obvious of that. He did not know that he was that good. He had found out Ghost's exact thought process with no other evidence than a sigh.

It was honestly quite unnerving, but astonishing at the same time. Ghost wondered what he must have been like as a child. When he was a child, he certainly had the confidence, but he never thought of himself as smart. He had certainly learnt quite a bit as the years went by, of course, but his youthful self was leagues below some others. He pondered whether Bryn had the same sort of story, or he was some child prodigy back in his past.

While Ghost was lost in his thoughts, Bryn casually checked one of his arms. "Eighteen hundred hours, give or take."

"What?" Ghost asked, brought back to the real world again.