Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Food From Next Door

Chapter 27: Food From Next Door

In Faye’s living room, one small figure and one much taller one sat in front of the television, both leaning with the racing cars on-screen.

When the track curved left, Miles leaned left. When the car skidded toward the guardrail, Cyrus leaned too, even though the controller did not work that way. His face stayed calm, but his shoulders gave him away.

Faye sat in the armchair with a book open in her hands.

The book was mostly decoration by now.

Her attention kept slipping over the top of the pages to the boy sitting on the rug. At school, Cyrus Calder looked like someone trying to disappear into his own shadow. He slept whenever he had a chance, spoke only when necessary, and carried himself with the tired patience of someone who had already decided most things were not worth the trouble.

Now he was watching a racing game with the focus of a person handling unfamiliar machinery for the first time.

Faye lowered her eyes before anyone could catch her staring. She had her own reasons for hiding her face at school, so she understood better than most people that appearance could be used as armor. That was why Cyrus’s reaction earlier had stayed with her.

He had seen her without the glasses and curtain of hair. He had been surprised, but after that, his attitude had not changed. He had not stared, praised her, teased her, or shifted into that awkward tone people used when they suddenly realized someone was prettier than expected.

That kind of reaction was rare enough to be useful.

It meant she probably did not need to warn him too seriously about keeping quiet. He did not seem like the type to gossip anyway. In class, the only person who talked to him with any regularity was Owen Keats, and even that seemed more like one friendly classmate trying not to let another classmate vanish entirely.

In a way, Cyrus seemed nearly as isolated at school as she was.

Faye’s thoughts had barely settled when Lena came out of the side room carrying a workbook in both hands. She stopped beside Faye’s chair and lifted the book with a pleading expression.

"Faye, how do I do this one?"

Faye set her own book aside and leaned closer. "Start by finding the total here. After that, you subtract the part they already used."

Lena bent over the workbook, pencil moving slowly. "So I do this number first?"

"That is right. Then write the answer neatly, or your teacher will make you fix it."

Lena nodded with great seriousness. "My handwriting is already neat."

Miles, who had just slammed Cyrus’s car into a virtual barrier, laughed from the rug. "Your threes look like worms."

Lena finished the problem, shut the workbook with offended dignity, and marched to the couch. "Let me play too."

Miles hugged his controller to his chest. "You already said racing games are boring."

"That was before you started losing," Lena said.

"I’m not losing," Miles argued. "I’m teaching him."

Cyrus glanced at the screen, where Miles’s car was facing the wrong direction. "The teaching method is very memorable."

Faye covered a smile with her fingertips.

Lena climbed onto the couch, reached over, and took the controller from her brother before he could protect it. Miles turned toward Faye with the betrayed expression of a wronged hero, but Faye only raised her brows at him.

"You already had a turn," she said.

Miles slumped against the couch. "She’s going to crash."

Lena immediately crashed.

Her car launched over the edge of the track, flipped once, and landed upside down in a fountain.

Miles burst into laughter so hard he nearly slid off the rug. "You drowned the car!"

Lena kicked her feet against the couch cushion. "The road moved."

"The road did not move," Miles said.

Cyrus studied the screen with grave concentration. "I can understand the confusion. The road did seem poorly behaved."

Lena brightened at once. "See, he understands."

Miles looked at Cyrus like he had switched sides in a war.

The afternoon slipped away in turns. Miles played, then Lena played, then Cyrus played again. By the time Cyrus began to understand how to drift around corners without destroying public property, both children had started rubbing their eyes.

Miles fought sleep harder than his sister did, but his blinks grew longer each time.

Faye closed her book and stood. "That is enough for now. You two usually nap in the afternoon, and you are both starting to look like you might fall asleep on the floor."

"I’m not tired," Miles said, while leaning against the coffee table like it was holding him upright.

Lena yawned into her sleeve. "I’m only a little tired."

Cyrus set the controller down, though his fingers lingered on it a beat longer than necessary.

Faye noticed that too.

"Sorry," she said. "They have a routine, and if they miss their nap completely, dinner becomes impossible."

"It’s fine," Cyrus said. "They lasted longer than I expected."

Faye looked at the children. "We should walk our guest out first, shouldn’t we?"

Both children nodded and shuffled toward the door with sleepy obedience.

At the entrance, Faye stood beside them, one hand resting lightly on Lena’s shoulder.

"Thank you for today," she said. "You helped more than you needed to."

"It wasn’t a problem," Cyrus said.

Faye parted her lips, intending to say one more thing. She wanted to ask him not to mention her appearance at school. She also wanted to thank him properly for not making it strange. Before she found the right words, Miles rubbed his eyes and tugged on Cyrus’s sleeve.

"Can you come play again next time?"

Lena nodded beside him. "You can come when we are not lost."

"That would be a better reason," Cyrus said.

Miles looked hopeful. "So can you come back?"

"I don’t know yet," Cyrus said.

After playing with them for an afternoon, the two children looked less like walking disasters and more like small, noisy people with decent snack access.

Miles accepted that answer as half a promise. "Come back when you have time, okay?"

Cyrus looked from him to Lena, then to Faye.

"I’ll remember that," he said.

The children seemed satisfied with that, and Faye did not press him for more.

After leaving the house, Cyrus walked slowly along the sidewalk while the afternoon lowered into gold.

A few hours had disappeared without him noticing. The last clear memory he had before getting absorbed in the game was taking the controller. After that came the track, the turns, the buttons, Miles’s frantic instructions, Lena accusing the road of sabotage, and the little plate of snacks that had kept being refilled.

Human entertainment was not harmless.

It did not lock doors or take away choices, but it made time vanish. It made him forget the heat, his money, his work schedule, and the question of what he was supposed to do next.

That was powerful in its own way.

He passed a shop window and caught his reflection in the glass.

His bangs were down again. His face looked dull, gloomy, harmless. The image matched the one he used at school, the version of himself people could look past without remembering much.

Faye was better at this than he had expected.

In class, she looked plain enough that people barely noticed her. At home, with her hair pulled back and the heavy glasses gone, she could have stood beside Audra Sloane without looking out of place. Yet no one in their class seemed to know.

That meant her hiding was deliberate, thorough, and practiced.

Cyrus understood the value of that.

He also remembered the way she had opened her mouth before Miles interrupted. She had probably wanted to ask him not to say anything, or she had another reason he had no right to ask about. Either way, it had nothing to do with him.

He did not want people digging into his secrets. The polite thing was to leave hers alone.

A small store on the corner drew him in with the smell of hot food. By the time he came out, he had two warm breakfast sandwiches in a paper bag and one already in his hand.

He bit into the first while walking and checked his phone with the other hand.

The price of a game console appeared on the screen.

Cyrus stared at the number for a while.

His expression remained calm, but the hope inside him took a direct hit.

So that was the cost of game freedom.

At his current pace, buying one would require more than wanting it. It would require planning, saving, and possibly eating fewer good things, which meant the entire project needed to be delayed until he had recovered emotionally from the price.

For now, he had a hot sandwich, a paid day off, and a few hours of unexpected rest. That was already a victory.

Back at his apartment, the familiar chill greeted him as soon as he opened the door. The room had cooled itself while he was gone, turning the stale summer air into something he could breathe without wanting to crawl into the freezer.

He ate the second sandwich, washed his hands, and opened the notebook Audra had given him.

Self-study was not as pleasant as racing games.

It did, however, make more sense than it had before. Audra’s notes were clean, organized, and almost annoyingly patient. She had marked examples, written reminders, and circled places where he was likely to make mistakes. With the questions matched to the right section, Cyrus could at least move his pen instead of staring at the page like it had personally betrayed him.

By the time he looked up, the sunset outside had gone deep orange.

The clock had passed seven.

Cyrus leaned back in his chair and considered dinner.

He had meal-replacement pouches in the cabinet. They were efficient, cheap, and depressing. After an afternoon involving cookies, tea, and video games, squeezing dinner out of a pouch felt especially cruel.

A knock sounded at the door.

Cyrus went still.

The knock came again, polite and measured.

He pushed the notebook aside and walked to the door. Through the peephole, he saw Daphne Whitlock standing in the hallway with a food container in her hands.

Cyrus opened the door.

"Ms. Whitlock, is something wrong?"

The first thing Daphne noticed was the cold.

It spilled out of the apartment and wrapped around her arms, strong enough that her fingers tightened around the container. The hallway was warm, almost sticky with summer heat, yet the air inside Cyrus’s apartment felt like someone had left a window open in late November.

Her eyes moved past him before she could stop herself.

The apartment was a single-room space with the sleeping area and living area folded together. From the doorway, she could see more than she should have been able to see. There was no small white-haired boy on the bed. No child curled on the couch. No little figure bundled under a blanket in a room much too cold for him.

Disappointment touched her before she hid it.

If that child had been here, he would have frozen in this room.

Daphne cleared her throat and lifted the container slightly. "Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"I haven’t eaten yet," Cyrus said.

"That works out, then. I cooked too much earlier, and throwing it away would be wasteful." She held the container out to him. "Take it, if you do not mind leftovers."

Cyrus looked at the food container.

The smell reached him a second later.

This was actual dinner, not a pouch, not a sandwich, and not whatever cheap food he could justify buying because it filled his stomach without making his wallet cry.

He accepted the container.

"Thank you for thinking of me."

Daphne smiled with the calm, reliable expression of a teacher checking in on a student. "You’re welcome, Cyrus. Since I live next door now, you can let me know if anything in the apartment gives you trouble."

"I’ll keep that in mind," he said.

She did not linger. After one more glance into the room, subtle enough that most people would miss it, she turned and returned to the apartment next door.

The door closed behind her.

Inside Daphne’s apartment, the cleaned cookware still sat beside the sink, dripping water onto a folded dish towel. Her unit had the same layout as Cyrus’s, but hers already looked more settled. A neat computer desk stood near the wall, and the screen glowed with a fantasy game paused on a white-haired boy character with wide eyes.

She had moved from a nicer apartment to this old building, and the downgrade should have bothered her more.

It did not.

The space was large enough. The walls were thick enough. Most importantly, the apartment next door belonged to Cyrus Calder, whose supposed younger brother had already ruined Daphne’s ability to enjoy her usual games properly.

She sat at the desk and looked at the screen.

The little fantasy boy on the monitor was cute.

He was also flat, predictable, and safely trapped behind glass.

Ever since Daphne had held that white-haired child in her arms, the game characters had lost their flavor. Pixels did not breathe. They did not look up with wary eyes. They did not shiver, resist, or need to be coaxed into eating.

The food delivery tonight had nothing to do with teacherly concern.

Cyrus was useful because he was the older brother.

If she built the right image in front of him, kind neighbor, dependable teacher, safe adult, then sooner or later the child might come by again. There were so many natural excuses: a busy brother, a hungry child, a neighbor who already knew how to cook.

Daphne rested her chin on one hand and stared at the paused game without really seeing it.

A soft, giddy laugh slipped from her mouth as the thought settled in.