Lirzod and Hundred were still inside the rented room, with not even flies but tinier beings, ants busy eating leftover bread, for extra-company.
“Why do you think the noises suddenly died down?” Hundred was unable to get his head around the reason behind the sour silence. He was perhaps as puzzled as a woman trying to know a man of few words.
“No idea. But I did hear their footsteps fade away,” Lirzod said, putting his ear to work just a bit, and he, too, couldn’t hear a thing. “Why don’t you go and take a look?”
“What?” Hundred’s heart almost dropped an inch or two. “I won’t go. You go.” He was quick to react but was also shrewd enough to keep his voice low.
“I am still recovering, you know,” Lirzod seemed fascinated from watching the lines of the ants carry food to their hidden homes. “No need to move when it’s not really necessary.”
“You are hitting my soft spot,” Hundred sighed.
“Hey, have you ever wondered about this?”
“About what?”
“Look at those ants,” Lirzod said. “Can you see them?”
“Of course, I’m not that old yet,” Hundred leaned over to look at the ants crawling on that bed. “What about them?”
“Can you tell apart from an adult ant and an old ant?” Lirzod asked in haste.
“Huh?” Hundred didn’t know what to say. He looked at Lirzod, thinking the boy was joking, but the intrigued expression on the young one’s face convinced him otherwise. Hundred then squinted his eyes and observed the ants for a good couple of minutes only to eventually stop with the scratching of his head. “They look all the same to me.”
“I know, right?” Lirzod excitedly said. “I’ve asked my father this same question long ago, and he said, it’s not that we stop working when we get old, but we get old when we stop working. So, compared to us, ants are better at doing their jobs, aren’t they?”
“Well, I agree to disagree,” Hundred replied.
“Why?” Lirzod had to ask.
“I think the fault lies with our eyes,” Hundred confidently said. “If only our eyes were better, then we can easily recognize a senile ant!”
“Y-Yeah, but that’s not my point,” Lirzod awkwardly smiled. “I’m saying it’s hard to meet the ant standards, but if we do, then old age can be handled better, don’t you think?”
“Come to think of it,” Hundred started talking to himself, “my old man once fed an ant for a few days, saying that it was too old and injured to take care of itself.”
“What happened to that ant?” Lirzod quickly asked.
“I don’t know,” Hundred shrugged his shoulders. “It didn’t stay for long, that I know, so maybe it bit the wrong sweet[1] and met an untimely end, or just died from that injury.”
“Oh, that’s such a pity. I’m always on the lookout for senile ants, but it’s so hard to come across one, you know,” said Lirzod, looking a bit disappointed. “Even if I did, it’s hard to tell them apart. I can only cry at my incompetence.” He bit his bandaged arm out of frustration.
Hundred was a bit lost in thought. In truth, I didn’t care all that much about that ant. Maybe, he left it in the woods or something. He exhaled an audible breath but then screamed in pain, for Lirzod had bitten his arm. “What the heck were you doing? I’m not your food!”
“Sorry. I just felt like biting on something other than myself, and I regret it. Your arm tastes bad,” Lirzod almost wanted to throw up.
“That’s because I didn’t bathe in a while!” He shouted but then quickly covered his mouth. “Wait,” he lowered his voice as he suddenly remembered the situation they were in. “We got lost in our talk and completely forgot about those men.”
“I’m telling you, they’re gone,” Lirzod said confidently.
“You don’t know that. They may still be spying.”
“Then why don’t you make sure?”
Hundred gritted his teeth but then had to restrain his anger after remembering that Lirzod had fought Hovan and Gaja not long ago. “Fine, I’ll take the risk,” Hundred took deep breaths, and after sound-checking through the wall a couple of times, he carefully opened the door, just enough to peek outside. To his unsettling surprise, nobody was there to jump on him. His eyes kept checking but found no living soul. It looked like they were gone for good. However, he was careful when stepping out, wondering if someone was hiding right outside, clinging to the walls so they could keep out of his sight. Still and all, after he came out and took a quick look, he was proved wrong. “Hey, there’s no one here!”
“Ah, yeah,” Lirzod didn’t seem as surprised. “Their anger wasn’t the real deal, after all.”
“Where did they go?” Hundred couldn’t feel at ease, knowing that they might come back with more men. It’s better to leave before they return. His jaw was slightly hardened. As much as I mind turning tail, I get forced to do it time and again on this ship, where I’m no more competent than a falcon that cannot fly.
“It always hurts when you get going after a break,” Lirzod took his time to walk out while cringing a bit from pain felt all over his body. He looked around as he straightened his frame, “You are right. They were all so angry and were itching to beat us. I wonder where they all went.”
At that moment, a person in a sheep suit came along their way. Though Hundred was hesitant, he eventually stepped in and asked, “Hey, mister, by any chance, did a bunch of people come in your direction? Like half-dozen of them?”
“Yeah, there were quite a lot of them, carrying weapons and all,” that guy said with a doubtful look. “And they were visibly upset, for whatever reason.”
“Ahem... Who knows,” Hundred exchanged glances with Lirzod. “But does that mean you know where they were heading?” he expectantly asked.
“Maybe,” the man in the sheep suit shrugged his shoulders. “They may be heading to the place where I’m coming from.”
“Oh, and where are you coming from?”
“From the commander’s room,” he took out a carrot from his pockets and took a bite that broke the carrot in half.
“Why did you go to an empty room?” Lirzod casually questioned. “For mementos?”
“Who said it’s empty?” the man in the sheep suit raised his brows. “The new ‘temporary’ commander of this deck has already come.”
“Oh,” both of them were sufficiently surprised. “A new commander already,” Hundred nodded to himself. “So that might be the reason why those guys off at once. To go and meet him and possibly gain a good initial impression.”
“Him? Nah, it’s not a man,” the hollow said and gulped the carrot pulp down his throat.
Hundred briefly froze after hearing those words.
“So it’s a woman?” Lirzod was slightly excited, but then he tapped his lips. “I didn’t come across many of them in the three decks I’ve been to. It wouldn’t have been easy for her to become a commander.”
“Of course, not. She’s from the upper decks,” the man in the sheep suit blurted out as if he was speaking a fact.
“Upper decks...” Lirzod couldn’t help but get his hopes up. Till now, he was worried about spending his time on the twelfth deck for the remaining voyage, in case his plan failed, and he would get forced to stay. However, after hearing that the new commander was a woman, he felt passably unworried as it might not be a boring stay on this deck.
“You two also can go and have a look, if you’re interested enough that is,” the man in the sheep suit started walking while murmuring to himself that getting one’s hopes up for ‘that’ person was as hopeless if not more as a cat chasing its own tail.
“No wonder those bastards ran like dogs in heat,” Hundred said. “Not only is it a person from an upper deck, but it’s also a woman. Upper deck commanders tend to be either extremely lenient or the opposite. I don’t know whether it’s good news or bad news for us.”
“Dogs don’t like sitting in the sun when it’s hot, so of course, they seek shade, but those guys were the ones who were actually threatening us,” Lirzod replied, “so they’re more like impatient dogs who don’t like being ignored for long. So, they left, which is good for us.”
Hundred glanced at Lirzod with a mystified look as though he had lost a few brain cells. A good three seconds of simple staring passed. “What?”
“I’m saying it’s good news,” Lirzod patted Hundred’s hand and began to walk. “C’mon.”
“Where are you going?” Hundred said and briefly glanced at the room they had stayed in for the past few hours. Though he rented it for two days, he had to leave right away, which was a waste of money. Six copper coins, to be precise. If they had booked a better room—bigger, cleaner, fewer flies or ants for company, and maybe a window view showing foreign places such as the ocean and the land—he would have lost more, so he tried to focus on the bright side.
“To meet her, of course,” replied Lirzod, straightforwardly.
“Huh?” Hundred made the face of a fox that had its tail stepped on. “No, don’t,” he yelled the same.
“Hmm?” Lirzod glanced over his shoulder. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah. There is,” Hundred quickly covered the distance between them. “Not just anyone can become a commander on a whim unless they already have a reputation big enough to fill in a commander’s shoes at least temporarily. If it’s a former commander that came here, it means she got demoted—for God knows what. Also, the reason for her to get stationed here would be, indirectly, you. If Sean were still the commander, she wouldn’t have been stationed here.”
“I... didn’t think of that,” Lirzod’s heart started pumping a bit erratically, “but she wouldn’t know our identities right off the bat. So, let’s get a peek.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hundred’s jaw loosened. “There will be many eyes around her. You think they’ll let us walk away in one piece?”
“But they can’t fight in front of a commander, right?” Lirzod couldn’t help but ask.
“Still, we can’t take the risk. Did you forget that Hardy Brothers were humiliated by a mob attack only yesterday? They’re luckier than a lottery winner to have not lost limbs.”
“I get what you’re saying, but you’re being so—” As Lirzod was saying, he saw Hundred stare over his shoulder, and Lirzod could also hear someone, or something big to be precise, approaching.
When he turned back, there was an elephantine figure, taller and broader than any human he had ever seen, gazing down at him. And it was a woman. She stopped at ten feet away, as they were blocking her way by standing in the middle of the road.
“Whoa...” Lirzod’s first response was that he was taken aback. This person was over four meters tall and could touch the ceiling of that street if she raised her arms and jumped a bit. Her arm alone was longer than Lirzod’s whole frame, and she was so buxom that it wouldn’t be easy to tell how many fat-packs she had under that wrapping of a dress. Furthermore, snot streamed down her nose, and sweat rolled down her face like excess chocolate dripping off a cake, no, like puss leaking from a wound.
“Oi, shrimps, you two are in my way,” she licked the snot away while glancing down at those two, and compared to her stature, they looked like newborn babies. Her high-pitch voice also only added to her abnormalities.
“U-Uh...” Lirzod fumbled to get his expression straight and stood there frozen in his thoughts. Did she just lick her own snot? An appalled expression took over his face as that image ran amok in his mind and shook him to the core. He had met a handful of highly disagreeable and extremely obstinate people, and also scary folks whose smiles made less to no sense, but never in his life did he expect to see someone whose appearance itself was probably enough to scare the living crap out of every crib-user in the world. It was, without a doubt, the most unprepossessing woman he had ever seen by a stretch of untold miles. It wasn’t just because she was fat, but her proportions were all over the place; her cheeks were rounder than fair-sized melons, her nose was as big as a braggart’s ego, and her hanging double chin was swollen enough to put an average man’s head to shame, as far as size was concerned. Even her ears were so long and fatty that they inelegantly hung and rested on the shoulders. And to make things vividly worse, her thick lipstick resembled dried blood as though she had forgotten to wipe her mouth after consuming raw meat. For these reasons and more, she didn’t look like a human anymore. Nothing about her appearance felt homespun, for it was far from pleasing, like the most bizarre art of the millennium, one that would taint the eyes and muddy the mind until gone into one’s grave.
Both Hundred and Lirzod froze in fright, but Hundred recovered quickly and pulled Lirzod aside, and she moved past them. Even after moving near to the wall, her obese waist pushed those two against the wall and choked them hard. Though the current street they were in wasn’t that wide, it was still wide enough for her to pass freely, so she had purposely pushed herself against them for wasting her precious time.
After she left, Hundred and Lirzod gasped for air. “Who in the world was that thing?” Hundred looked bewildered.
As for Lirzod, the scare was still pretty much freshly painted on his face, for this little fellow had never seen such a repugnant lady before. Much of his eyes were still out of his sockets. “D-Did you see what I saw?” He looked toward Hundred for confirmation. “I wasn’t dreaming, right?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’ve seen an overfed pig that put on drugs and lipstick.”
“No, no. Obviously, it was a human…” Lirzod affirmed, “or maybe, not. Can a human be so round?”
“I don’t know. She’s so big and fatty and sweaty. Not just any diet can make one grow like that. No, that’s not what we should be worried about. What’s a monster like that even doing here?” Hundred could only wonder.
At someplace else on the same deck, in the Cat Cafe, a relatively large room filled with cats for company.
The five Hardy brothers were playing poker. None of them were wearing wigs at the moment. Cat Cafe offered minimal food and coffee for a limited time, but only those who donated money at the entrance of the cafe would be allowed inside; this rule was put because selling food was against the rules on the lower decks, including the twelfth deck. Currently, the brothers were taking refuge in this cafe from a group of criminals hired by unknown parties. Knowing that fighting was forbidden in the cafe, they could be at ease, at least for the time being. No other customers were present in the cafe either, which added to the peace they were looking for.
And Fimbry just lost the game the earliest again.
“This is your tenth straight loss, Fimbry,” Divas patted him. “You should hone your skills better.”
“I’m frying, brother. But you four are improving faster than me,” Fimbry said. His whole body was wrapped in bandages, except for his eyes. That said, he could still play poker as his fingers could move.
“It’s trying, not frying,” Divas corrected him.
“Right…. Right.”
“There’s no hurry. Since we are stuck here, you can improve by the time we reach the Shambala Sect,” Centry lightly patted on Fimbry’s shoulder, which was enough to make the younger brother cry. “My bad. By the way, does anyone want to go and shake hands with this interim commander?”
“If you want to do it, then let’s pay a visit together,” Betts replied without fuss.
“But, Second Brother...” Fimbry hesitantly said. “Some dogs are spreading rumors that we are scared of roaming by ourselves. I want to ‘eat’ them first.”
“Fimbry... Don’t pay heed to fake speech,” Aziz insisted. “You know we do it together or don’t do it at all. If you want to pay a visit to the commander, then let’s go together.”
“Oh my... Are you perhaps talking about me by any chance?” a voice sounded from the side, which startled those five, and as they turned their heads, they saw a massive figure that dwarfed the entrance to the room. She was standing right outside the door, for she was too big to fit in. Not only were they surprised by seeing her, but they were also more shocked that they couldn’t see her coming at all. Even the cats failed to notice her. She didn’t make a tiny sound and approached them successfully while having such a physique? The thought itself was too intimidating, but more than that, from her words, it also meant that she was the ‘acting’ commander.
Shit! Did she come here for our heads? Divas was the first to stand while all the cats in the cafe ran into corners and hid under the tables, growing ever so restless by the second until they found a safer spot.
What’s up with her size? Centry deeply frowned as he stood as well. I can’t see her in full.
How could I not sense her coming? Betts ground his teeth and felt ashamed of himself.
Who’s she? Fimbry leaned back and almost fell from his chair.
Why did she come to us? Aziz was about to step forward, but that woman shoved her arm in through the entrance, scaring the living daylights out of everyone inside. It was all so unexpected, and their legs felt glued to the floor. With a swiping-pull of her arm, she pulled them all at once like pulling rats out of the holes.
“My little Hardy Babes!” she hugged all of those five together and rubbed her cheeks on their faces after picking them up as if they were fowls. “Since seeing you five on smokecast, I couldn’t control myself.” She sounded so thrilled and excited as a baby girl that had found her favorite toy. “So I came here in a hurry. Luckily, this deck’s commander, whoever he was, has recently been stripped of his title. It all went my way. Maybe the heavens are in favor of our meeting, so before this luck fades away,” her eyes widened to take in more light and so the miens of the five men, and her voice deepened to give weight to her words, “let’s all get married, shall we?”
A moment of silence struck the neighborhood harder than the dogs ever did, so much so that the cats in the cafe cowered away into overworked quietude.
“HUH?” The five brothers were slack-jawed in full. The disbelief in their eyes showed that they couldn’t believe what they heard. And they also wished their ears were listening wrong. In their lives, not a single woman complimented them, much less proposed to them. And when someone finally confessed their love, did it have to be this woman with an appearance that could probably scare even the wandering spirits?
Alone by themselves, the Hardy brothers usually looked like beasts that could single-handedly choke a wolf to death. However, in front of this whacking-great woman, they looked like her long lost little brothers who had stopped growing.
Even though they desperately tried to get out of her smothering hug, they simply failed, for they were given no time to act. One after another, the five of them got flooded with kisses and cheek rubs. Her rough handling itself sucked all the breath and might out of them.
“You five are so handsome in person,” Her face, especially the chunky cheeks, had flushed red enough to resemble iron being forged. “Apart from baldness, there are no negative features. I feel so blessed.” Her gaze fell on their ornaments. “What are these lockets? Wait, are those teeth? How scary!” She cast a contrived surprise through her eyes. “My men should be at least that much intimidating. But why is it that only four of you have those? Did you lose the fifth? Do you have a spare? Can I wear one of them, too?” she kept asking them question after question, and she didn’t even give them the time to answer, much less allow enough room for them to freely breathe. “Oh wait, I never told my name. It’s Bossie. Cute, isn’t it?” she kept on bruising their bones with her komodo’s clutch.
Meanwhile, at the commander’s room of the twelfth deck, there weren’t as many people gathered as one would expect.
“You mean that giant woman is Cute Bossie?” Hundred was thoroughly shocked when he realized that. “She’s our commander?” he couldn’t feel his heart for a moment.
“Yes. You can say that it’s her arrival that saved you both,” the one guarding the door said.
“What?” Hundred hastily said. “We don’t have anything to do with her.”
“Well, people are scared just to be near her. No one wants nothing to do with her. If anyone made a mess now, of either you two or others, they will have to come face to face with her sooner rather than later. And all she has to do is simply fall on top to suffocate them to the end, don’t you think?”
“O-Oh...” Hundred nodded. In his view, a commander shouldn’t compete with the people of his own deck, especially when going eye-for-eye. He didn’t know much about Sean, but from what little he had heard about Bossie, he could tell she was nothing but trouble. Sean was strict, and he always played it by the rules. However, the same couldn’t be said for her. Hundred thought for a bit and eventually glanced at Lirzod, who seemed disappointed as he had high expectations for the new commander. “What’s with your face? This is good news for us, so put on a smile, will ya?” He leaned closer and said in a low voice, “Now, we have enough time to find ourselves a safe spot in the lower decks.”
“What are you saying? This is bad news, really bad,” Lirzod pouted like a kid who didn’t get what he wanted.
At that moment, a plump-faced man chasing a cat entered his vision. When the cat noticed the men gathered up ahead, it stopped in its tracks. The plump-faced man used this opportunity and flung the net over, capturing the cat successfully, or so he thought. Just when he made it to the spot and bent over to grab the net, the cat expertly struggled and leaped at him before madly clawing in his face, forcing him to a nasty fall on his back. The cat then expertly fought and freed itself before skedaddling away with its tail still raised high and puffed to the max. The plump-faced man was now caught in his own net and struggled to get out. The other men standing around, who had seen the chubby man fail miserably and was caught in his own net, started laughing without reserve. Hundred was also laughing, with his mouth covered by a hand. Lirzod, however, quickly made it to the struggling man and offered help. Yet, the plump-faced man slapped Lirzod’s hands away, then struggled a heck of a lot more to break out of the net, causing the onlookers to laugh some more. Eventually, the chubby man ripped the net apart and got back to his feet before leaving as a frustrated man.
“Haha,” Hundred came over to Lirzod and looked amused as he said, “that was some entertainment. Did you do that on purpose?”
“Not at all,” Lirzod wore a plain expression with a settled gaze. “I just wanted to help. I know how it feels to be embarrassed by animals.” The squirrels of Allda flashed in his mind, and it was because of Allda’s squirrels that Lirzod had earned the nickname of Barebutt in Helenia, though not just anyone would dare to call him that in his face. Though the three white horses also embarrassed him, Burton, and Sariyu by not letting them ride back when they were boarding Exvo, that whole affair was nothing much compared to what Allda’s squirrels had put him through. “It stings all the more when you’re outdone by those you take for granted as not your match.” He was glancing down at the net. “If he didn’t struggle as much, the net would still be intact. Now, it’s no longer usable. Such a waste, but I guess it was inevitable. The simple yet scary thing about getting embarrassed is that one’s embarrassment can be another’s entertainment.” He remembered the time when Gorka had slapped Sean in public, and though the spectators back then were initially shocked, they soon started laughing hiddenly, behind Sean’s back, which aroused pity in Lirzod, but there was nothing he could do but play another spectator role. "While the tongue gets tied, an embarrassed mind thinks their fart echoed across the mountains," he glanced at Hundred, "but it's not entirely their fault, or is it?"
“I-I wasn’t as entertained as those other men, though,” Hundred almost shamelessly said and then swiftly diverted the topic by picking up the net and checking its condition. “This net is of fine quality, and I think this isn’t beyond repair. A good patch from a pair of expert hands should do the trick.”
“Oh, so you are a patching expert?” Lirzod expectantly asked.
“Do I look like a fisherman’s son?”
“You… don’t smell like one,” Lirzod replied.
“Then you already know the answer. I’m no patching expert, but I can tell that this is a premium fishing net,” he picked up the net and laughed maniacally, “and I can sell this to a fool and make a dwarfin[2] fortune to cover the losses we’ve suffered for renting a room.”
“Oi, you’re making a scary face again, Hundred,” said Lirzod, waving his hand before Hundred’s face as though he was swatting flies.
“Haha, I know,” Hundred backed his voice. “Let’s find a rich fool, shall we?”
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[1] Bit the wrong sweet: A euphemism for death that comes early from doing wrong things. This idiom originated from elves back when they selectively poisoned sweets to do away with the thieving goblins.
[2] Dwarfin: A slight version of something. This word originated among dwarves when they used to call their young ones dwarfins, but over the years, the word came to be used in many ways.
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