if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

secret

     I'll tell you a secret.

     Riju's eyes were borderline desperate in their intensity, like those words she caged up inside her were brimming over, like she was at the breaking point. My heart was pounding. I couldn't look away. It was as though her stare was a reel and she was drawing me closer. 

     When a child wanted to tell her story this badly, no matter what she was to say, no matter that she was a stranger, I had to listen. 

     I was fighting for the futures of children like her. And I saw, mirrored back at me, buried in her young eyes, a deep pool of pain.

     "Here, come with me." She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of sight, out of earshot. We were at a shadowy nook, away from the hum of the Cafe. I bent down slightly so that we were eye-level. 

     "The cameras won't catch us here." She told me. "We can talk."

     I quickly scrawled down the word "mute" on the notepad and showed it to her. She nodded her understanding. 

     "That's okay. You're a newcomer so you have to know this." She took a breath. "You know that the Tera people come here often, right? That they favor this cafe during their break times?"

     I nodded. 

     "You need to know what to expect here if you don't know already." She said, leaning forwards slightly. "Little people on the outside know this, but we-- we... We're like their, you know, their--"

     She inhaled deeply and shook her head. Her braid swished. "Listen. Once you come to work here, you can't escape. Ever. Again. They keep us. You can't resign, you can't run away, they'd catch you again and punish you. You can't even miss a single shift. Well, until you're not pretty anymore for whatever reason. Then they get rid of you and you're never heard from again. Trust me, I've seen it happen."

     Her stare deepened. "Know why it's like that here?"

     I listened with growing mortification. I shook my head. 

     "It's because of those people. This is their cafe, even though it's open to the public, even though nobody knows that fact except us workers here. They have influence over this place comepletely. This is where they always come to relax, to take their pleasures. They don't want the pretty girls here to resign, do they? They still want to come hit on them and they get mad when they're not there anymore. So if you run, they'll catch you, they'll find out everything about you and they'll use it to hurt you." 

     She was half-glaring at me, her eyes a wildfire of pent-up emotions. "I'm trapped here. All of us are trapped. Furosa and everyone else. And now you are too."

     Riju suddenly lunged closer and grabbed my collar. She looked wildly terrified, terrified for me. "Why on earth did you come here? Didn't you know the risks of being so close to those people? Even if you didn't know what it was like here, why?? There are so many other cafes out there, why this one?"

     I was horrified. Even if I weren't playing mute, there was nothing I could have ever said in face of this.

     Riju wasn't crying, but the look on her face was one of utter devastation. She seemed on the surface to be angry at me for voluntarily stepping into a prison cell, but I knew better. 

     She was another victim.

     I wrote down "Urbosa".

     "Oh, yeah, Lady Urbosa brought you here." She let go of me and stepped back. She crossed her arms. "She doesn't know. To her, this is just a flourishing cafe that Tera officials themselves help nurture, so maybe, to her, it was safe for you to work at. You know, she helped found this place when Hyrule was still Hyrule, it just got built after the fall of the Royal family. She wanted it to be a place where Gerudo women can get a stable job when they leave the secluded town to experience life."