Neon Lights

THREE

The first time I got the gist of what it meant to be a caretaker to Alexander Moon Ga and his mansion was one and half months later. We'd established a working arrangement, I spent most of the day updating him on what needed to be done and he handled the most on his own. There were no visitors, at all, but society lunches were included which were unsurprisingly more often than not thirty minutes long and took place at the same country club. I brought dinner to his room, left it outside, he'd fetch it later. He preferred all his food at the same time, the cleaner was allowed access to his room once in two weeks and he spent most of his time between it and his office. Both were on the ground floor, not too far from my room. I spent most of my day in his office playing his eyes, filing papers and maintaining orderliness as directed by him.

Alexander Moon Ga had a serious case of obsessive compulsive disorder. A disturbingly serious case of OCD. This was in his file, I did my best and it seemed to work. I spent most of my nights in class, as an exchange student I was enrolled in a university close enough to his mansion that I only needed an hour of driving by GPS. He stayed out of the way and so did I. It was easier than I'd thought it would be.

He was in the kitchen when I walked in, an hour to midnight. I was just from night class, sweaty and hungry and thought of fixing myself a meal. The chef made meals, yes, but my body rejected the foreign delicacies and forced me to do everything I could to recreate meals from my own country. My body still gave me hell for it, but the familiarity of the meal itself and the cooking process made up for it.

He was a weird thing in the darkness, six feet of lean muscle in a suit. I snuck in as softly as I could, he got skittish around people, as well as he hid it. Alexander was not a creature of the kitchen, it was easy to see. He moved around in such dorky clumsiness that if his face was invisible I'd have found cute. It wasn't. He was in obvious pain.

"Clara May" his voice was strained "hungry?"

I admitted to it, meeting his eyes, except he wasn't looking at me. In my general direction, yes, his body was angled toward me, and he looked like he was looking at me, but he wasn't. His pupils were off my face and angled more into the door next to me. It was the first time I scratched severity of it - his visual impairedness. Everything was severely off point, from his akward posture that was angled to look comfortable except he was pressed into concrete, his fingers desperately spread out as if caught mid search. The cupboards open and messy. His hair out of place, like it'd been pulled severely. The red of his eyes. The obviously curated aire he was displaying.

"Yes, sir. You?" I moved, oh so slightly, not too far but enough that his gaze was obviously not directed at me. His pupils did not change fixation.
"Miss Li said you were fed"

He forced out a smile. Turned away from me, the way he always did, his movements awkwardly fluid, his fingers fidgeting. He was facing the stove although he was obviously finding water.

The man was blind. Blind blind. No vision in those upturned star catchers he had for eyes.

The engines rolled in my brain, from his fixed routines that were so fixatedly similar every day to the similarity of his movements, the calculated breaks and changes in motion. His demeanor too calm. His OCD . How he walked in a straight line office to room. How his car was always parked at the exact same spot.

Blind as a fucking bat.

"I am. You-"

"Water?" I'd stepped quietly to his side, picking a glass from the cupboards and filling it, as loudly as possible, with water. He turned to my direction, again, obviously skittish, obviously on edge- something like an anxious kitten between dogs. He was scared to hell "I've been under the impression there was a dispenser in your room, sir, pardon me"