Red Roses

Chapter Five „the boys and girls"

The young people were about my age, between 18 and 20 years old, I thought. Nowadays you could say that young people look older and older than they are.
One of the boys wore a long brown coat and a black hat with gray heeled boots. He was tall and slim and immediately came towards us. "Good morning," Leon greeted him. "May I introduce this is Matt Walker, he used to be in my class and now lives in Berlin," Lein continued. "Hello, Matt, I'm Charlie by the way. said the boy with the coat. I held his hand and wanted to say hello to the rest, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. Maybe they didn't want to. "And that's Mike," Leon said. He patted the second boy on the shoulder and he jumped. Mike suited him, I thought. Because he had a very stocky figure and was also quite tall. From their looks, I thought they both came from Germany. In addition, they both spoke German without an accent. At first glance they seemed nice. "And here we have the remaining two," Daniel said to me and pointed to the two girls who were standing next to them a little impatiently. Leon also noticed this and continued, "And these are El and Emma. Sorry, you can actually talk yourself!" said Mike and tapped El who was tapping on her cell phone screen. She was a little shorter than Emma, ​​but also had an athletic build and blonde hair. Both of them also wore very thick jackets that were adapted to the weather. I, on the other hand, only wore two thin jackets because I didn't have any other jackets with me. There was a short moment of silence, which was probably really uncomfortable for all of us because none of us said anything. Tony broke the silence by saying, "Then let's go, right?" I have another date tonight." "You?" El asked and looked at Tony. He nodded and then unlocked the front door. " Yes why not. Someone has to start, right?" El nodded silently.
When we got to the apartment upstairs, Tony suggested starting with the living room. I asked him again what exactly we were doing because I thought he had said an hour ago that we weren't doing anything. Tony laughed and said it was just a joke. "Ah ok good" I answered him. Then I was given a broom and a dustpan and followed Daniel and Tony into the living room. "All right Matt, we don't have to do as much as the rest, just the walls need to be wallpapered. "Have you done that before?" I thought for a moment.

It could be that I had done this before, but I wasn't sure. " Well no matter. It's easy. " Within two minutes Tony had explained to me how to wallpaper a wall and I was able to get started. The work wasn't strenuous, fortunately. After about a quarter of an hour we had finished with a small part of the wallpaper, loud music suddenly started playing. Apparently someone had turned on music in the kitchen." Very good, finally someone is making music. Then I'll get in the mood for tonight," I heard Emma, ​​​​who hadn't said anything yet, call out from the kitchen. "Why tonight?" I asked Daniel and Tony, who were tearing the last of the old wallpaper off the wall. "Emma and El always go out partying, you know. And there's always techno music playing. "Do you listen to music too?" asked Daniel. "Yeah, sure. " I answered him and told him that I listened to all kinds of music except hits. Tony was happy because this was exactly the same taste in music as he had. " That's great. "I never go out to party," Daniel added. "Well...then you're missing something!" said Mike, who suddenly stood in the doorway. "Oh.."

After about two hours of work we were finished and all sat together in the living room. There were three boxes of pizza on the living room table and music was playing softly on the television. I sat on a red armchair right next to the couch where Daniel, Tony and Leon were sitting. Directly across from us sat Mike and Charlie along with El and Emma. "All right, so you're from Cologne." El began the conversation. I nodded and tried to swallow the slice of pizza in my mouth as quickly as possible in case I had to say anything else. " That's great. I'm originally from there too. What school did you go to?" "Max Weber," I answered. "Ah ok, very cool. " "My ex is from there," said Emma "Your ex? Which of the 100 do you mean? Leon asked her. Emma rolled her eyes and then replied, "Luke, you don't know him anyway. Why do you always ask things like that? I noticed in her tone that she was a little annoyed. Apparently this was an issue that was bothering her, I thought. "Have you heard about our project?" Leon asked. "Are you really going to tell him that?" Tony asked. " Yes why not. "Now I pricked up my ears, what project? "All right, you've probably seen some homeless people here, haven't you?" Tony asked. "Yes." "In our project, we decided that we had to do something about it. It's unacceptable that people have to sleep outside at this time of year and have nothing to eat. So we decided to do something about it. We do the work for the homeless, so to speak, by taking deposit bottles of beer and food and distributing them in one place. " " Although you have to say, it's not entirely illegal. Because we have had a new variant running for a few weeks now. This means that we take stale bread and other things with us in shopping centers. said Mike. "That's stupid...I've said that before," El said. "What's stupid about that?" Tony asked. "It's necessary, otherwise the food will be thrown away. " "Yes, then they should just go to work," Emma added. "Work, how is someone like that supposed to go to work?" asked Daniel and shook his head. "No, that's not possible."
For a brief moment there was another quiet moment. It was strange for me because I wasn't sure whether it was a good thing to steal trash for the homeless. "Well, I know that neither of you are particularly enthusiastic about this, but think about the positive things. Because some of the homeless no longer have to go hungry. said Daniel. " Yes, exactly. "You always want to eat well, so why shouldn't you do something like that?" asked Leon. El and Emma were silent. Then they stood up and El said, "Okay. If that's the way it always is, then we don't want to get involved. Do whatever you want. " she said and then left the kitchen. Shortly afterwards the front door of the apartment was slammed shut.

Now I stood alone in the living room with the others and announced ourselves. "Well, maybe she's right," Mike said. "Maybe it wouldn't be so great if we broke into a shopping center and then stole bread. " "But that's good," Leon replied and took the last piece of pizza. "That can all be good, but there still has to be another solution," said Charlie.

I listened for the remaining minutes but quickly realized that I had no idea about the topic. Maybe the guys were right and it was clear that this was illegal but they had to do something. But it never occurred to me to do anything about it myself.

When Mike and Charlie said goodbye about an hour later, I had almost forgotten why Leon had invited me to his shared apartment. Not because I was supposed to help, but because Charlie and Mike still had room in the shared apartment.
Luckily, Leon spoke to this directly. Charlie and Mike looked at each other and thought for a moment. "Yes, that could work. El then simply has to clean her suitcase and the mattress. You already have a mattress. "Mike said to me. I was happy about that and glad that I might get a place to sleep. "All right, then let's do it like this, we'll exchange numbers and then we'll think about it, maybe it'll work between the four of us. El and Emma are still there too. Or rather, what you're probably wondering is whether they're both nice after the previous action. But I can reassure you, everyone is nice. said Mike. "And maybe you like our project too," Charlie added. "Yes, exactly, we will contact you tomorrow and tell you whether it works or not. "You're already looking for a job, right?" Mike asked me. I nodded. Then the two of us said goodbye and left the shared apartment and I also left the apartment about 5 minutes later.