Never Break

Chapter Four: One Part Brave, Three Parts Fool

He reached the construction site and waited for the intern who was going to accompany him. He wasn't going to go into that hell-hole without him.

Soon, the intern, Mr. Smith, arrived. The 24 year old...kid...dressed in his formal wear. Just the way Ralph did on his first trip.

'Can't the company warn the interns about where they are going?' Ralph thought bitterly.

'G-good morning, Mr Murphy.' the guy stammered.

'Sh-shall we go and get this over with as fast as possible?' He looked unsure, sounded nervous too. Mr Smith felt exactly what Ralph felt in front of people.

Ralph felt a little sad. He slowly smiled at the Smith and said, 'Be careful of the dirt.'

'Be careful of the dirt? Thank you, sir...for the piece of advice.' Mr Smith mumbled. His face turned pale at the mention of dirt.

Ralph couldn't deny that he felt way better than this Smith. He was way more tensed than Ralph was. Plus he was worried that, it was a test from his boss. He couldn't quite show his weakness. Not to his boss at all.

'You brought the file, Mr Smith?' Ralph asked, gazing at the bag Mr Smith carried.

'File? Oh, sorry, sir! Yes. It's right here.' He fiddled with his bag and retrieved the typical silver company file.

'Then let's get going.' Ralph said and waited for Mr Smith to walk.

They entered the construction site. While his colleague tried his best get the answers out of the workers using his nervous tone (and occasional coughing), Ralph patiently took notes and did the calculations. He didn't talk to any of the workers, of course. He didn't need to. Mr Smith soon got confident enough, though his coughing was still evident.

According to Ralph, Mr Smith was the only human with whom Ralph had the longest conversation. And that was of only 1 minute and 20 seconds at a stretch... until now.

They went on investigating and inspecting works from each floor. When they reached the seventh floor of the under construction building, Ralph noticed something wrong with the number of cement bags. They seemed...odd.

Mr. Smith noticed his sceptic look and asked Ralph what happened.

'Sir, is there anything wrong?' Mr Smith asked him gently. The engineer was way too busy to move around with "a walking cane and a wheezing machine". In fact, he didn't even spare a glance at the two company workers.

'Look at the price of cement bags needed for this floor. It's just twenty thousand pounds. Have you noticed the price of cement bags from first to sixth floor?'

'Yes, sir. The initial price was forty thousand...and it gradually reduced.' Mr Smith answered. He coughed after that.

'Certainly. As we can see the number of bags are same. We have to assume that...believe that, the cement is of poor quality.' Ralph stated after he browsed in the web about the recent reduction of cement prices...but he found no such piece of information with regard to that.

'I'll ask the engineer about this at once.' Mr Smith said and marched of to the engineer. Ralph waited for him to return.

Ralph scanned his surroundings. There weren't many workers present in the floor. Those who were present, were near the engineer, working with the noisy machine. Ralph saw only one worker near him. He was leaning against the wall, inspecting a tool and a rope. Ralph considered that he must tell the worker to go back to work, but then decided not to.