Day 11| Part II
"Good afternoon, Mrs Agatha! How's the House today?"
"Sebastian Castle! Where were you yesterday? We all missed ya!"
"Aw, I needed to do some stuff but today I will make it up for you." Sebastian pointed at my small shape under his shoulder. The lady in front of us opened a huge smile which made all her wrinkles appear. She had a brown hair, with some silver in between, and one of the sweetest eyes I've seen, even sweeter than Mrs Yon's, because she didn't have craziness in them.
"Oh! The Soup House is what our Sebastian calls a romantic dinner?" She put her chubby hands together, laughing with pleasure.
"And who told you this is supposed to be a romantic dinner, Mrs Agatha? I've got you another volunteer!"
I looked up just to see his piercing curved in a maleficent smirk, I really was afraid he could be a psychopath and the restaurant, his place for torture. Agatha squealed with happiness, saying the house was pretty full today and already pulling out two identification badges from inside her robes. All I could see was the red hair of Sebastian's in one of them, and the other was blank. "What's your name, dear?"
"Angelina Firenze..." — I realized it was the first time the Arian boy was hearing my name. His name I did remember, because of the little girl who'd screamed when her meal was spoiled. It was impressive how that moment was saved in my mind, as well as the moment I saw the perfumed chain at the staircase. They all happened at the same day. Mrs Agatha smiling broadly to us, Sebastian's gaze steady above me, his hand still pressing my waist; suddenly my penny was dropped. I was squeezed against a guy I had only seen one time in my life and who didn't know my name a second before. My fingers unscrewed from his shirt a little bit, and in the most discreet way as possible I slowly dragged my arm back to its place by my side.
"Here we go, dear!" Agatha put the badge around my neck. "Now if you don't mind I must go back to the pans! You, big boy, please help your friend..." Once the lady disappeared through a something I guessed was the door for the kitchen, Sebastian pulled a silver cart in front of me. A big caldron of soup was realizing smoke and cubes of carrots and potatoes were floating on its surface.
"You can just take a bite after serving every hungry mouth in here." He said giving me a spoon and that was it.
•••
When the stranger guy at the refectory had the sensibility of throwing a raw meat on my plate a few days ago, it had never occurred to me he would become the best person I'd ever met. Sebastian walked through the tables cleaning everything with a small cloth and a bottle of alcohol. He held dirty plates and cups to led it all to the kitchen. He helped little boys cut their meal. He took the older people's hands to help them sit comfortably in improvised pillows, and he also said good afternoon and good night to beggars. Occasionally, he would stop whatever he was doing to give a look at me and smile. The way his eyes were summer and the way his cheeks saturated like roses made this smile the most beautiful of all smiles. He had the kind of look that makes you feel special, the one responsible for all happiness in the world. In those moments, my spoon would split a little soup in someone's lap. The person would laugh and say that they were clumsy sometimes too, and that the soup I was serving looked extremely delicious. My mind would race with all those strange feelings, and I would apologize by bringing a cup of lemon juice.
"You wanna see something magical?" He whispered in my ear right when I was teaching a little boy how to use the napkins. Without realizing I had jumped almost 4 meters high with his approach, grabbed my hand and started pulling me through the tables "Come".
Little ants ran in circles with its legs at the place he touched and some ogre started pirouetting inside my belly while he pulled us to the back of the Soup House, where was a narrow street, empty, and where the volunteers would put the trash. We went up a flight of an old staircase made of rotten wood, its steps noising with our weight. I peeked down while we ascended and saw the putrid floor below, with the trash cans, and then the city ahead...
"Where are you taking me?" I asked Sebastian.
"You'll see."
The steps finally ended, and we arrived at the Soup House's roof. There was nothing there except the aluminum slab in the form of waves, and a little wall with a water tap installed at the foot. He let go of me and walked to the water tap, being careful not to fall in the middle of the roof. I wondered why he'd brought me there, and what he was up to.
In the front of the tap was a squared part of floor. As soon I stepped inside with him he raised a hand, asking silence. "Ladies and gentlemen... I present you with the most wonderful thing ever created." He said.
"I can't believe you brought me up here to see a tap!"
"It is not a normal tap. Come closer..." He squatted beside it, with me doing the same. He turned the thread on, and gradually drops of water began to fall, followed by larger drops, and then a stream of water, soaking the cement at our feet. He looked at me. "Do you think there is anything more magical than opening a tap and seeing water coming out of it?" He paused. "Do you have any idea how many centuries it took us to achieve this, and then how many months it was necessary for us to stop appreciating it?"
The sun appeared from behind the cloud it was hidden in, and reflected the place we were at. Even the corner of his mouth became blinding bright. He turned the water off with the beam still on his face. He knew I got dumbstruck. He must have seen my face. I could feel how my own mouth deformed. How am I supposed to answer that? You left me without words, Sebastian Castle.
He got up, extending a hand to me. And I held it.
•••
Little by little, the number of people leaving went bigger than the ones getting into; and the sunlight was replaced by streetlights. "Where is Agatha?" I asked while washing my wrinkled hands after a long hour of dishes. My pile was the smallest of all volunteers but as I had no experience with that, everybody finished their work and I stayed, one plate after the other.
"She just left." He answered, picking up a wilted flower from a pot near the sink and handing it to me. The moment I was going to sink it in the garbage the flower got a sudden color, petals rose up, brightness returned, and a sweet perfume filled the air around. I widened my eyes and looked at Sebastian. He was concentrated in arranging the huge pans on a shelf with his free hand. But his piercing twitched, and I was pretty sure he was fighting a smile.
"Sebastian..?"
"Hm?"
"What happened to the flower?"
"It was converted to its natural form."
"So did the meat at the refectory?"
"Yes."
He stopped with the pans and limited his attention only to me. "Are you still hungry?"
I blinked. One, two times. All the little monsters inside my belly suddenly had come back from their hibernation. I had simply forgotten I was starving before entering the Soup House!
"It's weird, isn't it? Giving food to all those people and forgetting about your own? That's because you saw, Angelina, that the customers of the Soup House have too much heart and no money. Most of the times this bowl of soup we give is the only meal they are going to have in 24 hours. You see how this is important?"
Something bigger than my emotional limit exploded. I felt my consciousness ebbing away, and my thoughts, as clear and concise as they were mere moments ago, were coming to an end. I started crying. And I felt Sebastian's warmth closing around me, big and soft. He smelled sweat mixed with coconut detergent and alcohol. Just like the smell of a human being should be.
YOU ARE READING
Toys are to play
Teen Fiction'I kept staring that photograph for a minute, maybe 10 seconds. He took something out of his jeans pocket. "I forgot to give this to you yesterday." He was holding a little ice cream cone made of plastic, small and defenseless. I stopped bre...
