The first 'help' comes just two days later, and I have to admit I'm not expecting it. It's in the form of a trash bag with a few clothing garments in it. He passes it over to me, quickly, as soon as he pulls the cell door open.
"The fuck's this?"
"Hide it," he hisses, "quickly."
"What?"
"There's a hole in the wall in there, right? Deep enough to fit it?"
"...probably, but what the fuck—"
"Just do it!" he says. It's the most demanding he's ever been, so I shuffle back into the cell and stash the bag into the hole. "Take it with you when you leave," he says once it's out of sight. "It's clothing you can take back to The Outskirts with you."
My brows instantly shoot up. "You're fucking kidding," I mutter. "You're actually breaking your own shitty rules for me?"
"They're not my rules, man. And yeah. I told you I'd help you."
"And what happens if you get caught?!"
"That won't happen," he says firmly.
I can't help throwing up my hands. This guy must be more of an idiot that I'd pegged him for. But can I really refuse the help? It's what I came to this shitty place for to begin with; this way, at least I don't leave empty-handed.
But that's when a thought hits me.
"How the fuck am I s'posed to smuggle this out? Tell whatever guard releases me, 'Hang on, gotta grab my shit' and expect to just get away with it?"
"Yes, 'cause that 'guard' will be me," he says, the first hint of a smile of that morning manifesting on his stupid, ridiculously pretty face.
"You can't know that. I bet your parents will—"
"I'll make sure it is," he assures. "Nothing's happened under my watch so they'll probably be okay with me seeing you out. If I'm there, we'll get out a way nobody'll see us and you can escape with it."
I grit my teeth. It seems unlikely, but this fucker hasn't exactly let me down so far, so I don't question him further. At least, not until later when we're back in the shed getting shit to rake more stupid leaves from the courtyard.
"What the fuck happens if they decide to randomly search the cell?" I ask in a hiss-like whisper.
"They won't," he assures me. "Trust me. They do, and that's why nobody's questioned anything going on around us yet. They're all too busy anyway."
"And you don't think they'll suspect you, since you vouched for me?"
"Stop being so paranoid, man," he says. "I'm the one sneaking you things, so if we're caught the punishment will fall on me, not you."
Somehow I don't believe that, but I keep the rest of my thoughts to myself and focus on the shitty work. At least this way there's a chance I might not get back to the slums empty-handed. My mom will probably give me a good smackdown for it, but at least she might do it wearing something more than a raggedy dress I stole from a nearby thrift store donation pile.
As the week wears on, things keep coming, mostly in the form of clothes. I have no idea where he's getting them—if they're his or what—because I don't have much time to look through them before I have to stuff them into the trash bag.
He eventually starts bringing food, too, in cans and plastic bags. Non-perishables. Crackers that will probably be stale by the time I get back, shit like that... but it's not like we haven't eaten worse things. It's all small things, of course—shit I can fit into the trash bag. Despite the cold air wafting in through that shitty hole, I'm grateful for its size, allowing me to hold quite a bit. The clothes do well to block some of the air, too, which is a bonus.
As the weather worsens and the last of the fallen leaves have been raked up, I do everything I can to suppress my paranoid thoughts. Every time we pass a guard—all of them annoyingly bowing their heads to the prince—I feel my shitty shoulders stiffen, like they're already suspecting us under the surface. Regardless of whether the dumbass prince believes he'll take the blunt of the punishment if we're caught, I still don't. I am just a thief, a criminal, little more than a maggot in the eyes of everyone who lives in this uptight-ass palace but him. I keep imagining my head on a fucking guillotine...
Through all of this bullshit, Eijirou's seemingly forgotten about the soulmate bullshit, too. Though maybe forgotten is too strong of a word, as infatuated by the whole thing as he was. He's stopped mentioning it, even if I occasionally catch him looking closely at me, particularly when my right side is toward him. Every time I brush him off and turn away, but even I'm not as annoyed as I used to be. Ugh.
As much as I fucking hate to admit it, the damn prince has grown on me. A lot. I wouldn't say he's a friend—fuck no—but he's not exactly my enemy anymore, either. At least someone in this huge fucking place has some goddamn sense, and at least he's tried to fucking help me with what I originally came here for. Gotta give him that. Still don't think he's my damn soulmate, though, and it doesn't mean shit that I can't remember where I got the stupid eyelid scar anyway. I have lots of scars, (none of which I've seen on him) so it's not weird that I can't remember where one tiny one came from.
Aside from the clothes and food, he starts sneaking in some other shit—matches, once I've told him we don't have means of keeping ourselves warm in the winter; silverware, when I muttered someshit about having to eat with our hands more often than not, among a few other miscellaneous things that'll more than likely come in handy one way or another, like tape and thread.
The longer this goes on without suspicion popping up amongst the guards and shit, the more I find myself relaxing. Eijirou tells me one day not long after he first started sneaking me things that he thinks they're going to let me go soon, and I fucking hate the way my heart jumps at the information because it twists right in time with my stomach.
"How soon?" I mumble.
"Maybe another week or so," he tells me. "No more than two. They've hired people to replace the ones whose work you've been doing, and since you've been on good behavior they don't really have a reason to extend your punishment," he says with a mild shrug.
After that we get back to shitty work—scrubbing toilets, apparently. Go figure.
The stupid, gross knot in my stomach doesn't let up, and I realize I'm not as fucking glad as I should be about knowing I'll be leaving soon. It's not because of the regular meals or the two extra sets of clean clothes given to me, or even being sheltered from the increasingly chilly weather. It's... because of—
Oh fuck no. I won't think it. I grit my teeth and scrub at the stupid toilet harder, trying to distract my thoughts from both it and the damn tangle of confusion in my stomach that makes me want to throw up more than anything.
As he does, the prince chatters away at me while I'm cleaning but I can hardly find the will to listen. I let the sound of his voice drown out the stupid, unwanted thoughts as much as I possibly can...
———
A day later, Wednesday, he tells me they'll be sending me on my way on Friday. Two more days is all I have to endure of this shithole before I get to go back to my own shithole. Hmph. At least my friends and family are there.
I don't pretend not to notice the hint of sadness in Eijirou's stupid, big-ass eyes when he tells me this, and his smile can't even mask it. And of course, with my luck, that damned face is stuck in my head for the rest of the fucking day and halfway through the next, right up until the moment the same guard who caught me in their basement confronts us in one of the huge kitchen pantries where I'm unloading boxes and boxes of their stupid food onto shelves.
"Prince Eijirou, the queen has requested to see you both in the throne room."
In that second I swear the hard demeanor of his voice tells me all that I need to know, and I swear I nearly choke on my fucking heart as it jumps straight into my throat.
"What for?" Eijirou asks.
"She didn't say," the guard tells him. Even though he's a pretty good liar, I've been lying myself for a damn long time and I know instantly that she sure as fuck did say, but he isn't supposed to say a word.
Joining the everpresent, painful ringing in my ears, I can hear every, damn, pound of my heart in my head as we follow the guard—Shouta, I recall—to the elevator and up into the throne room. A wave of nausea rolls over me the second we come to a halt and the doors open, because the scene in front of me is so familiar, yet tense.
The faces of the royal family look down on me—on us, though their gazes on Eijirou are more respectful and confused than the cold, steely ones that are thrown my way. The queen herself sits in the throne, legs crossed and hands folded on her knee. As we get closer I find her expression to be that of utter contempt for me, the corners of her lips turned downward and her eyes narrowed. On top of it all, it's dead quiet.
"Eijirou, come forth," she says, voice hard.
He does as she says, and even he's tense. "What's going on?" he asks.
When the queen begins, she does it tentatively, almost as if she's unsure but still skeptical. "The kitchen staff has... raised some concerns," she starts off slowly, "about things they've noticed missing in their stock."
My stomach instantly twists, my mind flitting back to the shitty trash bag stashed in that hole in the stupid cell down in the basement, full of food the damn prince has more than likely smuggled from the kitchen. It's gotta be exactly what she's talking about, and despite our almost-friendly relationship, I still don't know if I can trust the prince to lie to his own mother—and the fucking queen—about it.
"We didn't want to jump to conclusions," she goes on, "but what with a thief—" she looks pointedly at me "—in our midst, we were concerned it might have something to do with him, especially since he's been responsible for unloading our shipments of supplies. I wanted to make sure my suspicions aren't correct and ask you first."
I hate that I can't see Eijirou's face. I can't tell if he's gonna tell the truth or try and manufacture a lie about where those supplies are, and unless I want my face shoved into the carpet—or worse—again, I can't speak up. They don't trust me anyway, for good reason. There isn't shit I can do. Fuck.
"When did they notice the things going missing?" Eijirou asks.
"A little less than a week ago," Miyako speaks up. "It isn't much, but the kitchen staff has the records of the stock that should come in, and everything was scanned into the computer to make sure the delivery company didn't make a mistake. However, there are things missing that were never scanned out."
"Do you know something?" the queen asks her son.
Lie! I want to scream. Fucking lie!
There's no way of knowing that would help, though. For all we know, this is a test to see if he'll be honest because they've already found the shit stashed in my cell.
But I guess it doesn't matter how much the fucking prince wanted to help me, or how invested in the possibility of him being my soulmate he supposedly is or was, because he doesn't lie.
"I took it," he said, calmly. Quietly. Still, his words echo throughout the room.
The queen closes her eyes, and that's all I need to see to know she already knew. She exhales slowly before locking her gaze on him once again. "Explain yourself."
Eijirou doesn't miss a damn beat. "I wanted to help Katsuki and the people in the slums. Ever since I was assigned to be on guard, he's told me all about what it's like to live in The Outskirts and how his people have nothing. They starve to death and die of diseases that are completely curable, and since—"
"Eijirou, you know what I've told you about that," the queen says, suddenly sounding completely exhausted. "Good intentions or not, theft is theft."
All it takes is one small motion of her head for my hands to be jerked behind my back and cuffed, for a gag to encircle my head. In the same instant a guard I don't recognize steps up to toward the throne and pulls out a sickeningly familiar trash bag from behind his back. His fingers release it and it haphazardly falls upon the steps, some of the contents—mostly the food—spilling out of it.
"Mother—"
"I won't hear another word, Eijirou. It was clearly a mistake to let you spend time with this lowlife. He's corrupted your mind." She waves her hand, and the next thing I know I'm being dragged away and no amount of thrashing, growling, or struggling I do can get me out of it.