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Ray wakes up feeling sore, off-kilter and as if he’s slept past his usual time.
Just as he sits up, running his hand through his hair, he realizes his left foot is bandaged, propped up on some cushions, and memories from yesterday catch up with him.
(“Take it easy for a few days, Ray,” Zack told him, cleaning the quipment from the table.
“Yeah, leg injuries are no joke!” Emma piped up from where she was sitting on the bed. “I would know.”
“I don’t want to hear about taking anything easy from you,” he replied, flicking her on the forehead. “Besides, it’s only a sprained ankle,” he said, annoyed and tired. “You don’t have to make a fuss out of it.”
Oliver smiled. “You say that as if it’s going to stop anybody here from doing exactly that.”)
Well, at least he managed to convince them to let him stay in their living quarters instead of the infirmary.
“Oh, you’re up finally! Good morning!”
Ray looks up, blinking blearily a few times, surprised to see Hayato in the doorway. The boy seems about to step in, but then he pauses, thoughtful, and calls, “I’m gonna get you breakfast! Be right back.” Before he runs off, though, he peeks his head back into the room and says, “By the way, Emma left you a note on the bedside table.” And then he’s gone.
Glancing around the room, Ray notices all the beds are empty and made — they must have let him sleep in. He reaches for the note on the table and squints at Emma’s handwriting.
Ray! I took off for the day with Vincent and the others. (Sorry, I knew you were supposed to come with us.) Norman is out on some business. We will see you in the evening. Listen to Hayato. Don’t do anything stupid! Rest!
The last two sentences are underlined. Twice. He smiles wryly. He’s a little disappointed he won’t get to train with them, but he can’t do anything like this, he knows. Still, why is he supposed to listen to Hayato, out of all people…?
As on cue, the boy reappears, with an actual tray full of food. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure what you like, so I took a little bit of everything,” he says, carefully putting the tray down on the bed. “Tea is still hot, so look out.”
Ray holds the cup in one hand, picking up some fruit with the other. “What are you actually doing here?” he asks as Hayato drags one of the chairs over, sitting on it backwards, arms on the backrest.
“The boss asked me to hang around and help you!” Hayato exclaims, beaming at him. Ray has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. He isn’t awake enough to deal with this much brightness yet.
“I’m going to strangle Norman,” he mutters into his cup.
Apparently not having heard him, Hayato goes on, “You’re supposed to be resting, but the boss thought you’re going to have a hard time staying still.” He shoots Ray a look. “Was he right?”
Ray makes a face, tea hot on his tongue. As always, Norman knows him too well. “There are a lot of things to do.”
Hayato sighs, but he looks understanding. “I thought so, too. You’re always pushing yourself.” Ray knows he makes some strange expression at that, but then Hayato grins at him, picking something up from the floor by the bed. Crutches, Ray realizes. “Get dressed, Sandy said he will come in a minute with a splint for your ankle and then you’re good to go.”
Sandy does just that, in fact, fitting the splint with the ease of someone who has done it often enough. Ray is just sitting there, distinctly feeling out of the loop, like all of this has been plotted behind his back — well, that certainly wouldn’t be the first time Norman and Emma did something like that.
As Ray tries to get used to the crutches, taking a few probationary steps, Hayato is at his site, a bouncing ball of energy. ‘So, what now?”
Ray has made a mental plan for the day, so he says, “Armory first.”
Mina is there and, as expected, she tears into Ray right upon seeing him. “You!” she calls, pointing a finger at him, the bun at the top of her head messy. “You got my precious invention damaged!”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Hayato pipes up from where he’s hiding behind Ray — smart, staying out of the direct path of her anger. She might be a whole head shorter than Ray, but she’s fierce. “It was an accident! A rather dreadful one, at that.”
She clicks her tongue. “Excuses,” she dismisses, hands on her hips. She looks up at Ray. “So? Did you get to use it at all before you broke it?”
He nods. “The accuracy is much better than in other rifles of similar types.” Mina seems pleased to hear that. “However, it’s hard to fire in rapid succession.”
She sighs. “Just as I expected,” she mutters, turning around to examine the disassembled guns on the table. “And it jammed upon the impact?”
“Yes, when I hit the ground.”
“Hm, that’s not good at all,” she says to herself. “I suspect I might have tweaked with the inner mechanisms too much. It’s not as stable as it should be.” When she looks back at Ray, she seems apologetic. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you something I wasn’t sure would work.”
Ray shrugs. “I was the one who insisted on testing it.” He gestures to his ankle with the crutch. “It was just an unfortunate chain of events.”
He thinks back to yesterday — a pack of wild demons, an unsteady branch suddenly giving way under him, a look of panic on Emma’s face as she tried to reach for him, well-aware she wouldn’t make it, the prolonged sensation of falling.
“It was scary!” Hayato counters, emerging from behind Ray now that the worst of Mina’s wrath has passed. “Between one moment and the other, you were just suddenly down there. I still can’t believe you only got a sprained ankle, and some cuts and bruises. The way you had to set up your landing was amazing.”
“Far from it,” Ray says, looking down at his leg with a frown.
“Well, it looked like that to me. If I were in your place, I’d have probably ended up breaking my neck,” Hayato admits with disarming frankness.
Sticking the landing is of course the best option, but rarely something you will be able to do, Yuugo told them once. Then you have to prioritize. Head trauma may as well mean you’re dead. Sacrificing mobility, especially when you’re on your own, is out of the question. Arm injuries are a pain, but as long as you’re still able to shoot, you can pull through.
Well, in the end, Ray kind of messed up on both accounts — he knew his ankle was busted the moment he hit the ground and he wouldn’t make it far, if at all. He picked his gun right back, only to find it jammed. His spare one was out of ammo. He wasn’t as good with a bow as Emma. Stupid mistakes all around.
The others opened fire on the demons as Ray tried to scramble up and away, gritting his teeth through the pain. And then Hayato was by his side, that particular mix of fear and determination Ray came to know clear on his face, and before Ray could as much ask what did he think he was doing, Hayato just picked him up and carried away from the immediate danger area.
Giving the boy a sidelong glance, Ray is once again reminded that there’s more to the people around here than meets the eye.
“I could help you figure out how to fix the issue with the mechanism,” he tells Mina, already thinking about the parts on the table.
She gives him a suspicious look. “Are you any good at that stuff?”
“I like disassembling things,” he just says.
They sit down and spend some time on this, punctuated by a few of Mina’s sharp, “Don’t touch this! — that, too! — actually, don’t touch anything!” thrown Hayato’s way. In the end, Ray thinks they achieved the original intent, and perhaps made it even better.
“Yes, with that part, this should work,” Mina says, picking up the rifle, weighing it in her arms, re-loading. “You are quite good at this,” she states while Hayato oohs in the background. Ray rubs his ear. She smiles. “The boss is too, actually. He came down here once, to help me when I had a particularly tricky problem.”
Ray’s own mouth twitches at that, reminded of all the afternoons he and Norman spent dismantling and putting back together cloaks and other machines back at the Grace Field house. “Yeah, he is.”
They make a stop by the infirmary, so Ray can ice his ankle, as per recommendations.
“I want to check out a few things at the library, it may take a while,” he tells Hayato when he finishes talking with Anna. “We should probably eat something now.”
At the mention of food, Hayato’s face lights up and he chats animatedly all the way to the kitchen. Don, who’s apparently helping out today, lets them in, although he tells Hayato not to let himself be seen by one of the chefs, Olivia, who is apparently “out for his blood” or something like this. (Ray doesn’t have a context for this, but he has his suspicions.)
Asking Hayato not to stand out, however, proves to be futile, and they’re barely two minutes inside before a dark-skinned girl in a chef’s hat rounds on them. “Hayato! What did I tell you about snooping around here?”
“Ah.” Hayato gives a nervous laugh. (By the counters, Ray can see Don shake his head and get back to cutting vegetables.) “T-that I’m always welcome?”
“Don’t even!” she exclaims, giving him a hard noogie.
Ray watches Hayato squirm like that for a moment before raising his hand, leaning his back against the counter. “Hey,” he calls, and once he gets Olivia’s attention, he continues, “He’s with me. We don’t want to cause trouble, we just dropped by to eat something because we’ll probably miss dinner.”
“Hmm.” The girl stares at him before some kind of recognition dawns on her. “Oh, you’re Ray, right?” she asks and he nods, surprised. “Well, you’re more than welcome to help yourselves. Just watch this one,” she adds, nudging Hayato with her elbow. “If I catch him running around here and tasting something he shouldn’t, he’s getting kicked out.”
“Sure,” Ray agrees easily, his suspicions confirmed. “Thank you.”
When Olivia goes back to her task, Ray gives Hayato his flatest look.
“What?” the boy whines, fixing his headband. His blond hair is a mess. “I have a really fast metabolism and quickly get hungry.”
“Well, I’m sure they’d give you something if you asked, instead of running around here while they work. Which I guess is what you usually do,” he adds, amused by Hayato’s deflated expression. He rolls up his sleeves, turning around to examine the contents of the cabinets.
Hayato inches closer. “Are you actually going to cook?” he asks, curious.
“I’m going to make something quick, nothing too hard,” Ray clarifies, thinking.
“Is your ankle gonna be alright?” Hayato questions.
Ray waves a hand. “It will be fine." Well-aware of Hayato’s restless energy beside him, he relents, “You can help out. Getting the ingredients and so. Without,” he adds as Hayato smiles at him, “drawing attention to yourself.”
Thankfully so, Hayato doesn’t fall into any more disfavors and the cooking itself goes smoothly. They sit themselves into a faraway nook, not to be in anybody’s way.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Hayato declares after the first bite of his omelette.
Ray rolls his eyes. “You’d say that about pretty much any food set in front of you,” he says.
The boy shakes his head. “No, I really mean it! You’re great at cooking! Emma said so, too.”
“You’re both just easily impressionable idiots,” he scoffs, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Eat.”
Ray thinks that after all, he might have put too much pressure on his ankle while cooking because as he gets up, reaching for his crutches, a sudden spark of pain travels up his leg, upsetting his balance.
“Are you okay?” Hayato asks, a little alarmed, catching Ray by the elbow. “Should I go get Anna or someone?”
“No, it’s alright,” Ray answers, meaning it; the pain is already dissipating. “Sorry about this,” he says as Hayato helps him up. He feels… wrong-footed, in regards to this whole day. “You probably have better things to do.”
“Not really!” Hayato replies without missing a beat. “Unless Jin and I are out on a mission, I mostly hang around the town, running some errands, helping out. Well, trying, at the very least.” He gives a breathy laugh. “Besides, I like spending time with you.” He picks up Ray’s crutches, and so he misses another shift in his expression. “So, library now?”
By the time they make their way there, Ray has collected himself enough to not feel bad about letting himself sit on one of the small sofas as he lists off the books for Hayato to get.
“It should be further on the right,” he calls as Hayato moves the ladder. “Third shelf from the top, blue spine — yes, that’s the one. Take two-volume archival journals from the shelf below, too.”
“Incredible,” Hayato muses as he hauls an impressive pile of to the table. “Do you already know the location of all the books around here?”
“Only the ones I need,” Ray replies, a little distracted, picking up one of the journals. “I have a good memory, that’s all.”
Hayato sits down next to him and is quiet for a total of thirty seconds maybe, before he suddenly says, “I noticed something.” Ray gives a non-committal hum. “You’re amazing at a lot of things. Except for one.” He pauses expectantly. Ray sighs, look up with one eyebrow raised. Just get it out, he means. “You’re so bad at accepting compliments!”
That’s… not what Ray expected. He stares, taken aback. “I — what?” he sputters.
“Just what I said! You’re terse with your praise for others unless somebody draws you out, but you tend to downplay yourself even more so.” Hayato crosses his arms over his chest, looking earnest. “Well, that won’t stop me! You’re so cool and can do pretty much everything, so I will keep telling you so.”
Ray knows his face is flushed by now, the feeling of embarrassment that has followed him all day along with Hayato finally hitting full force. He wishes he had the scarf to hide himself behind.
“You’re a dumbass,” he tells Hayato, leafing through the book to keep himself busy. He’s not ready to analyze that whole statement, but he may... see a point or two. “Also, I didn’t say it yesterday, did I? Thank you. For saving my life.”
“You’re welcome.” It may be the brightest smile Hayato has given him yet. Ray looks away, but there’s the faintest of smiles on his face even as Hayato continues, “See, it isn’t so hard, is it?”