So that Darish wouldn’t worry when he came back, Winry pulled some note paper and a pen from her bag and wrote something to the effect that Lettie would be at Atelier Garfiel, then she slipped it under the door. She also asked the hotel worker to deliver the message just in case, then the two of them headed outside again.
The stars had started to twinkle, and the delicious smell of chicken wafted to them from the stalls. Since it had been a long day for Winry, and Lettie had taken an extended trip into the mountains to play, the aroma made both of their stomachs growl.
“Maybe Darish went to buy dinner too?” Lettie said.
“Maybe he did. Or maybe he’s gone out to automail shops on his own and he’s talking to a great engineer.”
“I hope so.”
They looked at each other and grinned. From behind them and off to the side, someone suddenly called out cheerily, “Well, aren’t you two getting along.”
It was Garfiel. He had just come from a side street that was full of parts wholesalers. He carried two large paper bags. It looked as though he had just finished shopping and was heading home.
“Mr. Garfiel!” Winry exclaimed.
“Welcome back, Winry, my dear. Thanks for all your work today. And good evening, little Lettie. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Good evening, Garfiel … sir?” Lettie smiled, hesitating on what to call him. It didn’t seem quite right to call him sir, but he was an adult, so she also felt that it wasn’t right not to call him something.
Garfiel’s eyes glittered. “It’s sister, dear.”
“Garfiel, sister,” Lettie repeated sincerely when Garfiel put up his pointer finger and waggled it back and forth to correct her.
The scene of the tall man and little girl so seriously sharing eye contact during their exchange seemed slightly out of place and made Winry crack a smile.
Lettie asked Garfiel, “Are you going back home after shopping, sister?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Garfiel said. He leaned forward to show Lettie the brand-new screws and metal rods in his bags. They glittered in the streetlamp’s light. It seemed that he had restocked all the parts he had run out of—his bags looked full and heavy. After Winry took one from him, they all walked together with Lettie in the middle.
“I’m sorry for making you do the shopping, Mr. Garfiel,” Winry said.
“It’s all right. I wanted to get a look at some of the parts myself this time, so I had Henrik come in the evening to mind the shop.”
“Once we’re back, I’ll help out right away,” Winry said brightly. If she had been in the same headspace as that morning, she probably would have been feeling down in the dumps after learning that the proprietor of the shop was doing the shopping in her place. But, at that moment, she was feeling positive and planned on working to make up for that once they got back.
“I wanna help too!” Lettie exclaimed.
“Really? That’ll be so helpful,” Winry encouraged.
As Garfiel watched Lettie and Winry smile during their exchange, he grinned too, saying, “Oh good, you’re back to your normal self.”
“Huh?” Winry blinked, not realizing what Garfiel had said for a moment. Garfiel made a dramatically mournful face.
“Because you were making a terribly gloomy face like this in the morning. I was worried.” He dramatically scowled his well-groomed eyebrows and puckered his small lips even tinier to pretend he was depressed, which made Winry duck her head apologetically and say, “I’m sorry.”
She probably had looked pretty gloomy that morning. Her face burned red in embarrassment, which made Garfiel relax his expression and grin.
“It’s fine as long as you’re feeling better. Oh, but there is something I’ve got to tell you.” Garfiel heaved up the bag, which had started to sag from its weight, then side-eyed Winry as though he’d remembered something. “A little birdie told me. You paid for the parts at Mandel’s shop and the other places with your own money, didn’t you? You didn’t need to do that. Now just how much did you spend? You’d better charge me for it,” Garfiel chastised her. How he had found out, Winry wasn’t sure, but it could have been while doing the shopping.
“I was the one who caused the trouble, so making it up to everyone by buying the parts for the machine I broke was the least I could do,” Winry hesitantly replied. Garfiel dramatically sighed in response as though that were the thing causing him trouble.
“Now listen, Winry, my dear,” Garfiel began right as they were about to get back to the shop. He stopped to punctuate his point. Winry stopped too and faced him.
However, she never got to hear him out.
Before Garfiel could say anything, she overheard something from inside Atelier Garfiel that she could not ignore.
“That’s right. Looked exactly like Harling’s kid. Anyhow, seems like he got caught up with a shady-lookin’ shop,” a man with an automail right hand said as he left the studio. It seemed he was on his way home after a tune-up. Henrik was following him to see him out.
“That’d be pretty bad. Hope you saw wrong. Well, careful on your way out.”
“Harling …” Winry repeated the familiar name that had caught her attention. “It couldn’t be.”
Winry dashed forward. Once inside Atelier Garfiel, she started interrogating Henrik, who had barely just sat back down at the workbench.
“Mr. Henrik, what were you just talking about?!”
“Whoa, you gave me a fright!”
He had just been about to start servicing the next customer’s automail. When Winry shouted at him, he nearly dropped his screwdriver.
“Oh, it’s just you, Winry,” Henrik calmed. “Right, right. You really saved us there last night. Thanks to that cylinder—”
“I’m so sorry about yesterday. But more importantly, please tell me about what you were just talking about. There was a boy who looked like Darish?!” she blurted out. Winry had wanted to give Henrik a proper apology about the other night, but her heart was pounding and she couldn’t help rushing it. Henrik seemed bewildered when Winry pressed him for an answer, but he still gave her one.
“Ah, right. That client who was just here is apparently staying at the same hotel as Darish. And he said he saw a kid who looked a lot like him being coerced by a peddler in the west district sometime this evening.”
One of the clients sitting on an out-of-the-way bench who had nodded along while listening in on their conversation joined in, saying, “Oh, that kid! Saw him too. That kinda spunky-looking boy with the crutch, yeah? He was surrounded by these shady looking fellows.”
“That had to be Darish,” Winry said. She didn’t want it to be true, but she couldn’t deny it. There were plenty of people on crutches in the town, but it was likely to be him if he had been witnessed by someone who knew him. It was also a fact that Darish hadn’t come back to the hotel even though the sun had set.