around that same time, Darish was being stared down by men in a large warehouse situated along a back street. He was feeling terribly uncomfortable.
“I’d like to get back to my hotel soon,” Darish said to the man standing in front of him, ignoring the automail they had been forcing him to look at.
“Not so fast. Look at a few more of these, will ya?” a thin, pasty man said with a broad grin.
A bald man polishing automail from the wooden crate he sat on agreed, “That’s right. What do you think of this one? It’s one of my own creations—even got carbon fiber to boot. Try picking it up. Pretty light, huh?”
When the man plopped the polished automail into his lap, Darish could only pick it up as he’d been told.
Several hours had passed since he had been brought into the warehouse. The whole time he had been shown automail and schematics the men had produced for sale in the past. The gigantic warehouse they were using as a shop was outfitted with worktables and metal sheets like any normal establishment, but the rest of the building around Darish was dimly lit and filled with shelves piled messily with objects, as well as an inordinate number of stacked wooden crates.
The men had been producing objects from all over the warehouse to show to Darish and simply wouldn’t allow him to return home.
“Say, didn’t we just stock up on some secondhand prostheses earlier?”
“Yeah, yeah. You got that right.”
“Since we’ve got a guest right here and waiting, we’ve gotta make sure he gets to see all of them. Where’d we put those again?”
After the pasty man and the bald man winked at each other, they plastered on smiles, passing by the counter in a roundabout route as they headed into the back of the warehouse. When the men disappeared into the tall stacks of wooden crates, Darish sighed. They had called him a “guest,” but they had actually clapped their arms firmly around his shoulders and practically dragged him in.
Looking up at the small window at the top of the warehouse, he could see that it was pitch-black outside.
“I wonder if Lettie’s gotten back yet,” Darish wondered. Searching for his missing sister was why Darish had been walking around outside in the first place, making himself vulnerable to aggressive solicitation.
His mother had constantly warned him not to go into the alleys, and he himself had been careful not to approach any shady establishments until that point, but when he remembered how Winry had rescued Lettie from trouble before, he had wandered into the alleys just in case she had gotten lost there.
This alley, which featured rows of half-razed buildings and warehouses, had only been home to shady characters; he had seen no trace of Lettie. Darish had felt relieved, but that in combination with it being the middle of the day had made him lower his guard. His eyes had ended up landing on a piece of automail on display in front of a warehouse.
It had been unceremoniously propped onto a wooden crate, but the leg’s design was sharp and Darish couldn’t help imagining how far that leg could’ve taken him on a run if he only had it. It could’ve been just like his original leg—the leg that could take him to his sister’s side faster than anyone else when she was in danger.
The way the doctors and mechanics had practically disparaged his original leg had dug its way deep into Darish’s chest like a sharp thorn—a thorn he still couldn’t pry out. The beautiful automail made him forget that pain. He felt as though that piece of automail could take him far, far away. It had inspired a faint hope in him.
But that was also when some men had come out of the warehouse, talking to Darish in a sickly-sweet tone. Before he knew it, he was being sat down in a chair. The pasty man, who doggedly kept recommending automail to him and wouldn’t leave his side, had declared dramatically that this shop could fulfill any request Darish desired.
“Sorry for the wait.”
The two men who had secluded themselves in the back returned carrying automail legs and other prostheses.
“See, this here leg prosthesis is a real bargain. We’ve got one that’ll probably fit you, so how about you try it on?”
“No, it’s getting late and I haven’t got any money on me,” Darish firmly refused him.
Since the men had seemed so friendly when they initially spoke to him Darish had been lulled into thinking this was a conscientious shop, but as they tried to wheedle him with their sales pitches, his vigilance had returned. If they got a prosthetic leg on him, there was a chance they’d claim he was buying it and would demand payment.
“Hey, c’mon, don’t be like that. And if it’s money you’re worried about, you don’t hafta pay us right away,” the bald man said and grinned disingenuously. That rubbed Darish the wrong way. Now cautious, Darish felt the condescension in the grinning man’s smile.
“I can’t choose one on my own,” Darish firmed his guard.
The pasty man theatrically clapped his hands together. “Ah, I get it. Your mom’s back at home, isn’t she? But your parents wouldn’t disagree with your decisions, would they?”
The man was slyly using the information they had forced out of Darish over the last few hours to move the conversation along in their favor. As pros, they were masters at scamming people out of money. A twelve-year-old, even a stubborn one like Darish, was no match for them.
As moonlight began streaming through the window, Darish started to feel anxious about Lettie. He was the one with the hotel key. The front desk would have opened the door for her, but he doubted Lettie could get to that point on her own, knowing how young she was. And if she were actually lost, he really needed to continue looking for her as soon as possible.