“I need to get back to the hotel,” Darish said as he got up, forcibly putting an end to the conversation.
When he did that, the look on the men’s faces changed.
“Wait right there. We’re not done talking yet.”
Darish ignored them. He grabbed his crutch, which had been propped up against a crate, and turned to leave, but a large, burly man was now standing in front of the exit. The iron door that had been open when he had come in was now firmly shut. The large man standing in front of the door made Darish automatically take a step back. Then the pasty man placed a hand on Darish’s shoulder and spoke to him from behind.
“Say, why don’t you let our mechanic make you some automail? You don’t have to pay right now. Just sign your name on this piece of paper here,” the man said in a slimy tone as he presented Darish with a sheet of paper. Darish didn’t even need to read it to know the contract would result in an exorbitant bill later on.
The man’s coercive tone made it clear that he wouldn’t take no for an answer as he said, “Or would you like to buy one of our secondhand prostheses? I know, how about that leg we’ve got displayed out front? That thing looks slick on the outside even though the internals have rusted out, but we can tune it up just for you.”
“Huh?!” Darish twisted around and shook off the hand on his shoulder. “Cut the crap! You told me at the start that I could just listen to what you had to say!”
He strained to keep his voice from shaking as he tried his best to put on a show of bravado. Then, they said something he couldn’t believe.
“How about you at least pay us our consultation fee?”
“What?”
Darish was so shocked at the groundless demand that he whirled around.
“You took your sweet time making us explain things to you, right? Obviously you’ve got to compensate us,” said the pasty man, who had dropped his fake smile.
Their persistence had been a ploy to squeeze money out of him. Potential automail buyers coming to Rush Valley often prepared significant sums of money. While the legality of Darish’s signature would be questionable since he was twelve, using a contract as a shield to wheedle his parents into something using their sharp tongues would be like child’s play to these men.
“A consultation fee? Can you—can you even do that?” Darish murmured, which made the pasty man shrug. As though that were his cue, the large man standing in the way of the exit started to yell, “Why’re you bringing this up this far in? You were lookin’ at the automail out front like you wanted it. We invested time into talkin’ to you! You think you can head home without even paying the consultation fee? Don’t mess with us!”
The man’s shout resounded loudly throughout the expansive warehouse. Darish clung to his crutch and cringed. Once the man stopped shouting, the pasty man waved the paper around and let out a showy sigh.
“Well, I suppose there’s no use reasoning with you. We’ll just have your parents pay us directly. Where’s the hotel you’re staying at? Since your parents will probably be back tomorrow or the next day, we’ll just wait until then. Well, I guess we’ll tack on a late fee for every day we’ve gotta wait.”
“But … !”
The last thing Darish wanted was to cause trouble for his parents. They had already gone through so many hardships for him. Darish was so shaken that he couldn’t even find anything to say to the smooth-talking men. His hand trembled around the crutch and he hung his head.
Then, the pasty man hit his fist against his palm as though he’d come up with something.
“How about this. You just make a promise to have your automail made by us. We’ll get together a loan for you in exchange. You can just pay us back a little at a time after.”
“Huh?” Darish said as he looked up instinctually. If there were any way he could settle the issue without causing trouble for his parents, he was ready to accept it.
The pasty man, who had constructed another fake smile, thrust out the document he had been toying with. Darish eyed the creased paper with a tired and vacant look. After being trapped for so long, it seemed much better to his exhausted mind to just choose an engineer at this point rather than paying some sort of incomprehensible consultation fee.
As Darish slowly took the document, an image of Winry floated into his mind. Winry had been the only person who had understood how he had suffered. She had told him she was willing to listen. He had been so happy about that, and had made up his mind to be the one approaching her this time when he’d gone to visit Atelier Garfiel the night before.
But Winry had broken a tool and gone out to buy parts for it. He had waited until it was late, but she hadn’t come back. Darish vaguely understood that she had started hearing out her client’s desires and worries, which had left her pressed for time and had started hindering her work. In this town where the clients came in droves, waiting on every single person in that way would inevitably result in consequences of some sort. Once Darish convinced himself that he never should have expected a mechanic working at a business to understand his feelings in the first place, he had told Garfiel to relay the message that he would no longer be coming to the shop. When morning came, he had been met with the pain of a leg incapable of walking and Lettie’s worry. His only outlet for his inescapable irritation had been Lettie.