As Alphonse cheered his brother on, a flash of light engulfed the bookstore. The light was blinding, like looking directly into the sun, but when it faded, the cracked bookshelf was completely restored.
“Was that alchemy?”
“That’s awesome!”
The people who’d been drawn by the employee’s scream were astounded by the transmutation they’d witnessed.
One of them tentatively approached Edward. “Hey, I’m working on fixing the building right next door and we’re in a tight spot because our ladder broke. You wouldn’t be able to fix that too, would you?”
“Just leave it to me!”
Agreeing with a wide smile, Edward moved on to the building next to the bookstore and fixed a ladder that had snapped clean in two. While he was at it, he noticed that the handle on the dolly they were using to move cement was crooked and fixed that too. After that, he repaired a few shattered glass window panels and, by the time he was done, a crowd had gathered.
“He’s fixing stuff for free? Who is he?”
“He said he’s a state alchemist!”
“For real?”
The crowd blinked at the nonstop transmutations being conducted before their eyes while deliberating over the boy’s identity. They’d only ever heard of state alchemists conducting transmutations for the military, never for the common people. They found it hard to believe.
As though to reassure them, Edward climbed up onto the ladder he’d just fixed and announced, “State Alchemist Edward Elric! Pleased to make your acquaintance!”
While Edward stood above him with both arms raised in order to attract as much attention as possible, Alphonse echoed his brother’s name while waving his fans in encouragement. “Your city’s very own alchemist, Edward! His name’s Edward Elric!”
“Whoa!”
“Wow, he’s the real deal!”
The whispers turned into cheers, and Edward’s name and fame slowly spread throughout the city.
meanwhile, at a hospital near Central Command …
The spacious seven-story hospital building was home to over two hundred rooms, including reception areas, exam rooms, and sickrooms.
Roy Mustang stood in front of one such sickroom, pausing for almost a full ten seconds.
On the wall next to him were plates holding name cards listing the identities of the patients within, and this room had two names. For security reasons, both were aliases. Roy reached out to the name he had used as his own alias and slowly worked the card out of its slot.
The other name would remain there for a while yet. After gazing at the other name for a few more moments, Roy finally grasped the door handle and entered the room.
The modest hospital room contained two side-by-side beds. On the bed closer to the window, sitting upright while reading the paper, was Jean Havoc.
The two of them had confronted a homunculus and both had been gravely wounded. Roy himself had sustained heavy injuries but had managed to get himself discharged, though he’d done so against doctor’s orders. Havoc, on the other hand, had come out of the fight with two paralyzed legs and still couldn’t even get up from the bed.
Roy had decided to drop by after his checkup to grab his remaining belongings. As he stepped into the room, Havoc didn’t give any indication of noticing him.
He made his way over to Havoc’s bed, next to the bed he himself had occupied just two days prior, then silently stood between them. He slid open the drawer of the sideboard he’d used during his stay. The items inside—his favorite fountain pen and the clip he used to hold documents—clattered within the drawer as he pulled it open. He fitted the pen into his chest pocket and was doing the same with the clip when he heard a quiet voice say, “You’re more of a softie than I would’ve expected.”
Roy quietly closed the now-empty drawer before turning to face the bed’s occupant.
Havoc stared at the newspaper; his upper body rested against the inclined bed supporting his back. Roy couldn’t read his expression.
Two days before, when Havoc had confirmed he’d lost the ability to move his lower body, Roy had told him, “I’ll leave you behind, to make sure you have someone to catch up with.”
Roy had left the room immediately afterward and hadn’t heard Havoc’s response. He didn’t know whether Havoc had decided to keep following him or if the man had decided to retire from military life and leave it at that.
Whether it made him soft or not, Roy couldn’t simply discard someone who had gone with him through thick and thin. He wanted to believe that Havoc would follow him. But recalling Havoc’s anguished eyes and shaking hands as he begged to be left behind, Roy couldn’t be sure.
“Any interesting articles in there?” Roy asked quietly, suppressing the roiling emotions within him.
“Not really.” Havoc tossed the paper onto his lap blanket to let Roy read it.
The culprit of a countryside terrorist attack had been caught. A valuable vase had been stolen from an art museum. A new railway track had commenced operations, complete with photos from the opening ceremony. There was a report on the “Person of the Week,” and a detailed recruitment ad for the military police. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The conversation sputtered out there. The lighthearted camaraderie they’d shared in the past when they’d complained about the incompetent members of the top brass, held little bets, and even skipped out on work together was no longer there. During the unnaturally long stretch of awkward silence, Roy quietly watched Havoc’s expressionless face until Havoc shifted his gaze to the window.
“Oh yeah, actually, I did spot something interesting,” Havoc said, picking up a pair of binoculars from the side table. He pointed the lenses toward the outside. “I just happened to take a peek outside yesterday and saw a crowd in the distance. My mother came to visit yesterday and mentioned there was some kinda fuss going on in the city. I was bored, so I took a look.”
As he spoke, Havoc searched to the right and left with the binoculars before stopping, as though he’d found what he was looking for. He adjusted the magnification, then handed the binoculars to Roy. “Look, right by the eastern plaza.”
Roy played along, accepting the binoculars and pointing them where Havoc directed him.
“Wha—” Roy was at a loss for words.
He couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, and, wondering if the binoculars were broken, he lowered them to try to see without them. It was no surprise that what he was looking at was too far away to see without assistance, so Roy raised the binoculars to peer through them again.
He beheld Edward Elric. The young alchemist stood at the center of a ring of people gathered in the plaza and was energetically bringing his hands together. Every time his palms met, there was a lightning-like flash, indicating that he was using alchemy. It looked like he was mending things.
Alchemy had the power to reconstruct objects, so naturally, transmutation could be used to fix broken items. That was easy enough to accept. The part that was hard to swallow was that Edward, who had never expressed interest in strangers, was proactively doing good deeds. Even less believable was the fact that his usual scowl was nowhere to be seen, instead replaced by a wide smile plastered across his whole face.
On top of that, Alphonse, who usually stepped in when his older brother got too reckless, was also in on it, waving things that looked like fans while dancing back and forth.
“Impossible!” The words slipped from Roy’s mouth as, for the first time in his life, he was confronted by the full blast of Edward’s sparkling smile.
At the heart of the crowd, Edward shimmied up a nearby streetlamp, and upon reaching the top, shouted something. Roy couldn’t hear him but managed to read his lips.
“Edward Elric! Your neighborhood state alchemist, Edward Elric!” were his words.
“He’s been at it since yesterday, using alchemy to fix buildings and random stuff. He was in the eighth, fourteenth, and fifteenth sectors, or at least that’s what I caught of it. If we include the places I couldn’t see because they were hidden behind buildings, he’s been doing this at over a dozen locations. All places with high traffic too.”
Roy cocked his head to the side at Havoc’s explanation. “So in other words, he’s intentionally putting on shows to draw attention.” If all Edward wanted was to do good deeds, he could be subtler about it. To shout it from the rooftops meant that his true goal was attracting attention.
Through the lens of the binoculars, Roy saw Edward, his crimson coat fluttering about him, send the gathered masses an exaggeratedly large wink.
Roy lowered the binoculars and handed them back to Havoc, cringing at what he’d seen.