2023-09-15: The New Galadian Dream
- Cutscene: The New Galadian Dream
- Cast: Li Ruzhen
- Where: Void 35, Guild Galad
- Date: 15th September, 2023
- Summary: Ruzhen gets a visit from her client, fed up with waiting for her to report in.
The guests have left.
This isn't the kind of meeting Li Ruzhen is expecting to have, even on a particularly interesting week. She needs to run the facts through her head again. Angels. Seraphim. Malevolence. Notebook entry: capital-M Malevolence, the way they speak of it; Cult? End of the world? Black Market arms deals. That Kaguya dame. Veruni Control Zones... real bad business, that stuff...
"Miss Li, you're in there," comes a voice that cuts Ruzhen through the endless cycling of her own mind. It's coming from the door, spoken in higher tones than usual; two more raps of the door follow. A hint of desperation.
"Yeah... hold your horses," answers Ruzhen, a sinking feeling that's been gnawing at the pits of her stomach blossoming further. She takes deliberately slow steps. Waiting just makes it get harder and harder. The door swings open, slowly.
There's a young girl there, no older than sixteen; she's dressed in a battered old coat two sizes too large for her, with a t-shirt depicting Big Joe in his latest role, an impossibly well-muscled Galadian cop with an oversized ARM and an even more oversized ego, about to shoot the viewer. The print is well and thoroughly cracked, the colour faded from the weave of cotton.
"You were home last night, weren't you?" the girl demands. "You got home to 35 and you didn't tell me. Were you going to just leave me in the dark?"
Ruzhen's mind reels to its first layer of defence: vices. Shoot. The packs are on the desk. She cedes ground, and lights up, and doesn't say a thing.
"I'm not dumb. I'm not a kid," barks the sixteen-year old. "I already know what happened. No one goes to you for a case carrying hope with them," she repeats what she's heard so many people say, and yet the hitch in her voice betrays it anyway.
"Lisa. It's Lisa, right? Look..." Ruzhen addresses her after another moment of oneness with tar and smoke. She crouches a little, to be level with her, taking with her a small box she has prepared on the table.
"I did catch your dad's trail. He took the first cargo liner to Sylvaland; the sailors said he was going to make it big in some place called 'Spira'. It's impossible to miss the hubbub about it."
She's getting distracted again. "Your dad had a ride lined up... he was on a carriage taking Drifters through a rough neck of the woods. It took me two days to follow the trail, and..."
Li Ruzhen stops, catching the way Lisa has gone completely silent. The more she dawdles, the worse it's going to be on both her and this girl; but no matter what she says, she's about to say some things that she's never going to forget, and she's going to have to be responsible for that.
"Here." She hands over the box, and Ruzhen quietly reflects on how ill-fitting a coffin it is. That's all they can afford. People trying to make it big with the "new Galadian dream". The people this city broke, with its smoke and mirrors. A cheap little paper box, with their belongings in it, lightly stained with grease and blood...
"The carriage never made it. It was Moblins, Octoroks... that's what they call the spooks in the Lost Woods. Your dad's body... uh..."
Ruzhen's mind roars into the recent past. It's supernaturally dark; the cloying air chokes with the miasma of the woods. The detective kneels down before the scene of the crime, her lantern held in her left hand, and a photograph in her right. Her mind's already falling to her second line of defence: professionalism.
"Deceased identity confirmed as Isaac B. Albery. Male, in his early 50s; height roughly 5 and a half sools. Cause of death is a fatal wound to the chest. The murder weapon, a spear, is present. Rigor mortis has already passed; body temperature consistent with ambient temperature, livor mortis has settled, decomposition has set in... time of death corresponds to roughly 36 to 48 hours ago..."
"Miss Li," Lisa impatiently keeps calling her.
"... yeah," Ruzhen is snapped back to the present, breathing smoke to the side. "Look, kid, I wasn't sure... did you have family to go to?" There's a flash of pain at how sloppily that came out. She's not on even ground right now.
"No," Lisa answers softly. "But I'll... ask my friends. Maybe their parents are bleeding hearts enough. Mattie's already came by to offer me a place at the Red Roof orphanage, too, in exchange for work."
"Mattie's... Mattie's a kind one," Ruzhen finds her grasp on the reality of the situation slipping, silently thankful this is going better than the last child she had to break a death to, then silently guilty that Lisa has to carry the converastion for her.
Lisa opens the box. There's a lightly bloodstained pile of pins that read: LUCA GOERS!! Then, RONSO PRIDE!! PSYCHE CHECK!! AW YEAH AUROCHS!! There's a half-baked dream of flipping cheap merch to Blitzball fans, in there.
"... couldn't even go out for anything useful. It was just another grift," she quietly reflects. This isn't how Ruzhen wants a sixteen year old to reflect on anyone, and a shadow creeps in over her.
The girl's barely holding it together, as she looks up at the detective. "Do I owe you anything, Miss Li?"
The water company made good on their threats and cut the pipes. The power's also on the way. "No... don't worry about it, kid," Ruzhen quietly says.
"... thank you. I mean it, Miss Li," is the quiet finality that Lisa ends with, as she turns and walks out of her life, with the box of cheap and lethal dreams.
The detective quietly waits five seconds, then falls onto her couch as a log does when faced to an ax. The centre of her view is focused on the lazily-spinning fan, slowly weaving the smoke of her cigarette in a circular haze...