Kuroda exhaled through his nose, it almost sounded like a laugh, almost.
I didn't have an answer for him, it wasn't that I didn't know, it was…maybe I just really didn't know.
That old man used his woven fingers to grab the cigar from his lips. He looked over at me, then back at the crowbar laying in the snow dust.
He puffed out a brew of smoke bigger than any breath he let out in the cold air earlier, with his other gloves hand, he ruffled my kneeling head like some type of punishment.
He held out a penny nonetheless, the bronze coin looked to me like a gleaming sun; bright in the dark clouds, tranquil amongst the yelling I couldn't make out indoors, and captivating above all else.
Just like that, he held it out to me, like I was just supposed to take it.
I looked at the coin, then at the old man, and bacj again at the coin.
I always got a job done, no matter what.
I fixed up my hat, then grabbed the ice-cold metal; the metal I told myself was cold. I told myself a lot of things. But in reality, all it is was, all it is, was just a thought in my head, not reality.
Atleast, not my reality.
So even though it should have stung, it didn't.
I looked under Carter's thick, woven-black hat, at his red face that was comprised of moving static smaller than the weaves of yarn that made up his hat; that bright-red face that perked up at the edges, his deep and warm eyes despite all else.
I stepped back eventually, and shook my head.
"Can't." I spoke simply. "Not like this."
He spoke in no rush, "that bin isnt going nowhere, guess it's just meant to stay shut tonight."
That was the strange part, not the bin. I mean that was gonna be impossible to pry open in that state, but the way he said it.
"People say things like that all the time, but it's just so…casual, odd? Like, it was as if he were talking about the weather or something. Like whatever was inside didn't belong to nobody that day, like it wasn't supposed to be used, like it shouldn't have, not really atleast."
Kuroda's eyes followed my pace as I walked back and forth.
"…Can't you just sit down for a bit?" He peaked his head outside the door, it've been kind of a weird thing to explain if a nurse walked in. "Just looking at you makes me wanna collapse."
Suddenly, I was nowhere.
Not literally, but in my head, not only was I repeating the same scene in my head over and over again trying to see what I'd missed, but there was nothing.
The memory had just stopped, the static became futile, no longer carving out an image in my head.
I paused, Kuroda sighed.
"Hey," I called out to him, my eyes wide. "Do you have a penny?"