Electric Butterfly - 004

We both looked over to Sam. It was a valid question �" what exactly do you do in a situation like this? Zein stood up, motioning for us to follow him to the room that could most closely be called an office. It wasn’t furnished with much, just a large, red and black painted oak desk, several Buddhist charms, and a plush toy of some kind of a cat with a helmet and a magnifying glass. It had weird claws, but it was kind of cute.  There were no lights, only dimly lit cinnamon and vanilla scented candles that seemed to perpetually be burning.

He must have spent a fortune on candles.

“Sit, Sit!” he said to Sam. I stood in a corner of the room behind him to watch, raising an eyebrow as the fennec took his seat and looked around.  

“Why is this room so much different than the rest of the apartment…?” Sam asked, looking around cautiously.

“It’s really atmospheric, right?” Zein replied.

“Is it really just for atmosphere?”

“Well, you have to set the mood when preparing a case, yeah?”

“Wait, a case for what?”

“It’s kind of like a police interview.” My boss said, leaning forward and resting his head on his paws. “Whenever someone gains an echoes ability, or a Visitant gets away, I have to file a report and fill out a bunch of papers. Government regulation and all that”

He rolled his eyes.

“So let’s start at the top, yeah?” he leaned back, yanked open the desk drawer, and threw a stack of papers on the desk. “I already know about you from your wallet, but now I gotta fill out what happened to you �" so what happened?”

The fennec shrugged a little bit.

“I honestly don’t remember everything about it.”

“Well, what do you remember?” Zein leaned forward again, grabbing the cat-like plush toy and holding it out to Sam. “This is usually reserved for the kids, but you can hold it if it makes you more comfortable”

“I’m not a kid!” He barked.

Still, he still took the plush, sat it in his lap, and grumbled. Zein didn’t even try to resist the grin that spread across his face at this.

“I really…don’t remember much aside from a butterfly.” He said softly.

Zein raised an eyebrow.

“A soul?”

That question caught us both off guard. Zein clearly noticed that though, waving a paw gingerly and shaking his head with a chuckle.

“Butterflies are typically seen as a representation of the human soul, you know? In so many different cultures, there are similar tales. Seeing a butterfly means you’re seeing the soul of a loved one watching over you, yeah? Honestly, they’re one of the best things you could ever encounter; if you believe in that sort of stuff.”

Sam sighed a little, clutching that plush toy close to him.

“I can’t think of anyone I know that’s died recently, though…and even so why would I see that right before getting impaled…”

“Impaled?”

“Yeah…”

“By a butterfly?”

“Maybe?”

Maybe. He wasn’t making any sense, but that was a given considering he had probably gone into shock the moment he was gored by whatever attacked him. This whole interview was going nowhere fast.

Zein leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“So you don’t actually know what attacked you?”

“It was from behind. Then I saw the butterfly, then I woke up here” he mumbled, looking down at the ground. “Someone �" well, something snuck up on me. I don’t even know how I ended up on top of a building.”

A few more sparks danced off his body, dissipating into the air.

“I remember walking home from work, so I shouldn’t have been on a building, right?”

“Right.”

Another long pause.

“Can I go home?”

I wanted to go home too. Normally, I would have been asleep at this hour, and the tiredness was starting to take effect. My clothes were still soaked with Sam’s blood too.

“Okay, you can’t take the plush with you,” Zein said, reaching forward and pulling it from Sam’s lap. “But…I have something that might help”

We both looked at him, a bit confused.

“Help?”

“Yeah, with your whole zappy problem!” he said, pulling a patchwork blue and pink bracelet out of his desk. A rose clasp fastened it together, and the blue and pink fabric twisted around itself to create a pattern closely resembling a highschooler’s depiction of DNA. “It’s magical!”

The bracelet in his paws did not even remotely resemble something magical. Not at all.

“Well…what does it do?”

He honestly asked.

I guess you could add ‘naïve’ to the small list of notable traits compiled about Samuel Perri until this point.

Naïve.

Afraid.

Anxious.

Small.

He was all of those things, and yet there was something more to him as well. A drive of sorts �" I would later come to find out the reason behind that drive �" but in this moment, I simply saw in him a drive to continue living. If he didn’t have that, he would have died, he would have given up after seeing his echoes ability. Instead, he took us up on our offer.

He could’ve just as easily gone into hiding, honestly. It wouldn’t be the first time someone ran away from their problems and lived.

“It’ll help you to remain calm. Just clasp it around your wrist and breathe,” he said, smiling without a hint of mischief. That was an oddity. “It’s not perfect; it won’t absorb everything, but just breathe with it. Magic~”

Sam nodded. It was almost impressive, how Zein was able to go from being loud and overbearing to kind and understanding in a breath.

It was also a load of bull �" that was just a little scrap bracelet he dug out of his desk. Still, Sam believed it, hastily clasping it shut around his wrist. He stood up, awkwardly half-bowed, and let out a hasty ‘Thank You!’, prompting another laugh from Zein.

“Don’t worry about it, anything to help a new friend~” he said. “Think of it as a token of appreciation for joining Divine Territory. “