Endy- Reaching for the Missing Moon

by Jiny Lee

  So we let Kimmy stay in the house. We got her a nice sewing machine and she spent most of her time making some fancy stuff. She enjoyed it. It was different from making wearable pieces of clothes as she used to. The materials we could get her were fancy silk and delicate fabrics.

  After that, whenever someone asked us, 'Where is the beautiful and pale lady?' we said she was sick. We played some weak, fragile, noble canaria in her cage kind of image making game with Kimmy. We somehow succeeded in making them believe that she was really from the high floor, and some ladies paid a decent amount of money to buy the scarves and handkerchiefs she made with her sewing machine. She even got a few fans of her own.

  She enjoyed it. Her skills got better and better everyday and she even made friends with some of the ladies on the floor who payed her a visit. But she bursted into tears from time to time, whenever the sewing machine reminded her of mom. I tried hard not to cry. I tried as hard as I could at least not to cry in front of her, but I failed nearly every time. Fox made fun of us and said, 'You guys are really a brother and a sister.'

  ...

  We soon got accustomed to the floor. Some people still had that suspicious looks on their faces but they didn't express it out loud because Finlin liked us. He especially liked Jacques. He invited Jacques nearly everyday to have a good tea, good wines, and talked about things that even Jacques didn't tell us all. Jacques just kept telling us that he might be able to use Finlin when the time is right. So we let him do whatever he was doing.

  While Jacques was busy hanging around with Finlin, Alex and Wonder took a different strategy to get information. They moved around everywhere to meet people, and see things. Then one day, they got brave enough to go all the way near the gate to the 102nd floor.

  I said, 'Are you guys out of your mind? Did you forget what the broker said? He said don't try to go upstairs and don't do anything suspicious!'

  Alex laughed and said, 'Chill out, my buddy. I handled it just fine!'

  He said the guards asked them to show their ids. If I was there, I'm sure I froze at that moment. He said, 'So, I said to the guards like, no, no, no, officer. We're here just to give you something as a token of our gratitude. Please, take this. And I gave him an envelope, you know what I mean. I said, you know, officer, there are some people nowadays trying to move up and down the floors everywhere without any form of authorization while you, officers are doing your best trying to keep us safe! What are they think they are!'

  I said, 'Did you really call him an officer?' and he said, 'Yeah, and he seemed so satisfactory! Wonder, do you remember his face? He was trying so hard to wipe the grin out of his face! Which do you think he liked better? That I called him an officer? or the envelop?'

  Wonder laughed and said, 'probably the envelop.'

  I said, 'You guys are truly amazing. You are born to be tricksters.'

  Everyone in our group had a knack for something like that. Jacques had his extra ordinary demeanors and Alex and Wonder had that boldness. Kimmy was doing her part in making friends with the ladies on the floor, Fox was also doing alright, and Purple, well, I didn't know what he was doing at that time but he was probably being Purple as usual. I felt like I was the only one who didn't have any special talent.

  So I thought real hard for a few days. What am I good at? Even now I not sure about what I'm good at. I asked Fox what I was good at. She thought for a moment and told me that I was good at bringing people together. She said I have something in myself that makes people gather around me. I asked her what that iss and she said she didn't know for sure. I still don't get it. Maybe she just made that up to make me feel relieved.

  Anyway, I tried my best to be helpful for the team. We had a goal. We had a mission to accomplish. We had to find Hannibal and we had to reach the top floor to find Diane.

  That was all I was thinking of. I just wanted to get Diane Back. I didn't think about anything grand like a revolution or an uprising as Jacques was always saying at that time. He used to say, 'The world should be a place for everyone to be equal and free without any kind of discrimination. And the building should be the first in making the world such a place.'

  Whenever Jacques mentioned about his theory of a revolution, I just felt uncomfortable as if I was wearing someone else's pants. I felt like I saw someone saying the same thing before, maybe in my dream or I don't know, from a movie or some history books I used watch when I was young. But no matter what that movie or book was, there was one thing clear to me. I was sure that I didn't have a positive feeling about the resonance of it.

  17

  We didn't see Purple around often during that period. He was always outside. Well, since he had always been a peculiar guy, none of us cared much about him.

  We were doing our jobs individually, but we gathered in the house every morning before going to bed. But Purple rarely came home. He just came back home once in a while, got some sleep, and then out for another couple of days. Everytime I asked him where he had been, he said nothing but went to bed and then out when he woke up without saying anything. I got curious about him and followed him one day. I secretly tailed him and figured out what he had been doing.

  He was with the broker. He had been up traveling and down the floors with him. He somehow even bought the ownership of a small store on the 49th floor. He could do that easily since people down stairs had known him as a guard. He fooled the people, and even the guards on the 49th floor to believe that he had been promoted to the higher floors. It was a small bakery owned by a baker that Purple personally knew .

  I personally knew that bakery as well. I liked the bread there. He was also our life saver. Right after we ran away from the hospital, when we had nothing to eat, we sneaked in to an empty room. We stayed there hiding for days and nights without even making a breathing sound. When we almost fainted out of hunger, the baker happened to come across us and he brought us the first food we had in a long while. And that food was the bread he made from his bakery. It saved our lives.

  He was a good man. Although he knew that we were on the run, he gladly helped us. That was probably the reason Purple bought the ownership of the bakery. To repay the bill. He reduced the burden of the baker by secretly giving back the collected tax to him. He even bought a bunch of bread and handed it out to people on the lower floors.

  I highly praised what he had been doing when I found out. Purple said he was doing so just in case we'd need a public support, but I knew that wasn't everything. There was a phrase that we used to say. 'Purple is a weirdo but a weirdo in a good way.' He was acting weird from time to time, but he was a good man at his heart.

  And Fox was also busy doing her own thing. Her target was the so-called ladies on the floor. Maybe the easiest target when you're looking for information. Fox dressed herself up everyday to join the party. Kimmy made her those lovely dresses herself. It was outstanding. Fox looked outstanding too in those beautiful dresses. [add some descriptions about the colors and patterns on the later elaboration]

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  Fox said the ladies were secretly the most influential people on the floor. All the dirty dark secrets of the building were the topics. Fox shared with us all the things she had learned. All the dirty business that people on the higher floors were doing.

  They were the people who were standing in the middle between the lower classes and the cartel and taking all the advantage of the system. They were the people who were vicious, greedy, full of desires, and yet pretending to be satisfied and complacent before the cartel. They were pretending to be innocent from all the evil deeds of the cartel. But we couldn't blame them since we'd become one of them. To be more precise, we became pretending to be one of them.

  The life of the higher ups were more complex than we'd ever imagined. Everything was a politic. Everything from talking with someone and eating with someone was a politic. Even when you're alone, that was also a part of the politic, because people wonder why you're being a
lone. They come up with all kinds of excuses for your being alone. Is she preparing something? Is he intentionally avoiding his political enemies? We had to calculate everything before we do anything or they'll consider you an easy target to feed their greed.

  I got to understand what the broker meant when he said, 'Everyone up here is a bunch of cowards.' Even the cartel looked cowardly. They were not almighty as I'd always thought. They were in control of the building and the people on a superficial level, but on the inside, they had to be afraid of the people who had power. I somehow realized that people with power always get scared of people with bigger power.

  And that realization of mine ironically led to the conclusion that people with no power at all have less people to be scared of. That doesn't mean that the life I had on the lower floors was better than that on the higher floors. I mean at least, the life full of political struggle seemed much better than the life full of struggle for the very survival itself. To the people who have to worry about the next day's meal, the whole concept of politics and the power games is nothing but a luxury.

  ...

  Fox made friends with a lady named Liz. Liz was married to a guy named Chris, who was the owner of a small bar on the 100th floor. He also owned a small property down on the thirtieth floor but the most of his income was from the bar.

  The bar was the only place where people on the 100th floor could gather and grab a beer when there wasn't any party being held around. Fox visited there regularly and she became close to them.

  Liz was a quiet person. She was a bit shy too. Fox told us that it took a while for her to open up to Fox, but once she did, she told a lot of things to Fox. She became the major source of information for her.

  Nonetheless, Fox didn't just do the listening part. Fox told her sometimes about some interesting stories that people on higher floors were curious about. Stories of what was happening downstairs.

  It was funny that people living on higher grounds were curious about the lives of the people living on lower grounds. It wasn't just a curiosity or a pity, I guess. I think they wanted to have a sense of relief. They need something to look down on and think, 'Oh, what a pity they have to struggle,' or 'at least, I'm better in any way than those people at the bottom of this pyramid.'

  One time, Chris asked Fox how she knew about those stuff. Fox said it was because of the job she had. They asked her what her job was and she said she was an inspector, delegated from above to get information about the possible threat to the system. She said she had disguised herself to be one of the rebels.

  After hearing that, Chris and Liz seemed to keep a safe distance with Fox because they thought she was affiliated to the cartel. But that distance only lasted for a short time until Fox said she had a son. She said her son was killed in the turmoil and she wasn't an inspector anymore. Chris and Liz had a son, too, so they probably felt some kind of sympathy for her.

  I said, 'Did you have a son?' and she laughed out loud. Of course she didn't have a son. She made fun of me for a couple more days for that.

  That was a clever way to earn their trust, and learn that they were not so favorable to the cartel at the same time.

  The boy's name was John. He was a five year old boy. He was a celebrity on the floor since there weren't many children. Well, children were a rare species in the whole building but it was especially so on the higher floors. The overall ages of the people were higher than the lower floors. There were like four, five children on the floor and John was the youngest. He spent most of the days in the bar. The customers liked to see him running around since most of their children had grown over 14 and out somewhere in the building, working somewhere on some other floors. So they enjoyed watching him playing.

  John was a good kid. He made troubles from time to time, but most of the time he behaved. One time, I saw him accidently knocked a beer over a guy. He instantly apologized and got him some towel right away. The guy didn't get angry at him. That might have been because Liz gave him a free pint of beer, though. The guy said, 'Hey little guy, knock over a beer again after I finish this one.'

  John especially liked to hang out with a little girl named Charlotte. Charlotte was a daughter of a guy named Shorty. I hadn't had any chance to see him in person since Charlotte always came to the Bar alone. Liz told me that he was a single dad. He was a mysterious man. I heard some people guessing he was a trader or something since he occasionally went up and down the floors, but no one knew exactly what he did. I got curious and asked Fox if she had heard anything about him. She told me to go to the bar when Charlotte was hanging with John and quietly wait and I'd see when he came to pick her up.

  So I went to the bar the next day with Kimmy and waited for the man. Charlotte was playing with John. They were playing with little toys. John was holding a little toy soldier in his hand and never let go. He tried to attack Charlotte's little teddy bear with the soldier's rifle, making firing sounds with his mouth. They were running up and down the stairs laughing out loud. I emptied two pints while I was watching them playing.

  Kimmy told me that the kids reminded her of the time when we were running up and down the stairs when we were young. I said I was thinking the same thing. She quietly held my hand and said, 'I feel so sorry for thinking this way but it's good that we can live like this. You know, we haven't been this peaceful and relaxed. Is it wrong to feel this way?'

  I said it wasn't at all and I held her hands even stronger. She said, 'I wish Danny were here, too. Diane also.'

  I raised my glass up without saying anything. She raised her glass, too and said, 'Here's to the family.'

  ...

  We waited there for about three hours. When we were tired of waiting and about to leave, I heard someone calling Charlotte. I turned my head to him and I was surprised by the man's face. He was the broker who smuggled us in.

  He smiled at me and said, 'Did you meet my little girl Charlotte?' I said yes. I invited him to have a drink and bought him a pint of beer. He gladly accepted my offer.

  For a while, we only had some small talks. There were so many ears around us. We finished a pint each, and Shorty asked for another in his place. So we went to his place. We met Fox and Purple on the way and they joined us, too.

  He let us sit down on a huge sofa in his living room and told us to feel at home. I asked Fox why she didn't just tell me that Shorty was the broker. She said, 'Cause it's funnier that way.'

  Shorty came back to us in the living room after he put Charlotte to bed with some expensive looking whiskey and we had some serious conversation.

  He said, 'Well, where should I begin. You see, I'm sure all of you have already noticed, but not all of us are fond of the way the cartel run this building. It's true that our living environments are way better than where you came from, but in a sense, it's worse. You see, it might sound nonsense to you but we don't have much freedom. I want you to know that there are people who are wishing for a change. As you know, Purple and I move around the building not just to buy and sell things. We are preparing for something. We know many people who want to help. We are waiting for the right time.'

  I asked, 'The right time for what?'

  Purple said, 'The right time for us to bring down the system. Endy. This system is corrupted. The cartel is not as strong as it used to be. That's why they resorted in an extreme way to clear out the bottom floors. They don't have the same control over the building as they used to have. All we need is a trigger. It shouldn't be the same way we did before. We can't win in a war if we fight them face to face. But we can overthrow the system if we can make people follow us.'

  I said, 'You sound like Jacques. So what's the plan?' Shorty said, 'First of all, we need a trigger like he said. A trigger to let people know that we can do something.' I said, 'So what's that trigger?' This time, Fox opened her mouth and said, 'We need to kill someone to show people that the gods also bleed. Someone who's powerful and influential. Someone like...'

  Hannibal. Yes. It had to be Hannibal. I
said, 'Hannibal. We are up here to find him in the first place. Yes, right. But where is he now? We haven't seen him for months since we came here. And what if we find him? We can't go kill him that easy. You know he'd be with the guards as a security around him all the time! And he knows our faces.'

  Shorty said, 'Calm down young man. We'll figure something out. What we're saying here today is that we need that sort of trigger to move people's heart. We don't have many details yet, but once we do, and once we succeed in making people believe that we can make a change, there will be riots all over the building.'

  Fox said, 'The reason the rebel failed was because it was a small minority of us versus the whole cartel. But if we can turn it into all of us versus them, we can win this war.'

  I said, 'Okay, I get it. What should I do in this plan?' Purple said, 'Well, as we said, we don't have any details yet, but Alex and Wonder are up to something. I think they already found a way to get Hannibal.'

  I was a little bit dazed. I was relieved that everyone was doing their part, but at the same time, I once again blamed myself because I felt like there was nothing I could do. Shorty must have read my face. He said, 'Well, gentle men, ladies, why don't we save more discussions for another day and have a toast?' So we had some more drinks and I went home with Kimmy.

  On our way home, Fox told me not to blame myself. She said, 'You see, Endy. Don't blame yourself. It's not a competition, you know? We're just doing our best to do something and so are you. Just think about getting Diane back.'

  When we arrived home, I could see Alex and Wonder playing with the cats. We told him about the conversation we had at Shorty's. They said they also didn't know where Hannibal was, but there was a high possibility that he might accompany the sisters on the Chigan Sar. The Chigan Sar was only a few months away. We had to be prepared.

  18

  For the next few month till the Chigan Sar, we had to come up with a detailed plan. We could trust Shorty, the broker, but we decided to have a talk with Liz and Chris, too. We needed as many people as possible. Liz and Chris were close with Shorty. Fox said she was sure they didn't like the way of the cartel, but that didn't mean they'd follow us in every way. We had to make sure if they'd be on our side.