About Growing Up and Rain

It seems as if the rain in this city will never end. It pours and pours, drops cold drops of water on the ground along with heavy bodies falling from the roofs and does not even think about stopping. And there won't be enough clouds and water in the world, but the rain will never end here anyway. Six says she saw the sun. Mono doesn't really believe her. Sometimes it seems to him that he was born at night. But this rainy night for some reason have stretched out for decades. And the morning will never come. Six laughs when he tells her about it. She smiles, sits down next to him on the wet roof and presses against his side to keep warm. Mono looks at her yellow raincoat and shivers in his completely soaked coat. The fabric is dirty, torn in places and he hasn't taken it off for so long that it must have firmly adhered to him, like a second skin, as well as the paper bag put on his head and who has long become his face. Six quietly hums some melody, repeating it over and over, looks into the distance and stretches her legs. The song is slow, the one that the music box was playing when he first found her. Mono has heard little music, in the Pale City you won't hear much of it, but he likes this one. And Six does not seem to know the other. From the roof of a tall building opposite, another body breaks down and falls like a stone, but they are too high to hear with what sound it will fall. Perhaps they would have heard the frightened and scattered birds, but even they were not in this gray place. Mono hasn't even seen rats here, although the streets below are drowning from debris and fetid, half-decomposed flesh. He wonders again why he is here. As always, he does not find an answer. Six's wet raincoat feels icy, but Mono is not complaining. He is used to the presence of a skinny body near him and does not even know how he could wander alone before he met her. In the distance, a light flickers ominously from the Tower, gloomily towering over the Pale City. Mono knows that their journey together will end there. And there is no point in delaying this moment. Six also knows, but keeps quiet and accepts his tacit gratitude for this. They seem to be stuck in a huge time loop, from which there is no way out. No matter how many times Mono runs away, he still soon realizes that he is returning to where he started. It doesn't matter how hard he tries to run away, how hard he tries to forget the way to this dull place, as if someone pulls him here, even though he clings to the door frames with his hands and sits in places, from which it seemed there was no way out. Six is the same. She says that she escaped from the Maw, from a huge ship on which kids like them usually died, turned into servants or ending up on guest's plates, who won't stopping eating rotten meat without even noticing it. Mono understands at what cost she managed to escape, but like her, he doesn't say anything. He knows that eventually she, too, will return to that ship full of nightmares, which she rightfully will consider as hers. "You met many like us?" Mono does not see, but knows that she curls an eyebrow questioningly now under her yellow hood. She grimaces and pulls her knees up to her chest, streching the fabric of her raincoat over them to warm her frozen feet. "Kids?" she asks and presses against his side tighter, wrapping his arms around her small shoulders "Several." Mono doesn't continue the conversation. He just knows that when his time comes, he will rest alone. Six will leave and will not turn around, but on the ship she will still have somebody with whom she can play and talk about trifles until she gets tired of them, and decides to make servants out of them or use them as batteries. For Six, he is not the only one. Never been. Loneliness is prescribed for both of them, only his will come much faster. "How many have you met?" a curious voice sounded quietly, although Mono strongly doubted that Six was interested. He shrugged his shoulders, looking at the clouds, from which it rained endlessly. "Several." he returned her her answer, stroking her on the shoulder, feeling Six's body trembling. Maybe it was worth going back to the building, to hide from the pouring rain, but Mono knew that behind the walls, literally in a few rooms with faceless adults sticking to the TV screens, which showed only interferences, there will be another room, and it will be the beginning of the end of their journey. There will be a TV, to which he will be pulled, he will watch, open the door and make it clear that he is ready to take the place intended for him from the very beginning. "What do you think they see?" he asked, nodding his head to the window, in which he could see another faceless, not looking up from the screen with interferences. Mono did not ask how these people could see what is going on there - they do not have faces. He knew he would not find the answer. "I don't know. Maybe a happy life?" Six suggested, holding out her small palms to Mono. He obeyed to her silent request and squeezed them between his own hands, warming. "I don’t think they know how is it." "Then... Maybe their childhood? Or the future that they wanted to have... Or the Tower itself from the inside..." "What kind of future would you like to have?" Mono asked, placing his head on the top of her head. For some reason he felt mentally tired, but he knew that it would only get worse. “You know we can't have it. It is scheduled and completed several times by ones who are just like us. When we'll become adults, we too will run after small children, pretending that we are afraid that they will take away our strength and take our place. And they will kill us and everything will start in a circle again." Mono closed his eyes, listening to the rain drumming on the rooftops and feeling how painfully something squeezed inside, something that should be in the place of his heart. "You will become The Lady when you grow up." he said quietly, apathetically following with eyes another body that fell from these endlessly high roofs. Six smiled and intertwined their fingers. Mono couldn't tell if she felt the same as he did, or if she just didn't care. He never understood anyone's expressions anyway. Even the sound of the eternal rain suddenly became quieter for him, as if the weather judged him for bringing up one of those topics that should never have been discussed out loud. "You will become The Thin Man when you grow up." Six repeated almost affectionately, drawing circles on the back of his frozen palm. Mono would like to see the sun at least once before he becomes one. But it always rains here and it will never end. "Let's go?" she asked "I'm cold." He nodded, knowing that from now on, he would lose his identity. Become another Thin Man, who'll wander around the city in search of something that he himself does not know. He will sit alone in the Tower twist TV-interferences on all channels and wait for his replacement. But Six by then won't give a damn. She will be on her ship, looking at the sun, playing with children and looking for whole mirrors that she will break in a few years. For food, she will order to bring more guests to her's ship, to receive their strength and magic to support the work of her new home, which she will never leave again. They will never see each other again. Mono stood up and held out his icy hand to Six, which she readily grabbed, not letting her go all the way to the very room in which a large TV illuminated everything with its white light, waiting for a signal that would indicate that the new Thin Man is ready take the place of the old. Everything resembles a script memorized to holes. Six is kidnapped - he is not surprised. This part of the path he must go by himself. When he defeats the previous Thin Man, and he falls at his feet and disappears like TV interference, it rains and Mono feels cold drops on his face for the first time without a paper bag on it. When he goes to save Six and she betrays him, throws him down, as it was prescribed in their life scenario, it is still raining outside, and this something, that painfully squeezed inside in place of the heart, was slowly replaced by emptiness. And everything is going according to plan, according to a script written a long time ago. He grows up alone, in his Tower, and continues to watch the eternal rain of cold drops and bodies that fall from the rooftops. And everything is still as it should be.