Chapter 1459 (2/2)

In addition, Arrietti understood that his current attitude was the wrong one to have. If he wanted to change his situation, he needed to first adjust his attitude. With a grimace, he stood from his comfortable chair and walked to the cabinet along the far long. He took one second to drag a finger across the beautifully stained wood and then opened the door to his private liquor supply. He should not seek out companionship just for companionship’s sake… he should wait for the right person to appear and then turn his attention gradually to a relationship. But dammit, he had been waiting for so long-

Commissioner Arrietti’s eyelid twitched. His bottles of liquor were empty. He carefully shut the cabinet door. Was it Wolfram…?

“A walk,” Arrietti announced to the room. “I’ll take a walk. The greatest skill a man can learn in the pursuit of a mate is legwork. Never stop walking.”

No one answered his pronouncement; there was no one in the room to here his pearls of wisdom. He could have said anything at all and nothing would have changed with the lack of answer he received. When no one heard, no one would ever respond. That feeling of powerlessness stung.

The feeling of being adrift grew stronger.

With his sadness steadily deepening, Arrietti took his coat off the hanger and slipped into the heavy wool garment. He actually liked this coat quite a bit. The bottom was quite long, but buttoning it made him feel vaguely like a private eye. Which, his sour mood was quick to point out, was the sexy version of a police officer.

It also was so heavy that if he closed his eyes, he could just image that its weight on his shoulders was a lover’s arms. Needless to say, that thought very quickly turned sour as well.

Releasing a deep sigh, Arrietti swept out of the precinct. Fellow officers that were finishing up their shift or writing up reports stood at attention and nodded to him as he passed by them. Obviously this was a show of respect, but it only served as a display that made Arrietti more bitter. The space between him as Commissioner and the average officer couldn’t be more clear.

Then he was out the door. Luckily, the cold wind of the outside world blew away Arrietti’s mood. In a way, the implacable seasons were reassuring. It wasn’t currently snowing, but the steely sky above Kharon made it seem like that lack of precipitation wouldn’t last much longer. He pulled up his collar and put his hands deep within his pockets, fishing out his expensive leather gloves.

Then he strode purposefully through Kharon’s streets, wondering where he was going on this walk.

Thankfully, his feet eventually answered that question simply by virtue of continuing to carry him forward even while his mind was elsewhere. So as he considered his limp prospects of meeting new people, he arrived at the residential district of Kharon. Then he kept walking past the tall apartment buildings into the wealthy section along the edge of the city, which currently provided great views of the Orchard below.

The street ended rather abruptly, and there was a small, sloped park along Kharon’s edge. Two people sat hunched over a stone table on the left side of the park, but otherwise, the area was completely deserted. The speed of his strides slowed, but Arrietti quickly made it right up to the edge. He carefully positioned his toes flush with the sharp drop off. The wind whistled past him, warning him of the great expanse below.

Arrietti breathed in and then breathed out, released a lung full of air that was cloudy with the cold. He could just barely make out the shapes of people below, walking through the different pathways that had been constructed for the tournament. Farther to the South, Arrietti could see the construction crews putting glass panes up in the windows of the new development, in preparation for people to begin to move into the area. His eyes automatically followed their methodical assemblage of the building.

Sometimes it felt like witnessing something allowed him to be part of it.

The day was turning to evening and the light from the sun peeking between the clouds was perfectly angled to reflect off of the completed windows. They glowed golden, like the eyes of a cat at night. So for a while, Arrietti stood and watched as these workers gradually heaved the glass upward and opened the eyes of this massive apartment monster, one by one.

Arrietti shook himself as a bout of laughter from the couple at the stone table woke him from his strange trance. As he had suspected, the cold and the exercise did a lot to alleviate his dreariness. In fact, he was starting to feel better already. Even though that couple-

Wait… I recognize these voices… Commissioner Arrietti thought, glancing over his shoulder. Then his eyes widened.

“A good game,” Huang Shou said with a small smile on his face.

Miranda Hamilton shrugged her shoulders. “I lost.”

“Few can lose with such grace,” Huang Shou consoled, but from his tone it was clear that he took immense pleasure in his victory. Even to Arrietti’s eyes, he was quite self-satisfied. “Shall we play again?”

“Of course. The game of life is long… and really, I suspect I only have to win once in order to shatter your smug attitude,” Mrs. Hamilton began to grumble toward the end of her sentence, but overall… the feel between the two of them was slightly…

The corners of Arrietti’s mouth sagged downward as he turned and began to walk back toward his empty apartment.