Neighborly

[Jiang Wen]

He absolutely loathed that he had to do this. He loathed it with every fiber of his being and yet here he was, slowly walking down the winding hill path toward his nearest neighbor's home. His own home was further up the mountain, nestled in a forest of tall trees, partly blocked off by a creek, and usually only occupied by Wen himself. Driving up the mountain to his home invariably meant passing by the paths that led toward the other mountain folk in the area, so Wen knew they were there. He just... he'd never met them.

The paths were easier to cross on foot and besides... his problem also extended to his vehicle.

Wen was out of gas. Out of gasoline. His power had gone out in the storm the previous night and it hadn't come back on. The phone wasn't working, either. So he was forced--flushed out of his home. Picking his way through newly budding wildflowers, likely brought on by the fall rains, he quietly observed the countryside. The outskirts of Hazleton weren't home to the best variety of people, it was true. But Wen was pretty far from the rowdy trailer park and he was far enough up the mountain that he rarely had to deal with any other neighbors. They were all of like mind, after all.

There.

Wen saw it; a rather large home with all the hallmarks of an old country place. It had the wide, giant patio wrapped around it, the columns up front, and the swaying fronds of tall grass surrounding it. There were a couple of fairly new vehicles out front, so Wen thought they must be rather young.

Slowly, he approached the steps, then stopped. He felt... watched, for a moment, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw only a wild deer, staring back at him. Wen turned away and started up the steps. The third one up squeaked as he stepped on it, upsetting a dog inside the house even before Wen could knock. Taking in a deep breath, he knocked.

[Blue]

God, he was hungry. Kyoung Ho normally didn't go in for fast food--his lifestyle was unhealthy enough and that was just work taking its toll on him--but he had to admit that after more than 24 hours awake, working on a case, pizza sounded pretty damn good. (Tori wasn't here to tell him to sleep or eat, and Kyoung Ho wasn't the type of man to remember on his own.) Running a hand through the mess on top of his head that called itself hair, he stood up from his office chair and stretched his sore, cramped muscles.

The nice thing about working from home was that he didn't have to dress up. In his pajama bottoms and a black tank top, he was a far cry from the young professional-looking lawyer who had swept into town only a year ago, to join his father at his law firm. Hazleton wasn't exactly a hotbed of crime but somehow, cases still kept pouring in. This one in particular was a nasty murder case, that had been giving him headaches for weeks. He thought that he was on the verge of a breakthrough... but he had to not starve long enough to get to the courts.

Sighing, Kyoung Ho grabbed his phone and dialed up the local pizza place to put in an order for delivery. While he waited, he idly flicked through some more case studies, jotted down a couple of lines of notes on his notepad and then flicked through a few sites on his phone to see what everyone was up to. Okay, just his friends. ...okay, just one person. One person in particular. (Who, it turned out, wasn't up to much of anything.)

He was just contemplating getting dressed properly, like a normal human being would, when his dog barked outside. There was the sound of scrabbling paws as Baxter, the family Great Pyrenees, made a break for the door. Must be the delivery guy, Kyoung Ho thought as he exited out of his office and padded silently downstairs to the front door. He reached for Baxter's collar and restrained him. "Down, Bax. Sit." Baxter was as good-natured as they came, but the delivery guy wouldn't know that and Kyoung Ho didn't want to frighten some kid off.

Also, he wanted his pizza.

After making sure that Baxter was firmly planted, he opened the door. "Hi, how much do I owe you?" Kyoung Ho asked, and then belatedly noticed the conspicuous absence of a pizza box.

[Jiang Wen]

He did not want to be here. Interacting with human beings was probably on the top of his list of things he didn't want to do. For the most part, he had things delivered straight to his mailbox, which annoyingly was not situated at his home but at the bottom of the mountain community he lived in, along with the mailboxes of those who lived scattered over this same mountain. While Wen found this less than ideal, he imagined the person bringing the mail would rather have one place to bring all his mail, rather than trying to find each hidden mountain home out in this desolation.

Wen preferred the desolation, though. He didn't want to be around people. He didn't want neighbors, even. Yes, he preferred his time alone, spent with nothing but metal and wires and complicated codes. Even the most complicated of codes was nothing in the face of a human. So unpredictable, so... so...

He looked up as somebody answered his knock and he tried not to stare. The man was young, as he thought he would be. But he was in a state of undress, as if he had been sleeping. With his hair as messy as it was, he assumed he must have. Quickly, he dropped his gaze and mumbled, "My apologies."

Then he looked over at the cars that sat in the driveway. There were cars. So there was a chance there was gasoline, too.

"Do you have any extra gasoline?"

[Blue]

Thankfully, Kyoung Ho wasn't called out on his odd greeting, but he said, "Sorry, thought you were the delivery guy" anyway, just so that the stranger at the door wouldn't think that he offered to pay everybody who knocked. Since it wasn't the delivery guy, though, a shade of wariness entered Kyoung Ho's gaze as he inspected the man. Salesman? Another one of those pesky social committee members coming around trying to sell tickets to something or other?

Apparently, neither. Kyoung Ho's expression was neutral and maybe a shade frosty--the normal slightly detached face that he wore, that had become more of a habit than anything purposeful. "I don't know if we have any gas laying around," he said after a moment's thought, looking out over the porch. His car was parked outside, alongside his father's sportscar and the family sedan. Didn't look like the stranger's car broke down in front of their house, if that was what he needed the gasoline for.

"Did your car run out of gas?" he asked cautiously as his gaze fell back onto the man. Kyoung Ho didn't remember seeing his face before, but then again he was hardly the social butterfly around town. He was easy on the eyes, though--not that it necessarily meant anything. "If you need a ride into town, I can give you a lift."

It wasn't often that people came around here; their neighbors were widespread. That was one of the reasons that his father had bought this house and the surrounding piece of land, for the lack of snoopy neighbors. Being all rather private people, Kyoung Ho's family preferred to live in peace and quiet.

[Jiang Wen]

His voice was so similar. For a brief moment, Wen closed his eyes and allowed the voice to enter his mind, to worm its way into the deepest part of his memories. Then, hearing the young man shift, Wen opened his eyes. No gas lying around. No, it wasn't typical for most to have that sort of thing simply lying around, was it? Wen thought it would be more prevalent in the mountains where they were but it appeared he was mistaken. Or... perhaps he'd chosen the wrong home.

"If you don't have gas, yes." He tried not to stare, to look at him for too long. Something about him... Something about the shape of his nose, the line of his brows... Something about the way his eyes moved... The slight edge in his voice. It all made his heart throb and ache in a way he dearly wanted to ignore. Why am I here? Was I led here? Is it fate?

"I need it for my generator..."

[Blue]

"Oh, the storm knocked out your power?" Kyoung Ho's house ran on a different grid--one that didn't experience the same type of outages that some of his neighbors did. There were also solar panels on top of the house to provide backup electricity, so they had no use for a gas-run generator. Some of the poorer folks, however, who didn't have the kind of money to afford all of the modern bells and whistles, did.

"Just let me get the car keys and I'll drive you to the gas station in town." Not necessary to state which one--there was only one gas station. He couldn't just let the man walk into town, either, since it would take at least an hour on foot. Kyoung Ho stepped back and allowed the door to open fully so that the stranger could get out of the cold and fog. He didn't look like a robber or a creep and even if he was, Kyoung Ho had Baxter to protect him. Not to mention, he was plenty capable of defending himself.

"What's your name? Do you live close by?" he asked conversationally, though mostly to gather information on the stranger--just in case he had need of it later. Kyoung Ho wasn't the unnecessarily chatty type and smalltalk was never his favorite to begin with. He grabbed a coat from the closet by the door and selected his car keys from the key holder mounted onto the wall.

Baxter padded up with a soft whine, sensing that he was heading out and wanting to go with him, and Kyoung Ho reached down to ruffle his ears. "Sorry Bax, no joy ride today. I'll walk you when I get back."

[Jiang Wen]

"Yes."

It had knocked out everything and Wen tried to be patient. In general, he was quite a patient man. However, as time passed, the storms only raged on and the power wasn't coming back until the storms passed. Nobody in their right mind was going to climb a power pole when it kept raining and hailing as much as it did. Even Wen didn't want to step outside in this weather, yet here he was. In front of a neighbor. Inside his home, discreetly looking around and feeling vastly out of place.

The man's home was so neat and tidy and large. In comparison, Wen's home was... much less. It wasn't clean; Wen had no time for that. It wasn't tidy in the least--he had all kinds of items and robotics equipment strewn about the entire house. And although it was a somewhat large home, it was nothing compared to this one. Wen's home was older, more rundown, and vastly cheaper. The wooden floors were creaky, the paint on the walls was starting to peel, and it always smelled faintly of what Wen could only describe as old.

Wen wished he had the time and money for a place like this. Yet he would never have something like this. He was far too obsessed with his work to let himself care about much else.

"I'm Wen... from up the mountain," he said, nervously watching the very big dog move forward. "About half a mile."

[Blue]

"Ah, from all the way up there huh?" Kyoung Ho knew about the houses up on the mountains--most of them were two-room shacks, if he had to be honest. There was a lot of land up there, though. Not much developed property. It was mostly poorer folk who lived up there, although Kyoung Ho wasn't going to assume anything of Wen. After all, to look at him in his current state, one might never know that he was independently wealthy and a lawyer, either.

"I'm Kyoung Ho. And this is Baxter," he added as Baxter trotted up to sniff the stranger's legs and feet. He let out a low bark and wagged his tail, pleased to meet a new friend. "Don't worry, he's friendly," Kyoung Ho added at the look of apprehension that crossed Wen's face, although he supposed that every dog owner said that. Baxter really wasn't a threat, though.

"Okay, let's go. We'll have to make a run for the car. It's the dark blue one." Wen must have seen it coming up the drive, so he didn't feel the need to also point it out. Ushering him out, Kyoung Ho locked the door--to Baxter's disappointed bark--and then ran for the car and hastily slid into the driver's seat. And he thought the fog was bad!

[Jiang Wen]

Obviously, this wasn't what he thought. The more he looked at the nice home and the big dog, the more he realized it. Yet there was something about him, the man... Wen kept sneaking glances at him, sure that he'd seen a face just like his. Had he inadvertently modeled him after this man? Was he famous? He might be famous. Wen could have seen his image in a magazine. He thought of all the magazines and books that had littered his old apartment, tried to remember if this man had been one of the faces.

I must have.

He kept his head low as he followed the man out. Kyoung Ho, he said his name was. That wasn't his name. He wasn't the same. But it was uncanny and he followed him silently. He flinched at the sound of the dog barking as the door was closed and locked but he stood on the cold porch as Kyoung Ho attended to his home and followed at a slower pace as Kyoung Ho sprinted for his car.

Arriving a moment later, Wen opened the passenger's side door and slid into the car. It still smelled new. Even in the driveway under the torrent of rain, it had been shiny and new. Definitely somebody with money. Wen used to have money, too. Until he let his obsessions take their hold. Until he forgot how to live. He settled his head back against the head rest.

"...thank you."

[Blue]

"You're welcome," Kyoung Ho said simply as he started up the car--and more importantly, the heater--and turned on the windshield wipers to clear the rain away. It was pouring; he didn't think he had ever seen it rain this much or this hard. The water droplets pelting the windshield sounded like drum beats.

""You're not from around here, are you Wen?"

There was something about Wen that was different from the rest of the citizens. He wasn't crazy different, though. Just... different in a way that Kyoung Ho couldn't quite put his finger on. There were many folks in town that gave off a similar vibe and Kyoung Ho didn't know what to make of them. He didn't quite know what to make of Wen, either, in that moment.

[Jiang Wen]

Pulling his jacket around his shoulders, he was thankful as well for the heater. His hands slipped between his legs for warmth and he tried not to stare at Kyoung Ho any more than he had to. Better to look out the window. Through the rain, it wasn't easy to see much. It had been raining pretty hard when he arrived at Kyoung Ho's place but now it was starting to let up. Wen tried not to think about what might happen if it rained so hard, they couldn't even see past the windshield.

"No," he said. "I'm not."

He wasn't from around here; he was a new member of this weird little community. But he hadn't made much of an impact on it. No friends. No conventional job to attend. If he could, he would stay up in the mountains in his old, rundown place for the rest of his life. He would simply make more models, more robots. But... nothing like he'd done in the past. He told himself that over and over again. Only concentrate on work.

"...are you?" Wen asked, turning his gaze back toward Kyoung Ho.

[Blue]

Out of towner--there seemed to be a number of those in Hazleton, from what Kyoung Ho had seen. He half-smiled over at Wen--a very small half-smile, admittedly--and shook his head. "No, I'm not from around here either. I moved here for work, I'm a lawyer at the law office in town."

His parents wanted to 'semi-retire' in a sleepy, slow, small town to get away from the big city bustle and noise, but his father soon felt the itch to work again and opened up a law firm in town. That was him through and through, though--he wasn't the type of man who could retire in peace to tend to a couple of veggie plots. Kyoung Ho's father was driven and genuinely enthusiastic about his work, something that rubbed off on Kyoung Ho himself as he grew into his career. His mother, too, ran several charities "to keep busy."

The workaholic gene ran strong through their family, that was for sure.

"Do you have a job in town or do you work from home?" It was a little hard to see through the rain despite the windshield wipers on max, so Kyoung Ho drove cautiously down the mountain road into town. He didn't want to wipe out; that was a pretty steep fall and a shortcut that he was not keen on taking at the moment.

[Jiang Wen]

A lawyer. And he was from out of town, too. Wen wondered... But no, it wasn't possible. He put the thought into its final resting place. There was nothing robotic about Kyoung Ho. He was just... Well, no, that was a lie. There was something similar to a robot about him. Maybe that was it. He felt robotic, like he was running on pure thought and logic and not on feeling. Wen raised his brows very slightly while he peered over at him again.

All of his questions seemed like logical enough questions. All small talk. Nothing delving into personal affairs. Just... who was he, where did he live, what did he do for a living. Hm. Maybe he was rather robotic after all. Wen could almost feel the if this, then that statements coming from him.

"I'm currently working on personal projects," he said, not wanting to talk about how he'd been fired and why.

[Blue]

"Ah."

That was code for "mind your own damn business," Kyoung Ho was sure, so he didn't pursue the subject. For all he knew, Wen could be a drug dealer--or worse, a user of drugs. There were rumors of drugs being peddled in and out of town and while Kyoung Ho hadn't personally handled cases involving them, he knew that some of the others at the firm had.

Since he had gotten all the information he needed--or that Wen was willing to divulge--Kyoung Ho fell silent. He wasn't unduly bothered by the quiet. If anything, he preferred it over meaningless chatter about the weather, or the local sports team. As they drove down the mountain and into the outskirts of town, Kyoung Ho slipped a surreptitious glance or two at Wen, when he thought that Wen wasn't looking.

Something about him felt really strange. It was like an aura surrounding him, maybe. A vibe. Kyoung Ho wasn't given to superstition but he swore he felt it.

[Jiang Wen]

That was when the silence fell--after he said that he was simply working on personal projects. It seemed like Kyoung Ho got the message. Well, good. Wen shifted slightly and looked back outside, at the rain that sluiced against the window, scattering the world beyond in a blur of muted colors. A little like art. He ached to make art of the way it made it him feel. Despite the robotic logical part of him interested in his work, Wen had never lost his sense of wonder and artistry.

Silence continued to stretch between them, no words exchanged as they headed down the mountain at a snail's even pace. Occasionally, Wen was aware that eyes were on him but every time he looked up, he found Kyoung Ho watching the road before him. Maybe it was just his imagination. He pulled his coat a little closer to his body and tried to settle his frenetic nerves. It wasn't usual for him to feel this way but normally he had work to focus on. With nothing readily available to focus on, he had only the world outside the window--and Kyoung Ho.

He didn't want to break the silence merely because he felt a strange urge to do so. It wasn't until they were down the mountainside and pausing before the road proper that Wen finally spoke.

"Left," he said--and he didn't know why he bothered to say it, as if Kyoung Ho didn't know which way to go for the gas station.