Mr. Cupcake and the Rat: A Letter
Ren - Real World AU.
Ren - Real World AU.
Ren had settled into something akin to a comfortable routine, as much as anyone on the streets could possibly hope to. Every day brought new chaos. The bakery she had staked out as the center of her territory was on the rougher, poorer side of town, and she never knew when violence or cops would spill into her attempt at a peaceful existence.
She’d been heckled while digging through a trash can. When she hadn’t reacted, they’d thrown a bottle at her head. Her hat, an oversized beanie the same dark color as the dirty, matted hair it covered, had kept any glass from digging into her skull, but she had a hell of a headache and was dizzy. That was the sort of thing that made every day different from the next.
But there were some comforting constants.
She swung by the back alley by her bakery. She was quite late, and it was Sunday, so he would already be closed. But no one else came by, which meant... yes.
A little brown bag sitting on the step by the door into the bakery. She snatched it up quickly, stuffing part of it into her mouth so she could use all her limbs. Teeth clenched around the top of the bag, she clambered up onto the dumpster. In a practiced movement, she backed up to the corner, ran forward, and leapt. She caught the bottom rung of the fire escape on the next building, then hauled herself up. She climbed up another two stories on the fire escape, then, bag still dangling from her mouth, leapt onto the bakery roof. She landed on all fours, scrambled across the tile to the end of the house where the roof was at its highest. She slid off of it automatically, arms, then head, then chest and body, feet catching briefly around the edge as she swung herself down. The window was unlocked, because she never locked it. A metal ruler she left sticking out of the bottom made it easy to pry open, and then she slithered in.
The whole effort took less than thirty seconds.
She was getting very good at it.
The attic above the bakery was dark, but that didn’t bother her at all. She’d found a flashlight in an old box, and she had very good night vision. She clambered over bare plywood to her little corner, by the window, hidden behind a whole host of old, dusty boxes. There was a thick pile of blankets on it. She prodded at it a few times to figure out where all the rats were, moving some of them aside, before settling in.
She flicked the flashlight on and opened the bag. Inside was a saran wrapped sandwich, something wrapped in tin foil, two children’s juice boxes, and... ooooh, eclairs. She pulled it all out excitedly, using one of the boxes as a makeshift table. She started with the sandwich, unwrapping it and then carefully sticking the saran wrap around the existent ball of the stuff she was collecting. She didn’t know what for yet. Inside the foil were some sort of puffy baked things, folded and fluffy and filled with white poofyness that might have been cream cheese or something, and flecks of green. She poked at them. Lettuce? She didn’t know. It was too dark to be lettuce, she was pretty sure.
Curiously, she took a bite.
It tasted good, savory and creamy at the same time. She shrugged. It didn’t matter what was in it if it tasted good.
The juice boxes contained soy milk. One was chocolate. She drank that one first.
She fed the dozen or so rats in her blankets little pieces of bread and meat from the sandwich, which was full of some sort of chipped meat, and a vinegary sort of... cabbage maybe? Or a weird pale pickle. And cheese. And some kind of sauce. She didn't rightly know, but it was good and the bread had a pretty, swirly design on it. The rats didn’t like the weird vinegar cabbage so she got to eat all of that herself. She really liked it. She wondered if she’d ever get to eat it again.
After she and the rats had devoured every last crumb, and the foil had been safely balled up around her Ball of Foil, which sat next to her Ball of Saran Wrap on her makeshift shelf, she flicked on her flashlight and grabbed the empty bag. It was a little greasy at the bottom from sitting for so long, but she could still use the sides. Eagerly, she went to tear it, then paused.
Something was... already written on the side?
She squinted at it, shaking the flashlight to get it to light up better.
“There is an Oktoberfest party today a few blocks away. Please watch out for drunks. Did you know otters have a special pouch where they keep their favorite rock?”
She tilted her head to the side, running a thin finger over the words, written in an unfamiliar scrawl.
Had Mr. Cupcake written this, then? He had never written her anything on a bag before. Except the first time, when he had written LUNCH in large letters.
A party... drunks. That explained the belligerence and the bottle.
She stared at the words for a while longer then flipped over onto her stomach, grabbing the sharpie she used to draw little pictures on the bags after she had eaten.
In careful letters underneath, she wrote, “One of them hit me.” She paused. “With a bottle.” That seemed like it might be an important clarification. Then, below that... “I did not know that. Did you know that rats laugh when they are happy?”
She stared at the words on the paper for a while. She doodled a little rat, laughing, the words HA HA HA over its head. She stared for a while longer. She had never written anyone a letter before. She was pretty sure this wasn’t how you did it. She wrestled with indecision for a while longer, before she tore the bag, carefully, so that the words didn’t rip. Then she taped it onto the slanted roof above her make-shift bed, with her other paper-bag doodles. This was paper bag lunch number fourteen.
She hoped tomorrow would be fifteen.
She hoped tomorrow would have more words on it, too.
She yawned, stomach gurgling and full, and curled up, pulling one of the many blankets over her head. The rats settled in around her, and she drifted into sleep, very full and very warm.
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