Angel on earth

Seeing that the wives were not there, Mikhail heaved a sigh of relief, locked the door behind him, put down his clothes, bent down, and lifted Aaron's glasses with one hand. His neck touched his lips.

"Good morning, Mishenka."

The doctor's young, slightly hoarse voice echoed low in the small room at the back of the church.Mikhail closed his eyes, and his slender eyelashes swept across rare and rough marks on his face, leaving thin, shiny dust on the other's pale cheeks.

"What happened, Aaron?" Mikhail pointed to the empty room.One of Aaron's feet is retracted, and the other is already resting on his lower back:

"God knows. There's still a little time until the event, though. I've got things to do and I can't have lunch with you, so..."

Mikhail hugged him gently, took off his glasses and put them on the dressing table.

After lunch, Mikhail, who played the role of "Santa Claus", wandered the streets carrying a sack almost as tall as others.The Victory Church and the Red Moon Church also have poverty relief activities, but they are not as grand and cumbersome as the fountain area.

At first, Mikhail didn't know if it was a relief or some kind of weird sacrifice. A long queue lined up from the side door of the church to the outside of the square, and the city government guards were patrolling nearby.The weather wasn't too cold, but the wind was strong along the coast, and a narcissus flag with a blue background whizzed across the sky, like a huge bat hanging on the church bell tower.The origin and age of the poor who came to receive relief supplies were strictly limited, and almost all of them were children. The four- and five-year-old children in the workhouse were also dressed in mended and thin clothes, and they were organized to line up here early in the morning.They were not allowed to talk loudly or move around freely, but they all knew that they could get clothes and candy today, and everyone was patient.

All Mikhail could do was squeeze his way through the ranks like a really rough Abaddon, select a few really poor people, and send out beautifully wrapped gifts in sacks.

He sneered in his heart, because quite a few guys who actually had a decent life wore tattered clothes found somewhere, and pretended to be frowning at the front of the team, but they couldn't hide it from him.He could tell the good from the bad, the poor from the rich, and now the poor from the poorer still, because the narrow gate was in him.It wasn't anything to be happy about, the only thing he saw was that there were so many different kinds of poverty in this rich city.

Suddenly, he shouted: "Aren't you the boy of Mr. Beeton's concierge? Don't make trouble!"

Putting on thick-heeled short boots, Mikhail, who was almost [-] meters tall, lifted a little boy from the crowd like a chicken. The people around him didn't respond, but the boy struggled and shouted:

"Let go of me, Abaddon bastard! I want to tell my father! This is the Duchy of the Rhine, it's not your turn to control me!"

"This is theft." Mikhail said earnestly, "Your family is not poor, you can even be said to be rich, why—"

He was stunned.Mikhail Ivanovich Kupala was so grown up that he was just days away from turning 19, and no one ever spit in his face.

Seeing his expression, the boy became even more proud. Although he was still dangling his legs in the air, he was no longer afraid:

"I tell you, this has always been the rule! Didn't Dr. Edwards teach you?! These gifts are meant for us, are those lazy people who don't go to work worthy of them? Even me, such a young child, knows Thanksgiving, I have helped Mr. Beeton clean the garden since I was a child, what about them? They don’t do anything but beg on the street!”

"But they can't find a job." Mikhail wiped the saliva off his face and justified.

The boy shook his head and said, "The people of Abaddon are really stupid. There are plenty of jobs, but they are greedy. Like me, I never get paid for working for Lord Beeton, but they are tired all day long and ask for more wages." , would rather beg than work."

Mikhail said: "How long do you work in a day? At most, they need to work [-] hours a day, and the wages they get can't even make up for the exhausted physical strength, let alone eat."

"They can eat at home, of course eating out is very expensive." The porter's son muttered, "Also, they can also hunt..."

Mikhail sighed, put him outside the square, and returned to the long, motionless queue.These children had to go through a long night like this. Mikhail didn’t know if those who were thanked by him for his so-called good deeds were also like this. He could only walk back and forth along the line, trying to give them as much warmth as possible. .Once he picked up a girl and she fell asleep in his arms, so he had to hold her all the time.

It was supposed to snow in the evening, but he quietly drove away the dark clouds, and stole a piece of warm wind from the south of the moon sea, but he didn't know if he would be discovered.Having said that, if you are discovered, you will be discovered, and you can't just ignore death.

In the middle of the night, a deacon in black hurriedly dragged a boy into the square, looked around for a while, and found Mikhail with a big smile on his face.

"Oh, oh, you are the butler of Dr. Edwards, right? I know, butler of Historia, you play Mikhail today...Of course, you are too similar!" The deacon rubbed his hands, "Really I'm sorry, the doctor asked me to take care of you, something happened in the afternoon, I missed the hour, and I didn't find this bad boy. Alas, you are right, this is theft, or taking food from the poor, and it has been going on for three years , God, right in front of God the Father... We were all terrified, such a child must be educated well, before that, punishment is absolutely indispensable, why has he not repented after three years! So, we cut off His thieving hands—"

Mikhail froze.The son of the concierge had a bruised nose and a swollen face, and his body was dirty. He was holding his right hand in his left hand, and his right wrist was tightly tied with a piece of cloth so as not to bleed to death.The boy walked crookedly and tremblingly, and knelt down in front of him with a plop.

Mikhail grabbed the shoulder of the deacon in black with one hand, and shouted:

"Where's Aaron?"

The deacon froze for a moment: "What?"

"Where's Dr. Edwards?!"

"This, I don't know..."

Mikhail stuffed the girl into his arms, warned him to take good care of her, picked up the boy, grabbed his severed hand, and rushed out of the square like the wind.

He kept asking, "Where is Dr. Edwards?!" No one gave an answer, because it was late at night, and there were almost no pedestrians on the road. Occasionally, a child who was woken up excitedly shouted "Santa Claus", and was immediately caught. Another angry "That's Abaddon" hurried back; the weather was cold, the police officers with higher ranks hid in the mistress's room to warm up, and a few patrol members were also lazy.

He ran for an unknown amount of time, dazed and terrified, until Aaron appeared on a street corner with a medicine box on his shoulders.

"What happened, Mikhail? Why are you crying?" Aaron asked him in Sinai, and stood on tiptoe and wiped his cheek with a handkerchief, wiping off a pile of gold dust and stains.

Mikhail looked at him blankly, and said: "Oh, isn't this the son of Mr. Beeton's concierge? I remember him. He was a bad bastard. How did he finally kick the iron plate?—Go over there Let's go, borrow a room, and you can connect your hands."

Mikhail followed him quickly, and walked into a low room with a bit of air leakage.A girl exclaimed in a dazed surprise, "Santa Claus!"

He glanced at her blankly. Aaron had already negotiated with the hostess, borrowed a lame table, put the boy on it, took out a bottle of alcohol and poured it on the wound.

The boy passed out from the pain halfway, and now he screamed, woke up from the pain and passed out again.Aaron muttered a few words, and while deftly taking the boy's hand, he said:

"Have some hot tea, Mishenka. What's going on? I heard your voice in Iron Barrel Lane. Don't be afraid, if anything happens, run away with me..."

He babbled nonsense in Sinai that the hostess, who was working by dimly lit candles, could not understand.This is a tailor's shop on the first floor, narrow and cold, with a small bed in the corner, tables, chairs and benches squeezed together, and the public toilet is a long way from the back door.Mikhail sat on the floor, filling almost half of the room.

"Where is this?"

After a while, Mikhail asked.

Aaron was stunned for a moment, but the movement of his hands didn't stop. He closed his eyes and groped for a while, then cut his palm and pulled out a blood line:

"Tailor Lane, next door to Bucket Lane. Mrs Chuck is the best tailor in the street."

"Don't say that, you are, Dr. Edwards."

The hostess laughed and scolded him, and drove her daughter back to sleep.The girl wanted to say something cold, but the doctor gave several silver coins, could she buy some coal or firewood to burn.But Santa Claus subconsciously touched her head, and she was confused in the warmth.

"Are you Santa Claus?" she asked softly.

Aaron put the kerosene lamp on the seamstress' desk, away from the girl: "What do you think, miss?"

She scratched Mikhail's soft curly hair, and saw a pair of spring and summer starry eyes slowly opening.

"Oh, you are an angel sent by God the Father." She said the last sentence in a daze before falling asleep, "Good night, Mr. Angel. You are so warm."

Mikhail turned around with difficulty and kissed her rough cheek.

Aaron moved his face closer, winking at him through his silver-rimmed glasses.

The boy also kissed him on the cheek, and he said softly:

"Don't be afraid, Mishenka. If there is a mistake, it is my fault. I asked Gith to take care of you. Maybe I didn't consider the nature of people like Gith. Maybe I actually knew it. I just wanted to give this kid A little lesson... Don't be afraid, Mishenka, it's not that you did something wrong, there are many things in the world that have no answers. His hand is still working, and I have already connected it. How dare he spit at you?!"