[H] Brother’s Skirt - Chapter 9

The city felt so alien that wandering around felt like navigating a maze, making job hunting an even bigger challenge. I was injured, and a few hours under the sun had me so dizzy I ran headfirst into a bus stop sign. My brother hurriedly carried me to a nearby fast food joint and got me an icy drink that was more ice than water. Given my condition, all I could do was recover, while my brother could only look for jobs that allowed him to keep an eye on me.

My brother noticed a convenience store across from the fast food place was hiring. He told me to wait for him at the restaurant while he checked it out. I felt better after resting for a bit and insisted on going with him. We had already tried at two or three other convenience stores, but they turned him down since he couldn’t provide any educational credentials, and one of the managers even mocked him for being “naive.” I showed them my stitched-up elbow and dared the manager to repeat his words, and he shut up.

The convenience store across the street rejected my brother for the same reasons. The manager was busy dealing with a broken scanner and cash register, with customers waiting to pay. He had to send an employee to check the price of items and come back to the register to calculate.

My brother said, “This water is four and a half, the ice cream is five, these chips are eight, and these are six seventy, totaling twenty-four thirty.”

Before the employee could step away from the register, my brother had already calculated the total.

The manager paused, then after the employee confirmed the prices, he asked my brother when he could start. My brother said he could start that night. It was a 24-hour store, and the night shifts paid more.

My brother and I went to buy some cheap meat buns for dinner. I asked him, “Isn’t it tough to work overnight?”

My brother, happy to have grabbed the last few buns, said, “It’s quiet at night at the convenience store. I’ll get you a lounge chair so you can sneak in and sleep behind the counter. Once we get paid, we can rent a place to stay.”

“Aren’t you going to sleep?”

“Of course!” My brother blew on the buns to cool them and fed them to me. “There’s a park nearby, not too crowded. I can rest there during the day.”

That park had more mosquitoes than people. While my brother slept there during the day, I was in charge of swatting the mosquitoes away. I didn’t let my brother buy the lounge chair; cleaning the floor behind the counter was enough for me to manage some sleep. On his first day, a coworker showed him around while the coworker slacked off behind the counter, and I stayed close to my brother, watching him stock the shelves.

“What if we get caught?”

My adoptive parents were probably too busy fleeing to care about me, but my brother’s adoptive parents had invested too much in him to ignore his situation.

My brother looked me in the eyes and said, “Then we run again.”

During the days my brother was supposed to be taking entrance exams, he pretended to go but really took care of me. His adoptive parents didn’t suspect anything. He made sure we avoided cameras and even bought hats for us to wear. Working required ID, but hopefully, the manager wasn’t too diligent about reporting everything. Right now, it was about surviving each day. We were more afraid of being caught and locked up than of struggling to get by.

“Bro, how about we run farther away once we get paid, instead of renting a place?”

My brother thought about it for a while and seemed about to agree, then suddenly glanced at me, his ears turning red. “You’re not just trying to screw me over.”

I couldn’t do much in the store because of the cameras, so I just whispered in his ear, “I could screw you anytime, anywhere.”

I was just talking big; in reality, there wasn’t much we could do. Besides housing, we faced another serious issue: showering.

My brother had brought some clothes along, but without a place to stay, we had nowhere to wash up. Public bathhouses were too expensive. It was feasible to brush our teeth using water from a public restroom, but showering was out of the question without locking the restroom doors. My brother’s solution was to shower at a public pool’s facilities. The entrance fee for the pool was cheaper than the bathhouse, but washing there every day was costly, so we decided to go on the days he had off from work, using towels to clean up on other days.

To reduce sweating, we found another trick—hanging out in shopping malls. These public spaces are air-conditioned and open for long hours, where people can stay as long as they like without sweating. We found a mall with an ice skating rink and a row of seats around it for spectators. I would sleep well at night and let my brother rest his head on my lap during the day, even saving the effort of swatting mosquitoes. When the time came, we would head to the convenience store, where he worked and I slept.

A week after our escape, I found a laid-back job: online chatting. Most of the sessions were late at night, and the conversations were mostly venting, though some were borderline passionate. Once my brother got used to his night shifts, he was the only one watching the store, and I was more free to move around.

I crouched at his feet, asking the customer on the phone, “Where do you want my fingers to go?”

My brother looked down at me, frowning. His shorts were loose, and I could easily reach in. He pressed his hand over mine through the fabric.

“‘Where’ is where?” I asked the customer.

I pinched my brother’s thigh, then took advantage of the flesh sinking in to slip under his briefs and rub his perpetually hidden buttocks. I looked up at my brother and saw his darkened face.

I quickly asked the customer, “Oh? A ‘hole’? Does your place have a hole? Like a mouse hole? You need a professional for that, my fingers won’t cover it.”

My brother couldn’t help but chuckle.

The customer had less than a minute left, so I reminded him, “It’s getting late, better go to sleep or you’ll be late for work in the morning. Good night.”

After ending the call, I hugged my brother’s legs and said, “Don’t be mad, it’s just work.”

My brother crouched down to my level. “How about we don’t take those kinds of jobs?”

I agreed, “Okay, but you have to buy me something.”

I walked to the shelf in front of the cashier, picked out a box, and threw it to him. After he scanned it and paid for it out of his own pocket, he stuffed it into my pocket.

“This stuff isn’t cheap, use it sparingly,” he advised me.

“It’s not up to me how often it’s used.”

“So should I just say no?”

“That requires a discussion and agreement from both sides, you can’t just rush into things.”

That’s how we spent our nights: bantering, flirting, napping when tired, and discussing what kind of apartment we’d like to rent, making plans as if they were just dreams.

We celebrated a week without being caught by eating mangoes picked from roadside trees.

After two weeks, we celebrated with the cheapest bag of chips.

After three weeks, each of us had an ice pop to celebrate.

After four weeks, my brother got his paycheck and, with some pleading and no need for a deposit, we rented our first apartment.