Place to Call Home
AoXiang bounced his foot, thump, thump, thumping on the ground in the silent room. He surveyed the room he was locked in, waiting for a police officer to come and interrogate him.
He wasn’t supposed to get caught. John told him that the store closes at 9:00 pm, and there shouldn’t have been anyone inside. He walked in 15 minutes before the time and haunted the second floor waiting for the clerk to turn off the lights, until he heard the telltale sound of the shutter dropping.
Casual but cautious, he made his way down the stairs, keeping his footsteps silent; he couldn’t let anyone on the other side of the shutter hear him, and even if the cameras caught him, he had his hood up. He wasn’t expecting to see the shutter only half down, the clerk at the cashier and five others in the store.
Panicked, he took his gun out and shot two blanks, gun aimed at the ceiling, while he slammed the shutter down, scaring everyone there, except for the woman who was with another woman; she just looked exasperated at his decision, but crouched with everyone else. Her hand was behind her back; he guessed she was the one who called the police on him.
The creak of the door snapped him out of his recollection. He turned to see the same woman from the store. Black hair tied in a high ponytail instead of the claw clip it was in, but still in the black sport shorts, white shirt with a graphic of some indie show he’s pretty sure the Engineer watches, a grey hoodie on top and oddly enough, a pair of white crocs with quoted charms decorating it.
The woman looked like she owned the place, relaxed even though there was a criminal in front of her, and she slammed herself into the chair opposite him. He stared at her with suspicion, and she giggled in his face.
“Relax! I don’t bite! I just wanna ask a few questions, nothing about why you thought it was a good idea to break into the store half an hour before closing, though”
‘John, you goddamn liar’
“Soo…. What’s your connection to the drug ring ‘The Oil Rig’?”
He flinched at the name. ‘How did she know-’
“You have their symbol tattooed on your neck; you don’t cover it well”
“...Dammit”
She chuckled, “Anyway, what do you know about it?”
“Why the hell would I tell you?” He sneered at her. Why would he tell a cop about The Oil Rig? He was loyal to them, but more so, to John.
“Because I know where you can find your mum”
His flinch spoke more words than she expected, jackpot.
“If you tell me what you know about the Rig, then I’ll drop in a word to lighten your sentence, and I’ll tell you where your deadbeat of a mum is hiding herself”
To AoXiang, the deal meant more than one would expect. He had been looking for her for years since she left, taking more than half of the money they had, which dropped him and his dad into the lower working class, and he dropped out of college. Hopefully, she still had most of the money, but if not, well, what’s another crime to what he’s done so far?
“Fine, what do you want to know?” She cheered, jumping out and down before quickly settling down, realising where she was, he was starting to suspect whether she was an actual cop or not.
“Anything, really. Locations of deals, habits, where they live, if you know any, who’s in charge of what, so on and so forth, anything will do”
“Hm…. Well, there isn’t much really, I haven’t been with them a lot so they haven’t told me much about any deals, the Engineer likes to go to a specific place to smoke every other day, Driller is a germaphobe, I don’t know much about the boss but they like to call him the ‘Toolpusher’, theres also Jo- Roughneck who helps with the manual labour, then theres me, a Roustabout with the other minions who help with the manual labour and other smaller things.”
“Yeah, yeah, I already knew most of that. What else is there?”
“Well, uh…” He stumbled over his words until he remembered, “You wanted to know about living situations, right?”
“If I can, yeah” It’ll narrow down where she would be likely to find one, but she left it out.
“Then, uh, first things first, we don’t have that great of living conditions. Even though some of us can afford an actual apartment like the higher-ups, some of us have it worse. Roughneck lives in one of the subdivided units with his family, but it’s a problem with the small size, and the hygiene isn’t great. But he’s on the waiting list for the public rental housing, but who knows how long that’ll take.
Some of us live in the cage home type of units, they’re uh, smaller, a lot smaller than one would expect. They’re all wires and sharp edges, with just enough space to lie down or sit up, although you have to hunch. They are often, if not always, stacked in pairs, some areas having dozens, like the ones you see on the news or documentaries, with single bathrooms and a shared kitchen area. Crowded, unhygienic, and the ventilation sucks. I went to visit one of the other Roustabouts since they haven’t been appearing much, and his place was suffocating. There were no windows, the fans were barely working, and there was so. Many. Places with mold building up.
The people with the closet homes or bed spaces have it only a little bit better. The ones with bed spaces have their rooms made with wood instead of wires, only a slight improvement with a lock for privacy, but they’re not even bigger than a ping-pong table! The people with closet homes are actually one of the few that have an actual door instead of one of wires or sliding cabinet doors, with room to actually stand with a taller ceiling. I was honestly thinking about moving into one, but thought against it after other Roustabouts were complaining to me about the amount of space they get to store their things.”
She watched him change his expressions through his rant, hesitance bled into annoyance, transformed into worry and fear, then into exasperation. By the end of it, he was heaving and was glaring at the table like it offended him.
“...That’s all right?”
“That’s all I know is what it is. I’m sure some of them might actually be homeless and are using this as a last-ditch attempt to earn some cash. You’ve got all you want from me, so uh,” He gulped and mumbled something she couldn’t hear.
“What was that?”
“Could you uh, try and reduce it as much as you can? I don’t want my dad catching wind of this. He’s a good guy, and I don’t want to disappoint him”
“Well, I think that might be a bit late to mention”
“What?” His anxiety increased tenfold. What the hell is his dad doing here?!
“Your dad is in the waiting room asking for ya, I told him I was going to check on you, and I did! So I have to go now and not get caught-”
“YiTian?! What are you doing here?”
They both turned to see a tall man with black spiky hair shooting up at all sides underneath his police cap. He looked young, around the same age as the woman, and AoXiang realised he hadn’t caught her name. Until now, that is.
“His dad wanted me to check on him, so I did! Oh, and be nice and give him a light sentence, ’kay? He’s a nice guy who just wanted to help his dad. Bad living conditions, you get me?”
The spiky-haired sighed and looked at her, annoyed, “I’m not the one in charge of that, and you’re not even supposed to be here! You aren’t even police!”
“But you are! And I get police best friend privileges!”
“Those don’t even exist! Now get out before Chief Li gets here!” He dragged her from her seat, grabbed her wrist and marched out.
“Thanks for answering my questions! Let’s keep this secret, ’kay?”
“What do you even- Ugh, I can’t right now”
The door slammed shut as he processed what had happened. He had given information to some random person who was actually not the police but was friends with them and knew where his mum was. Probably. Hopefully.
