8.1 Sweet night

Yomo made his way through the crowd enjoying the nightly flea market. At this time of year, such events flourished all over the city, allowing the inhabitants to enjoy the mild evening in a festive atmosphere. They were nostalgic after all. Nostalgic for the summer that had just left this part of the world for good, and nostalgic for the winter and its magic that had not yet arrived.

This in-between period, which left them all in a state of expectation from which they wanted to escape, was a bit like the cursed time of the year. The one that everyone wanted to get through in a hurry. The evening outings were therefore welcome in this somewhat gloomy atmosphere where everyone was looking for a way to distract themselves from the greyness that was setting in.

Yomo had received a call from Jin when he was leaving his last class. He and Nils had been working all day to catch up on the classes they had missed during the week, and they couldn't stand it anymore. They needed to get out. At least that's what Jin had said. But Yomo knew that Nils was the one who couldn't stand still after being locked up for a week in his flat, going in circles. "The princess needs to get out!" he had thought, laughing.

His friend's bruises had healed, and he could now go out without having to wear a mask and glasses. His black eye in particular, had diminished considerably, and with a bit of makeup, it was very easy to cover up. As for the rest, the bruises were still there, but they had faded and were already much less painful than a few days ago. In any case, they knew very well that it would take at least two weeks for the wounds to disappear completely. In the meantime, they had to be careful when they went out and make sure that Nils was not surprised by any involuntary physical contact that might awaken the pain of the purple marks all over his body.

Considering this, they made a date to go to the local flea market to get their minds off things. Yomo was delighted. He too needed something to take his mind off the busy weekend ahead. So he rode off as fast as he could on his pedal engine.

He was looking for them when he saw Nils waving his arm at him with a cotton candy in his hand. He approached.

"I see you've been waiting for me before enjoying yourselves..." he pretended to be offended.

"You took your time too, we've been here for twenty minutes already!" Nils retorted, looking as if he were on springs.

"Sorry, your highness, I didn't dare put my life in danger by running lights and overtaking cars so as not to keep you waiting," Yomo bowed in a grotesque bow that earned him a kick from his friend that he barely avoided.

Impassive, Jin watched them bicker. He was used to it. These two spent their time looking for each other. He just had to let them be, and eventually, tell them to shut up when he had something serious to say. But nothing impossible to bare with. He had trained the two puppies to respond to his reprimands at the risk of facing his anger.

They walked between the stalls of second-hand dealers who had come to exhibit the latest curiosities to passers-by eager for a change of scenery. The three friends had no purchases in mind but rather relied on the food stalls that abounded here and there, tempting with their equally yummy smells to make them forget their hellish week. Relieving themselves of all the stress accumulated over the last few days, they let themselves go in the sweet jovial atmosphere of this promising beginning of the evening.

"By the way, did you see my message in the conversation? Have you seen Neti since?" asked the tall, dark-haired man, stuffing a bite of waffle into his wide-open mouth to avoid getting chocolate all over himself.

"Ah, she came by earlier," Jin replied disinterestedly.

Nils, who had no idea, had looked up from his cotton candy, surprised as he asked what message they were talking about because he hadn't seen anything.

"Did she come by? Did you get a chance to talk then?" Yomo said, surprised at how quickly the young woman put her words into action.

Jin didn't answer right away. He took a sip of his spicy hot wine before continuing with his choice of words.

"I didn't let her in," he explained, looking straight ahead.

"You didn't? What do you mean?" said Yomo, trying to understand what his friend meant. "You mean you didn't explain anything else to her? Did she at least see Nils?" he asked, turning his head towards his friend who was swallowing the last remaining bite of cotton candy and licking the stick meticulously, listening to the conversation with one ear.

Nils was a walking belly, and he loved sweets. Nothing could stop him when he got it into his head that he was going to indulge.

"I didn't chee her, Nechi," he articulated with difficulty, his mouth still full of the pink sugar cloud.

Yomo looked questioningly at Jin who was still staring straight ahead. Jin sighed.

"Yomo, I understand that you feel bad for her and that you think it's unfair that she's being left out, but we're not just talking about drama between friends." he began. "We're talking about problems with the mafia, a potentially dangerous situation for Nils and even for us. It's a case that interests the police, and potentially the government as well, given its scale. She's not close enough to us to be able to handle a situation like this."

He finished his sentence by looking into the tall, dark-haired man's eyes with his beautiful blue ones. Yomo thought for a moment.

"But that's all of us anyway," he replied, licking the chocolate off his waffle. "In the end, we're all caught up in this because we're friends with Nils, whether we like it or not. To question our involvement in it would be nothing more than questioning our friendship with Nils."

He glanced carefully at the subject of the conversation, but he was totally disinterested in what his friends were saying as he was focused solely on his churros that he had just bought after throwing away his perfectly licked cotton candy stick.