Sora stared morosely at the small cardboard box that looked like the files in it had just been carelessly tossed in. Knowing Riku, they likely were.
Sighing, he hefted the box onto a nearby table and started digging through it, trying to make some sense of order out of the mess. Some papers had slipped out of their folders, and he ended up searching through the many folders multiple times to replace them.
Once the files were all intact, he had to organize and update them before filing them away. He scowled at the documents inside some of the folders, wishing some traders could decide whether they were going to use letter size or legal size paper, instead of random smatterings of both. It made the whole filing process difficult to have multiple paper sizes… and several of these files were horribly outdated. He would have to update almost all of them.
Oh, yes. He was going to be very busy the rest of today.
He growled to himself and allowed a small moment of childishness as he dropped his head to the table and thumped his forehead on the surface a few times while groaning in frustration and irritation. This was going to be a bitch and a half.
He was going to kill Riku.
With another sigh, he lifted his head, grabbed the nearest folder, and started flipping through it. He frowned at a couple pages, grabbing a pen to scribble in a couple extra pieces of information, removing several papers and copying them down before replacing the originals with his own copies. Some traders and merchants had atrocious handwriting. At least his own was readable.
It could easily be said that while they both had a bit in common and got along well, Sora was and always had been very organized and a bit of neat freak, a good personality quirk for his part of this job, whereas Riku… wasn't. Sora was often cleaning up after the older boy, or throwing childish tantrums at Riku at the smallest messes that he left. Sora couldn't deny that he was probably a little anal about some things… the files and neatness in general, mostly, but he got some satisfaction in the fact that there were a few things about himself that threw Riku into about as much frustration as Riku's habit of making and leaving messes did to him.
If they hadn't grown up together, and were just partners in business, they probably would have killed each other by now. Sometimes that brother-like bond they shared was the only thing that stopped them both from murder. They certainly fought and bickered like siblings, and each knew exactly how to push the other's buttons. Personality-wise, they were polar opposites. Sora was open and friendly, often stopping to talk to random people on the street about absolutely nothing, just for the sake of talking to someone. Riku was very introverted, almost cold. He often didn't speak unless he was spoken to, and even then his replies were often monosyllabic. Riku only spoke openly if he was talking to Sora or if he was making a business deal with another trader or a merchant.
Riku was the businessman of the two. Sora didn't really have the mind to deal with some of the traders and merchants they often dealt with, mostly because he was never very fond of the air they had about them. Whenever they were present, Sora and Riku's roles seemed to reverse. Riku would become open and talkative, talking shop and business with the other parties with the same air of discussing the weather or sports. Sora would close in on himself, sitting stonily silent next to Riku with a look that Riku often described as his "poker face," but Sora just defined it as "pissed off and trying somewhat unsuccessfully to hide it."
He'd thought about it several times, but he still didn't know what it was that made him seem to automatically hate others in the business. Maybe it was just the feeling of sliminess they had about them that made him want to leave the room and bathe whenever he saw them. He also knew that slaves sometimes were treated poorly, and that was the one part of the job that he absolutely hated. He often wondered if he was the only one in the trade who believed that they needed to be treated like other people and not like the animals most traders and owners treated them like. He'd done the health exams on new slaves that came to them enough times to see the scars and evidence of malnourishment.
There was one scar that every slave shared, however. It was small, and usually near a shoulder or the middle of the back. A two-inch-long mark that showed where their Chaser, a small implant that allowed owners and traders to track escaped slaves for recapture, had been placed. Every slave had them, whether they had ever tried to escape or not. And if you were an escaped slave and were being tracked, you'd know it. Part of the health exam was to test the slave's Chaser to make sure it was still in working order, and every slave had flinched or cried out when he'd turned it on. An active Chaser was painful. Whether it was just a side effect, or a malicious part of the design of the thing, he didn't know.
He sighed and dropped the file he'd been working on on top of a small pile of finished files. He looked from that to the much larger pile of unfinished files, and groaned. He needed a break.
He pushed back from the table and moved to the kitchen, intending to make himself a sandwich, and probably one to bring to Kairi, too. He rummaged through the fridge, pulling out some lunchmeat and various vegetables, kicking the door shut behind him. As he moved to the counter and dumped the food on it, Riku appeared in the doorway, a small bag of groceries under one arm.
"Having fun yet?" He asked the younger boy as he moved to the fridge to put away what he had brought and to make himself something as well.
"No," Sora replied without looking up from what he was doing. "What the hell did you do? Throw them in there?"
"Well, yeah. I didn't really have time to organize stuff when I was putting them away."
Sora turned to Riku at this. "Putting them away! They're FILES. They go in the FILING CABINET. Not in a freaking cardboard box! Do you know how long it took me to put most of those things back together!"
Riku shrugged and hazarded a guess. "A long time?"
He was going to kill Riku.
Sora sighed and dragged a hand down his face. "Try about two hours." He replied through clenched teeth. "But whatever," he turned back to the sandwiches he was making. "I'm too tired to argue with you right now."
Riku grabbed an apple and crunched into it while plopping himself at the small table in the kitchen. "That's why Dad made you the bookkeeper and not me."
Sora snorted. "Smart move on his part. You'd be living under a pile of files and your own mess and laundry if I wasn't here."
Turning back to his sandwiches, Sora let the subject drop. Riku's father was still a delicate subject. He had taken Sora in when both he and Riku were very young. Sora didn't remember much before that, and all he really had of any significance to his past was a small necklace he had been found with. It wasn't much really, just a very simplified key on a black cord, but it was all he had, and he always wore it under his loose shirt, never taking it off. Riku's father had told him to hold on to it, that it was important.
Riku's father was a slave trader, and he trained Riku in the business from a young age. Sora he had taught how to keep and maintain the records when it became obvious that Riku would never do it, mostly because little Sora often watched intently over the man's shoulder whenever he was maintaining old files. Both Riku and Sora had learned quickly, and when Riku's father had taken ill, the two boys took over the business and it continued running smoothly. When the man had finally lost the battle and succumbed to his sickness, he had left the business to the boys, mostly Riku, as Sora neither needed nor wanted a large part in it. He was just the bookkeeper.
That was many years ago, but Sora knew Riku still dwelled on it occasionally, and probably wasn't entirely over it. Sora was still saddened about it sometimes, as the man was just as much a father to him as he was to Riku, but he had been able to move on. He wasn't sure if Riku ever would, but neither of them really minded that, as it didn't seem to bother Riku much unless the subject was brought up. He knew it was troubling the other boy now, because the kitchen had fallen terribly silent after that.
He finished the second sandwich and left the kitchen. "I'm gonna go see how Kairi's doing." He said over his shoulder as he left the kitchen. Riku just waved over his own shoulder in response.
Shoving his own sandwich in his mouth to free a hand, he stopped at the hall closet on the way to the holding room and dug out a very thick blanket and a couple of fluffy pillows before continuing down the hall to where Kairi was.
He severely doubted it, given her circumstances, but he hoped she was having a better day than he was. He swore violently as he stubbed his toe on something, and lifted the bedding up to better look down at what he'd "found," to find a very thick book lying in the middle of the floor that he knew did not belong to him.
He was going to kill Riku.