Chapter Text
“It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens,
and in the depths of the emerald seas,
and upon every grain of sand in the vast deserts,
that the world which we see is an outward and visible dream
of an inward and invisible reality.”
. . .
Once upon a time, there was a golden city.
In the center of the Golden City atop the tallest minaret, were three gold balls. The ancients had prophesied that if the three golden balls were ever taken away, harmony would yield to discord, and the city would fall to destruction and death.
But the mystics had also foretold that the city might be saved by the simplest soul, with the smallest and simplest of things.
In the city, there dwelt a lowly shoemaker.
Also in the city, existed a thief...
. . .
In a faraway land, beyond violet-peaked mountains of stone, a beautiful river oasis flows through the desolate sands of the Arabian desert. In the center of the crystal blue water lay a towering island cityscape, the river flowing around it to each side and encapsulating it— an island city within an island of water within a sea of desert sand.
Just past dawn, sunlight spreads across the empty bazaar of a dazzling city. Cleared of its tents and carts and stands, the tiles of the courtyard zigzag off in a diamond-shaped pattern of golds, browns, creams, and oranges. The buildings are of smooth stucco with brown ceramic-tiled rooftops, stacked up and jutting out in a maze without pattern or order. Towers of polished white stone with golden caps stand tall, opulent and sparkling richly in the sun. Windows and walls are decked with textiles and spice bags. Laundry lines stretch from house to house through alleyways, clothes fluttering high up into the sky. Cypress, Greek juniper, and pine shrubs grow from turreted balconies, framing keyhole windows shaped like the Mughal domes of the temples. Staircases, wooden balconies, awnings, doors and windows, they become a beautiful patchwork quilt the farther into the distance you look.
The tight urban spaces are crammed with buildings and residences, stacked up and slotted close enough to suffocate, but the bazaar, the open flat area down in the courtyard, is perfect for congregating— and better still before a soul is awake.
Well. One soul is.
Over the sunlit tiles, through the cheery brown buildings and their tangle of colorful striped awnings, the city dreams. Peddlers sleep outside with coin cups, slumped into corners with their pack of wares. Dogs lay with their heads on their paws. Through the courtyard, past a merrily splashing fountain, coated in glittering jeweled tiles and stone statuary, the dawn reaches its warm fingers through the front window of a dingy store.
It's a cobbler's shop. The sun sparkles down and falls onto the back of a sleeping boy, lying curled up on a rug. He’s fallen asleep among his tools, which are strewn out next to him in a pile.
The shop is absolutely crammed to the brim with shoes. The downstairs is packed with wares, hanging in pairs from the ceiling, practically blocking the doorway, forcing one to duck and weave to get inside. Upstairs is the workshop. Leather lays in rolls on the floor, cut to pieces in the shapes of shoes and boots and slippers and sandals. Tables are overflowing with pins and measuring cords, spools of thread with needles sticking out. Hammers and chisels and knives and whittles and scissors and wooden models of feet of different sizes are stacked and piled and scattered everywhere. In the center of it all lay the young man.
Although his eyes are closed, he is working in his sleep, hands fumbling slowly through the motions, the muscle-memory having become automatic after endless labor.
A young man of twenty, perhaps younger, perhaps older, and pale as a marble column. His hands are large and unwieldy for the delicate work of gripping a tiny needle and thread, of holding a shoe tack steady. His clothes are grey from use and ragged enough to fall to pieces, as evidenced by the medley of patches covering the fabric. His own rough shoes are tatters, his toes sticking out and bound with a rag. Bristly hair of dark brown nestles beneath a cloth cap, his eyes sweetly closed, two crescent moons of dark lashes.
He lays in a bare patch on a woven rug, surrounded by tacks. Let’s not forget the tacks.
They’re absolutely everywhere. Sharp iron shoe tacks are strewn on the ground, piled up in boxes on the shelves, scattered any area where he must have been working. They’re even locked into his knuckles, held fast between his fingers, they’re bitten into his lips, held in his teeth for later use.
By contrast to his hardworking and threadbare appearance, his mindless hands stitch an intricate design on a delicate crimson shoe, a thread of brilliant gold pinpricking its way across the surface. He’s not just any poor shoemaker. It’s clear he’s an artist.
Kagami Taiga is an artist with a tender and gentle heart, whose hands bring forth amazingly detailed designs, a fantastic imagination, a wild and fiery spirit caged within a squallored shop. A boy who can live the most humble and impoverished life, and yet dream the most beautiful dreams—
And the single waking soul in the vast city, that soul has been watching.
He’s been watching the little shop for a few days now, some would call it casing the joint, but whatever— He’s been watching the shop and the big recluse that lives there, and he’s ready to pay him a visit.
Across the empty bazaar, flies buzz just above a wall of stone bricks, and then beneath them, a head pops up. A little grubby face swiftly looks around and then zips back down.
The flies follow him in a swarm as he huddles along to a saddle shop, standing empty as the owner sleeps upstairs, blissfully unaware. A tiny hand whips out and yanks a woven saddle down from the stall, swiftly pulling it into a coat— a shapeless, heavy, filthy, filthy coat.
It hangs on his skinny body like an amorphous green-gray-brown blob, concealing him from stinky head to grubby toes and giving him the appearance of being larger than he really is. His sleeves droop over his hands unless he pushes them up, optimal for swiping. It drags along the ground behind him as he shuffles and scuttles over the stone street, the edge ragged and dusty.
Tiny hands and feet with bony fingers and toes occasionally peek out of his disgusting coat, the only visible body parts other than his head. A white hat sits on shaggy hair of faded blue, capping a plain face. All in all, he’s completely unremarkable. The only notable characteristic on his unmemorable face is that it’s completely neutral. An uncreased brow, a flat mouth, and two round and very dull eyes that stare forward in a calm but rather unsettling way, utterly expressionless.
The type of person who always gets passed over in a crowd, never draws attention, never gets noticed.
Kuroko was made for the life of a crook.
Feeling pleased with himself, he breaks cover and bolts for the fountain, but quick as he is, he can’t escape the flies, which trail him like a cloud.
No one’s about on this merry morn, and the bazaar is left defenseless, ripe for him to pick over as he pleases. Well, no. Actually, he can see someone else up and about, hears them singing in the early morning as they stroll on their way.
Kuroko sneaks up behind a young girl, skinny with light brown hair and slowly going about her business. Silently, he reaches out a hand to try and lift her purchase, a bundle of fruit, and suddenly—
He’s been grabbed around the wrist.
With unexpected strength, she flips him over her shoulder and throws him to the ground with a whomp— knocking the breath out of him. He’s so surprised he doesn’t struggle as she shakes him by the neck, throwing him this way and that, thrashing him good.
The loot he’s already collected flies from his pockets, scattering to the ground with a terrific clang and clatter, brass pots and glass jars and jewelry and useless articles snatched up by the hands of an opportunist zipping out of his baggy coat like candy from a pinata.
At last she hurls him to the ground, leaving him there like a chump, and goes on her way. Kuroko picks himself up from the pile and skitters away sheepishly, scurrying into an alley and disappearing.
Silent, tiny, and unobtrusive. A face no one remembers, incredibly plain, with a weak presence. He usually goes entirely unnoticed. He’s built to be the perfect thief.
His only problem is he’s criminally incompetent. And he never learns shit.
Kuroko dusts himself off, and because, hey, nobody saw anyway, gets back to business and creeps along the alleyway for his next victim— he knows exactly who he’s going to visit now. Someone more defenseless, y’know, no more tiny girls who’ll beat him to a pulp.
He peeks into the cobbler’s shop.
Upstairs, unseen by Kuroko's blank-faced, peeping, burgling eyes, Kagami is moving in his sleep, twining a cat’s cradle in his drowsy fumbling fingers, snapping a beautiful pattern into a shoe. He takes a breath and sighs, a hiss coming through his lips as he clenches his teeth on the tacks in his mouth.
Kuroko creeps through the doorway, lingering on the front step as, even at his insignificant height, he has to duck beneath the heels of boots dangling from the ceiling. The whole shop is dark and hanging with shoes and boots, shelves stacked up in orderly rows and filled to bursting. The ceiling and walls are filled to capacity with hanging bundles of shoes. Ornamental slippers, silk shoes with cloth soles, leather boots, sandals, colorful beaded jutti, mojari made of animal hide with durable heels. Beautiful works of craftsmanship made from fine materials, much more expensive and becoming than the humble living quarters, the workshop, the shopfront— and Kuroko spares a thought. Such beautiful wares set out for sale, and yet he can’t make a living? His shop is crammed to the brim with wonderful merchandise, and it sits unsold.
Creeping up the stairs, he sees the reason why. One he’s suspected for a time over the last week as he’s caught glimpses of this guy, holed up in here working late into the night, but up close he can definitely confirm it.
No bed to be seen, a shabby, dirty guy sleeps on a mat, hands lazily roving an array of tools and a half-finished shoe. Rolling over, his hands fall still at last as he slumps to the floor, and his coin purse droops out of his pocket along with nails, spools of thread, measuring tape, and other tools. His pale complexion makes him appear frail and skinny, but Kuroko can see the swell of muscle in his back and arms, in his thick legs. He’s curled up on the rug, but as Kuroko gets closer, he sees he’s much bigger than he looks, probably quite imposing when he’s standing up straight.
And what else does he see. Brown hair with rich red tones and fair skin tinged olive. A nose with a prominent bridge that slopes down. Mediterranean. Who knows which city-state he hailed from.
Seems he’s not finding much business. He could charge a pretty penny for such beautifully crafted work, but the type of people who could afford that kind of thing don’t want to have dealings with a foreigner employed in a low caste profession. If he were selling silk, perhaps it'd be a different story—
No wonder he’s dressed like a beggar. He very nearly is one.
One might think that would draw sympathy, that Kuroko may find it too low to prey on one facing such hardship already and would leave him in peace, but his eyes remain indifferent and blank.
One might also think it reckless to come into a person’s home this way. One might think Kuroko would avoid a situation that might get him his second beating before six o’clock. He might have avoided such a serious threat, considering this guy could probably break him with his pinkie.
But Kuroko’s criminally foolish, and all he’s thinking is that he’s come across a major score, disregarding the danger and overlooking the poor moral character required of him to pilch this guy’s last silver shekel. How can he call himself a thief if he can’t land such an easy target.
Besides, asleep like that, he’s a sitting duck.
‘Come to Mama,’ he thinks as his eyes spy the money pouch, exposed just for him.
He approaches the sleeping man, creeps up behind him, around his long legs and up his back, gads this guy is humungous, like— if there was real macro and micro, he and Kuroko would be it. Utterly silent, Kuroko keeps his eyes zeroed in on the purse, eyes on the money, bitch. He lifts it carefully and gently pulls the drawstring, peering his face in.
A moth promptly flies out into his face, nearly making him sputter.
… Empty? Completely empty?
He dumps it inside out. There’s nothing in it at all. Not even lint. He’d thought the guy looked like he had it rough, but there’s not even a single coin here. How can that be? Maybe it’s in the other pocket? Or perhaps he keeps his money in the shop somewhere... How can there be nothing?
Still puzzling over the empty purse, Kuroko doesn’t realize that a fly in his ever-present swarm has broken away from the group and landed on the cobbler’s big nose, which twitches and squirms at the tickling.
‘This bitch empty—’
The sleeping giant rolls suddenly, taking Kuroko with him, laying him out flat with a not insignificant thud—
Fuck.
Kuroko lays there stock still, staring at the ceiling, holding his breath to see if he’d wake. Not that it matters. His substantial weight has Kuroko pinned to the floor. He couldn’t squirm out if he wanted to.
He really must be exhausted, because he’s still deeply asleep.
That doesn’t mean he lays still though. The big oaf picks up one of Kuroko’s hands as if somehow in his sleep-addled brain, he can sense where it is. He holds Kuroko's thumb up as if it were a nail, and then hammers it with a little hammer, rapping it hard and with startling accuracy.
Kuroko clenches his teeth in silent agony, unable to shout out in pain for fear of waking him.
Fuck, what’s next, thumbscrew torture? It’s like the guy knows. Is this karma? Nah, can’t be.
He subtly writhes in his grip, but he’s holding fast. Kuroko looks on in bewilderment as he picks up a needle. It gleams wickedly in the light of the dawn, and he has a moment of sheer fright, just before the cobbler dives in with the needle and starts… sewing him.
Or rather, them— together.
Ah great. How’d he get himself into this one. Why me.
He looks up suddenly when he hears the sound of grand trumpets from outside.
As he has been here thieving and getting spooned by a sleep-hugger, the city has awoken and has started about its business. People have put out their washing, started their breakfast, set up their stalls, and the call of trumpets draws a crowd into the town square as the bazaar opens up for business. Loud shrill voices call out, singing to announce the procession of the Grand Vizier of the palace.
Kuroko’s face falls into an even deeper deadpan.
Great, not this guy.