Syndedeménos (Connected)

CHAPTER 13

When Keenan and Mary entered the dining room, Pygmy still closed his eyes and was saying a prayer. Several small children who opened their eyes immediately closed their eyes again when Keenan saw them. In their minds Keenan was one of the adults like Haylie so they were afraid of being scolded when they didn't follow the directions or regulations that apply there. Not too interested in the condition of the dining room, Keenan walked past the backs of the children who were sitting in the middle of the room, then headed to the right of the dining room.

The next room was half the size of the dining room with two water tanks with a volume of one thousand liters each on top of plastic pallets. Next to the tank was an elongated shelf that holds eight sets of toiletries in a twenty-four-liter bucket. Inside the bucket there was a dipper, shampoo, soap and toothpaste that can be used together. The eight sets of toiletries corresponded to the number of bathrooms behind the two doors in the room.

During the day, Haylie had introduced Keenan to every item that was shared and also provided the tools that each person uses, such as toothbrushes and towels. And what made Keenan confused and amused at the same time was when Haylie had given him his bag which had been in the back seat of his car. The contents of the bag were clothes that were prepared by Thalia if Keenan didn't come home last night. And Keenan really didn't come home.

Keenan laughed at his current state. The more he paid attention to the details prepared in this kîdnapping, the more things would not make sense if they were mere coincidences. Likened to a puzzle, Keenan was collecting small pieces of the puzzle one by one to unite them with each other. But he couldn't figure out yet what the picture was when the puzzle was finished. So Keenan could only follow the plot that had been planned until he knew the perpetrator and the real motive of this kîdnapping.

According to the information he gave Mary, Keenan would use the dinner time together to take a shower. The time was right because no one will come out from the dining room -except Mary before- so that Keenan could freely carry out his bath routine. Keenan also took one of the eight sets of toiletries from the shelf and emptied the bucket so that it could be filled with water from the water tank. While waiting for the water to fill up, he tries to correlate the situation in each room he has observed with the question asked when he was still tied up upstairs: where am I?

After further review, Keenan concluded that the room used as a residence was a former gym located on the top floor of a mall or an office. Apart from the fact that there are quite a lot of bathrooms, namely four rooms each for men's and women's bathrooms, another room beside the dining room has a large enough area to put gym equipment. In the largest room there are also several small rooms that have lots of glass on the walls which are usually used for gymnastics classes or other sports activities. Keenan praised people who had the idea of choosing a place to live like this because the gym is quite large and has quite a lot of bathrooms when compared to the number of children being cared for in this place.

Not long after Keenan gave a compliment, he had to experience an incident that made him swear. When he entered one of the bathroom cubicles, a cockroach had crossed his legs.

" ShÎt ! What other strange insects will appear after this?!"

A cockroach while Keenan was taking a bath and a grasshopper when he woke up from his sleep. The two insects that Keenan hated the most had made him even more wary. Keenan even opened his eyes while washing his hair to see if the brown creature with antennae would creep back up on his feet. Keenan's plan to freshen up while taking a bath turns into a disaster for him.

Keenan sped up all his activities and tried to leave the bathroom as quickly as possible. After returning all the toiletries to the shelves, Keenan immediately crossed the dining room which was still bustling and didn't care at all when many pairs of eyes turned to him. Keenan showed a cold face that didn't want to be disturbed in the eyes of others even though at this time Keenan's eye movements were faster in exploring the floor he was stepping on and Keenan's heart was still beating fast because he was shadowed by other cockroaches that can pass anytime anywhere .

As he walked, Keenan cursed insects in his heart. For a dozen years, he had only found the insect he hated once and only been in his garden, so the occurrence of a cockroach in the bathroom of Aldrich's residence was impossible. It seemed that all the maids in the Aldrich residence had been briefed in such a way as to ensure that not a single insect would be inside the Aldrich residence.

Currently Keenan was in the largest room in the shared bedroom. Even though the room was called a bedroom, Keenan sees it more as a sunbed because there was no mattress there at all. A bed for dozens of small children was just a very long cloth folded and stacked until it was about five millimeters thick. On top of the long cloth there were twenty thin pillows and twenty half a square meter of cloth for the children.

Keenan walked on until he reached the far side from where he entered. Keenan's bed was deliberately placed farthest from the dining room so he wouldn't be easy to escape. He looked at his bed that looked special compared to the other beds, namely two yoga mats that had been covered with cloth. Even the pillows and blankets for him looked new and clean. But what's the point of a special bed if Keenan wasn't going to sleep there tonight.

Because there was no electricity, the lighting only relies on the moonlight coming in through the outer glass that was not covered by the banner. Keenan picked up the bag that was placed on his bed with narrowed eyes while directing it at the line of light that entered the room. After making sure the bag was still tightly closed, Keenan calmly unzipped it. Like in the bathroom earlier, Keenan became alert near his bed because he found a grasshopper jumping on the pillow and almost hitting his face.

Keenan changed his clothes as quickly as possible and put his dirty white uniform into another part of the bag so it didn't come into contact with other clean clothes. Then Keenan walked quickly back to the dining room before he was startled by a green creature jumping here and there.