Things that never happened to Soran Ibrahim
Index/Timeline
"I would like to point out that I am really quite opposed to this idea. Where did you even get the kid?"
The air in the room is cold and smells funny, like dust and nothing. He knows the men are behind the mirror, although he cannot see them, or hear them. They're still there.
"We have people for that sort of thing. He won't be missed. Besides, we have to show that the subject can kill on order, even if the target is not an immediate threat."
The walls are white. The table is white - on top. Underneath it's dull grey. The chair is the same. The door he came through is white and featureless and there's no handle on the inside.
There's nobody else here, except for the men behind the mirror.
But he knows someone else is coming, so he sits on the chair and waits.
"Do try to recall that your 'subject' and your 'target' are both children, Doctor."
Another door opens.
"You've got a funny definition of 'children', my friend."
A boy steps through. He's older than Soran. And when he looks at Soran, Soran hears words inside his head. Not really hears, but they're there.
The words all run together, but he thinks they go what the fuck do these shitheads really think i'm going to ice some stupid scrawny bit of shit on their say it's fucking insulting not even a fucking challenge so fucking sick of this look at the stupid little fucker even al could kill it useless fucking fuck...
"You shouldn't swear," he says.
The boy look at him. Then he hears words again, this time clearer, like actual talking. Mouthy little fuck, aren't you? Whatever, I was planning to blow this fucking joint sooner or later anyway.
Afterwards, Soran says THANK YOU. Or tries to. It makes the other twin wince.
"You suck at that," says Halle, picking at the blood underneath his fingernails. "As soon as we're clear of this shit you're going to fuck right off, you hear me? We don't need you around."
Somehow, Soran never fucks right off. For some reason, Halle never makes him.
◊
He spies a dry spot to hide in and wait out the downpour; it's not quite big enough for him so his feet are going to get a bit wet. It's okay, though. It feels safe.
"Hey," someone says, and Soran reconsiders "safe", since most of his definitions of safe don't involve other people.
The kid is pretty small and skinny, though. He doesn't look like a fighter. Soran could probably take him. "Hey."
Judging by his clothes, he's in the same sort of situation as Soran. "You want to eat with us?" the kid says, hopefully.
Yeah, like he's going to take that bait easily. "Us?" Meaning the kid and his fucking pimp, probably.
"Saji, how many times do I have to tell you not to wander-- oh." A girl. Late teens, he thinks. Same state as the kid as far as clothes and dirt go. Looks tougher, though. "You collecting strays again?"
She makes Soran sound like a kitten. Soran is not a kitten. "I'm not hungry," he lies.
"There's not a huge amount," the girl says. "Just soup and shit. I'm Kinue, by the way."
"Don't say bad words." Saji tells her.
Kinue just grabs his hand and starts pulling him away. "Shush and come eat. You coming, fluff-head?"
"Soran." He doesn't know why he feels the need to correct her. They're never going to see each other again.
"Okay. You coming, Soran?"
He watches them go for a moment, fingering his knife. Then he decides (it has nothing to do with the way Kinue hugs Saji close to her and ruffles his hair, it is a purely logical decision) that self-sufficiency also means you can take soup from people stupid enough to give it to you for free.
And also, he thinks, trailing after them at a large enough distance to not look like he's eager for company or anything stupid like that, his hair is not fluffy.
◊
The boys-- Klaus isn't sure how old they are, Shirin is busy trying to track down the real documents-- huddle together, while Shirin and the woman from Child Services have a nice, friendly, chat with them.
Leaving Klaus to try and deal with the lunatic in metallic lycra hotpants that they've got stuck in detention cell four. The one who keeps throwing himself at the door as if he really thinks he can punch through steel.
They finally manage to wrestle him into one of the interview rooms and cuff him to the chair, which restricts his lunacy somewhat. "Are the princesses in another castle?" he demands.
At that point, Klaus almost gives up and puts him back in the cell until the psychiatric guys can get there in the morning. "What princesses?"
"I have proved my devotion by delivering them from their captivity!" the madman declares. "With the stealth of the ninja!"
Klaus wonders what the ninja have to say about getting pulled over for speeding with two half-dressed teenage boys clinging to each other in the back of your car. Still, he might get something out of this yet. "If you can tell me where you rescued them from," he suggests, "I'll see what I can do to-- rally the troops."
The madman looks like he wants to salute, but his hands are still cuffed to the chair. "You sir, are clearly another knight of the way of TRUTH and JUSTICE!" he declares, and gives Klaus all the information he needs to know.
When he emerges from the cell Shirin has located the documents, and the woman from Child Services is being treated for some sort of minor injury. "She thought she might give Saji-- that's the skinny one who looks like he's about to burst into tears-- a hug. Soran stabbed her with a pen. Found their files - fifteen and sixteen, although I know they don't look it, half-brothers on the father's side, no current known address listed. The nurses are looking over them now-- they agreed to it as long as they could stay together."
"I might be able to help you with that address," Klaus tells her. He's not looking forward to what they might uncover.
In the end, what they do find is an empty house. Ali Al-Saachez, supposed father, is nowhere to be found. Plenty of evidence left behind, most of it relating to people not Al-Saachez. Pretty much all of it makes Klaus sick to his stomach.
The kids run off from the first shelter they place them in, then the second. The third time they steal a motorbike and disappear into the metaphorical sunset. Klaus, frankly, wishes them all the luck in the world, but they have to log the bike as stolen property anyway.
It turns out not to matter either way; they never find them.
◊
Klaus throws the office door open so hard it rattles. It doesn't improve his mood any. "Will somebody please do something about those vultures hanging around outside?"
Shirin gazes at him, unflappably calm as always. "Please tell me you didn't punch any journalists, Klaus."
"Not even the ones who really deserved it," Klaus says, "and fuck knows there's a lot of those. The words we cannot comment on ongoing investigations don't seem to be sinking into their thick skulls. If I had my way--"
Shirin interrupts before the rant can really get going with a simple statement that stops Klaus in his tracks. "Ali Al-Saachez was Saji Crossroad's father."
"What?"
"Took me all morning to unravel the files," Shirin tells him, nodding at the computer screen. "School files have him transferring out to be home-schooled, seem to have forgotten to mention by who; birth certificate only lists the mother, but there's a transfer of custody about a year ago-- backdated a couple months and tossed under a level four security seal which I somehow doubt was for the good of the poor kid. We're waiting on DNA results to confirm. You have any luck with the sister or the mother?"
"Managed to narrow down the date of the sister's disappearance; the last known residence tracks back through a management firm to Al-Saachez. The mother-- big fat blank on her. Sent a copy of the last known photo around, maybe something will turn up."
He's not feeling very hopeful on that one, or on the idea that Kinue Crossroad is still alive.
"Al-Saachez's toxicology report coming up for you on screen 3, Shirin," one of the forensic guys calls, "It's a fucking doozy."
That's a technical term, clearly. Klaus would call it holy shit that's a lot of drugs. There's a low whistle from somewhere at the back; most of the team working on this case are now fixated on the numbers scrolling up on the screen. "So he overdosed, then?"
"Nah," forensic-guy says, cheerfully, like they all do when something really horrific comes up. Klaus just knows he won't like what comes next. "He was still alive when the kid started chopping him up, for sure. Bled out."
Yeah, Klaus saw the crime scene. He doesn't need the added visuals, thank you. He ignores the ongoing discussion to focus on screen 2, where the figure of Soran Ibrahim is silently pacing. There's no sound on that channel, but Klaus gets the feeling that if there was it would still be exactly as quiet.
Every bit of evidence they round up only corroborates the kid's story further; Klaus, as much as the whole business makes him nauseous, had a suspicion from the first moment that Soran was telling the truth. It's not a pretty thought, but when you look at the kid's eyes you can believe it; that in the early hours of the morning, while Klaus was still asleep, he quietly suffocated his brother, laid his body out neatly as any undertaker, cushioned by pillows on every side, and then picked the lock on his door and went upstairs to kill his father.
All Klaus can say is, it's been a long time since a case gave him fucking nightmares.
◊
Kinue always gets up at the last minute, throws herself into a kitchen chair with her hair still wet and grabs the coffee with both hands. Saji always scolds her for it while he makes her eggs. She always tells him he's turning into their grandmother. It's kind of their tradition.
Also, Kinue tends to burn things so he doesn't like letting her near the stove to do her own breakfast. "I have to go early to work today," he says. "There's a new pilot."
"Is he crazy?" Kinue asks. "They're all crazy, as I remember."
"Not all," Saji objects, although okay, he can't exactly think of a very good counterexample at the second. It probably doesn't help that the first of the pilots Kinue ever met was Patrick, because as soon as he heard Saji's sister was a reporter he insisted that of course he'd be happy to give her an interview and wouldn't shut up about it until Kinue came to do just that.
Or that, while she was there, they said she might as well interview Graham as well.
Some of the senior engineers call Graham Crazy Graham, which Saji thinks is a bit mean. It's more like worryingly overenthusiastic Graham, anyway. Like the time when Saji got his locker filled with roses because he'd helped fix a problem with Graham's hydraulic systems-- and no, whatever Ian says, that is not an euphemism for anything, because ew.
Unfortunately, he can't tell Kinue that this new pilot won't be crazy; firstly, he hasn't exactly met Soran Ibrahim a.k.a. Setsuna F. Seiei yet, and secondly, he doesn't want to give away the fact that he already knows who the newcomer is and may have kind of read maybe every magazine article on him, which tend to all say the same thing because he doesn't do interviews. And also watched that one bootleg video on loop for a while, the one where he does tricks that should be physically impossible even in a top of the range plane, let alone the thing he was flying.
Not that Saji doesn't intend to be professional about it all. It's just that Setsuna F. Seiei is really cool.
Besides, the way Graham has been going on about him, it's not like anybody will notice if Saji fanboys a little.
He doesn't get the chance, actually; when he gets to work, Setsuna F. Seiei has already been whisked off to have meetings with people who are important; i.e., not Saji. So much for the be-there-when-he-turns-up plan. Saji resigns himself to having to spend the morning doing work instead.
As Saji is the most junior member of the team, he gets all the messy jobs. He doesn't mind, normally, because you actually learn a lot from doing all those things. Today, there are a variety of components that need cleaning, and testing for damage; the pilots tend to go through a lot of parts, the way they fly.
It's kind of meditative. Each component has to be properly disassembled before cleaning and part testing and then reassembled for final tests. He has a certain order he lays things out in, each piece cleaned and tested and put in its place, so that when it comes time to put everything back together again it's all in order.
He keeps his hands clean as he can, of course, so as not to transfer any dirt onto things he's already cleaned, but inevitably when he does this, no matter how careful he tries to be, smears of grease make their way onto his cheek, or his clothes, or into his hair. Ian says it's cute.
Saji hates being called 'cute'.
Suddenly, he realises he's being watched. Someone is sitting in the corner, just watching him take bits of engine apart. For a moment he thinks the eyes are gold, but they're not anymore when the stranger comes closer.
Of course they're not; it must have been a trick of the light. People's eyes don't glow like that. Before Saji can do either of the two things he really should do right now, those being stop freaking out, and introduce himself to Setsuna F. Seiei like a normal person, he hears other voices; loud voices.
Graham and Patrick, no doubt. Setsuna F. Seiei's oddly blank expression takes on a slightly hunted look.
"Um," Saji says, and jerks his head towards the storage 'rooms'. Not really rooms. They're kind of large cupboards. Setsuna nods at him and silently disappears into one.
No sooner than he does, then Graham arrives in the room. "Saji Crossroad!", he declares (Graham never just says things like a normal person). "It is a fine day, is it not? A fine day to seek my One True Rival."
Oh God. Saji can hear him talking in capitals. He feels bad about lying to Graham, but-- "Sorry, I haven't seen anybody. It's just me in here."
Graham bows. Elaborately. "My apologies for interrupting your fine and vital work, in that case. I will seek my rival elsewhere."
"I'm right here," Patrick complains from behind him, but Graham is already heading out the opposite door. "Hey, who said you could turn your back on me, Acre? Afraid, are you?"
Graham ignores him. The sound of bickering (if something that one-sided could be called bickering) slowly fades away.
"Thank you," Setsuna F. Seiei says.
That's the first sentence Setsuna ever says to him, which come to think of it is kind of neat. At that point Ian comes in looking for Setsuna-- tests, calibrations, something, anyway, and Saji doesn't see him for the rest of the day.
When he heads for home, he notices a really nice motorbike in the parking lot. Not that Kinue would ever let Saji buy a motorbike (he still hasn't told her he's saving up for a car), or that he could afford one like that anyway, but there's no harm in looking, right?
The second sentence Setsuna ever says to him is "Want a lift?"
Saji turns to look at him. He's not smiling, but he is. "Yeah, sure."
"I would like to point out that I am really quite opposed to this idea. Where did you even get the kid?"
The air in the room is cold and smells funny, like dust and nothing. He knows the men are behind the mirror, although he cannot see them, or hear them. They're still there.
"We have people for that sort of thing. He won't be missed. Besides, we have to show that the subject can kill on order, even if the target is not an immediate threat."
The walls are white. The table is white - on top. Underneath it's dull grey. The chair is the same. The door he came through is white and featureless and there's no handle on the inside.
There's nobody else here, except for the men behind the mirror.
But he knows someone else is coming, so he sits on the chair and waits.
"Do try to recall that your 'subject' and your 'target' are both children, Doctor."
Another door opens.
"You've got a funny definition of 'children', my friend."
A boy steps through. He's older than Soran. And when he looks at Soran, Soran hears words inside his head. Not really hears, but they're there.
The words all run together, but he thinks they go what the fuck do these shitheads really think i'm going to ice some stupid scrawny bit of shit on their say it's fucking insulting not even a fucking challenge so fucking sick of this look at the stupid little fucker even al could kill it useless fucking fuck...
"You shouldn't swear," he says.
The boy look at him. Then he hears words again, this time clearer, like actual talking. Mouthy little fuck, aren't you? Whatever, I was planning to blow this fucking joint sooner or later anyway.
Afterwards, Soran says THANK YOU. Or tries to. It makes the other twin wince.
"You suck at that," says Halle, picking at the blood underneath his fingernails. "As soon as we're clear of this shit you're going to fuck right off, you hear me? We don't need you around."
Somehow, Soran never fucks right off. For some reason, Halle never makes him.
◊
He spies a dry spot to hide in and wait out the downpour; it's not quite big enough for him so his feet are going to get a bit wet. It's okay, though. It feels safe.
"Hey," someone says, and Soran reconsiders "safe", since most of his definitions of safe don't involve other people.
The kid is pretty small and skinny, though. He doesn't look like a fighter. Soran could probably take him. "Hey."
Judging by his clothes, he's in the same sort of situation as Soran. "You want to eat with us?" the kid says, hopefully.
Yeah, like he's going to take that bait easily. "Us?" Meaning the kid and his fucking pimp, probably.
"Saji, how many times do I have to tell you not to wander-- oh." A girl. Late teens, he thinks. Same state as the kid as far as clothes and dirt go. Looks tougher, though. "You collecting strays again?"
She makes Soran sound like a kitten. Soran is not a kitten. "I'm not hungry," he lies.
"There's not a huge amount," the girl says. "Just soup and shit. I'm Kinue, by the way."
"Don't say bad words." Saji tells her.
Kinue just grabs his hand and starts pulling him away. "Shush and come eat. You coming, fluff-head?"
"Soran." He doesn't know why he feels the need to correct her. They're never going to see each other again.
"Okay. You coming, Soran?"
He watches them go for a moment, fingering his knife. Then he decides (it has nothing to do with the way Kinue hugs Saji close to her and ruffles his hair, it is a purely logical decision) that self-sufficiency also means you can take soup from people stupid enough to give it to you for free.
And also, he thinks, trailing after them at a large enough distance to not look like he's eager for company or anything stupid like that, his hair is not fluffy.
◊
The boys-- Klaus isn't sure how old they are, Shirin is busy trying to track down the real documents-- huddle together, while Shirin and the woman from Child Services have a nice, friendly, chat with them.
Leaving Klaus to try and deal with the lunatic in metallic lycra hotpants that they've got stuck in detention cell four. The one who keeps throwing himself at the door as if he really thinks he can punch through steel.
They finally manage to wrestle him into one of the interview rooms and cuff him to the chair, which restricts his lunacy somewhat. "Are the princesses in another castle?" he demands.
At that point, Klaus almost gives up and puts him back in the cell until the psychiatric guys can get there in the morning. "What princesses?"
"I have proved my devotion by delivering them from their captivity!" the madman declares. "With the stealth of the ninja!"
Klaus wonders what the ninja have to say about getting pulled over for speeding with two half-dressed teenage boys clinging to each other in the back of your car. Still, he might get something out of this yet. "If you can tell me where you rescued them from," he suggests, "I'll see what I can do to-- rally the troops."
The madman looks like he wants to salute, but his hands are still cuffed to the chair. "You sir, are clearly another knight of the way of TRUTH and JUSTICE!" he declares, and gives Klaus all the information he needs to know.
When he emerges from the cell Shirin has located the documents, and the woman from Child Services is being treated for some sort of minor injury. "She thought she might give Saji-- that's the skinny one who looks like he's about to burst into tears-- a hug. Soran stabbed her with a pen. Found their files - fifteen and sixteen, although I know they don't look it, half-brothers on the father's side, no current known address listed. The nurses are looking over them now-- they agreed to it as long as they could stay together."
"I might be able to help you with that address," Klaus tells her. He's not looking forward to what they might uncover.
In the end, what they do find is an empty house. Ali Al-Saachez, supposed father, is nowhere to be found. Plenty of evidence left behind, most of it relating to people not Al-Saachez. Pretty much all of it makes Klaus sick to his stomach.
The kids run off from the first shelter they place them in, then the second. The third time they steal a motorbike and disappear into the metaphorical sunset. Klaus, frankly, wishes them all the luck in the world, but they have to log the bike as stolen property anyway.
It turns out not to matter either way; they never find them.
◊
Klaus throws the office door open so hard it rattles. It doesn't improve his mood any. "Will somebody please do something about those vultures hanging around outside?"
Shirin gazes at him, unflappably calm as always. "Please tell me you didn't punch any journalists, Klaus."
"Not even the ones who really deserved it," Klaus says, "and fuck knows there's a lot of those. The words we cannot comment on ongoing investigations don't seem to be sinking into their thick skulls. If I had my way--"
Shirin interrupts before the rant can really get going with a simple statement that stops Klaus in his tracks. "Ali Al-Saachez was Saji Crossroad's father."
"What?"
"Took me all morning to unravel the files," Shirin tells him, nodding at the computer screen. "School files have him transferring out to be home-schooled, seem to have forgotten to mention by who; birth certificate only lists the mother, but there's a transfer of custody about a year ago-- backdated a couple months and tossed under a level four security seal which I somehow doubt was for the good of the poor kid. We're waiting on DNA results to confirm. You have any luck with the sister or the mother?"
"Managed to narrow down the date of the sister's disappearance; the last known residence tracks back through a management firm to Al-Saachez. The mother-- big fat blank on her. Sent a copy of the last known photo around, maybe something will turn up."
He's not feeling very hopeful on that one, or on the idea that Kinue Crossroad is still alive.
"Al-Saachez's toxicology report coming up for you on screen 3, Shirin," one of the forensic guys calls, "It's a fucking doozy."
That's a technical term, clearly. Klaus would call it holy shit that's a lot of drugs. There's a low whistle from somewhere at the back; most of the team working on this case are now fixated on the numbers scrolling up on the screen. "So he overdosed, then?"
"Nah," forensic-guy says, cheerfully, like they all do when something really horrific comes up. Klaus just knows he won't like what comes next. "He was still alive when the kid started chopping him up, for sure. Bled out."
Yeah, Klaus saw the crime scene. He doesn't need the added visuals, thank you. He ignores the ongoing discussion to focus on screen 2, where the figure of Soran Ibrahim is silently pacing. There's no sound on that channel, but Klaus gets the feeling that if there was it would still be exactly as quiet.
Every bit of evidence they round up only corroborates the kid's story further; Klaus, as much as the whole business makes him nauseous, had a suspicion from the first moment that Soran was telling the truth. It's not a pretty thought, but when you look at the kid's eyes you can believe it; that in the early hours of the morning, while Klaus was still asleep, he quietly suffocated his brother, laid his body out neatly as any undertaker, cushioned by pillows on every side, and then picked the lock on his door and went upstairs to kill his father.
All Klaus can say is, it's been a long time since a case gave him fucking nightmares.
◊
Kinue always gets up at the last minute, throws herself into a kitchen chair with her hair still wet and grabs the coffee with both hands. Saji always scolds her for it while he makes her eggs. She always tells him he's turning into their grandmother. It's kind of their tradition.
Also, Kinue tends to burn things so he doesn't like letting her near the stove to do her own breakfast. "I have to go early to work today," he says. "There's a new pilot."
"Is he crazy?" Kinue asks. "They're all crazy, as I remember."
"Not all," Saji objects, although okay, he can't exactly think of a very good counterexample at the second. It probably doesn't help that the first of the pilots Kinue ever met was Patrick, because as soon as he heard Saji's sister was a reporter he insisted that of course he'd be happy to give her an interview and wouldn't shut up about it until Kinue came to do just that.
Or that, while she was there, they said she might as well interview Graham as well.
Some of the senior engineers call Graham Crazy Graham, which Saji thinks is a bit mean. It's more like worryingly overenthusiastic Graham, anyway. Like the time when Saji got his locker filled with roses because he'd helped fix a problem with Graham's hydraulic systems-- and no, whatever Ian says, that is not an euphemism for anything, because ew.
Unfortunately, he can't tell Kinue that this new pilot won't be crazy; firstly, he hasn't exactly met Soran Ibrahim a.k.a. Setsuna F. Seiei yet, and secondly, he doesn't want to give away the fact that he already knows who the newcomer is and may have kind of read maybe every magazine article on him, which tend to all say the same thing because he doesn't do interviews. And also watched that one bootleg video on loop for a while, the one where he does tricks that should be physically impossible even in a top of the range plane, let alone the thing he was flying.
Not that Saji doesn't intend to be professional about it all. It's just that Setsuna F. Seiei is really cool.
Besides, the way Graham has been going on about him, it's not like anybody will notice if Saji fanboys a little.
He doesn't get the chance, actually; when he gets to work, Setsuna F. Seiei has already been whisked off to have meetings with people who are important; i.e., not Saji. So much for the be-there-when-he-turns-up plan. Saji resigns himself to having to spend the morning doing work instead.
As Saji is the most junior member of the team, he gets all the messy jobs. He doesn't mind, normally, because you actually learn a lot from doing all those things. Today, there are a variety of components that need cleaning, and testing for damage; the pilots tend to go through a lot of parts, the way they fly.
It's kind of meditative. Each component has to be properly disassembled before cleaning and part testing and then reassembled for final tests. He has a certain order he lays things out in, each piece cleaned and tested and put in its place, so that when it comes time to put everything back together again it's all in order.
He keeps his hands clean as he can, of course, so as not to transfer any dirt onto things he's already cleaned, but inevitably when he does this, no matter how careful he tries to be, smears of grease make their way onto his cheek, or his clothes, or into his hair. Ian says it's cute.
Saji hates being called 'cute'.
Suddenly, he realises he's being watched. Someone is sitting in the corner, just watching him take bits of engine apart. For a moment he thinks the eyes are gold, but they're not anymore when the stranger comes closer.
Of course they're not; it must have been a trick of the light. People's eyes don't glow like that. Before Saji can do either of the two things he really should do right now, those being stop freaking out, and introduce himself to Setsuna F. Seiei like a normal person, he hears other voices; loud voices.
Graham and Patrick, no doubt. Setsuna F. Seiei's oddly blank expression takes on a slightly hunted look.
"Um," Saji says, and jerks his head towards the storage 'rooms'. Not really rooms. They're kind of large cupboards. Setsuna nods at him and silently disappears into one.
No sooner than he does, then Graham arrives in the room. "Saji Crossroad!", he declares (Graham never just says things like a normal person). "It is a fine day, is it not? A fine day to seek my One True Rival."
Oh God. Saji can hear him talking in capitals. He feels bad about lying to Graham, but-- "Sorry, I haven't seen anybody. It's just me in here."
Graham bows. Elaborately. "My apologies for interrupting your fine and vital work, in that case. I will seek my rival elsewhere."
"I'm right here," Patrick complains from behind him, but Graham is already heading out the opposite door. "Hey, who said you could turn your back on me, Acre? Afraid, are you?"
Graham ignores him. The sound of bickering (if something that one-sided could be called bickering) slowly fades away.
"Thank you," Setsuna F. Seiei says.
That's the first sentence Setsuna ever says to him, which come to think of it is kind of neat. At that point Ian comes in looking for Setsuna-- tests, calibrations, something, anyway, and Saji doesn't see him for the rest of the day.
When he heads for home, he notices a really nice motorbike in the parking lot. Not that Kinue would ever let Saji buy a motorbike (he still hasn't told her he's saving up for a car), or that he could afford one like that anyway, but there's no harm in looking, right?
The second sentence Setsuna ever says to him is "Want a lift?"
Saji turns to look at him. He's not smiling, but he is. "Yeah, sure."