It was a particularly sunny day. The kind where Robert could see the sun through his eyelids when he closed them. Feel it on his face.

Until a brief shadow passed over his little spot on the street side, prompting him to look up. That was the first day he saw the boy.

No older than maybe twelve or thirteen. A pale child with slicked back black curls. He paused very briefly on his walk to school. A private school, and a fancy one at that— from the look of his neatly pressed uniform.
He held an umbrella in his hand, casting a shadow over the two of them. But the thing that striked Robert's interest was the boy's eyes.

A deep, rich, almost cherry red. Contacts, no doubt.

"Spare change?" Robert asked, tapping lightly on the cardboard sign in his lap. The boy stared at him with those striking red eyes. Then silently sifted through his pockets and dropped a gold coin in the tin near his foot.

Then he left.

It was a very odd encounter. He wasn't the first to throw a cent or two toward him, and he didn't offer a meal like the rare good folks in the city. But Robert had a nagging feeling that tugged at him throughout the day when his thoughts returned to the boy with red eyes.

That he wasn't an average kid.

Time passed slowly on the street. Performers would come and go, toting their instruments and earnings along with them. The occasional passerby would yell at the fellow panhandlers that made it their business to move out into the road during stop lights.

Robert rubbed his eyes, and peered down into his tin. Not enough for a room.
A couple of tens and a five dollar bill, a few quarters from an old woman on her way back from the grocer. Robert shook the can, and dug his hand into it to see if he happened to be lucky with that gold coin.

What he pulled out utterly confounded him. He expected maybe a gold dollar, and it was that technically. It was a very old french coin, minted in 1782. Probably worth a decent amount of change nowadays, but finding a place willing to buy it would be hard.

Robert tucked the coin in his pocket and leaned over, glancing around his immediate surroundings to see if there happened to be a pawn shop nearby. Likely not. And walking to the nearest one would lose me my spot.

Robert let out a soft sigh and stood, ready to entertain the notion of buying his one meal of the day before bed.

The second time he saw the boy was early in the morning. Before dawn.

Robert woke up to the sprinklers in the park across from him turning on. It was still dark out and far in the tree line, tressing about along the pathway he could vaguely make out two people. One an adult, creeping at an even pace with the much smaller one. Why so early?

He didn't recognize at first that it was the same boy, he wobbled a bit, losing balance on the tree stumps he jumped across. But the flash of those bright red eyes caught his attention.

He watched, moving from his uncomfortable position on the pavement as he sat up.

The adult accompanying him slowed, stopping near a tree that obstructed the boy's view but not Robert's. It looked to be a man, short hair and somewhat plump, silhouetted against the park lights. What's he doing?

He was fiddling with something around his waist while the child wasn't looking— too busy trying to catch frogs in the pond.

Robert watched as the man he was with loosened his belt and casually beckoned the boy over. Oh no you fucking don't.

"HEY!!" Robert's voice boomed, drawing  the man's attention for a moment only, before he called the school boy over and directed him toward a much darker part of the park. He couldn't hear them, and didn't need to.

Immediately he got to his feet, despite the ache of his older bones, and sprinted into the sprinklers.

"I seen you!! You don't touch that fucking kid!" He yelled, causing a flock of birds in the trees to scream and flutter away. It was far too dark, and he couldn't make out any words among the chitting of the sprinklers and the noise of the birds.

Robert jerked left and right, wiping the sweat from his brow. Screaming— he's gonna cry, or scream.

He listened carefully, through the excess noise for any indication of suffering.

There was a muffled noise, definitely a scream. It lifted Robert into the air as he raced through the bushes in search of the child.

"The fuck are you?! You touch that boy I'll kill you, you hear?! YOU HEAR?!" Robert called, spinning around and almost losing his footing in the mud and wet grass.

"What are you doing?" The voice caught him off guard, so close that he stumbled and swiveled in order to find it. In front of him, seemingly from nowhere— the red eyed boy stared up at him with a look of almost incredulous confusion.

"I— you— you went— did he touch you?" Robert stammered, at a loss for words from how suddenly the kid had arrived. He had not a scratch on him, and his eyes flickered up and down in judgement.

The he smirked.

"Don't worry about it."

"But—" Robert followed the kid as he turned, apparently already done with the conversation. "What the hell are you doing out here? It's not even sun up on a school night!"

"What does it matter to you?" The boy kicked the dirt, sending chunks of grass and mud in the air. "Go back to your spot on the street, old man."

"Old— where are your parents?!" Robert tried to catch up with the kid, but he had already made it to the street and was making his way toward the old district of the city. "What are you ten? Twelve?"

"Not your business. But if you wanna know, I can show you where I took the other guy." Was that a— that was a threat!

"Now listen here—"

"No, you listen." You boy spun on his heel, taking Robert back a few steps with his suddenly and incredibly intimidating aura. "I have been on this earth far too long not to be able to tell the predators from the prey. I know what I'm doing and you haven't the slightest inkling of an idea of what I am capable of. So I suggest you go back to your little patch of pavement next to Barry's Charcutière, drink the liquor you bought with the livre I gave you and have a nice happy nap with the bugs."

The boy gave an awful, insidious glare, his eyes boring into Robert's very core as he spoke. It was spell binding, despite the man's every effort to call him out for being such a stupid brat of a child.

"O-okay." Robert mumbled after a moment, feeling suddenly and positively drunk after answering him. The boy gave a slight nod.

"Do me a favor, and tell the authorities there's a body in the creek as well?"

"Of...of course..." Robert answered, tripping over his own feet as he dizzily turned and shuffled back to his place by the butcher shop.

The third time Robert came across the boy was no more than three days later. He'd counted. Watched every passerby in quiet search for the child, secretly fretting over his safety.

No kid that young should be out that late. Park or no park, this is the city and it's not safe. If Nina—

"Did you report the body?" The boy’s unmistakable voice cut off Robert's thoughts and he jerked up to look at him. He had his umbrella, blocking out the sunlight and was about three feet from him, crouched down and staring at him with those eyes.

"Yes...?" Robert drew out the answer, trying to guage what the kid was thinking. It was fuzzy, but he did recall putting in an anonymous tip to the police. A day later, sirens and cop cars had flooded the park's lots, hauling something on a stretcher into the back of a refrigerated van.

The boy gave a short nod at the answer and stood. "Good."

"What—"

"You're homeless correct?" The boy cut in, preventing Robert from asking him what exactly happened that morning.

He let out a beleaguered sigh and tapped on his cardboard sign. "Richie passed his drug test and I moved in on his place."

Why does he talk like that? Where is he from? Robert glanced behind the kid, hoping to catch sight of an adult, anyone who was safe and accompanying this boy. Is he foreign?

"Would you like to have a place to sleep?" What?

Robert shifted, gazing up at the kid with a look of utter bafflement. "Kid, I doubt your parents will take a random stranger off the street. Pedophile hunter or not."

The boy gave a sensible, almost forced chuckle at his answer. "You'd rather sleep on the ground than in a bed, then?"

This kid can't really be as young as he looks, right? No tween talks like that. It was true. Most kids had their own lingo, modern with shortened words and acronyms Robert barely understood. But this boy spoke like someone much older than him— similar to the way people talked in old black and white movies. He had an accent too— though not easily placed.

"Obviously not," Robert replied, eyeing him further. He was a child, but didn't act like it. It was unnerving. "I'll take a dollar or two, or a nice hot meal, but I'm not gonna put out anyone for a place to sleep. Where are your parents?"

The boy made a face, for just a flicker of a second that looked positively beastly. "I am an orphan. I don't have parents."

He paused, as if collecting himself, and brushed his uniform collar. "I don't need them. But I do need an adult around. So do you want a bed or not?"

Robert hummed softly, not trusting this child an inch. No parents though? With that uniform?

"Who's taking care of you? You don't look like someone in the system."

"I'm not," he answered gruffly, looking just about like he would walk away from the conversation altogether due to Robert's probing. "I'm not in any sort of danger, if that's what you were insinuating. And I wasn't in any danger three nights ago."

Robert leaned back against the wall, not believing him for a second. But he didn't respond.

"I'm offering something more of a contract—" the boy paused, his eyes flickering back up the street to something the man couldn't see. "My previous legal guardian was...terminated due to unforseen circumstances. I'm in need of a new one and— seeing as you don't seem to have anything better to do, are in a much more vulnerable position than I...I am extending a conditional offer of house and food contingent on your compliance to my legal needs."

Conditional offer? Is this kid seriously trying to make a business deal with me?

"What sort of compliance we talking about?" And what happened to the last guy?

"I'm a minor and unable to enter certain locations unaccompanied, or sign any legally binding documents." No shit.

The boy continued, ignoring the eye roll Robert gave him. "That compromises my efforts, as you've no doubt proven with your ludicrous probing. So I'm offering the open position to you— provided you are able to adequately support my endeavors and supply the basic necessities of parental guardianship."

"So you need a dad." Robert couldn't help but laugh at the insinuation. A child! No older than twelve, talking like a lawyer— going so far as to offer his home and food to a grown ass adult he's only met what— twice? All because he needs a dad! Nina would have a conniption if she were here to see this! 

"If you have to say it like that." The boy averted his gaze, looking quite offended by such a simple summarization of his predicament. "Then yes...I need a Dad."

Robert brushed his fingers through his beard, deeply contemplating such a wild offer. This could be a trick. This kid could be a lure for someone bigger— some kind of crime king pin or something. Folks go missing in the city too often for that not to be the case.

"How can I know to trust you?" He said, eyeing the child longer. He didn't have any marks, or give any indication he had been coerced or harmed. In fact— he looked pristine. "I don't even know your name, you claim not to have any guardians to speak of, and you're walking around in that fancy get-up. For all I know you could be tricking me."

The boy scoffed, "if I wanted to manipulate or kill you I would have done that already." Oh would you? With your scrawny little body? I could sit on you and you wouldn't be able to move, kid.

"I don't even know your name."

At his remark, the boy seemed to sway, and a noticeable shift in his approach occurred. For the first time throughout the interaction, he smiled, dropping back down in a crouch and offering his hand to shake.

"Pierre Laurent."