( 3 )
N O C T

    Today was going to be a good one, he decided.

    As childish as it sounded, the young man named Noct would often guess how each day would turn out by observing the weather. Quite an odd one indeed, he had been doing this for the past years and surprisingly, most of the time his predictions had ended up correct. If the weather was fair or sunny, the scales of chance was tipped in his favor and his steals for the day would be enough to buy him a delicious meal in some tavern somewhere. If the weather was dreary, then it was the opposite. Chances were that his steals for the day would be close to nil and he'd either have a half-rotten fruit for dinner or even perhaps none at all.

    Such was the life of a thief like him.

    The kingdom of Uldard was not an easy place to live in, even with its merits for being a place of grand beginnings. In his opinion, that phrase was just a useless advertisement to entice the people. To someone who had been orphaned and penniless since childhood like Noct, surviving in the harsh conditions of the world he lived in was not an easy thing to do. So, naturally, he turned to the only thing that required neither money nor experience, and only tact. Thievery.

   Noct often liked to consider himself as not just any run-off-the-mill kind of average thief. In fact, he considered himself as a highly-accomplished one, and it simply wasn't because he had a huge ego or anything of the sort, which he did. The reason for it was simple. Noct's skill for thievery was undeniable. After all, he had been stealing and deceiving for as long as he could remember. It was his natural talent, so to say. His born ability. The one special trait of his that he had refined and cultivated after years and years of careful practice. To Noct, fooling unsuspecting citizens was as natural as him breathing in air. He had spent so much time hiding his real face behind an invisible mask for so long that he could pull of any kind of act without requiring a drop of sweat, and almost all of the people he met for the first time didn't know that right under his bright, friendly grin and helpful, cheery facade, he was, in fact, a cunning, cussing, and an impolite two-faced bastard.

   He was a master of deceit. That much was a well-known fact among his fellow thieves. However, there was more to that which made him a great one. Noct had also been blessed with a resourceful mind and a nimble body--the perfect kind of combination that any thief like him could ever hope for. Sometimes, some of the few people who knew him would even point out that if he only had put his mind to better use, perhaps Noct could have held a respectable job in a shop somewhere and earn his keep honestly instead of leading a life of crime.

    But where was the fun in that?

    Noct loved being a thief. The happiness at the prospect of a big steal filled his hunger and quenched his thirst more than food and water ever could. He loved the feel of the whistling wind as he sped atop the high roofs, the rush that came over him whenever he ran away from a steal or was being chased by the kingdom's sentries. Those short moments of when he jumped from a roof to another almost made him feel like a hovering bird in midair, ready to fly away into the sky to escape. He could go anywhere he wanted to and do anything he liked whenever he wanted. Although there was no luxury in being a thief, there was that blissful feeling of freedom in exchange. And that, he decided, was better than any feeling he could experience.

   "Oi, oi, Crow..." Pierre, Noct's fellow thief and partner, suddenly called out to him as they both sat on the red-tiled rooftop of a tall building erected beside one of Uldard's busiest and crowded market roads. They had happened to meet each other by coincidence. Both of them had been there for some time already, surveying the busy noontime crowd underneath their noses to look for potential victims.

    "Have you made any steals today so far?" Pierre asked lazily.

    If Noct could take a moment to explain their relationship, he would regard Pierre as his closest acquaintance. They were similar in a lot of aspects. Like him, Pierre had been orphaned and homeless when he was young, and the reason why they easily got along was probably because both of them had seemed to be close in age. Despite the fact that he didn't know exactly how old he was or even when he had been born, he and Pierre looked most likely to be somewhere in their early adulthood. They had known each other since long ago. Even though he couldn't remember their first meeting, Noct remembered the night when both had been comfortable enough to tell each other their names.  In the world of the homeless thieves where identity was something easily discarded, Noct was often regarded as The Crow Thief, and Pierre as The Pierrot.

   Noct grinned mischievously as he crouched beside him like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. He smacked his lips, the lie easily escaping his mouth. "Today? Hm... yep, two of them, in fact. One was an idiot merchant imbecile and the other was a gullible lass. Not much in their pockets, though."

    Pierre scoffed, rubbing the back his curly brown hair. He seemed to have known Noct was lying but decided to say nothing. One side of his face was covered by a pierrot's mask which was what had earned him his thief name, shadowing parts of his clearly bored expression. He sighed.

   Noct mimicked his tired sigh, moving his head sideways to shield his face from the heat of the scorching midday sun. He raised a hand to tighten the red scarf he had wrapped on his head. "Ugh... it's as hot as hell today. I'm dying," he complained.

   Pierre eyed Noct for a moment before looking back down at the multicolored crowd. From above, they all seemed like scuttling ants.

   "You know, you'd better make su--Ah, wait, I see one." Pierre suddenly interrupted himself in the middle of his own sentence. Noct noticed him tense up as Pierre's face formed into a wide, calculating grin. Noct knew immediately from his look that he had spotted a victim among the crowd. The Pierrot narrowed his eyes and waved a hand at Noct in goodbye, uttering a quick "See ya later!" before abruptly jumped over the side of the building, scaling down as nimbly as he could and leaving Noct alone on the rooftop. Noct continued to stare at the place where he had disappeared only a moment ago, unsurprised by his sudden disappearance. When, after a pause, he thought: What an ass.

   His eyes followed Pierre as he emerged from the side of the building's dark alley, looking easy to look over and seemly insignificant as he quickly blended into the bustling crowd. Noct watched closely as Pierre followed a woman dressed in a purple fluffy gown stitched with lots of frills, walking alone among the press of bodies and looking around at the stalls with an expression of obvious ignorance. She was clearly an uneducated aristocrat. Every bit of her actions seemed to tell every thief within ranhe that she was begging to be robbed. Noct deduced that she was probably some mistress in some mansion somewhere who must have been stupid enough not to bring any lackeys with her.

   Poor tramp.

   "Lucky bastard." Noct murmured quietly to Pierre's fading figure. After a moment of silence, he sighed again and trained his eyes back to the crowd, looking closely at their blurry moving bodies and hearing their loud, unintelligible babble. He felt unlucky for a moment to have not seen her sooner. On normal days, he could have easily distinguished prey at a first glance. But today seemed to be different.

    At that moment, his stomach growled hungrily. Noct hadn't eaten a proper meal since three days ago, and his mouth was watering at the thought of warm, filling food. If there were no good steals for him today, he hated the thought that he was going to have to steal bread from the bakery again. He was already feeling slightly weak and sluggish from starvation. It was only a matter of time before his skin started to press into his bones.

   Then all of a sudden, a flash of silver caught his eye.

    Normally, from the distance and the blurry movement of the passing throng alone, it was impossible for anyone to notice this. However, he possessed the gift of great eyesight--a gift most useful for spotting things that would easily be overlooked by the human eye.

   The brief flash of silver had belonged to a small figure walking silently down the path, draped in a suspicious brown cloak that hid both her face and body to her knees. From the way that she walked, as well as her petite build, however, Noct had easily guessed that she was a girl. Quite nimbly, she forged through the people. As Noct continued to gaze at her, he noticed that she was taking extra care in avoiding any contact with anyone she passed.

   The silver had come from the inside her hood at the moment when she had lifted her head to look her surroundings. Noct narrowed his eyes, waiting for the moment to confirm what he has seen just in case. When she looked up once again and faced in his direction for a moment, the color of her eyes were unmistakeable to miss--at least for Noct--underneath the darkened hood that hid most of her face. And they were silver.

    Jackpot.

   To date, silver-colored eye drops were one of the priciest in the market, next only to gold. They sold for an impressive amount that not every wealthy person could easily procure. Even a single gold coin could buy more than a dozen loaves of bread, which meant that the little miss was, without doubt, a wealthy one. An extremely wealthy one.

   Noct felt his excitement tingle up his skin at the prospect of what could possibly be his biggest steal. However, that wasn't the only thing that made him ecstatic. After taking a few moments to make sure of it, Noct realized that the girl was definitely an outsider to the kingdom. He saw this in the way she walked each step with a slight unfamiliarity and in the way that she kept looking around as if lost. Noct almost wanted to jump in joy at his luck. From his previous experiences, confused travelers were always the easiest to steal from. He grinned widely, standing up to stretch his arms.

   Finally, he thought at the back of his mind. Today is going to be a good day.

----> thank you for reading!

Q:
Now that Noct's real persona has been revealed, what are your thoughts about him?