Precautions

Alright! Chapter 3 is here! Be forewarned: THIS CHAPTER IS THE FIRST PART OF A FLASHBACK. I just really didn’t want to make everything in italics, since it’s going to be pretty long. Everything that’s italicized is a thought, just to clear things up. So, just keep in mind that this chapter and the next are flashbacks. Kthanksbai!     

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     A lithe, sandy-haired young man sat in class, not remotely paying attention. Political Science was doing its usual bet to bore him to death. It was Tuesday. He was 19. Freshman year at university had passed by relatively quickly for Naruto and was now in its twilight, with only two months remaining. Two months which, in his opinion, were purposefully dragging on to torment him. In short, Naruto was miserable in every conceivable way.

    

    As if his body knew of his internal lamenting, Naruto’s stomach growled frightfully. He flattened his palm against his abdomen, frowning. Man, I need to get a job, he thought. The churning of his stomach made the image of his father’s latest care package come to mind. This one had only lasted a few days. While Naruto’s father sent him care packages of food, home items, and—embarrassingly—condoms once a month, Naruto himself was far too proud to admit how hard it was for him to stay afloat a continent away without a job or financial assistance.

  

     A frustrated grumble left the blond as he forced himself to forget his hunger for another day and focus. Or try to. He looked ahead at the whiteboard covered in nearly illegible multicolor writing, diagrams, and taped up newspaper articles. It all swam together in a confusing mass of squiggles and shapes from his places several rows back from the front of the lecture hall. Shit, I should’ve paid more attention. Naruto blinked and refocused his attention, hand poised over his blank notebook to jot down anything he could. He had just begun to record the droning words of his professor when his ever-focused attention was drawn to the conversation that sprang up behind him.

    

    “Did you see it?”

   

    “Yeah, they put on up in the caf, too!”

    

    “God, ‘virile young men of sound body and open mind,’ this one says. I’d bet my bollocks it’s a queer pick up service.”

    

    “A cult, I reckon.”

    

    Naruto swore under his breath as he realized that he had written the word “cult” on the page before him. He scribbled it out and continued on note taking.

    

    “’No experience needed, excellent pay.’ Oi, get this, ‘Those not in excellent physical condition and/or describing themselves as unadventurous need not apply.’ What is that?”

    

    Naruto heard soft sound of paper being crumpled and then poorly hushed laughter. That did sound sort of cultish. Naruto mused to himself. His left hand scrawled across the page, quickly drafting the vital information he had been missing.

    

    OK. The vitality…of the…free market economy has…become a vital…bargaining tool for presidential hopefuls…in the upcoming…

    

    ”I wonder if they pay per load, eh? Fifty pounds for the face, one hundred pounds if they want it in their mouth.”

    

    The state of…the American economy…suffers…in the mouth…Naruto started as he took in the jumbled blue ink on the page.

  

     “Son of a bitch!” he growled under his breath.

    

    Marking angrily through yet another Freudian slip up, the blond furrowed his brow, set on paying attention. If those two idiots would just shut the hell up! A consternated frown firmly in place on his face, Naruto raised his head yet again to the professor, dead set on catching up where he had fallen behind. Gripping his pen tightly, Naruto squinted at the board just in time to see her erasing the board.

  

     “That concludes lecture for the day,” her voice echoed through the auditorium. “Be prepared to begin presentations tomorrow.”

    

    The young blond gaped in horror. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! He lamented internally. As the professor returned to erasing his last hope at successfully completing a presentation in less than twenty four hours, students began to mill past him. Unadulterated frustration marred his features with a deep scowl. He stood and began shoving his supplies angrily into his bag. Loud bastards. How could anyone pay attention with them practically screaming in the next row? Naruto continued to fume as the hall began to slowly empty. He sighed. When the hell am I even going to find time to work with something due every day? His immense irritation slowly began to give way to frustrated resignation. Shoving a pen into his back pocket, the all too familiar voices of his classmates caught his attention yet again.

    

    “Call me picky, but ‘very flexible hours’ and ‘substantial compensation’ aren’t nearly enough for me to do something as shady as all that.”

  

     Naruto’s ears perked up at that.

    

    “Right. Nobody’s that desperate.”

    

    His classmates’ words hung heavily in the air. Tan hands lugged a heavy satchel onto one shoulder. A furtive glace about the hall showed it almost empty save for the professor and two students at her desk, seemingly begging for extension of their deadline. Naruto’s eyes caught sight of a crumpled ball of white paper sitting innocuously on the empty bench. His eyes seemed glued to it, even as the hushed conversation replayed in his mind.

  

     It probably is some weird gay cult or something. Naruto turned his back on the bench and the crushed paper. Or a scam. He smoothed his shirt, checked to see if his shoes were untied. Maybe a porno or bullshit modeling agency. Forget it. The blond shook his head and moved his vibrant blond hair from his eyes. Nobody’s that desperate. Not even me. He began to sidle out of his place at the center of a bench, blushing, embarrassed of his own intrigue. What was I even thinking? I am way too good for—His thoughts were interrupted when his stomach growled loudly and more than a bit painfully. Naruto grimaced, eyes darting once more to the flyer lying bunched just a foot or so behind him.

  

     It had been nearly three days since his last decent meal, if you could call it that. He had scarfed down several bowls of ramen noodles purchased by a kind, pale upperclassman with a penchant for belly shirts from his art class. Never one to accept charity, Naruto had insisted on helping the man move several pallets of canvases to his apartment just off campus. In his zeal to earn his meal, he had almost completely burnt it off by carrying them up the four flights of stairs to Sai’s apartment.

  

     Naruto’s brow furrowed as he recalled the numerous times he had managed to charm Ruth, Gladys, and Rosemary into giving him breakfast or lunch despite his woefully empty school account. They were all three kind old women, and as they always seemed to fall for Naruto’s wolfish good looks, he’d always felt slightly guilty for receiving the meals from the cafeteria workers. More often than not he chalked it up to an eventual onslaught of bad karma and tucked in. Pilfered plates of cafeteria food hardly made for a suitable diet for a growing young man, however, and in his hunger-weakened stat, his ego faltered, allowing his mind a moment of logical clarity.

    

    It could be a legitimate job that just happens to pay well and advertise strangely. He turned and reached across the aisle to the bench behind him. Or I could just be that desperate. Naruto’s hand closed around the wad of paper. Not that being desperate has to necessarily be a bad thing. He opened his bag, shoving the crumpled flyer deep into it. Plenty of people start out in jobs they never saw themselves in. This could be my…stepping stone. The thin man secured his bag unnecessarily well and began a hurried trek to the exit. I just need the money, and a job is job. Naruto pushed open the door to the hall, stepping into the usual gloom of a London morning. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

---x---

    

    Hours later, after his classes had ended for the day, Naruto found himself in a phone booth not far from the school campus. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see him make the potentially licentious phone call, so he’d walked a few blocks until he found one at a sufficient distance. Naruto had second guessed himself the entire way, muttering under his breath for the duration of the walk, and once even going so far as turning around and going several steps in the opposite direction. He had hurriedly changed his mind, however, and continued toward the phone booth.

    

    Now within it, Naruto clenched the abused flyer in one hand and held the receiver in the uncharacteristically trembling other. His heart hammered with each cold whir of the dial tone.

    

    “Come on, come on, pick up,” he murmured breathlessly. “No one answer…Pick up…Fuck, I can’t—”

    

    “Hello?”

    

    Naruto’s entire body froze. His breath hitched and he just scarcely managed to whisper, “U-uh, hi.”

    

    The line remained silent. Only Naruto’s heavy breathing could be heard in the booth. He swallowed, though it came out as more of a gulp, and cleared his throat.

  

     “I’m, uhm, calling about the job? From the flyer?”

    

    His voice sounded too loud to him. In the small space it was easy to hear its waver, the immature lilt that made his statements sound too like questions. He swallowed again. There was another silence. Then a voice: icy, distant, and eerily dripping with etiquette.

    

    “Your name?”

    

    It was a woman’s voice. She sounded younger than her tone led him to believe. He suddenly wondered how old she was, what she looked like.

    

    “What?” He shook his head as if to dislodge his distraction.

    

    “What is your name, child?”

    

    Naruto knew he should have been upset, indignant, but the woman spoke with such a frigid politeness that he could only answer placidly, “Naruto. Naruto Uzumaki.”

    

  “Height?”

    

    He blinked. How random. “I’m six fe—oh, uh, two meters, I think? No, wait, uuuh, 1.7? Or maybe it’s 1.9?” Even a year in the UK hadn’t left Naruto with a firm grasp of the metric system. Conversions had continued to be an embarrassing daily struggle in his life. He fumbled for a few painful moments, cheeks going pink as he attempted to do the figures in his head. After what felt like an eternity, Naruto conceded defeat and cleared his throat.

   

     “I’m 6’1”.”

    “Hm. Weight?”

    

    Naruto glanced down at himself. He fiddled with the hem of his tee shirt, suddenly self-conscious. He could not for the life of him remember the last time he had weighed himself. The blond strained to remember but could come up with nothing. Not wanting to sound stupid for a second time, he made a ballpark estimate and began attempting to mentally convert it to stones. Naruto sighed.

    

    “I’m not, uh, I’m not entirely sure.”

    

    He could hear the woman do something akin to clearing her throat.

    

    “Hair and eye color?”

    

    He was glad to have a question to which he finally knew the answer. ”Blond, blue,” he stated definitively.

    

    A silence followed, unbroken for several long moments. As it stretched Naruto began to fidget. The taciturnity of the woman’s voice had begun to fill him with a strange agitation. He hated that something in her speech unsettled him, made him question himself. He drummed his fingers against the glass wall. Blue eyes idly took in nails that had been bitten down too far. Finally, it seemed, her voice filled his ear.

    

    “In a moment I will give you an address. You will arrive at the address tomorrow afternoon at exactly 2:15 for your interview. Make sure you are freshly showered. Wear loose-fitting clothing, all black. Do you understand?”

    

    Naruto’s mouth hung open as he tried to process everything he’d been told. He could feel his head nodding before he managed to speak.

    

    “Uh, yeah. 2:15, shower, loose black clothes. Got it.”

    

    There was a beat of silence before the woman began to tell him the address. Scrambling to snatch a pen from his back pocket, Naruto pressed the crumpled flyer against the wall of the phone booth and began hastily scribbling it down. Somehow he doubted she would repeat herself.

    

    “Tardiness is unacceptable.” The woman’s voice seemed to soften for a moment and was nearly close to becoming sweet. “We look forward to meeting you, Naruto.”

    

    Thoughts buzzed in Naruto’s head. “Hey, wait, I still have some—”

    

    A soft click sounded, followed by the dial tone. Naruto sighed, hanging his head. “—questions.”

    

    He hung up the receiver, mind teeming with unanswered questions. For a moment Naruto stood silent in the small booth, trying to absorb everything that happened. A time passed, and still he felt no closer to understanding his strange new position. Shaking his head, the blond pushed open the door to the booth. He walked toward the dormitories, his mind a cacophony of question.

    

    Naruto tried to clear his mind but his frazzled nerves refused. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. He stopped. The blond managed to empty his thoughts, only one burning query remaining. He turned his head, bright cerulean eyes glancing back at the phone booth.

    

    “We?”