Matilda

Beta and Matilda sat across from each other on plastic chairs at the amusement park's cold drinks stand, two sundaes piled into little mountains giving off wisps of white mist in the chilled air.

Strawberry sauce slowly slid down the rim of Matilda's cup. When she tried for the third time to catch the falling jam with her tongue, Beta could not help laughing.

It was the third day since Leon had left for France on a last-minute job handover.

As the only adult the reclusive assassin trusted, Beta naturally became the obvious choice to look after Matilda.

Over the past seventy-two hours, they had visited every worthwhile place around London, from the Ferris wheel by the River Thames to the antique shops of Camden Market.

By now, Matilda had shed the wariness she had shown when they first met. Her canvas backpack was covered in souvenir pins, jingling as her legs swung beneath the table.

When Beta's palm ruffled her ear-length hair, the little girl merely pursed her lips and kept concentrating on the mountain of ice cream that was about to melt, grumbling in mock annoyance, "Hey, my hair."

Watching her puffed-up expression, Beta's eyes softened with a gentle smile. "Even though you always like pretending to be an adult, in my eyes, you're just a little runt who gets happy over ice cream."

Matilda indignantly retorted, "I'm already eleven and a half! I'm practically a grown woman! How old are you, then?"

Beta replied unhurriedly, "Twenty-nine."

He made a gesture with his hand. "I've lived exactly one and a half cycles longer than you. The year I officially entered this line of work, little runt, you did not even qualify as an embryo yet."

Matilda was about to argue when Beta pressed a spoon smeared with cream against the tip of her nose.

Wrinkling her nose, Matilda fiercely wiped the cream off with the back of her hand.

She rolled her eyes in her signature fashion, making her hair sway along with the motion. "Childish."

Wisely dropping his teasing expression, Beta began stirring the melted ice cream at the bottom of his cup with his spoon. "So what do kids your age play these days?"

He tried to recall the products on convenience store shelves. "Trading cards? Or those little glowing fairy toys?"

"Are you some unearthed relic?" Matilda's phone slipped from between her fingers onto the table.

"Who still plays with that stuff?" She unlocked her screen, her black-polished nails tapping rapidly across it. "We post updates on Instagram and make challenge videos on TikTok."

She paused and eyed Beta suspiciously. "Don't tell me you didn't even have a smartphone when you were a kid?"

Beta lightly tapped his fingers against his glass, producing a crisp sound. "Twenty-nine years ago? Leon was still wearing a middle school uniform and playing football on the field back then. Smartphones?"

Matilda slipped her phone back into her pocket and propped her cheek on her hand. "Then what did you play with as a kid?"

Beta's gaze drifted, as though it had pierced through time and looked toward somewhere far away. "Nine-millimeter submachine guns, .45 Colt, AKs. What I remember most were the human-shaped targets at shooting ranges. Those safety-first shooting clubs have long since banned them, saying they 'could easily encourage violent tendencies.'"

Beta continued reminiscing. "What else was there? Ah, sometimes someone would take me along to fulfill his rush orders."

Beta's fingertips gently rubbed the wall of the glass, the icy sensation seemingly stirring up even more memories.

"The most absurd one was..." He suddenly laughed. "In the winter of 1993, at a bar in Brooklyn, he killed three people with nothing but a pencil."

He casually grabbed a straw from the table and mimed stabbing someone in the throat before Matilda. "Just like that—squish, squish, squish—three stabs, and he dropped three Russians in a row. The spray from one guy's carotid artery even dyed the neon sign red."

Tilting his head, he seemed to admire the imagined scene. "Know the best part? That pencil could still write afterward."

Beta leaned closer and snapped his fingers twice before Matilda's frozen eyes. "So? Compared to that, aren't those little lip-sync videos of yours painfully boring?"

Matilda swallowed, discovering that her voice was a little dry. "The 'someone' you mentioned... was that your father?"

Beta did not answer. He merely turned his gaze toward the amusement park, where it finally settled on the shooting stall hung with colorful balloons.

His eyes fixed on the plush toy wearing a fisherman's hat at the very top. "Look at that. A genuine Paddington Bear, with a scarf patterned like the United Kingdom flag. Want it?"

Matilda sharply noticed his deliberate attempt to avoid the subject, so she cooperatively swung her legs and teased, "What a surprise. I thought an antique like you only knew that foul-mouthed fuzzball from the Teddy Bear movie."

Beta chuckled and rose from his chair, leaving the cold drinks stand and heading straight for the shooting stall.

Pointing at the Paddington Bear, he told the stall owner, "I want that one."

The stall owner picked up an air rifle and handed it to Beta. "Five pounds for five shots. If you can hit that moving alien spaceship, you can take it home."

Beta accepted the air rifle and casually handed over five pounds, sweeping his gaze across the targets. "Which alien spaceship? The one hiding behind those two mountains and constantly moving?"

The stall owner nodded. "That's right. That one."

Beta raised the air rifle and pulled the trigger. With a ding, the plastic pellet veered off course and struck the tin mountain on the right. The stall owner had tampered with the air rifle; that was perfectly normal.

Beta pulled the bolt to chamber another round and aimed again, but the second pellet passed through the gap between the two mountain peaks, failing to hit the moving alien spaceship.

For his third shot, Beta took aim and calculated the alien spaceship's path of movement.

With a crisp ding, the alien spaceship's metal plate fell over, and the stall's speaker immediately burst into a game-like cheer: "Amazing!"

Beta set down the air rifle. The stall owner took the Paddington Bear from the highest hook and handed it over, praising him, "You're really amazing, sir! Not just anyone can do that—hitting the target in only three shots."

He paused, as though suddenly remembering something, then added, "Oh, no... another young man did it last time too. He even had his wife with him."

Beta examined the Paddington Bear in his hands.

He returned to the cold drinks stand with the toy and handed it to Matilda. "Another trophy from the trip."

His voice carried a warm smile. "Keep it safe. When you see this little bear again at fifty, you'll still remember today—that a friend named Salong Wick won this gift for you at a shooting stall."

Matilda stuffed the entire Paddington Bear into her backpack and continued eating her dessert. "I'll keep it safe."

She tilted her head and studied Beta. "Is something bothering you?"

Beta turned toward Matilda. "Oh?"

Besides all the killing, I wanted to flesh out Beta's character a little more by weaving in other stories.