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Back inside the Ruby 7, I went over and over again through Nureyev's words.
"I implore you to live your own life from now on. Take it from someone who's given his away. A life is far too precious to waste."
Of course I agreed, every life is precious, but what we didn't agree on was about his. I also understood that his friend's –lover's– life was precious to him, but his was just as precious. He didn't know me well enough if he thought I would let his life go to waste.
From the day we met, he'd trusted me with his life, even though I didn't know it yet, and I wasn't going to let his creditors take it away from me.
"Mr Steel? Mister Steel!" Rita's high-pitched voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
"What is it, Rita?" I blinked and try to focus on the here and now.
"Well, it's just, I know the diary's like super secret and all, but why did Mr Nureyev leave?"
I wondered how much I could tell her. Then again, she already knew his name, and if she was going to do this with me, it was only fair that she knew what she we were up against.
"It's a bit complicated and kind of secret, but basically, he's in a lot of debt with some dangerous people." That was probably clear enough, without diving into Nureyev's past too much.
"A debt? Why's he in so much debt Mr Steel? Is it like a debt with a mafia boss? One of my favourite streams "The life of the super scammer" has a main character that has to pay his family's debt and then he falls in love with the mafia boss–"
"It's not with the mafia." He paused. "I don't think it is with any mafia. In short, his friend –first love– is in a coma and Nureyev went into debt to keep him on life support and try to find a cure for him." I doubted for a moment if to mention that Slip was Nureyev's lover, but Rita was my friend and I needed somebody to share my complicated feelings with.
"Oh, Mr Steel! That's so romantic!" she stopped herself. "Also so difficult! I'm so sorry Mr Steel, I'm sure Mr Nureyev loves you a lot, he was clearly smitten with you."
"Thanks Rita, but that's not what's important to me right now." I tried to shift the conversation away from me anyway.
"Of course, oh, we just have to save his friend and get him out of debt! It'll be such a romantic rescue, I'm sure his lover will also be super thankful to you Mr Steel, and then you can all be happy like the characters from Love Between Three Super Stars!"
I sighed slightly, "Again, that's not what's important."
"Oh, sure, sure. Anyway, Mr Steel. If his friend is so sick, why didn't Mr Nureyev steal the Curemother Prime when he left?" She started mumbling impossible causes but I wasn't listening anymore because that question had smacked my train of thought against a painted tunnel entrance.
"He didn't… He could have saved Slip with it, and surely paid off his debt, but he didn't."
I processed that for a minute before truly understanding what that meant.
"He wanted us to have it. He knew that giving it to his creditors would be putting the Curemother Prime in dangerous hands, but more than that, he knew the good that Vespa could do with it, how many people she could save, and he wanted that more than he wants to repay his debt to Slip."
Tears threatened to fall from my eyes at the realisation. Nureyev hadn't betrayed us, he'd left, but that was all. Not only had he come back to rescue us, but he had never meant to hurt us in the first place. He had to leave, but he didn't want to betray his family, he wanted to help.
Rita immediately broke into tears. "But, but Mr Steel! If we're his family, then why didn't he tell us? Mrs Buddy and Vespa and Jet, and us! Would have helped him! Family sticks together when things get hard, we help each other!"
Rita was right. I too wished he had told us what he was going through before this, but I also understood that self-sacrificial attitude because I had been like that too. We would just need to show him that it was pointless to try to leave us out of it.
"I think Nureyev was trying to do this by himself, so that nobody else in the family would be in danger."
"Well, Mr Steel, he's a dum-dum. That settles it! We have to save Mr Nureyev and that Mr Slip and teach him that family is there for good and bad things."
The Ruby 7 beeped in agreement while Rita wiped her tears with a handkerchief that the Ruby 7 had produced in its glove box.
"Yes, that's exactly what we're going to do. If the Aurinko crime family has taught me anything, is that family is there for you even when you want to face things alone."