Chapter 27. Running Errands

I sighed as I stepped outside of the bank. It hadn’t been too long, but it felt much longer than that. It reminded me of how easy things used to be before when people would just part and make way for me whenever someone said ‘Hero of the Holy Gods’. From meetings with queens, and kings, to simple greetings in a small town, it would all just get done in a moment.

Here I had to wait with a paper in my hand as people were called, one after the other, who would take their time each to talk with another person wearing clean elegant clothes. I didn’t know what took so long with each person, until it came down to me. The fix was almost instant, but the things I was asked beforehand so they could fix it kept coming.

They asked for my ID, which was the norm in this world, and went over to even asking me to press my finger on a small red light. That last thing took a while to do, since apparently, my fingerprints didn’t pick up, so they had to retake them once more, asking time and time again to press my finger. After that was done, the man finally could fix the whole ‘bank account’ thing that I apparently already had—probably from Salrak’s doing. After everything was done, the man working behind the desk kept reminding me not to forget yet another set of numbers, ones that I made up for myself this time.

He nearly jumped off his chair when I said them outloud to him, which the man then forced me to come up with a new set of numbers while reiterating several times that I shouldn’t tell that number to anyone—not even my mother.

There was one thing that confused me from the information that the man gave me, and that was that the username for the online services was ‘Chickenlover247’*. This one I also didn’t know where it came from, but I could guess it had been something similar to how I got a last name on the ID card.

Right after I was done with that, I was told to queue so I could ‘deposit’ the check, and yet again, I had to sit down and wait to be called by another person working behind another desk. Once I got there, and told the man I wanted to turn the check into coins, I was looked at as if I was asking for something outrageous. After a moment of confusion, the man said that what I wanted was a deposit, so I allowed him to do that, only to have the check exchanged for another piece of paper—a ‘receipt’ he said—proof that the coins were already in my possession.

And so, not wanting to spend any more time here, I made my way out of the bank, the piece of paper in my hand with the numbers printed on it, wondering if this is actually what passes as coins in this world.

“How did it go?” Nicole asked as she passed me the large sword again. “Took you a while, so I went around looking for other things.”

I strapped the sword on my back and looked down at the piece of paper. “I think it’s fixed… but… Are these supposed to be coins?.”

“Huh? You ‘think’? Shouldn’t you have made sure in there?” she asked with a forced smile.

I pulled out the phone and tapped the screen on it to go into this bank’s app, and after carefully writing the username with the new set of numbers, the screen changed once more to show me another set of numbers that was supposed to represent coins. I turned the phone over to show Nicole.

“Ohhhh…” she said with wonder in her eyes. “Quite the good amount. Did you get that from the Labyrinth?”

“Yes, they did give me a thousand, but”—I looked back at the phone and the receipt in my hand that showed the same amount—“how do I use this as coins?”

“Well…” Nicole said with a forced smile, turning to look at yet another queue of people standing next to the bank, and I felt my spirit being drained once more.

I sighed and filled myself with patience. “If this is what it takes to pay my debts, then I guess I must.”

“Debts? Do you owe money to people?” Nicole asked as we were making our way to the end of the line.

“Yes, I got a fine by the police a few nights ago, and I owe rent to someone in the building.”

“Oh! If that’s the case, then you can pay it all online, even with your phone.”

“Is that so?” I replied, turning the phone on again. “How would I do that?”

“Well…” Nicole leaned over to look at the screen. “First, let's go to the police website and see if there’s anything there.”

I did as she suggested, and slowly pressed on the screen to eventually change the screen to the ‘website’, doing exactly as she’d told me before on how to do it for almost anything I wanted to look for in the phone. I followed Nicole’s instructions on how to look for the fine and we eventually saw the information saying almost the exact thing that the police that gave the fine said.

“Setting a fire on a public park?” Nicole mocked as she forced herself not to laugh, her face almost breaking down while doing so. “I can’t believe you’d get a fine for that.”

“I was cold, and I didn’t expect there would be a problem with doing that.”

Nicole couldn’t hold her laughter when I answered, and I felt my cheek twitch due to her reaction, but I decided not to chastise the girl for it.

“How do I pay it, then?” I asked with some annoyance, and the girl calmed down.

“Lets see here…” she said, leaning over again with a smile plastered on her face. “There, it gives you several options to pay it, from going to one of their banks or just using an online service.”

“So I could’ve paid for it here?” I asked and glared at the door of the bank.

“No, this isn’t one of their banks. Just click on the online service.”

I once again followed Nicole’s instructions to pay the dept. It took a while to get to where it needed to be, but thankfully, in just a few seconds, the screen showed me that it had been successful, after which I sighed.

“Can I do the same with the ‘rent’?” I asked this time.

“Well… do you have the information to pay for it here?”

I searched my clothes and my armor, but I didn’t find the piece of paper that I was given at the building, which meant that… “I left it home.”

“Then I guess we should go find it!” Nicole replied and took a couple of steps outside the line of people. “Let's go!”

“Hold on,” I said and the girl froze for a moment before coming back. “I still need coins like the ones that you have. Can I get those from the phone too?”

“U-um… well…” she trailed off and looked ahead at the line of people.

It was all I needed to know about how to get them, and so, I once again regained the patience I had let go before, and prepared myself to wait once more.

* * *

“Put those aside already!” Nicole warned with a hushed voice, as she warily looked around.

“Okay…”

However, I couldn’t stop looking at the small pieces of art in my hand. They were paper-like rectangular paintings, with intricate details, colors, and textures. Nicole claimed that these were supposed to be the physical form of the money in my bank account—coins apparently—but I just couldn’t believe that people would use works of art as coin in this world. The only detail that would let me know they were used as such was the number drawn on a corner of the painting that represented their value, but if it wasn’t because of that, I’d either frame these on a wall, or sell them for actual gold coins.

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Regardless, Nicole had warned me a few times already to put them away, just like one would do to someone in a city when they were showcasing their coin bag in the streets, so I shoved them in a secure space in my armor, prompting a sigh of relief from Nicole.

“So, are we far?” she asked while looking around the buildings.

“No, we’re here already,” I said and pointed at the glass door of the building.

“Oh…!” she exclaimed while looking up. “Quite fancy.”

“Is that so?”

I wondered if it really was, since I couldn’t really tell what was normal and what wasn’t in this world, but the first impressions I had from this building when I got here was that it was indeed quite an impressive one.

I went ahead to the glass door at the front, hesitating once more to grab it due to the loud noise it made, but eventually pushing it without anything happening. We made our way in, and the same man that I had first seen working behind a desk did as he usually did and ignored me and Nicole.

“Good day!” Nicole said with a polite tone.

“Good day,” the man replied without even turning to look up at us.

Ignoring the interaction, I went head deeper into the building and to the back of the hallway where the staircase was, Nicole right behind me.

“Which floor is it?” she asked, before I took a step into the stairs.

“Eight.”

“Huh? Then why don’t we take the elevator?” she asked while pointing at the silver doors.

I froze for a moment as I looked at the silver doors. I had indeed been curious about them, but I hadn’t tried to investigate them further. However, this time, with Nicole coming with me, I found it was as good a time as ever to see what secrets lay behind the silver doors.

“Okay…” I replied with uncertainty, and Nicole merrily pressed the engraving on the side of the door that looked like a triangle.

It shone for a moment and the silvery doors opened to a very small room—far too small for anyone to live or do anything in it. Nicole quickly went inside and stood next to a metal panel full of numbers, but I hesitated to go inside such a strange room. Because of that, the doors started to slowly close back, but Nicole pressed a symbol on the metal panel and looked at me with surprise.

“What are you waiting for, come on,” she said, her hand still pressed on the symbol.

“Okay…” I repeated with the same uncertainty.

With a slow step, I firmly planted my feet inside the room. Once I was completely inside the small room, Nicole stopped touching the symbol and quickly touched somewhere else in the metal panel that had an eight imprinted on it. The doors behind me slowly closed once more and I quickly turned to look at them, mana circulating all over my body while readying myself for anything that could happen.

“Could it be…?” Nicole asked and looked at me up and down. “Are you afraid of elevators?”

“I—”

Interrupting me as I was about to answer, the room suddenly shook and I quickly took a stance inside. I couldn’t really feel any traces of magic, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t something strange going on inside this room.

“Woah!” Nicole exclaimed. “Calm down, Althea!”

“Becareful, something’s going on,” I replied while looking everywhere inside the small room, and getting Mana Barrier ready to protect Nicole.

However, to my surprise, Nicole simply giggled. “We’re just going up, silly.”

“What do you mean…” I said, frowning as I looked at the girl.

She smiled and pointed at a set of glowing numbers on the upper side of the silver doors. “Look, we’re on the third floor already. No need to be so tense.”

I looked at the number which changed after a certain interval, but I couldn’t keep my guard down until the doors opened again, since these sorts of unknown artifacts could prove fatal if one didn’t pay attention to everything that happened, especially when one was inside of it.

Everything would clear up once it reached the eight number, which did in a few seconds, where a ding sounded on the elevator—as if someone hit a silver cup—and the silver doors opened once more. I stood in a wary stance, not sure about how this small room had moved, but Nicole quickly made her way out of the elevator.

“See? Nothing to worry about,” she said and then pressed her hand on the side of the wall. “Come on, don’t stand there. We can’t hold the elevator for other people.”

I quickly made my way and spun to look at the ‘elevator’. Nicole let go of the engraving on the wall, and the silver doors closed once more. “What kind of artifact is this so-called elevator?”

“Hm?” Nicole answered while looking at the silver doors as well. “I don’t really know exactly how it works, but I think that it’s just a box that’s being pulled by a really strong cable that lets the box go up and down depending on where we want it to be.”

I tried to imagine such a contraption, but I couldn’t think how it would work on its own like that without magic, especially when it’s supposed to be ‘just a box’. “I didn’t sense any magic on it.”

“It doesn’t use magic,” Nicole said with a giggle. “If you really want to know, you can look it up on your phone.”

Nicole was correct, I had an artifact with me that would allow me to access all kinds of information—at least according to her—so I quickly reached for the phone, and started pressing the screen.

“So which one is your apartment?” she asked, and I remembered why we came here.

I looked back up at the silver doors and then at Nicole, who was looking between the different doors of this building. The realization that knowing how the elevator worked wasn’t urgent hit me, and I put the phone away before turning to walk to the door at the back of the hallway.

Once I opened the door, Nicole simply walked in and stood still for a moment, looking at everything inside this small room.

“It’s… minimalistic, I’d say…” she said with a strained voice.

“Is something wrong with this place?” I asked as I went over to the table that had the paper with the information regarding the rent.

“No! No, not at all! Hehe…” she quickly replied while waving her hands and turning to look at the mattress on the floor. “I just… expected something a bit more… otherworldly, is all.”

“Hm?” I tilted my head. For me, this place and everywhere I went was all otherworldly… so I couldn’t quite see what she meant. I didn’t ponder on that for longer as I reached for the piece of paper, opened it and looked at the information in it. “How do I pay for this?”

Nicole skipped a couple of steps and stood next to me to look at the paper with me. She pointed a finger at a set of numbers. “There, that’s the number you’ve got to send the money to.”

I pulled out the phone again and opened the bank app. “How do I do this?”

* * *

A few minutes later, the screen said that the payment had been done, and I sighed in relief. Now that all of this was done, I could say that most problems that were placed upon me when I reached this world had been cleared—at least as far as I knew.

“Hey, are these the only clothes you have?” Nicole asked, and I turned to see her crouching by the bag and pulling a pair of very short pants.

Those weren’t really my clothes, since they were already there when I appeared here, but she didn’t need to know that. “Yes.”

“Really?” she replied with surprise, putting aside the pants she had grabbed to pull out a shirt, then a pair of pants that looked as comfortable as the ones I first wore. “These don’t look at all like women’s…” she dug deeper, until eventually there was nothing more for her to pull out before looking around the room. “Say… Althea… do you not have… bras?”

“No,” I confessed. I had heard of such luxurious clothing from noble women, but I had never had a need for them since the armors would usually take care of everything. “Do I need them?”

“W-well… it’s not that you need them… but…” she then stared at my armor, or rather, my chest, for a moment. “I think that you need them.”

I looked down on my armor, but I didn’t see why I would need them. “Why?”

“B-because… you just need them!” she exclaimed, not really explaining to me the why, so I couldn’t help but return a questioning look. She looked away and back to the clothes on the ground. “You also need clothes that fit you better.”

I also looked at the clothes, and this time I had to agree with her that some of those clothes would fall off when I wore them, which would make them hard to use outside of sleeping. “Very well, however, I don’t have much money left after paying my debts.”

Nicole grumbled slightly when I said that, but sighed and looked back up at me with a grin. “Then, when you get more money, we’ll go on a shopping spree!”

That reminded me of the way some noble ladies would talk in celebration parties, but they would be the kind that didn’t have to worry about money. I pulled the phone again and looked at the bank app, where they showed me how much coin I had, and while I was doing that, Nicole went ahead and opened the cold coffer.

“Hm? This is…” she said in a low voice as she lowered herself to look into the coffer. “Um, Althea? What’s up with this fridge?”

While the bank app was loading, I looked up to see what she was pointing at, but I didn’t see anything that would surprise me as there were only the cans, a few vegetables, and eggs. But it was good to know that the coffer was called a ‘fridge’. “Is something wrong with it?”

She put a forced smile and the bank app finally showed me the coin amount.

“I think we should go shopping for food instead,” she said.

I looked at the numbers and tapped the few small pieces of artwork I had in my pocket, and I agreed that perhaps I should stock up as well.