Chapter 37. A Peaceful Afternoon

After leaving Bo’guth’s workplace, Nicole and I went back to the room I was currently living in. The entrance to the building was similar to last time, with the same man that ignored everything that didn’t speak to him, and the suspicious elevator that I still couldn’t trust, since even the information that I looked for it on the phone didn’t clear all the doubts I had; mostly because I couldn’t understand it all.

Right now, Nicole was sitting by the white table on one of the two small chairs that it had. It was afternoon already and a refreshing breeze was entering from the window as the orange glow of the setting sun illuminated part of the room.

With a heavy sigh, Nicole put her phone down and looked at me. I was sitting across from her, trying to train my ability with the phone, but noticing her state, I also put it aside.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Man, I wish I was as strong as you, Vicky or David are,” she answered with a pout.

“Is there a reason for you to be strong?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, “Just by following you around I’ve met some interesting people, like Bobby, and that’s only because you’re strong!”

“So you want to be strong so you can meet people?” I asked with an eyebrow raised. “I think that you can do that without having any martial prowess.”

She pouted again and looked to the side. “Sure… but then you’d need to have some other form of power… or money, and I don’t have either of those things.”

I couldn’t quite understand what her goals were, since for me, being able to live a peaceful life was more than enough to be happy. “Is there a reason that you want to meet people like that?”

“Well… yeah. It’s kinda silly though,” she said, poking the screen of her phone a couple of times.

I waited a moment for the girl to answer, but she was just pouting. “If you don’t want to say it, I won’t force it out of you.”

“I’m going to tell you, but don’t laugh, okay?” she said and looked at me with a serious expression.

I didn’t think there would be something funny in it if she was looking at me like that, so I nodded. “I won’t.”

“Okay,” she took a breath. “It’s because of my granny. You see, five years ago, when magic and the people from the other world came here, among the few people that awoke powers first was my granny. She was already eighty years old, so… you can guess that she didn’t have a lot of time to do anything with it.”

“I see…” I replied when she paused for a moment. Although I didn’t see what was ‘funny’ or ‘silly’ about her reasoning so far.

“But…” she continued with a wry smile. “When she found out that she had some meager amount of power and that there were beings from another world here, she insisted that she wanted to meet them all…”

“That doesn’t sound silly at all,” I said, tilting my head to the side slightly with one eyebrow raised.

“Y-yes… but… she wanted to meet them… because…” she trailed off for a moment, and I noticed that she was getting flushed.

I stayed silent, waiting for the girl to finish—if she even wanted to do it. She wet her lips slightly, poked her phone a couple of times while quickly blinking, and trying to force away the wry smile.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“—hot,” she interrupted me with a whisper of that word.

“What?” I asked and leaned myself closer to hear her better.

She clenched her hands and looked at me with blushed cheeks. “She thought that Elves were hot!”

I was momentarily stunned, raising my eyebrows as I looked back at the blushing girl. It was a strange thing to proclaim, but I didn’t see how that related to her. “So… your grandmother wanted to meet them because of their appearances… and you…?”

“I-I started looking into them myself, both to see what she liked so much about them, and if there was a way to actually meet them. But… at the time, it was all so tense that there was just no hope to do it if you weren’t powerful or important,” she said with the same forced smile that faded after a moment. “A year later she passed away…”

“Oh,” I replied with a regretful smile of my own. “I’m sorry about that.”

She shook her head and smiled. “It’s okay. She was very old, after all.” She softly laughed. “One of my aunts used to say that ‘she was already skipping grave time’.”

I couldn’t help but put up an awkward expression. “That is… a hurtful thing to say…”

Nicole just laughed it off and shook her hand from one side to the other. “It’s okay, my granny would laugh it off as if it wasn’t a big deal.”

I paused for a moment to let her settle down a bit before asking: “So, you want to meet people from the other world because of her?”

“Eh… kinda…” she replied by blushing again and looking to the side. “It’s just that while looking into it… I got really interested in knowing how the people from there are and how they look…” she paused for a moment. “And I also think that elves are hot…”

“I see.”

“Really silly, right?” she said with a pout.

“No, not at all. I think that what you’re doing is better than what I used to do,” I replied with a serious expression.

“Really? What do you mean?” she asked with a surprised expression.

I looked down and shook my head. “I never bothered to meet nor get to know anyone ‘from the other side’. I just accepted what I was told, and acted upon it.” I looked back up to Nicole. “So I don’t think that what you’re doing is silly. I think it’s great.”

“Oh you!” she replied with a blush and a smile, lightly tapping my hand before standing up. “I think I need to cool down.”

She quickly moved over to the fridge. I had to agree that the cool air from that artifact would be great if one was hot, although, the ambient of this city was never really hot for you to require any cold air from the artifact.

However, I was wrong in thinking that she wanted the cold air, as she reached into the fridge and pulled out one of those metal cans that I had been ignoring so far.

“You still have all this beer. I thought that you liked drinking and would’ve already had a few of them,” Nicole said, closing the door and placing her fingers on top of the can.

“I… wasn’t really interested in them,” I said, when reality was that I just didn’t know what they were and decided to leave them there.

“Huh? Then why did you have so many?” she asked before pulling on a small metal bit on the can, creating a hissing sound.

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“It was an accident,” I lied, since I really didn’t know why they were there to begin with.

“Hmm… okay,” she said before taking a sip from the can. “Do you want one?”

From the scent of the opened can, I realized that this was the kind of drink that people would share at taverns. I was compelled to deny her offer, since Holy Knights and anyone related to the Holy Gods couldn’t ever get inebriated while under Their service. But I was no longer under their service, and didn’t need to follow their laws anymore, so with an uncertain nod, I accepted her offer.

“I shall have one.”

She went back to the fridge and pulled another one of those cans, bringing it over with a brisk pace. “Here you go!”

It was cold and the can itself was the kind of creation that always made me wonder about the artisan behind it, since the material was smooth, the edges were even and nearly perfect, and it even had detailed paintings with words written all over it.

I had yet to open such a thing before, but judging from the actions that Nicole used on hers, it wasn’t hard to figure out that I had to pull on the small metal bit on the top. I pulled on it, and the can easily burst open, with the same hissing sound that hers did when she did it.

I was uncertain about drinking from it, as there still was a large part of me that told me that what I was about to do was wrong, but it was the same part that had taken me to fight to the death with Salrak and destroy the world. I tried my best to shut that part down, grabbing the cold can and slowly bringing it up to my face.

Nicole didn’t seem to really be thinking much about it as the blush she had from what she told me was slowly being replaced by the blush from drinking her can.

I looked down on the can in my hands, the strong scent of the drink invading my nose, and the cold radiating from the can already biting at the palm of my hand. I closed my eyes and braced myself, bringing the opening of the can up to my mouth, where the cold drink touched my lips.

I frowned once I tasted it. It was terribly bitter, and it seemed to have some sort of foam that formed as soon as the liquid moved. With a cough and a clearing of my throat, I put down the drink back on the table.

Nicole giggled as she watched my actions. “Not good with drinks?”

“Ahem,” I replied and sat up straight. “It… it was the first one.”

“What?!” Nicole replied with widened eyes. “How come?”

“I had never been interested in drinking them until now,” I said, while looking down on the drink.

“Ah, I see. Well that would make sense,” she said with a nod of understanding. “You wouldn’t have the kind of power that you have if you just went around drinking.” She then quickly put down her own drink and looked seriously at me. “I don’t usually drink either, by the way! It’s just this time, okay!?”

I looked at Nicole with some surprise, and I couldn’t help but chuckle after a moment when I saw this cheerful girl get flustered about the whole situation. “Okay.”

She widened her eyes in response, gasping as she leaned closer to me. “I can’t believe it!”

“What?” I said, leaning back slightly.

“You—you just laughed!” she exclaimed before leaning back again. “Ever since I met you, you’ve had the same hard face! Only softening slightly, but never properly laughing!”

I considered her words for a moment. It is true that I had hardly laughed ever since I left my home, back in the outskirts of the Holy Empire of Leyfall. Things back then and up to now had almost always been fighting or dealing with powerful people. Even more so in the last few months during the Final War, where every moment could spell my doom. But right now…

I softly smiled again. “I guess… I’m losing some of that edge.”

“Hehe,” Nicole giggled and took another sip from her can. “It’s good to have fun from time to time.”

I nodded slightly, and took the can again to try yet another sip of the drink. Once more, I couldn’t handle the terrible bitter taste of the drink, and wondered why would anyone choose to drink this over any of the other tasty drinks that this world had to offer—even water. But seeing the cheerful girl taking sips while the fresh breeze of the afternoon entered the room, I felt for a moment that it wasn’t so bad.

And so, I continued trying to drink this terrible beer.

But… for the first time in a long time, I actually felt peaceful.

* * *

“Say… Althea…” Nicole spoke, her words slightly slurred. “What do you do most of your time?”

There were a few more cans of those beers arranged on the table. The girl had been having more as time went on. I didn’t understand how she could keep drinking them when I had hardly been able to drink the one that she brought over.

“I train,” I replied and looked over the phone on the table.

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “What do you train? Magic or something like that? Or do you go running and lifting heavy things?”

I shook my head and took the phone. “I’ve been training on the use of this phone.”

“What?” she asked before bursting out laughing. “You always say the funniest things.” After she settled down she looked at me again. “No, really, what do you do?”

“I’m serious. Whenever I’m not resting or taking care of myself, I’m learning how to better use the phone like you or everyone else does,” I reiterated, since at the moment I was more worried about understanding this world, and the phone seemed to be the best artifact to do that.

“Ehh? F’real?” she replied and tapped the strange book-like artifact that I had avoided to use so far. “You don’t use your computer at all?”

“What?” I asked this time, looking around the room for one of those boxes, but I didn’t see a computer here. “What computer?”

Perhaps there was some sort of hidden artifact in the room that she could see, but she just giggled and grabbed the strange artifact on the table. “This one, silly.”

She suddenly opened the supposed computer like one would open a book, and I immediately realized that it indeed appeared to be one, as it shared the same screen as the phones and many computers did. It also had the strange arrangement of stones with letters and symbols engraved that all of these artifacts had at the front.

“Wow,” she exclaimed while looking down. “You have a gaming one? You don’t strike me as the kind of woman that would play games.”

“I—uh,” I stumbled on my response, since I was at a loss for words. I didn’t understand at all what she was talking about.

She giggled again before pressing one of those bits. “Someone probably told you that it was the best on the market and you just bought it, right?”

“Eh, well…” I said, unsure confirming or denying her as I looked at the glowing screen, which was just like a phone’s. I settled on saying the same thing I said about the phone. “Someone gave it to me.”

“Really? Was it your parents? Must’ve taken a bit of convincing,” she replied with a giggle.

I remained quiet as I looked at the screen. I was expecting a computer to look and work just like a phone would, only being larger. However, the drawn details that this one displayed weren’t quite the same as a phone had, and the apps didn’t cover the whole drawing, which I also liked on the background of this computer, as this one looked fairly similar to the landscapes and portraits drawn by artists from my world.

While waiting for Nicole to do the same thing one does with a phone, I was surprised to see that she didn’t touch the screen at all, as she instead placed her finger on a small rectangle panel that was on the bottom part of this computer. I continued watching what she was doing, which was then that I noticed a tilted white arrow moving on the screen at the same time as her finger did.

“You have a few games here. I thought that you didn’t like them,” she said, the arrow passing by a few of the apps.

“I’ve never had time for games,” I replied, since for me, the only thing I’ve ever done was fight or train.

“Oh, really? I guess with all that training you wouldn’t really have the time, huh,” she then quickly tapped the panel at the bottom two times and the drawing on the screen changed. “How about time for a movie? There’s this new one that came out and I’ve been meaning to watch it. Good thing it got released online as well.”

“A movie?” I asked. I had never heard of such a thing.

“Yeah. I’ve heard it’s a cheesy romance, but I kinda like those sorts of things. Wanna watch it?” she asked, without really explaining what it was.

I decided that instead of asking her to explain the thing to me, that it would be better to see for myself, so I nodded. “Okay.”

“Yay!” she exclaimed before she started pressing the bits that were between the panel and the screen.

Words appeared on the screen just as fast as her finger moved, and I was once again amazed by her dexterity with these things as every finger moved one after the other without getting in the way or messing up the words. Her years of training must’ve been long and constant.

After a while, the screen changed to a detailed portrait of a man and a woman. Nicole then looked around the room for a moment before standing up and pulling her chair all the way to be next to where the mattress lay.

“Lets get comfy,” she said, coming over to the computer again, lifting it up and placing it down on the chair that she dragged before moving over to the mattress and snuggling herself. “Come on, Althea.”

She opened a side of the blankets and tapped the mattress, expecting me to move over. I softly smiled and stood up to make my way to her.

“Oh wait!” she exclaimed and I stopped mid-way.

“Something wrong?”

“Can you bring me another beer?” she asked with an embarrassed smile.

I sighed and nodded, bringing her yet another one of those cans before I settled myself next to her to see for myself what a ‘movie’ really was.