酷视

Chapter 34: It\'s better this way

\'And what did you do that for?\' I asked myself as I hurried towards the nearest corner.

First, I had to break everyone\'s line of sight in the off-chance some white knight would bother trying to follow me.

\'It felt good, for sure, but beyond that... I accomplished nothing....\' I hesitated for a second, even though I was fully aware of the truth.

No.

I accomplished nothing with this little show of force, a show of change to my character. For the sake of feeling good about myself for a few seconds, I gave out a warning to my dear auntie that things would change.

"Well, what\'s done is done," I muttered before hurrying my steps and randomly turning left and right every few streets before finally reaching the area I could recognize. From there, only a short walk separated me from the main object of my today\'s mission.

The first part of finding out a bit more about the value of my physical attributes was completed. Now, I had to hurry up and spend close to half of all the money the mob invested in me. About twice as much as I could gain from selling off all the gold coins I currently had.

\'Still, the question stands,\' I thought once I distanced myself from the commotion far enough not to worry about any pursuers. \'Am I really all that strong... or was he just that weak?\'

The answer to this question would pretty much determine the value of my strength. Because, for as far as I knew, actually breaking someone\'s hand, especially from just a still hold that I had his wrist in... Wasn\'t a feat that an average Joe could accomplish!

\'It feels unreal, but I need to start considering the possibility that I might be actually freaking strong.\'

For a second, I could sense a tinge of regret. If raising my strength by just a single point already made me pretty damn strong, then didn\'t all the investment towards my wisdom and intelligence suddenly a silly waste?

\'Well, there\'s nothing I can do about that either,\' I quickly concluded, opting to drop the pointless topic and focus on the task at hand instead.

And right on time, as my short stroll was about to come to its end, with the final line marking the entrance to a small, local shopping mall. It was a far cry from the magnificent buildings rich in many types of shops that one could see in the city\'s center.

No, this was just a small, local unit, housing just the most critical shops that one could need in the areas further down from the areas where the business was actively thriving.

\'Still, it\'s nice to feel strong,\' I thought as I made my way inside the warehouse-like building, where only the interior truly revealed the purpose of the structure.

Blight and splendor were reserved for the city centers. In this particular mall, efficiency was the key to staying afloat in the world\'s slowly decaying economy.

"First, the electric shop," I muttered to myself as I grabbed one of the big, bulk-shopping trolleys before setting off on the journey through the various points.

As mentioned, my travels began at the sovereignty of all that\'s electric, where I hustled away nearly half of all the cash I brought for just two small boxes and then one on the slightly larger side.

"The sim cards are inside the boxes already?" I asked while raising my eyes from the two phones and a laptop I purchased.

"Yeah. There\'s enough data charged up on those for you to fill the form online and activate the card directly from your new phone, sir," the shop\'s clerk, a man early into his thirties, smiled as he explained in a voice that revealed just how bored he was.

I looked over my shoulder... Only to see a mere few customers walk down the main alley of the mall. If not for the relatively modern interior of the place and the lack of rolling tumbleweeds, I could pretty much feel like standing in the middle of some deserted warehouse in a Western type of setting.

\'No wonder he\'s bored.\' Thankfully, I could only imagine how it felt to have boredom for the greatest struggle in your job. In all the part-times I worked so far, there was hardly any time to spit on the ground, making toilet breaks a rare privilege for a selected few!

There was one simple reason why I decided to buy two, brand new phones that came with prepaid sim cards with them. While I felt pretty safe myself out in the town, I just couldn\'t help but worry about Fay. And even if she, as a child of a celestial fox, was strong enough to protect herself from robbers or other threats...

What if she felt lonely? Or if she got hungry? Or suddenly found herself scared by a passing lighting and...

No. I couldn\'t allow any of the above to happen, even if they solely belonged to the domain of my imagination. And the easiest solution to this issue was to buy two phones. One for Fay and one for me, as I had no wish to keep supplying my dearest aunt with information by using the phone I was pretty sure she tampered with.

As for the laptop, I bought it for two reasons.

First, this piece of old tech was cheap, costing a mere fifth of the bill\'s total that I left in the custody of the shop\'s clerk as I placed the boxes on my trolley, and secured them with a simple lock before pushing my cart out, towards my next destination.

I bought a few pieces of simple man\'s wear at a relatively cheap store, changing from the overused rags I had on myself to simple yet fresh clothes straight from the shop. Then, once I looked presentable enough after a visit to a barber to get my hair cut, I moved on to the most effort-consuming part of the task.

This next part of my quest concluded roughly two hours later, when I pushed out the trolley stacked with all sorts of bulk boxes of food, drinks, tools, and other supplies I found interesting. A kilogram of dried peppers here, a five-kilo bag of salt there...

With those supplies, I could go camping for an entire month straight, while slowly turning my camp into a seed of a new civilization... Or a great selection of items for trade! And as much as I wanted to find out from Fay before leaving about what could be useful and what would become just a weight for me to carry... I didn\'t really learn from her much.

Done with my heavy lifting and then shopping, I passed over all my purchases to one of the delivery drivers stationed at the mall. And after parting ways with a hundred bucks bill as I stuffed them into the delivery man\'s pocket, I could finally turn towards the most challenging and probably quite expensive part of my shopping quest.

\'I never thought I would step into a place like this,\' I thought while I carried on and entered a huge shop with all sorts of female clothes. Only when inside I have truly understood the magnitude of the place.

Despite appearing quite small from the outside, this shop somehow housed not only all sorts of casual and even formal wear for the women, but it also had a section for off-season clothes and, surprise surprise, a few rows of cosplay suits, accessories, and DIY sets!

What I failed to consider as I entered the premises, though, was how every quest was likely to end up with a boss fight. And when two, roughly twenty-year-old clerks set their sights on me, I learned what it felt like to be reduced to nothing but prey.

\'Praise the lord, for he is merciful,\' I silently prayed roughly four hours later as I left the shop with nearly all of my money gone and my hands stuffed with all sorts of items.

After leaving the store, I dared to look over my shoulder only once.

My hands were weighed down by everything. From casual underwear, through shorts, sweatpants, sweaters, shirts on elegant skirts, jackets, and even some cosplay outfits was now neatly stuffed into the bags hanging down my hands.

\'They must be CIA assets,\' I thought, gulping my saliva down when the two clerks waved at me with satisfied smiles on their faces.

Before I even realized it, they started their interrogation, pulling out more information about Fay that I was ever willing to share with anyone, even my mother if she were to suddenly stand up from the dead and appear before me. And by using what they learned to their greatest advantage... They accurately cleaned up my wallet from nearly every last cent, leaving me with just barely enough to get a taxi home.

\'Damn freaks,\' I thought, as a tear fell down my cheek. In a sense, I felt violated. Assaulted, used, and then thrown away once my bullies no longer had any fun from tormenting me. All of that happened with neither of the clerks dropping their professional yet excited smiles of two young women who found a young man trying to buy all sorts of clothes for his girlfriend.

\'Well, that was tiring,\' I thought when I finally sat down in the taxi and closed my eyes, I breathed out a long sigh. The slight shaking of the car as we rode away from the mall and towards the gang-controlled area somehow calmed me down, putting my thoughts on a weird track.

\'The least I can do right now is to show her the wonders of this world through the internet,\' I thought, moving with my thoughts to the packages that awaited my arrival in the backyard of my shed by now. There, a cheap but new laptop awaited its first launch that would mark the start of its career as a tool for Fey to learn more about Earth in the most convenient fashion I could imagine.

\'It was a chance, random miracle that allowed the two of us to meet. And I should be really grateful that she tolerates me,\' I thought.

And how else was I supposed to feel? Now that I distanced myself from Fay and got some time to think, how could I not realize the fact that all I did for Fay so far... was feed her some canned meat and then some burgers. And over something as silly, she was willing to bear all sorts of risque situations we found ourselves in so far?

I silently shook my head, my thoughts finally falling into order and under the scrutiny of logic and reason.

\'Let\'s not get conceited. She\'s not interested in me but in this world. I\'m just a mean for her to experience it.\'

"Be better"

I could swear I just heard my mother\'s voice.

Be better than those who would use this opportunity and Fay\'s cluelessness to their advantage, too overtaken by their own desires to be actually considerate.

I took another breath before opening my eyes. After a quick scan of my surroundings, we were about to reach the destination I set in the app on my new phone.

"That will be forty-two bucks, young man."

Too busy with my thoughts to care for little things, I simply stuffed a hundred bill into the fareman\'s hand before grabbing my bags and getting out.

\'It\'s better that way. Both for my safety...\' An image of the bus-sized celestial fox flashed in my thoughts. "And my sanity for when the time will come for us to part ways."