BXBX NOVEL Chapter 63: Shop'nt
'There goes my source of inspiration,' I thought, struggling to believe how quick some things could happen.
It wasn't even a day since when I started to live with Claire. In fact, with the plan now safe in my head, we ventured out to get some fresh air so that I could work out the finer details of my ideas.
As one could expect, Claire's shop was the first place I wanted to visit, given the variety of various parts and tools that could give me the inspiration necessary to give my plans a solid form of a proper concept.
But now, Claire's shop has become nothing more but an empty husk of what it used to be, with the workers already moving to completely remodel it from the inside and out.
"It's really hard to believe, even when I'm looking at it with my own eyes," I admitted, a strange sense of heaviness poking through the vibe of my voice.
That shop… It was the place where I first met Claire. It was the place where I first got an idea of what to craft. A place…
It was a place that, for the last few days, served as an anchor, a center point for all my adventures. But now?
Now, it was in the process of becoming a stylized, modern front for a newly opened branch of Chihiro's personal franchise.
"Don't worry," Claire looked at the shop with indifference before turning her lovely, brown eyes over to my face as she hurried up the few steps of distance between us before latching onto my arm. "All the items were moved to the company warehouse. It was…" she hesitated for a second, a hint of guilt flashing in her eyes, "it was an initial cost of buying my business out…"
I squinted my eyes a bit as I turned my face and looked at Claire for a bit, only to then roll my eyes and look away.
In all honesty, even if she played around with the prizes of her stuff before ensuring everything would be bought out by the company Chihiro set up for me… I couldn't care less. I was much more concerned about the nostalgia aspect.
And with how I couldn't help but feel uneasy about this shop vanishing to make space for something else… Just how bad was it for the girl who spent much more time in there?
"I mean, are you okay?" I asked, not wanting to be someone who noticed a potential issue yet opted never to bring it up to the light to avoid the inconvenience that came with it. "Wasn't that place important to you?"
Claire's eyes at first widened a bit, only to then relax. She smiled lightly and with a profound look at the bottom of her eyes.
"Whatever role this place had in my life is now over," Claire said before shaking her shoulders up and then shaking her head sideways. "It was a great place to get busy and get my thoughts occupied, saving me from the endless boredom of doing nothing but cultivating. But now…" she wrapped herself tighter around my arm, "but now it is no longer necessary.
So I'm going to make a much better use of this space rather than keeping it as it was purely for the sake of its sentimental value."
Looking down and into her eyes locked on the shop, I could tell that Claire wasn't perfectly honest here… But while there was a hint of regret in her eyes, so was there a whole ocean of determination.
"I'm definitely going to ask what this shop was all for. Even if not now and not today… someday, I hope you will be happy to share it with me."
It didn't take a genius to figure this connection out, nor was I a genius to realize it wasn't the right time to have this conversation. Only once the memory of this shop becomes just that, a distant memory rather than a picture right before her eyes, could we talk about it again.
"What do we do now, then?" Claire asked, perking her head up after thoroughly washing her expression out of anything that could get me worried.
And as I scrambled my thoughts to figure out what would be the next best place for us to go to…
"Now that I think about it, did you know that when it comes to the cultivation district… I've never gone anywhere beyond this shop of yours?" I asked as I turned my eyes to the girl strapped on my arm.
"Wait, seriously?" Claire opened up her eyes wide, taken aback by my statement.
"Yeah," I nodded my head. "When I first came here, I just wanted to take a stroll through this place and see the world I wasn't allowed to before. But then I ended up at your place and well, became too preoccupied with other things to ever waste an evening on just sightseeing," I explained. "So, how about we put all the duties for later and just… go on a sight-seeing date for now?"
I allowed my inviting smile to grow a little bigger.
"And it won't be a waste of time, since I need to find inspiration for my next project anyway!" I added, just in case Claire wanted to argue the job was more important than just a…
"So you are telling me I get to be the one to show you all around?" Claire asked with a look of uncertainty in her eyes that vanished before she could even finish her sentence, replaced by excitement bursting out of her eyes. "Then, what are we still waiting for, standing around like that? Let's go!"