Randidly tried his best to keep his smile even as he continued to offer the crisp bill he had admittedly gotten from Tatiana’s wallet the previous night. “Seriously, it’s no trouble. I have the cash to pay-”

The young vendor raised his hands and waved them almost frantically. “Mr. Ghosthound, please, don’t make this harder than it is on me! You designed the entire city of Kharon. It’s a moving marvel! And it’s only because of you that my little brothers can grow in relative safety here. There’s no way that I can let you pay for something as small as a coffee.”

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Randidly began. Then he stalled out as he struggled to verbalize why he would still prefer to pay for the coffee.

Randidly and Vye were standing at a long row of stall along the rather busy Banner Street, which was the more commercial street one block over from the main headquarters of many of the industrial centers of Kharon. Most of the street’s usual morning bustle was smothered by the fact that everyone was very aware that Randidly was walking around trying to buy the coffee. Nearby customers took a very long time counting change and peering over their shoulders at Randidly’s helpless expression.

As he had appeared on the street, most of the shouting vendors had fallen immediate silent and looked toward Randidly with all the carnal intensity of a thirteen-year-old boy fixated on his first crush. Randidly’s first instinct had been to turn right around and walk away, but he really did want to sit and have a talk to Vye. He didn’t know if she liked coffee, but it seemed petty to back out because of overzealous vendors. After all, this was about Vye and her particular situation. In terms of experience with how people reacted when you abruptly said you were going to leave them, Randidly thought himself relatively experienced.

At least experienced enough to understand what was really going on in that discussion… Randidly made the crisp bill dance across his fingers as the vendor refused to budge.

The coffee-order-turned-hostage-negotiation situation was made more complicated by the almost a hundred people that were drifting around Randidly in a loose ring with clearly nothing better to do than gawking. A lot of them seemed to be people in relatively non-senior positions at the various industrial corporations of Kharon, coming to work with soot stains already on their uniforms and stumbling across the Ghosthound. And since they found him, they wanted to indulge their own curiosity.

They sipped coffee and nibbled at bagels and pretended like they had nowhere to be as they cast sidelong glances at the man who made Kharon possible. It gave Randidly quite the headache. It’s not that he didn’t understand; curiosity was in human nature. Although he had shown himself a few times in Kharon in the past, it had never been as personable as this. This was, perhaps, the chance of a lifetime.

So people milled about and the influx of workers ready to go their jobs continued to flow into the street and ask in loud voices why everyone was just standing around. A hundred hushed conversations quickly drew the new arrivals into the slow orbit of Randidly Ghosthound and Vye on the increasingly packed and yet somehow deserted Banner Street. Randidly supposed he should just feel lucky that there weren’t any vehicles on Kharon or his presence on a street would have ground the whole city to a standstill.

Which was why he currently found himself in a low voiced argument with a vendor that carried quite far. Pressing his eyes closed, Randidly tried to be reasonable. After all, Vye couldn’t be enjoying the attention by proxy that she was receiving after her fight with her… whoever. It was somewhat… galling, but the best response was just to accept the charity. Despite his unwillingness to do so.

Yet Randidly found it oddly difficult to just accept. Because he had never really experienced anything quite like it. Oh, Randidly knew that he had benefited from free goods and services both in his time in Donnyton and while he had been in the finals bracket of the under-25 tournament on Tellus. But that somehow had felt different from the straightforward offer he received now from a vendor.

Randidly could tell in the young man’s eyes that he felt like he owed Randidly the coffee. And that made his skin crawl.

It’s just a coffee, Randidly sighed to himself. And just when Randidly was about to accept, a pot-bellied man stepped forward out of the crowd.

“How about this? I will buy Mr. Ghosthound’s coffees. That way-.... Ah, ahem…” The man started talking with an affable expression, but Randidly’s tight glance quickly sent him coughing and turning away. Although it was certainly a generous offer, it was exactly not what Randidly wanted right now. Someone else buying the coffees would not make any difference.

Breathing through his nose, Randidly turned back to the vendor. “...two coffees on the house then.”

As the vendor was pouring the coffees, his eyes gleamed with the spark of the god of lucre. He gestured invitingly to his steaming wares.“...and a waffle?”

Randidly’s mouth twitched. Why are you acting like you are fleecing me by giving me free food and drink…? “Fine, a waffle too.”

The delighted vendor finished preparing the goods and Randidly turned around to say something to Vye, but what he saw behind him made Randidly stop. The pot-bellied man had returned carrying a table and two chairs and set them down right in the middle of the street. He froze too when Randidly started staring intensely at him but offered a placating smile and then backed slowly away into the crowd.

Randidly’s gaze slid side to side, noticing how everyone was carefully not looking at the table and two chairs that had been prepared. Randidly probably would have hopped onto the roof and moved to a different part of the city if not for the fact that Vye snorted in amusement.

She walked up to Randidly and clapped him on the back. “You are even worse at this than I am. But it seems the Order Ducis is second fiddle Randidly Ghosthound himself.”

Sighing, Randidly followed Vye and they both sat down at the table. Still, Randidly had no intention of ignoring the surrounding people. As he sat at the table, the Mana in his veins stirred. His toes pressed against the concrete ground flexed and from the ball of his feet, the bright lines of Mana Engraving radiated outward to race across the entirety of Banner Street. People exclaimed softly in admiration and bent over to poke at the lines of energy on the ground as they spiraled across the surrounding surfaces.

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level 253!

Very quickly, some of the more general runes Randidly had designed to let the moss spirits interact with the world soon lay across the whole of Banner Street. The floating platform experiments weren’t the only ones that Randidly wanted to conduct and this busy street would likely function as a solid test case.

Once the runes were in place, Randidly said lightly. “Moss spirits, make sure they can’t hear what we are saying.”

A veil of green light spiraled upward and surrounded Randidly and Vye. Very gradually, the people of Banner Street slowly shifted back into unwilling activity as the two seemed to be held suspended in a sphere of green light that cut off all sound. And no one was willing to so obviously press into the sphere while Randidly sat right there. Business gradually began to resume around the duo.

“...If you heard the fight with my boyfriend, I’m sorry you had to experience that.” Vye said lightly. She cut off the corner of the waffle and popped it into her mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she continued. “He… I don’t know. I don’t know why he’s being so…”

Scratching his chin lightly, Randidly shook his head. Going gently about this conversation seemed like a waste of time, so Randidly just went straight for it. “Vye, if I understood things correctly, he wasn’t mad that you are leaving or that he can’t go with you. He’s mad because you acted like you didn’t care enough about his opinion to ask it.”

Vye blinked. “Of course his opinion matters, but this is my-”

“Then tell him that before you go.” Randidly took a long drink of the coffee and was surprised to find how much he enjoyed it. The warm flavor lingered pleasantly on his tongue. “As someone who has walked away from a lot of people and done it poorly for most of that time, just a word of advice. Starting the conversation with the fact that you still care goes a long way. As does listening. In life… you can treat people as subjects or as equals, but they don’t like it when you do both.”

Vye opened her mouth and then closed it. She took another bite of the waffle. Then she gave Randidly a sidelong glance. “I guess you would have quite a bit of experience in this area. But… I don’t want him to get his hopes up. I’m not going to change my mind.”

Around them, Randidly couldn’t help but notice that several vendors had noticed what Randidly had done and were doing surreptitious experiments at the limits of the moss spirits power. With a small smile, Randidly drummed his fingers on the wooden table. “My mother always used to tell me that there were two types of relationships. The ones where your individual weird stuff was aberrant nonsense that your significant other wanted to change or the ones where the weird stuff was exactly why they loved you.

“For the former, you want to end things with them anyway. And for the latter... “ Randidly shrugged. “They don’t want to change your mind. They just want to be a part of your life.”

Vye considered that for several seconds. “Your mother seems like a smart woman.”

Randidly just shrugged. Even now, he didn’t quite feel comfortable commenting on his mother. But further conversation between Randidly and Vye was drowned out by the sudden influx of booming voices around them as the vendors entered into a war of volume by discovering they could empower their voices with moss spirits.

“FINEST BACON IN KHARON!”

“-ONLY WAY TO START YOUR MORNING-”

“RANDIDLY GHOSTHOUND HIMSELF DINES HERE! FRESH WAFFLES-”

Randidly’s eyelid twitched as the volume steadily increased upward. To the point that the loud calls sent ripples across the surface of his coffee. While Vye still had a thoughtful expression on her face, Randidly slowly stood at his table and rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Moss Spirits. Silence them all.”

An emerald wave exploded outward and swept away the voices of the surrounding vendors. As one, everyone on Banner Street turned guiltily to look at Randidly.

The silencing aura that he had conjured earlier dissipated as the moss spirits read his intent. Randidly’s mouth twitched. “Use these tools responsible. Yea?”