I heard the twang of an instrument and immediately felt horrid pain. The strings of the double bass were accompanied by the sharp sounds of 2 pianos which seemed to be prerecorded. My eyes were still closed but I saw something in front of me.

[ The calm music weaves through your pain ]

-| Silence | debuff removed

-Health Regeneration temporarily increased by 10%

-Pain Resistance temporarily increased by 10%

It was different than last time. Last time it hadn’t given me Pain Resistance. I check the skill’s description once more to be sure.

[ Passive: Emotionally Enhanced Experience ]

-Effect 1: When under the effect of emotion, based on the emotion a buff/debuff is applied at random.

-Effect 2: When not in a listening session debuff | Silence | is applied.

It was as I remembered it, though the | Silence | debuff still escaped me. I had tried to find what it did but never found an answer. It was like it was being kept away from me, which it probably was seeing as the system answered most of my questions, but apart from that, the other thing that was being kept away from me was the music seeing as I was still screaming at the top of my lungs.

It was painful, too painful, but that wasn’t the thing on my mind at the moment, as I had yet to find out where the music was coming from. As I struggled to save my voice from the burning pain I looked to my side and saw a girl looking back at me. Her long silver hair was tied in a ponytail seemingly so as to keep it out of her way while she played her instrument, her dark brown skin glimmered in the presence of the light that shone through the window behind her. Her lithe fingers slowly coming to a stop rested on the strings of the double bass in front of her. I raised my head and squinted at her, not knowing what to actually do in this situation.

“Not every day you have a seedling crash into your backyard you know.”

She calmly stated sneakily prodding for an explanation.

I couldn’t help but let my head crash back against the carpet I was laying on. I was still having difficulty gathering my breath as I tried to get an answer out.

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

I wasn’t so naive to reveal anything else. Seeing as she knew what I was already and had only gone out of her way to help me, I could only hope she didn’t take advantage of this.

“Sorry, but what’s today's date.”

“Oh, it’s the 15th of March.”

“Huh.”

I thought to myself: ‘It’s been that long already?’

It was hard to keep track of time when all the days blended together so easily.

Her eyes only seemed to grow more curious after my answer.

“Sorry, but can I know why you crashed into my backyard with bullet wounds. I mean you don’t have to answer but I’m just curious that’s all.”

Could I trust someone like her? I wasn’t sure. I really wanted to trust her but I couldn’t, not after what I’d just gone through. I didn't even know her.

“Sorry, but I can’t say.”

She frowned lightly clearly disappointed.

“Can I at least know your name, it’s gonna be kind of hard to just call you ‘you' all the time, I did kinda save your life.”

“I’m . . sorry about that . . . It’s just that I don’t know you. When you get chased with bullets it gets kind of hard to trust people you don't know.”

It was true that I couldn’t trust her, but I could at least tell her my name since she did save my life, so I continued after a brief period of silence.

“Natalius, but you can call me Nathan if you want.”

She raised a singular brow to my answer but said nothing about it. It was peculiar how patient she was with me considering I apparently crashed in her backyard, which I didn’t even know I did. It was weird, well the entirety of the world was weird now probably. Seeing how unfazed she was to me being a Seedling I could assume they were probably common knowledge now. That or she was unfazed with everything, I couldn’t tell with this girl.

I decided to ask a question keeping it as polite as possible.

“May I know your name?”

This apparently earned me another raised brow as she played with her strings nonchalantly as If mulling over something. I wasn’t disappointed that she chose not to tell me her name because I was ultimately still a stranger, but she surprised me by answering anyways.

“Alex. The name’s Alex.”

She seemed to have grown a small bit more comfortable after getting that out so as I waited for the pain to subside I tried to look at my surroundings. The room we were in was small and seemed to be the upstairs area of wherever I was. The room had some girly charm; not that I would know what that looked like seeing as I’d never been in a girl's room before, assuming this was her room. It was overall kind of messy but who was I to judge my savior.

I made a quick comment to avoid the weird atmosphere.

“Nice room.”

It was such a lame comment, I turned my head away from her and physically cringed, what kind of comment was ‘nice room.’. I was such a loser it made me wanna go back in time and beat myself up.

“You don’t have to exaggerate, I know it’s messy. Also by the way aren’t seedling supposed to heal fast or something.”

I didn’t see a reason why to not hide it, after all, it wasn’t as if I was going to stay here, but just in case I decided to tease her a little bit.

“If you keep playing that pretty music of yours I’m sure it’ll go faster.”

That earned me another raised brow, but she didn’t seem to mind as she started playing again.

“Big music fan are you.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“You could say that.”

Her mood seemed to have lightened, and along with it, mine followed so I couldn’t help but let something slip.

“My power . . Or whatever people are calling it these days . . . it works based on music.”

The music came to a stop.

“No way.”

I turned my head towards her wearing a slightly goofy smile.

“Yes way.”

“Dude, that’s cool as fuck!”

“haha, yeah. It is pretty fucking cool.”

The strings started their melody again.

“Are you like a bard or something?”

“I actually don’t know how to play any instruments.”

This time her surprise didn’t stop the music.

“Whaaaatttt, get out.”

“Yeah, It’s more like whenever I listen to music stuff happens.”

While I had been staring at her most of the time after I let myself slip she had only been looking at me once or twice. But now that I had revealed that information, it seemed I had all her attention as she gazed at me, meeting my eyes.

I couldn’t hold eye contact due to embarrassment so I turned my head, and listened on to her music.

I had always been like this for a while. The shell I had chosen myself during my social debut in middle school was based on the shows I had watched as a kid. The stereotypical unfunny outcast. In my earlier days, I had no trouble communicating with kids, but as the world knew, kids were dicks and I, in my dejected feelings from these goblin children decided I wouldn’t let myself be bullied, I would be above them, never showing a hint of emotion, and when they least expected it hit them with “sick burns”. In my high school days, I changed a little.

I kept the same personality, but got rid of the sick burns because like 90% of every other kid, I found out, I wasn’t funny at all. Sure sometimes I would throw a joke here and there but it was all just another shell I put just in case the first one fell.

Deep inside, I really did want to converse with everyone all the time because in the end, I was lonely. So when a chance was given to me like this, I couldn’t help but latch on.

‘I’m so fucking cringe.’

I laid there for a second waiting for something to be said. I didn’t know why the conversation suddenly went quiet but I was really hoping It didn’t stay that way much longer. I gazed around the room once more to get something to grab my attention and nothing came, so this time I tried sitting myself up to see if I could.

“Woah there my guy, stay down, stay down.”

I stared at her for a second and obliged still keeping my face away from her sight.

I heard a small sigh, and then her voice.

“I thought you seedling never told anyone your fate skills.”

This time I raised my eyebrows. This was totally left field for me since I assumed there would be a lot of people bragging about their skills, or maybe showing off by taking vigilantism by the balls and riding it, but I guess I was wrong.

‘Well since I already told her this much, I might as well come out with it.’

“Ah, I actually didn’t know. I kinda got kidnapped as soon as I got caught by a seed.”

She kept playing but I could tell her music faltered for a second.

“Sorry about that.”

My back shifted, I was uncomfortable. “No it’s okay, it’s not like you would’ve known anyways . . . haha.”

“Yeah but still, sorry. Also, you should never tell other people what you told me. No offense but you’re a bit naive.”

I shook my head and smirked in a defeated matter.

“I won’t disagree.”

I woke up feeling lazy. I couldn’t really be bothered to get myself off of the couch. It was way too comfy for its own good so I did the best thing I could think of and thought.

Yesterday had been a mess. Put two 20-ish-year-olds of the opposite sex in the same house for long enough and things are bound to get awkward. Especially if they don’t know each other. Well, that's what I thought would’ve happened but it had actually been pretty cool for the most part.

Alex was great. She was sociable, funny, and too cool. Too cool for me. After totally not freaking out about the things I let loose about my powers we hung out for a bit and I even helped fix her backyard; for the most part.

She was too good and I honestly didn’t wanna leave, not after the 6 months of mild-social-interaction-desert-hell, I had gone through.

I used [ Wind Control ] to transport the TV remote into my hands. I never checked the news but seeing how I was gone for a while I thought it wouldn’t hurt to check. The button went down to my touch and the TV sounds reached my ears. Regular news. Boring news.

Either seedling were already no big deal, or someone was trying to hide as much info as possible. I honestly wanted to believe the first option was true but I’d been trying not to think as naively as Alex had suggested. If the second option was true, well, there wasn’t much I could do about it, to be honest. I was a disheveled boy still too lazy to get out of a couch in the morning, what was I gonna do, bore them to death? Plus it wasn’t really my business so who cared.

I twisted my body to get in a more comfortable position when I heard a door click.

“Mornin”

“Mornin, you sure do sleep a lot.”

She pouted. “Hey! it’s not my fault I suck at drinking!”

She continued her walk towards me and pushed my legs from the end of the couch. “Move, lazy.”

To which I obliged. She let herself fall down and put her hands over the couch letting her body relax.

“Could ya pass the remote?”

I obliged once again and used [ Wind Control ] to float it to her. She looked at me for a second, shook her head, and snorted out: “Fuckin Seedling.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault I’m awesome!”

She chuckled and slapped my back playfully.

Her chuckle slowly came to a stop and as its last givings slowly died out and as she changed channels one by one, the question came out.

The damned question.

“So what are you gonna do now.”

I was really hoping she didn’t ask this. I really didn’t want to leave, and I wasn’t one to ignore my flaws but I fell in love too fast. I fell in love too fast and I was clingy. Those two attributes already set me up for failure.

Looking from my perspective I had 2 regular options and 1 “You’re Insane” option. The first regular option was to get out of here and hitch a quick ride back to my parent's house seeing as I wasn’t really that far from them from what Alex told me about our current location. It was a good plan in theory but there were a couple of potholes here and there such as the fact that they probably thought I was dead, and the fact that we never had such a great relationship to begin with, so that crossed out the first option.

The second regular option was to get all my documents in check, get a small job and provide for myself while totally avoiding everyone I knew for the given time. This option in my head made the most sense seeing as I would be staying in Alex’s house for maybe a month at most, and then leaving to rebuild my life from the little pieces I had left. This one was out for the simple reason that. 1: I was a clingy, annoying motherfucker.

2: I was a clingy, annoying motherfucker . . . Which led us to my one “You’re Insane” option.

I tell her this.

“You wouldn’t happen to want a housemate, would you.”

The clicking of the remote came to a stop as she slowly turned her head towards me.