Chapter 5: Feel

He returned staring into his abyss, and felt something rise from it.

We reach the building where she lives, and it turns out to be a normal-sized house with a double garage on the side. Huh. I was expecting a skyscraper with an apartment somewhere inside, but I don’t really have a preference. When we are almost at the door, Zure tosses me a key, which must be for the door.

It’s 6:12 when I wordlessly open the door and step inside. “Shoes. Off.” She points to a spot by the wall with a small shoe stand. “Time for the grand tour!” Zure waves her arms around bombastically while saying this. In response, I push past her and say, “So which room is mine?” “Well, there’s only one bedroom so that means we get to sha-” “Nice couch.” I plop down onto it and feel the seats and cushions before sinking deep.

“That works too then. I was just kidding, by the way. There’s a room down the next hallway.” “Sweet. I don’t feel like a couch would be very comfortable anyways.” She leads me down the next hallway to the room. In the room I find something very interesting.

To be specific, wallpaper. Floral wallpaper, in conjunction with a floral bedsheet, pillow, and covers. Fine with me. “I don’t know what kind of reaction you were expecting from me, but flowers don’t bother me.” She hmphs, turns, and says, “Fine then. Explore the house on your own. There’s food in the fridge.”

“Thanks. Though I know I don’t sound like it, I really appreciate all of this.” I don’t know if she heard me or not, but I meant what I said.

I take out my Cred and check my inventory. I store the naginata by pushing it onto the screen, and it absorbs soundlessly.

I then go explore the house, finding a laundry room, bathroom, dining room/living room conjunction thingy, and a floral closet in my room. Seriously. Who makes every single thing in their room flower based?

I depart for the kitchen, and check all of the cupboards for stuff. They’re mostly filled with glassware and whatnot, but some of them are filled with snacks. Jackpot. I check the fridge and find a selection of junk food. Does she live on this stuff? How is she not fat? As if on prompt, Zure walks in.

“Do you actually live on this stuff and not get fat?” “Yeah. Strong metabolism.” “Respect.” I turn back towards the fridge and take out the gallon of Strawberry Atnaf (Lazy naming returns), get the biggest glass I can find, and fill it to near the top with the red stuff. I take the bag of potato chips and plop onto the couch once more. I see a TV in the corner, but there doesn’t seem to be a remote.

“How do you turn the TV on?” She claps twice and the TV turns on. Really. I do it, but nothing happens. I clap three times and it turns off. Nice. I clap twice and say, “Channels?” To my surprise, a channel list pops up in my vision.

I scroll through all of them and stop on a random channel. Which happens to be called Mockaleodon. Great. And on is a show called StarBill RoundShirt. It seems to exactly mirror SpongeBob, but with a different character cast. Perfect.

“How’d you know what my favorite show was?” Zure sits down next to me, also with a large glass of soda and junk food. We watch until late into the night, when another show finally comes on and we decide not to watch anymore. It’s now 10:00 pm.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about tomorrow’s schedule.” Oh boy. I almost forgot about the promise I made to her about being her punching bag.

“So first thing in the morning, whenever I wake up, we’re gonna fight until I’m satisfied. I decide on whether or not we use weapons. Then we’re gonna go to the mountains to start trying to get you leveled up a little bit. That’s also how we’re going to make money.”

Sounds simple, but the early morning fighting sounds bad for my health. Whenever she wakes up? Just watch her wake up at 4 am and attack me while I’m sleeping. “Do I get any free time to go explore the city?” “Maybe. Depends on the mountain expedition.” Great; there goes my plans.

“I’m going to go shower. Don’t do anything dumb while I’m away, you hear?” Zure tells me this and escapes to the bathroom. I’m not going to do anything dumb; no way am I going to risk a trip-and-fall scenario. I’m not interested, but she seems to want to tease me about romance or something. I poke around the house and eventually reach her room.

Am I interested in looking around? Yes. Am I embarrassed because it’s the room of a girl? No. Will I explore her room while she showers?

Definitely.

I push open her door and expect some more floral patterns, but her room is surprisingly boring. It’s mostly gray colors. Except for her bed, which has a rainbow pattern on the covers and pillow. I guess she really didn’t want to hurt the other color’s feelings.

I walk over to one of her dressers and find nothing but clothes, assorted skirts, jeans, shirts, dresses, plus various gloves and socks. I hoped to have better luck in the second dresser, but I pull open all of the drawers to find more clothes and some shoes. I then reach the last drawer. I open it normally, but hear a click at the very end.

I pull the drawer all the way out of the dresser and feel around inside, and find a paper square, magnetically attached to a small metal plate inside the dresser. I pull it out and see that it holds a picture of a woman, who has the same blue hair as Zure, but looks to be middle-old aged.

This woman must be her mother. But why was she hiding the photo inside of a dresser? I hear the bathroom door click open, and Zure sounds like she’s heading this way. Shit. I don’t have time to replace the photo, so I settle for just putting the drawer back in place.

The bathroom isn’t that far away, so if I leave, Zure will notice me leaving her room. Shit. I do a once-over of the room, and notice that the only place with hiding space is under her bed.

There better not be any spiders under there. I dive under the bed and try to get to a position where Zure won’t be able to see me. A few seconds later, I hear the Zure walk through the doorway to the room. I can see from under the bed that she’s already half undressed. Of course she is. Wait. Why didn’t I just use Freeze?

Didn’t I just tell myself to not do anything dumb so I wouldn’t trigger one of those fall and grope situations? I’ve fucked myself so many times today I wouldn’t be surprised if my INT stat had fallen by a few points. I facepalm in my mind as I try to be as silent as possible.

I then use Freeze and and get out from under the bed. Zure is a few feet from the dresser, so I remove the last drawer, replace the picture, but I’m interested as to why she came back, so I slink back under the bed.

As time resumes, she walks directly towards the second dresser and takes out the last drawer. She then expertly pulls out the picture, as though it was a practiced motion, and begins to speak.

“Hey mom. It’s me, Zure. Today, the weirdest thing happened. I was just in the career center, and I was surrounded by a bunch of thugs. You remember how I had bad claustrophobia? Well, it kicked in at the worst time, and I got scared. But then I met the most interesting guy I’ve ever seen. He appeared out of thin air, but he beat up all of the guys in just a few seconds. He claims to be from another world, and when he said that, I was really surprised. I lied and told him I knew a few reincarnated people. I’d heard rumors of reincarnators before, but when he said he had a special ability, I actually guessed it right! He has time control powers, and it’s super duper odd. He said he didn’t he have a place to stay, so I let him crash at my place. Right now, he’s probably in your old room. While we were walking home, he told me what his favorite color was, and afterwards I realized that he was someone who could be trusted. Maybe it was something in the way his eyes looked when he was done talking, or maybe his actions from earlier. He claims it was pure retaliation, but I’d like to think it was for me. I also totally kicked his ass when we fought; but he didn’t use his ability at all. I’ve only known him for a day, but I feel closer to him than I have to anyone else in a long time. If I could explain the feeling, I would. But I can tell. He knows how I feel, or at least he’s incredibly good at faking it. Alright Mom, that’s it. I’m gonna go shower now.”

Zure replaces the photo and the drawer, then exits the room. I hear the bathroom door click, and I roll out from under the bed. I understand how she feels? I look upon her words from earlier, then think about them carefully

[Because I’m good at acting. But you don’t act. You wouldn’t smile unless there was a real reason to be happy.]

I think about these words for a moment, then try to draw a conclusion. I don’t act? I feel myself being drawn into another vision….

Once again, it’s the dark haired boy. But this time, he’s walking down a school hallway while talking to a blonde-haired girl. The girl says to him, “Are you okay?”

In response, the boy smiles at her and says, “Definitely not. But it feels better to fake it than to not be okay, ya know?” The blonde girl responds with silence and an odd look at the black haired boy. I then see a series of days pass for the boy, but these times, he is walking alone. Every single time after the first, the girl is no longer there. A phrase resounds through my conscience.

It’s better to be alone.

I’m back in reality, and I realize a few things, first and foremost: the black haired boy is definitely me. I have no idea about the blondie, but this means that parts of my memory will return when I find certain items, like the guitar pick, or make certain connections between this world and that one.

It’s better to be alone? Why? So I would have less to lose? I have so many questions, and so little answers. I just have to experience this world more.

But while I’m lost in my thoughts, I fail to hear Zure return from her shower. Naked, except for the towel covering her sexy areas. I also don’t realize in time that she entered the room, and I was just standing up in it. It’s too late to use freeze; she’s already seen me. Time to talk my way out of this, hopefully.

An aura similar to the one earlier in the day when I made the punching bag promise is now pouring off of her like lava. Oh geez. Mistakes have been made. Mistakes have been made.

“How long have you been there?” “From before the drawer thing.” Why am I telling the truth? I don’t know, but after her speech, I don’t want to lie to Zure anymore. “So you heard everything I said?” “Yep. Don’t worry about it.” If the aura could get any scarier, it just did. I thought it was evil before, but now it’s downright demonic.

Zure just puts that creepy smile on her face and walks closer to me. No. No way am I letting a nearly-naked girl get close to me. I step back and say, “Put some clothes on before you attack me.” “I’m not just going to attack you.” I nearly shrink back in fear and close my eye, but instead, I feel her put her arms around me in a hug.

“I was right, mom.” Zure murmurs this from the side of her mouth while nestling against me. Not good. Unfamiliar situation. Play it cool, Zeph, play it cool.

I CAN’T FRICKING PLAY IT COOL THIS IS SO INSANE WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

“Uhhh…” I start to feel the blood rush to my face and try to push her away, but to my dismay, she just snuggles in closer. Her towel is starting to fall off of her back.

I quickly move my hands to her back and keep the towel in place. “Clothes! Please!” She just looks up at me and then seems to realize that she is, in fact, half naked. And really, she doesn’t seem to care.

At this point, I forcibly push her away and say, “No. No way. Not happening. Ever. No. Noononononoonononononononononono. No.” I freeze time and leave the room.

I unfreeze time when I reach my room. Holy shit. Did that just happen? I also just remembered that in my past life, I actually have no experience with girls. At all.

You know what that makes me? A 19 year old virgin, who’s never even hugged a girl until now. Just because I’m expressionless in my mind doesn’t mean by body isn’t.

I just can’t calm down my thoughts. I’m now constantly telling myself that I can’t calm down because unpopular guys always fret over the smallest things.

But that was a full on body hug. Through a towel! I then tell myself it was just a one time thing, but the more I think about, the less composed I am.

“ARGGGHHH!!!” I’m now doing physical exercise, and I locked my door to prevent any more interaction. “One, two, three…” I trail off while doing pushups.

After doing 69 pushups, I collapse onto the floor. Breathless and exhausted, I’ve finally calmed down. I drag myself into bed and prepare myself for the next day, which already promises to hold excruciation, pain, and confusion.

End Of Chapter 5