Alessia came up not that much afterwards, carrying three glasses of you-know-what. One for me, one for her and one for Viktor.

“Sorry I couldn’t carry any drinks for you two, want me to get you something?” Alessia asked my girlfriends, who were both petting Shima.

“No, it’s fine, we know where to find drinks if we need them.” Em smiled.

“I’m not really that thirsty, either.” Ria nodded along.

“Okay.” Alessia smiled and gave a glass to me. “Cheers.”

“Thanks again for helping.” I raised my glass towards my two vampiric mentors.

“Absolutely no problem at all.” Alessia smiled and started to sip from her glass. Viktor did the same.

We all chatted in my room for a bit longer, mostly about what I still needed to get done before the move was completed. There was still quite the sizable task ahead of me, but at least the most annoying part of the move was done already.

“We should probably go and leave you girls alone for the rest of the evening.” Alessia said as she finished her glass. Viktor’s glass had been emptied quite a bit earlier.

“If you need any more help in the next couple of days, don’t feel afraid to call us.” Viktor added to that.

“I think we will be fine, but thank you for the offer.” I smiled and took both Alessia’s and Viktor’s glass from them so I could go and put them in the dishwasher.

“Then the only thing that rests on us is to wish you a happy Christmas if we don’t see you before that.” Alessia went to give a hug to both of my girlfriends.

“Merry Christmas to you too!” Ria replied enthusiastically as she squeezed Alessia.

“And fröhliche Weihnachten to you too, Viktor.” Em smiled and gave Viktor a hug too after she’d given one to Alessia.

“Danke, frohe Weihnachten." Viktor smiled as well and gladly accepted the hugs.

After they were done with hugging my girlfriends it was my turn, albeit rather clumsy as I was holding two glasses, but we still managed to give each other a very wholesome goodbye.

Alessia and Viktor left through the front door together, and all of us waved them goodbye as they walked towards the underground parking garage. When they were out of view, I closed the door to avoid too much cold air creeping in and made my way to the kitchen to dump the glasses into the dishwasher.

“And now we are all alone.” Em said as she lifted herself on top of the kitchen counter. “It really is a nice house, isn’t it.” She looked around while Ria took bread out of the bread bin.

“It really is.” I replied as I closed the dishwasher again. “I think I got really lucky with finding this house. Maybe it’s because the two of you are my lucky charms.”

“Hehe.” Ria giggled. “We definitely are!” She then continued looking around the kitchen.

“Are you looking for something?” I walked over to Ria and hugged her from behind.

“I’m getting a bit hungry, so I was looking for a toaster.”

“I think the toaster is in one of the boxes. This kitchen didn’t have a built-in one. What do you want to make?”

“Pan con tomate?” Em asked.

“Yes!” Ria replied.

“I think the toaster is in that box.” Em pointed from her position on top of the counter to one of the boxes next to the door that leads to the tearoom. “I think I wrote ‘kitchen 1’ on top of it with a permanent marker.”

I let go of my girlfriend and went to investigate. The box Em pointed out had indeed ‘kitchen 1’ written on top of it. “Alright, let’s see.” I opened it up and lo and behold, the toaster was right there in front of me. “Nice.” I picked the toaster out and gave Em a thumbs up.

“Toaster!” Ria jumped up enthusiastically.

“We do have tomatoes and garlic as well, right?” Em asked.

“I think so. I think Viktor already put all the food away in the fridge. If it’s in this fridge or the one upstairs I’m not sure though.” I took the toaster with me and swiftly plugged it in while Ria walked over to the fridge. “Em, aren’t you going to help?”

“I’m clearly directing. It’s a very important task, y’know.” She chuckled.

“Fair enough. Can mistress director at least grab us a couple of plates from the cabinet behind you.”

“I think that’d definitely be a possibility.” Em turned around and grabbed some plates out. With the tomatoes, garlic and a bit of mayo now at our disposal, we were ready for some light evening dinner.

We ate our light dinner in the tearoom, pretty much in complete silence. No television, no radio, we barely even talked with one another. Just the sound of crispy bread getting munched on.

At least until Ria decided that she’d had enough silence for the time being. “Have you noticed that the neighbors are also very quiet? I don’t think we’ve heard them yet.”

“It’s not like the neighbors at the last house were very loud.” I replied. “But it’s true that we’ve not seen them yet either. You’d think a move would at least pull some attention to us, right?”

“Maybe no one lives next door?” Em proposed just after she’d eaten her last slice of bread.

“Surely not.” I looked at the wall that was closest to the next adjacent house. “Well… at least the house looked inhabited…”

“These walls are probably thick enough so that we can’t really hear each other anyway. Rich people probably would have thought about that. But still, it could be one of those houses people use more for an art atelier or even a warehouse.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought about it being a warehouse.” I scratched my chin. “Would you like to go and check?” I got up from my seat and collected the empty plates for some more dishwasher work.

“Are we going to say hi to the neighbors?” Ria’s smile started to shine.

“Why not, right? Having a good relationship with the neighbors is never a bad plan. And if no one lives there, we will also know so immediately.”

“Hmmm…” Em stayed silent for a bit before she answered. “Are you sure about that? Wouldn’t it be best to limit contact with the people who live next to you? As we are… you know… not going to age that much anymore…”

“It’ll be fine, Em. We can’t just go about ignoring everyone you know. And if we have neighbours, one day they are going to see us anyway. Better to make a good impression, right?”

“Hmm, I guess that’s true.” Em got up from her seat as well. “Are we going to say hi now?”

“Why not. Put on your jackets and let’s go!” I pumped my fist into the air, followed by Ria doing the same.

Cozily clad in our winter jackets, the three of us headed out into the evening. The decorated lanterns shone their orangey light down upon us as we first made our way to the house that was on the right. This house looked similar to ours, albeit a bit more narrow. It definitely seemed unlikely to me that someone would use this house as any kind of storage facility, but then again, everything is possible.

At least the doorbell had a little plaque hanging below it, with the name ‘Blanchet’ stamped upon it. I stepped up the first step and rang the bell. It was definitely working.

I then got down the step and waited next to my girlfriends for any activity.

It actually didn’t take very long for a light to go behind the window.

A heavy lock turned and the door opened in front of us. The person who opened it was a pretty young lady, presumably in her mid-twenties with raven black hair tied back in a neat ponytail, it contrasted quite nicely with her white turtleneck. She looked a bit wary but once she saw us a friendly smile appeared on her face. “Hello there, how can I help you?”

I smiled back. “Hello, we came to say hi, we just moved in next door and we wanted to meet the neighbours.”

“Oh! Sorry for my look earlier, but we’ve had a lot of door to door salespeople lately.”

“No problem.” I continued smiling. “Are you the lady of the house?”

The lady shook her head. “No, I’m a live-in caregiver.”

“Who’s at the door, Julie?” The raspy yet friendly sounding voice of an old lady rang through the hallway.

“The new neighbours!” Julie turned around and called back. “Would you like to meet them. They look like three friendly young ladies.”

“Oh! Definitely!”

Julie turned back to us. “If you give me a second, I will go and help Lady Blanchet. She’s not very mobile.”

“Go ahead.” I replied. “We shall wait here.”

Julie quickly ran back and disappeared into one of the doors at the back of the house.

“This must be a big house for a lady all by herself.” Em commented as we waited.

“My house is a bit bigger and there’s only three of us, too, and that’s when you are not with your parents.”

It looked like Em was going to comment on that, but she decided against it, starting to blush instead. Maybe it hadn’t really processed yet that I had just moved. The only thing I know is that it was rather funny and that Ria thought so as well as she started to giggle.

-That said, Em’s comment was quite right. But at least she had this Julie girl to live with her.-