The rest of the morning flew by, making sure Ria was fine and had everything in order to go back to her parent’s house. Especially paying attention to see if there weren’t any specks of blood we’d missed. But luckily everything appeared to be fine. Afterwards we ate some soup for lunch together with some bread and charcuterie. The time for their departure was quickly approaching.

“Will you be fine by yourself, Auro?” Em asked while taking the last of her own things together too.

“I think so. I’d prefer if you stayed of course, but that’s not really in the cards right now.”

“Mhmm.” She nodded. “I’ll call you a bit later before I head to bed, if that’s okay?”

“Of course! I’d be sad if you didn’t.”

“And I’ll text you!” Ria jumps around my arm.

“Y’all are too sweet.”

“We know.” Emma smirked.

“But I was wondering one thing though, and I can’t get it out of my mind... What girlfriend things were you doing together? Were you two like… making out?”

“Wha-whaaat!?” Em’s smirk had disappeared in an instant. “O-o-o-of course not… We aren’t that far yet…”

“Ah, the way you replied to me earlier, I thought…”

“We were just f-flirting a little and cuddling… n-nothing more…”

“Rora, we need to build this relationship slowly, you know. Not everyone moves as fast as you.” Ria smiled while she was still hanging from my arm.

“Y-yeah! Exactly!”

“That’s fair.” I decided to pet Ria on the head and Emma too for good measures. “I’m happy you two get along that well.”

“Otherwise we’d never have agreed to the relationship in the first place.” Emma pouted, taking my hand away from her head and patted me instead to assert at least some degree of dominance. It reminded me a bit of how things went yesterday evening and as a result made me blush a little too.

Ria just nodded along and laughed at the situation.

For the rest of our time together, we just sat around playing a card game, right up to the moment where Emma’s phone began vibrating in the last round of the game.

“Hello? Mhm, yes, we’ll be outside in five minutes.”

“Helen?”

“Yep, she’s pulling into a parking spot across the street.”

“Shouldn’t we get up then?” Ria asked, but immediately got a negative reply from Emma in return.

“When I’m this close to winning? No way.”

I pulled my next card, but it was useless. Emma’s smirk grew and drew hers and threw down her hand on the table. Like she’d predicted, she’d won. “That’s a gg wp.”

“What does that mean?” Ria put down her cards as well, apparently she’d also been quite close to victory, but Emma beat her by a round.

“Ah, it’s ‘good game, well played.’” Emma explained. “Right, your parents don’t let you play online games…”

She nodded. “They don’t… but it sounds fun…”

Emma and Karin liked to play video games, especially MMOs. They talked about that to us occasionally. -Maybe now that I have money, I could invest in a couple of gaming PCs so Ria and I could play along too…-

“Auro? What are you spacing out about?”

“Ah, sorry. It’s nothing, just marveling at your victory.” -I’ll look into it later, maybe I could give it to Ria as a surprise.-

“Riiiight.” Emma laughed as she rolled her eyes. “We should probably go now.”

“Mhmm.” I guided my girlfriends to the front door and gave them both a kiss.

“Ah, I forgot something, you can already go to the car Ria.”

“Okay! See you tomorrow, Rora!” Ria hugged me one last time before running towards the car that was parked across the street. Helen, who was standing next to the car, waved at me and then opened the passenger door for Ria. Of course, I waved back.

“So, what did you forget?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to have one last word with you before we left. You’re gonna buy her a gaming rig, aren’t ya?”

I scratched the back of my head. “Was it that obvious?”

“Pretty much.” She laughed. “Do you even have a clue about what to pick?”

“No… not really…”

“Thought so, I’ll help you with picking out the parts then. And at least let me pay half of it, okay?”

“Thanks, that’d be appreciated, but you really don’t need to pay.”

“Auro, she’s my girlfriend too, remember? I want to be able to give her something, too.”

“That’s… that’s fair.” I smiled. “Let’s start planning for it after the conclave, then?”

“Sounds good to me.” Em gave me one more kiss and looked at me in the eyes. “Do you mind if I tell my sister we are together, by the way? I don’t think I will be able to keep it secret from her for very long...”

“Of course, feel free to tell it to anyone you like. But why do you think you won’t be able to keep it a secret?”

Em started blushing. “Because I’ll be smiling at my phone every time I text you…”

“Holy shit, Em, you’re way too bloody adorable.”

“I know, shut up, you idiot.” She punched me softly on the shoulder and then turned around, putting her hands over her face to try to regain her composure. “I-I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Mhmm. I’ll be waiting.”

Em nodded and walked to the car, while I leant against the door frame. She waved one last time when she entered the car, and shortly after they were gone. Leaving me alone with Shima once more.

She mewled at me once I closed the door.

“You want food?”

“Mew!”

“Alrighty then. I’ll get you some. After that, I’ll have to figure out what to do with the rest of the day anyway.” I stared into the rest of my now empty house. “I might go on a bit of a walk afterwards.” I ran my hand across her spine and scratched her behind her shoulder blades. She always loved that and began purring almost immediately as I did it. “Cutie.” I smiled and then got up to get her some food.

Afterwards I watched TV for a little bit more and around 17:15 got dressed in more appropriate clothes for a walk, meaning jeans pants and a black hoodie. Just so it didn’t look like I was just out of bed wearing my PJ’s.

I grabbed my brown fake leather jacket from the coat hanger and headed out after giving Shima a pet on the head. “I’ll be right back, don’t worry.”

She mewled me goodbye as I closed the door behind me.

It was already quite dark outside, winter was definitely getting closer and closer. I stared at my new front door for a couple of moments and then started walking. A bit aimlessly at first until I noticed I was getting quite close to the park where shit went down two days ago. Almost immediately my heart started racing, my breathing stopped, and I turned around to head the other way. But something stopped me. Part of it definitely was curiosity, as I wanted to see what the place looked like after it was cleaned up. But another part of me realised that I couldn’t just run away from this. One day I’d have to face my trauma, and that day might as well be now. So I clenched my fists tight and turned back around again and marched on towards the entrance of the park.

I didn’t know what I expected to find, but when I got there, the first thing I noticed was the new fencing. “This is where those cars had crashed through…” I muttered to myself.

The gate to the rest of the park was open, so I didn’t need to jump over like we did last time. To my surprise, there were no car tracks visible whatsoever. Although I did notice a couple of new flowerbeds in some places. “They can’t possibly have covered up everything in that short amount of time, right?” I inspected the grass more closely, but everything looked completely normal and fit in with the rest of the area.

Something was starting to tell me that this conclave had even more power than I had previously dared to imagine, especially as I came closer to the epicenter of the fight. Everything just looked way too pristine. No bullet holes, no signs of explosions, no nothing. If anything, the park looked even better than it did before the incident.

I decided to take in the entire scene from a new playground they’d placed in the meantime as well. Sitting down on one of the swings. The lighting made everything look extra moody.

“I look like one of those depressed anime protagonists, don’t I?” I chuckled darkly to myself.

“What’s an anime?” The sound of a young kid’s voice almost made me fall off the swing in surprise.

I looked behind me in a panic, trying very hard not to start swearing. A kid, around 7 or 8 years old, was standing behind me, the knees of his pants were full of dirt. “What the h… uhm. What are you doing here, kiddo? Shouldn’t you be at home, it’s getting quite dark.”

“Was playing hide an’ seek with my friends. We wanted to play in the new park.”

“And where are your friends now?”

The kid shrugged. “I’ve been hiding since it was still light out.”

“Kid…” I sighed. “You should really be going home before your parents get worried.”

The kid shrugged again.

“Alright.” I got up from my recently acquired seat and offered my hand. “I will bring you to your parents. Do you know where they live?”

“Bine hill.” That sounded familiar.

“Do you mean Pinecrest Hill?”

The kid nodded.

“Okay, let’s go then.” We walked out of the park, although I’d barely had any time to think, at least I could help someone out and that was definitely a plus.

“But what’s an anime?”

“Ah, right...” I started explaining and by the time we reached his house he’d already asked a couple more questions. Like ‘Where is Japan.’,’why do potatoes exist.’ and other random questions. -Kids these days sure are inquisitive.-

When his parents opened the door, their faces were full of relief.

“Oh, thank God.” His mom immediately hugged him.

“We were about to call the police.” His dad wiped away some sweat from his brow.

“Thank you so much for bringing him back.”

“No problem. Didn’t he tell you he went to the park?”

“He did, but when we went to the park to look, we couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“I thought they were tricking me to come out!”

I tried very very badly not to facepalm and from the look of his parent’s faces I could tell they were just as dumbfounded, bamboozled and utterly shocked as I was. “Next time, please come out when your parents call you…”

“I will!”

His parents thanked me again and even offered me a small monetary reward for bringing their child back home safely which I refused. I had enough money laying around anyway and I didn’t do it for a reward in the first place.

With that I left the terribly strange kid and his parents behind and decided that that was enough trouble for an evening walk and headed home myself.

“Let’s hope that kid doesn’t forget his head one of these days…” I giggled to myself and walked further into the night.