"Thanks, I'll be back in a sec," Carl called, walking towards the workshop's entrance with a quickening pace, his worries having intensified significantly in the time it took to finish loading up the old woman's car and then drive back across the district. How'd I even manage to walk that far this morning? Can't imagine…
He pulled on the door and walked through, looking—
A pair of sharp-looking pieces of ice came to a stop just in front of his eyes, hovering motionlessly for a moment before they dissolved. "Oops, sorry, master," Phonia called in a stage whisper, poking her head out from behind the car. She bounced over to him with an expression of glee and wrapped him in a hug. "I've been guarding just like you ordered!"
The sudden shift from being almost attacked by magic to being hugged by a still-naked almost-Annie with horns, a tail, and locks of purple hair caused Carl's brain to require a moment to catch up. "Uh…"
"Nobody else tried to come in," Phonia reported while looking up at him. "Do I get a reward?"
Carl disentangled himself from the sex doll—gently, though, because she did still look like Annie. "Nope, just checking in to make sure nothing happened."
Phonia pouted. "You're really not making very good use of me, master."
"Yeah, yeah," Carl said, rolling his eyes. "Mina still asleep?"
Phonia nodded. "I checked on her in case someone tried to break in through the roof hatch. Or through the wall. Or the windows. Also the vents." She frowned. "This building isn't easy to guard, you know."
Carl gave the sex doll an appraising look in her eyes, because it was difficult enough for him to stop ogling his wife in real life let alone this in-game version of her that seemed somehow—
"You're sure you—"
"Nope. Keep guarding," Carl said, immediately turning around and walking out the door. He shut it behind himself in a quiet way so as to avoid waking up the teenager on the second floor. She's probably gonna be out until… Huh. Is noon still at twelve or is it at like, sixteen? Days here are so freaking long.
He returned to the car where Romuliana was waiting and hopped over the side of it into the passenger seat. "All set." Kinda weird that cars here still don't all have doors and you have to jump in, but it's better than no sides at all. Still no freaking seatbelts though. What the actual heck.
"Wife?" Romuliana asked.
"Uh… Er…" Carl struggled to find a way to reply that didn't involve the term 'sex doll' since he was more than a little embarrassed to admit that he apparently owned one—not that he had any problems with people who owned sex dolls, of course, but it wasn't something that he, Carl Weathers, would choose to own. "Workshop assistant," he said. "Very clingy."
"That's how it starts," Romuliana said, driving with reasonable attention to safety. "My daughter had it happen the same way. She was training to fight in the arena, and there was a man she always complained about being too clingy and always trying to train together with her. Now they have children."
"Yeah, probably not gonna happen like that for me. I'm already married. Kids, too."
"I figured as much with how careful you were with my wares. But there's still victory in finding a second person you love as mu—"
"Nah, I'm good."
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Carl had just finished bringing the last boxes in from the car, which was parked around to the side of Romuliana's shop.
"The vases go on this shelf," she said, pointing to a small shelf, "and the rest can stay in the back. Jugs over here," she pointed to another shelf, "plates here, cups here…"
Carl remembered the location of each item, aided as he was by the hint of having one or two of each thing already in place from the previous week, because they were now restocking her store after she'd taken a couple days off.
"I'll start here," she said, standing next to a box with plates in it at one end of the store.
Carl decided he'd start with the vases, because it made a certain sense to him to use the same order he'd used to pack things up in the first place.
He eyed the box.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
He looked to the shelf.
Yeah, it was probably gonna take a while to restock all these shelves. Not that long, obviously, since it hadn't taken him even an hour to pack everything up in the first place, and he wasn't even going to be unpacking everything—there wasn't anywhere near enough space since her shop was pretty small, though it was way bigger than the tiny breakfast shop he'd found himself at earlier.
He picked up a vase. There were four more in the box, of course, and he'd get to each one in turn once he'd set this one on its shelf.
A blue status window appeared.
New class acquired:
Employee now rank 1!
1 unused skill point remaining
"Dismiss." Carl sighed and grabbed another vase.
No, he wasn't going to just zone out and "fast forward" through this like other people might. He was going to take the time to do it the right way, with each of Romuliana's wares going into its place in order to maximize his thinking potential, and—
----------------------------------------
"That went much faster than I expected," Romuliana said.
"Yeah, time really flew by," Carl agreed. He'd gained another two ranks in the Toiler class as well as another one in Employee, which gave him an odd sense of accomplishment even though the classes didn't seem to be adding anything tangible to his experience.
"You're a hard worker, Weathers," Romuliana said, pushing a box filled with vases a little bit further into the storage room in the back of the shop. "And you're not obsessed with all that class garbage like everyone else."
Haven't had much of a chance to look at it yet, really. He leaned against the small counter near the front of the shop.
The old woman eyed him for a moment, then walked to the front of the shop to stand next to him and speak in a quiet voice. "You know, you might be more like one of us than like the rest of the system-obsessed idiots in the city. Tell me, Weathers, have you heard of the goddess of light?"
Carl carefully kept his expression neutral. "Can't say I have?"
"Well," Romuliana said, brightening slightly, "it's said that she's the reason for many of the changes that have been happening here lately, especially the beneficial ones like all the roads getting paved and adding the race tracks which caused cars to become more common."
Is she… Carl chuckled a little when he realized what she was talking about. "Nah, that's just Rog…" Oh, uhh, wait, I shouldn't be talking about company stuff. "I mean, yeah, goddess of light," he added quickly, "she sounds pretty incredible!" He made eye contact while strongly hoping that she wasn't going to ask him to elaborate since he wasn't one of those people who liked to gloat and make snide comments using his insider knowledge.
Romuliana gave him a suspicious look for a moment before she relaxed, having been pacified by a quick-witted, masterful execution of Confused Innocent Stare. "You might consider paying a visit to the church," she said. "It's on the east side of D-five near the south end. Lot of us older, more mature folk who can see through all this system nonsense gather there. I think you'd enjoy it."
This must be some kinda Jehova's Witness type thing. Older people protesting against game-y stuff while they're trying to do their slice of life, hobbyist things. "Yeah, uh, I'll think about it. Maybe," he lied with the knowledge that he was absolutely never going to think about it.
"In either case, it's always a pleasure to come across someone who isn't grubbing about for stat points and class ranks," she said, her voice returning to a normal volume.
"Yeah, that was pretty annoying," Carl mused, recalling how he hadn't even been able to see at one point when the number of open blue status windows had gotten to the point where his vision was completely blocked. These bugs keep piling up. Not even sure it's worth reporting this kinda thing; they've gotta be aware of it already with how annoying it is and how many reports they must be getting from all these old ladies.
The old woman made an approving grunt. She produced a small set of keys from somewhere and walked around behind the counter, crouching down. There was a click, then some rustling, and then she rose back up over the countertop and set a trio of coins down. "Here's your pay for the morning. Thirty marks. Should be enough to get you a pair of shoes. Clothes, too, if you're thrifty about it."
Huh. That's… Carl did the mental arithmetic based on how many dozens of pork shanks he could buy with the amount of money. Like, three quarters of a dozen pork shanks. I guess that's pretty good? Not that I was really doing it for the money, but Mina's probably gonna… Actually, I still gotta buy clothes for the doll. And now I'll have some real coins to use for coffee without breaking company policy or having to borrow. "Thanks," he said, sweeping them off the counter and putting them into the pocket that wasn't still full of random metal scraps. Where'd I even get these from?
"Take one of these, too," she said, grabbing a mug off the shelf with a sun etched into its side. "A little reminder in case you decide you're interested in spending time with other like-minded people."
Carl refrained from frowning as he accepted the gift. Can't hurt, I guess. Actually, now Mina and I can both have mugs instead of sharing that one. Maybe not so bad after all. "Thanks again, Romuliana. Hey, any idea where I can buy some clothes?"
She sized him up. "Hm. Place a couple streets down might sell something in your size. What type of—"
"No, uh, actually I need to buy some clothes for a woman," Carl said, feeling awkward.
Romuliana snickered a little and gave him a knowing look. "A woman, is it? You know, the goddess of light encourages having multiple lovers."
Carl grimaced.