The experience of being kissed and groped by someone other than her chosen lovers was more than unpleasant. It felt like a violation of her body and mind, so Yuriko reacted with predictable violence.
She shoved the man off her with her right hand, her left grabbed his wrist, wrenched it off her bosom and twisted. As for the hand stroking her hip, it was pushed away by the momentum of her shove.
“Ah!” the man squeaked as he was pushed off, and then half screamed when she twisted his arm around his back. Her foot tripped his, and he wound up on his belly on the ground, with her knee at the small of his back.
Bam!
Her fist slammed the ground next to his cheek and squelched his angry retort.
“What the hell!” Yuriko yelled, her vernacular influenced heavily by Lilibeth’s memories. She recognised the man. It was Evan Andrews, one of Lilibeth’s…friends? Ex-boyfriend and current sex friend, apparently. What?
Yuriko felt her cheeks heat up as the memories and emotions hidden within welled up. Her true body and the rest of her strands of consciousness rose up to combat the unwanted affections, and she took a deep breath, then let the young man loose.
Evan had soft brown hair and earnest looking brown eyes. He looked up at her with not a little bit of surprise, and an unsurprising amount of lust. Ancestors.
“Lili! What the heck?” He muttered as he got up and held his shoulder. The way she twisted his arm, the pressure had been focused there, and he was not doubt feeling the pain.
Yuriko glared down at him. “Don’t do that again,” she said as coldly as she could.
Evan had been Lilibeth’s first lover, but she had not been his. It wouldn’t have mattered, except he apparently lied to her about it. She even caught him in the arms of another woman, a rival from back in high school. Lilibeth had broken up with him about it, but a year later, they agreed to enjoy each other’s company without any strings attached.
Yes, Lilibeth had been hung up on him for a while, and Yuriko recognised the betrayal as one of the impetus that drove the young woman to do the ritual that killed her.
Hmmm. Evan wasn’t half bad looking though. Pretty attractive in a muscular kind of way. Those limpid eyes and sincere look had fooled Lilibeth and a number of other girls too. Unfortunately for him, Yuriko’s tastes were more than a bit different, and if the memories Lilibeth had of their sessions were to be believed, she was likely to be left wanting afterwards. Oh well. Maybe if there were four of him at the same time?
“Sorry,” he mumbled, his face a bit red. “I…”
“I’m sorry too, Evan,” Yuriko said as she shook her head. “I no longer want anything to do with you.”
“Eh?” The young man stared at her, face stunned. The red in his face was turning to anger from shame, though.
Yuriko snorted. “Goodbye.”
“Wait! Why are you being such a—!” He cut his screech off, suddenly conscious of the others in the park. They had gathered an audience, from the look of it. “Why are you doing this?”
Yuriko looked at him, Lilibeth’s feelings suddenly surfaced and she could feel it manifesting on her face. She pushed it down, however. She wasn’t Lilibeth, and she wasn’t about to go sleeping with anyone she didn’t feel attracted to. This was for the best. “Because I no longer wish to continue…” She bit her lip and continued with this place’s vernacular. “Coz I’m tired of you.”
“You!” Evan’s face turned completely crimson.
This might not have been the best way to go about this, but she also wasn’t going to use her Mien to affect him. That would be a disservice to both of them. Yes, this incarnation body had access to the full Mishala Mien. It had been a surprise, but the Mien had not divided itself like the rest of her powers. It bridged the gap between an unimaginable distance…
“I’m sure you’ll find someone else,” Yuriko continued. “You’ve done it before anyway.” She turned away and left, though she extended a bit of her perception aura towards him, but he calmed himself and left in a huff.
The rubberneckers appreciated the show, apparently, and more than a few applauded her, while a couple looked thoughtful. Yuriko ignored them, keeping her face impassive. She noticed a few of them with their rectangular phones held up, with the rear cameras oriented towards her and Evan. Ah, something she should be wary of, yes? Everyone can record scenes with their devices and post it on the Astorian Network for others to peruse. She…Lilibeth…used to do the same.
Nuances of the other’s life surfaced as she headed back to the apartment. She hadn’t brought Lilibeth’s phone, her purse, or wallet with her, and she was growing hungry, especially since she’d been tempering her body over the past few hours. She could push more today, but perhaps it wouldn’t be wise. She barely had a thousandth of her true body’s physique, and it was making this incarnation body anxious. But too great a change at too little a span of time would blow this identity, or perhaps attach the Altered Human label on her. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.
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Lilibeth had been ambivalent over it, seeing the Altered for each individual’s merits. Her family, the one she was estranged by, saw the Altered as nothing more than tools. But then again, they saw every other human the same way.
Lilibeth’s best friend loathed them.
Ah, that was another problem. Yuriko sighed as she climbed the stairs to her apartment’s floor. Once she was in front of the door, she reached through the wood using her Anima and unlocked it. She entered with little fanfare and headed to the refrigerator. There were containers of pre-prepared meals that she only had to pop into the microwave oven. They were even labelled, funnily enough. She hadn’t eaten the one for Sunsday breakfast, so she got that and the one labeled lunch and put them in the oven.
The machine was fascinating to watch as it operated. She could see the miniscule energy waves of ambient Elemental energies wash through the food. Most of it was wasted but it did the job, she supposed. She had the urge to open the machine and figure out how microwaves converted the electrical energy to heat, but refrained herself. She could do as much just by enveloping the food with her Radiant energy…
Breakfast was simple. Just some bread, sausages, and scrambled eggs. Lunch was some white grain, fluffy and filling, as well as some meat cutlets and steamed vegetables. The trouble was that there was only one more container of prepped food in the fridge. Today should have been meal prep time, Yuriko remembered.
After she washed the dishes and placed them in the drying rack, she rummaged amongst Lilibeth’s things. Her phone, encased in pink, had died and needed recharging. She plugged it in then looked over the woman’s purse. She had a couple of identification cards, one being a university ID, and another being her driver’s license. There was also another plastic rectangle that took her an embarrassing amount of time to figure out. A credit card linked to the Bank of Astoria.
The concept wasn’t all that foreign to Yuriko but the terms Lilibeth thought of when it came to funds confused her until she sat down and focused on all of it. The Astorians called their coins Astorian Royals, or Torries for short. Except it wasn’t only coins. She picked up something Lilibeth called a wallet, which was a leather container that held coins and rectangular paper that was printed with pretty pictures and numbers. It took a while for her to realise that this was what Lilibeth meant by bills, and it served in place of larger amounts of coin. Like a letter of credit, she supposed.
But the thing that stumped her was that the coins she saw weren’t made out of precious metals. It had copper and silver, sure, but it was mixed in with iron and steel. There were no coins that were valued higher than a single Torry, too.
Comparing it with the value of goods back home, it made no sense. It was only when her true body checked the concept of Autochreds did it somewhat match up. She thought that Dragon Fall City’s ACs were based on the value of Scourge bones, but it wasn’t. It was derived on the value of a worker’s work hours.
Delving deeply into Lilibeth’s idea of bills, the only thing she got was that the Torry’s value used to be derived from gold. An IJin of gold used to be valued at a hundred Torries, but now, it wasn’t. It was valuable based on what the Republic said it was valued at.
That had made Lilibeth’s family rather happy since they controlled the Bank of Astoria and that unpleasantness was part of why the woman had cut ties with them. The concept made Yuriko’s head spin so she sighed and pushed it back down. The important bits were that she had a little over three hundred Torries to her name, she had a budget of two hundred Torries a week for food, and she should have already started cooking by now.
Sighing to herself, Yuriko retrieved a bag—no backpacks for Lilibeth—made sure she had the apartment keys in her tiny pants pocket, and took her scooter’s keys, too. The groceries were a couple of longstrides away, on the opposite side of the park from the building. Lilibeth’s phone was still charging so she left it there.
Relying on Lilibeth’s memories for directions, she nevertheless got lost a couple of times. The woman had relied on her phone for directions, even if she’d gone to that grocery over the past couple of Seasons. By Yuriko’s reckoning, it was the 57th Day of Earth, AF 3003, but Astoria used a different calendar. The year didn’t match, being 610, but the day and Seasons did. Except they used a Lunar Cycle to cut up the Seasons in three, naming them Low, Mid, and High, with the Mid cycle having thirty-one days instead of thirty. So technically, it was Mid-Earth 27, Year 610. Her apartment’s rent would be due on the 1st High Earth, and Yuriko didn’t have enough bills on hand to pay it. Rotter.
Lilibeth had her part-time jobs, four hours for five days a week as a shopping attendant in Trinity Mall’s department store, and eight hours on Earthsday, the last day of the week, at the Bean and Coffee Cafe. Both jobs paid fifteen Torries an hour, except the cafe also allowed her the chance to earn gratuities from the customers. Lilibeth had been able to pull thirty to fifty extra Torries there, but she hated the crowd at the cafe.
And she was short of Torries because Lilibeth spent more than a couple of hundred buying ritual reagents.
“Hmmm, what should I do?” Yuriko muttered.
Lilibeth’s school fees were paid off by something her parents set up when she was a toddler, so that was something she didn’t have to worry about. Rent was eight hundred Torries a cycle and, normally, it was well within budget even accounting for minimal taxation. It helped that Whilton Apartment had part of its rent subsidised by the university, otherwise, it would be more expensive. The cheaper option would be if Lilibeth lived in one of the on-campus dormitories, but the woman didn’t qualify for it. A pity.
The scooter wasn’t so bad, Yuriko thought as she pulled up in the grocery’s parking lot. She was just a bit annoyed that she had to worry about funds, of all things. She couldn’t live isolated after all, or rather, she was sure it would ruin the purpose of this trial.
It was an unexpectedly peaceful existence, she thought as she entered the building. And of course, that was when the Threads of Fate despised her since she walked into an armed robbery. Who’d steal from a grocery anyway?!