In the end, I give Effy my name too, before asking her to circle back the way she came so the gate guards don't figure out we were together. She does as I ask and heads back into the city. I lie down in the grass to stare up at the blue sky, watching the clouds roll past.
"I'm really glad that worked out," I say to myself. "Thanks Chisa, thanks Riko." I let them know they can go back to doing whatever they want, and just sleep in the wonderful grass for a little while longer.
Shortly after the ninth bell, Emily gets to the forest and picks up the animals we caught today, so I thank Kiara and Soma for that. She takes a little time to pet the hobins and thank them before running back into the city. I guess that means I should head back too. Slowly opening my eyes, I sit up and stretch. I let out a big yawn, feeling really well rested after sleeping in such a comfortable spot.
I slowly get back to my feet, brushing off the grass stuck to me, and head home myself. When I approach the gate, the nice guard from earlier asks if I had a nice nap and I nod happily.
From there, I walk home, one slow step at a time. I feel a bit bad for ignoring the doctor's orders, but I still think it was worth it, I'm really glad I got to talk to Effy and learn about what she has been going through. I still don't understand why using Lilia on me made it so she can feel emotions, but maybe that's something I'll learn about in the future. For now, I'll have to focus my efforts on what I think I can learn.
My goals for now are learning more about the different structures I've seen that make up mana wells and stones, and possibly finding some way to make physical things out of mana. Unfortunately, the only way I can think of to move forward with either of those is by doing some tests on animals... And I still have no idea where to even begin with making physical things. If only I had some clue to go on... Still wondering about that, I arrive home.
It turns out that Emily is so much faster than me that it takes just as long for me to walk here from the gate as it takes her to run from the forest. As we both approach the front door, I can't help but think, isn't that a little too fast?
"Aria? What are you doing out?" she asks, looking worried.
"Ah, I just went and took a nap in the sun, it was really nice," I try to reassure her with a smile. I can tell her about Effy later.
"Oh, that's fine I guess, just don't move around too much, alright?" At least she doesn't look too worried now.
"Yeah, I won't." We both head inside.
It's about halfway to the tenth bell, so the orphanage is still pretty much empty, but everyone should start getting home pretty soon. After Emily deals with the couple hobins she brought home for the orphanage, we go into the kitchen and Emily begins washing the counter. I stand nearby, but I'm not really sure what to do.
"You can just go rest, Aria," Emily says when she sees me standing around.
"Umm..." I know she said she would cook for me, but is it really ok to just have her do everything? Is there any way I can help? Well, it's not like I can draw water from the well in my condition, and I can't even reach the counter. Even Emily needs to stand on a chair to work at it. Since I'm still standing uneasily, she comes over to me.
"It's fine, you really don't have to do anything. It's my turn to impress you," she says with a big grin, as if she doesn't impress me all the time.
"Ok, I'll go sit down." I finally agree. I walk over into the dining room and sit in one of the chairs. Since there's nothing to do, I rest my head on the table and kick my legs in the air a little while my mind wanders.
Let's see... I learned a lot from talking to Effy today, but I also have a few more numbers to work with from when I was counting earlier. And then there were the bells when I was out in the field. They definitely came later, around the second small tick of my divine gear instead of the first like at the orphanage. So is it based on where I am after all? How does that even work?
"Let's test it..." I murmur. Chisa, can you go to the church? That's where the bells always come from, so let's see if there's anything I can figure out from that spot. It's not all that long until the tenth bell now, so I'll get to hear them again soon.
Still, once Chisa flies over to perch on the roof of the church, there isn't anything to do but wait. So I wait, just kind of sitting drowsily with my head on the table. I haven't done so much sitting around since I was in the rail program. I'm getting impatient, I want to finish healing as soon as possible so I can start to get more done. I only have so much time.
More children get home as I wait. Some come through the dining room from time to time, but it seems like there's a crowd gathering in the kitchen. Is Emily going to be alright in there? Well, whatever she's cooking, I can already smell it in here. I can't tell what it is, but I can clearly smell the hobin meat, mixed with a bunch of other good smells. She said her cooking is weird, but it smells really nice...
I wait a while longer. The tenth bell should be any time now... Then it rings. Standing right on the church roof, it's incredibly loud for Chisa, but it definitely rings exactly on a large tick this time. Huh... I wait a little bit, wondering what I can figure out from this. Then I feel the next large tick, followed just a moment later by the bells?
"Huh?" I stare at the wall across the table. Why am I hearing the bells a second time? Chisa heard them at the church, but I'm hearing them again at the orphanage?
The only thing I can think of to explain that is that the sound isn't based on where you are. The sound is actually moving? Does sound move? That's what it seems like based on my observations...
Ok, let's assume I'm right and it does move. How does it move? How does it travel from one place to another? I have no idea, I can't even try to form a guess because I have absolutely nothing to go on. Then let's just skip that. It moves somehow. Does it matter? Yes. I've already seen for myself how being closer or further away causes the sound to reach me on different small ticks. That explanation even resolves the question about how I got a different count that one time. Since I was much closer, if the sound was traveling, I heard it sooner, so my count between those two bells was shorter. Everything I can think of seems to indicate that my guess is right...
So I'll go with that for now. I don't think there's much I can apply it to though. I'll just need to keep it in mind and adjust my time-keeping accordingly. With that, I've figured out the first of my two big questions about time. The other being, why is the time between each bell one tick shorter today than it was yesterday? But I need more information for that, so I'll work on it more tomorrow.
And... I'm back to having nothing to do. I glance over at the kitchen and it looks like the crowd has only gotten bigger. Emily really will be alright, won't she? It looks like half of the orphanage is gathering over there, so I'm starting to get worried. "I guess I'll check on her..." I slide down out of my chair and walk over into the kitchen. Even at my size, it's kind of difficult to squeeze between the other children to get over to the counter and Emily. But it looks like she's just standing at the hearth, stirring something in a pot. I glance at the rest of the crowd all circling around her, but it seems like she hasn't even noticed them?
"Umm..." I go up and speak quietly. Emily jolts a little, then turns her head stiffly to look at me. Why is she so nervous?
"Oh, Aria?" she sounds really relieved as she looks down at me. "The food will be done soon, do you need something?"
"Well, I saw the crowd and I was just wondering if everything was ok..." Now that I'm here, I'm still not sure.
"Ahh. I'm fine." Her smile seems kind of forced though...
"Well, ok-"
"But, umm... could you stay here for a bit?" she cuts in, grabbing my sleeve with one hand. Now I'm sure. This crowd makes her really nervous, doesn't it? I understand, being watched by so many people... Just being here is making my heart race, and I'm not even the one they're focused on.
Emily still seems to be trying to keep her cool though. "How about I tell you about what I'm making?"
"Sure." I answer, moving to stand beside her as she works. I hope she can keep her mind off the crowd by talking to me. And I can keep my mind off them by talking to her...
"So I've been selling some of the hobins I bring back to Matthew to use at the bar." She leans a little closer and whispers, "he said he can't keep accepting them for free, so he's paying me for them now."
"Ahh..." They are worth a lot of money after all...
"He boils them in water to make stock to use in a bunch of the stuff he makes, so I thought I would do something like that here," she explains. "He also makes mashed potatoes, so I thought of putting the two ideas together. First I boiled the hobin to make the stock, then I put the potatoes and carrots in, so they would absorb the hobin stock, then mashed them up. Then everything went in together, and now I'm stirring it all so it'll all mix together nicely and cook through." I nod a few times. I don't really know much about cooking, but I think I have some idea of what she's talking about. I wait patiently next to Emily, giving her the silent support she seems to need to withstand the stares of the kids behind us.
This is really uncomfortable...
I ignore it as best I can while Emily finishes cooking. Like she said, she was nearly finished. She grabs a couple bowls and spoons out the food for us. I stare at it blankly for a bit. It looks like orange goo. "H-here..." Emily stammers while handing me the bowl with a stiff expression.
"Right..." I hold onto the bowl and try to push my way through the crowd of children to get back to the dining room. It's hard, but I manage it, Emily following right behind. We go into the dining room and sit down. The goo in my bowl is super hot, so I just blow on it for a bit. It looks really weird. She told me how she made it, so I feel like it should taste good, but it looks sort of scary. Even so, I scoop up a little in my spoon and blow on it until it looks like it shouldn't be too hot anymore.
But it's hard to move past staring at the orange colored stuff, to actually eat it. Still, I push down my unease and bring it up to my mouth. Emily looks on in such clear anticipation, it's hard to meet her eyes.
I take a bite.
"Mmm!" I mumble through the food. I swallow it down. "It's weird! But it's tasty!" I say with a grin. It's kind of smooth like paste, but it tastes just like hobin meat. Like soft, mushed up hobins? It's so weird, having the flavor come from something mushy like this, but it still tastes good.
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"Hahahaha..." Emily laughs bitterly while she eats the food. "Everything I cook is weird after all..." Then she finally smiles a little. "I'm getting better though, at least this tastes good."
"Mm mm!" I mumble through the food in my mouth while nodding enthusiastically.
Just like that, we end up eating the food pretty quickly.
"Aahh, I didn't realize it would be so filling..." Emily mumbles while holding her stomach. She finished her bowl, but seems to be completely stuffed. It's only a few bells until dinner, so she might not even be eating it tonight...
"Yeah, but that makes it really nice!" A big grin spreads over my face after I finish my bowl. I pat my belly, feeling nice and full too.
"You're so small, but you can eat more than I can..." Emily gapes at me.
"It's... not that bad, is it?" I mumble while blushing at the thought. "I'm not a glutton, am I?"
"Of course not!" she assures me immediately. "You're growing, so of course you should eat a lot!" I've been kind of worried about it, especially after Eryk mentioned it. If Emily tells me that, then that makes me feel a lot better.
"Thanks, Emily," I respond with a smile.
"Alright. Now go get some rest while I clean up," she instructs while patting me on the head.
"Shouldn't I help?" I ask. She made all that food for me, I really should help with something, shouldn't I?
"It's fine, really," Emily keeps petting me gently. "I do this all the time now."
"But... I still feel bad having you do so much for me when I can't pay you back..." I grumble.
After a few long moments, she sighs and says, "Fine. If it'll make you feel better, you can help me clean up. Come on, I'll show you what to do."
"Sure!" We head back into the kitchen, where a lot of the other children have already left, but some are still sticking around. Emily shows me how you use a rag to wipe down the counters to get them clean, and use water to wash out the bowls and pots. She lets me help a little too, splashing some water into the bowls to get the leftover bits of food out.
While I do a little bit, she quickly runs through all of the other cleaning tasks, and we're done before I know it. Seeing the couple bowls and the section of counter I cleaned, compared to how she washed the the pot and all the cooking utensils, doused the fire, wiped down the rest of the counter top, and refilled the water jug, I'm not sure if I really feel any better about her doing too much work... Well, she said she's been doing this every day, so I guess she's gotten pretty fast at it already.
We're all finished and head back to our room before the eleventh bell even rings. I lie down, already feeling pretty tired even though I haven't done anything but sit and eat. Emily just rubs my head and puts me to sleep, saying she'll wake me up when John comes with my dinner. I'm already pretty full though. I'll just have to eat as much as I can. Still, I didn't really think ahead to that, I don't want to waste any of the expensive food Eryk has been making for me.
Despite my worries, I just lie down and go to sleep for a while. Everyone else is starting to settle down for the night too, so I kind of just drift off.
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Just like she said, Emily gently shakes me to let me know that John came with more food. I sit up in bed, still a bit worried as I begin to eat it. I can't help but compare it to the food Emily just made. Without a doubt, it's better. But it sounded like Eryk was having it made by a professional, and it's made of a bunch of high quality, expensive ingredients too. And unlike my contract to work with him for an education, I'm not repaying him for all this food in any way. Even more than troubling Emily, I'm worried about how much Eryk is doing for me. Does he really think he'll make enough money from my help that it will be worth it?
Which brings my thoughts back to that sword. He said he didn't know what it was made of, but I'm not really sure either. It generated light like tin, and lightning like copper. Thinking about it that way, my first guess would be that they mixed tin and copper together somehow. However, there was that other thing it did, the way the lightning got really strong really fast. And it didn't produce any light mana like tin does. And just looking at it normally, the color was completely different than either of those two. Even if they were mixed together, gray and yellow shouldn't make brownish gold.
So maybe it's like that one metal I saw, and glass? A different thing that has some of the same effects as other things I've already worked with? But if it's a new metal I've never seen before, there's no way I can figure it out. Working with my mana is no good for that after all.
"Umm, Aria?" I blink a few times when Emily calls my name. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," I answer, confused by her question. Then I take another bite and understand. How long have I been attempting to scoop food out of an empty bowl?
"I was worried you wouldn't finish, but it looks like you're still hungry..." she mutters, clearly still worried.
"No no no, I'm fine! I was just lost in thought is all!"
"Hmm?" Then she grins a little. "What were you thinking about this time?"
"I was worried about Eryk sending all of this expensive food for me to eat and wondering if there's any way I could make it up to him at work..."
"Oh, that..." Her grin vanishes as she glances away.
But then another voice cuts in. "You got a job?!" We both jolt a little, turning to look at Eve, half sitting up in her bed with an amazed look on her face. Glancing around, it looks like everyone else feels the same. That's right, they're here too right now...
"Ahh, yeah..." I scratch my head when I realize we always wind up talking about these things in front of our roommates.
"Good job, make sure you work hard!" she encourages me with a big thumbs up. Behind her, Mary and Helen nod repeatedly. "What kind of job did you get anyway?"
"I'm working as a third party contractor at the Ebock refinery," I explain. It feels weird using all those new words I learned.
"A what what?" Eve immediately tilts her head to the side and asks with a look that says she has no clue what I'm talking about. So it's not just me, she doesn't know that term either?
"Eryk told me that I'm called a 'third party contractor'." I say it slowly this time. "He said I'm too young, so he can't hire me to work for his company. Instead, I'll be working there by signing contracts with him."
"Huh, sounds kind of sketchy. What do you actually do?" Eve looks skeptical. Helen and Mary just nod repeatedly again.
"Well..." I lower my head. "Sorry, but that's a secret."
"Your job is... a secret?" She narrows her eyes and looks even more doubtful now. However, it's Mary bolting upright in her bed that draws my attention.
"Mary?" I ask, leaning to the side a little to look past Eve.
"N-n-no, it's nothing!" she stammers out a terribly obvious lie.
"Ok..." I mutter, but don't press her on it because whatever it is, she clearly doesn't want to talk about it. Something about my job being secret? So I turn my attention back to Eve and try to explain.
"I'm working with things that relate to trade secrets of his company, so I can't talk about exactly what I do."
"Well, that makes sense I guess," she rubs her chin a little.
But suddenly, Jannette speaks up. "Trade secrets?" We all look over at her in shock. She was actually listening to our conversation? "You don't hire a third party contractor to work with your company's trade secrets." From the way she said that, it sounds like she knows a lot about this topic, but why? Her eyes narrow as she stares at me hard. "Either he's stupid, or one of you is lying."
"No, it's not like that!" I wave frantically to deny her claim. "It's just that he really needs my help with something that's important to his company, so he did everything he could to get me to work with him." She doesn't look convinced at all, so I try to explain it. "He's even been taking me to the doctor and sending over food for me to eat every day. And he was really angry when Mister Fredricson changed the terms of our contract so that it didn't benefit me as much."
"That just makes him sound desperate. But why does he need you?" That sounds like an insult, but I know what she means.
"It's just that I have some things that I'm good at, so he needs me for those specific skills," I know it's vague, and she jumps right on that.
"What sort of skills?" she asks, her expression not changing one bit.
"I can't really talk about that..." I mumble while looking away.
"Figures." Without saying any more, she just rolls over in bed to tell me that this conversation is over. All I can do is sigh and look back to the other girls. I think that's the most I've ever heard out of her. From their looks, everyone else is the same. Except Mary, who looks so pale, it seems like she's about to faint.
"Mary, are you alright?" I ask.
"Fine! I'm fine! Really!" She's definitely not fine. She looks so bad that Eve gets up and goes over to her, asking if she's sick and checking her temperature, despite her protests.
While the other girls are doing that, I turn back to Emily. Jannette completely threw me off there, but now I remember I had something I wanted to ask Emily about. "Hey Emily, how did Matthew hire you? You aren't ten yet either."
"Well, it's not an official position or anything. He knows the guards, so he got their permission to take me as an apprentice."
"Ahh, I guess you could do that..." Since the guards are the ones who actually enforce the laws, what Eryk told me about the government not caring about taking apprentices early really means that it's the guards who don't care, doesn't it? Or in this case, I guess they actually give permission. Even though it's supposed to be against the law.
It's really weird to think about it like that. The people who are supposed to enforce a law giving someone permission to break it instead. Laws seem to be strangely complicated...
"I don't know what to think about your shady job," Eve starts talking to me again once Mary finally convinces her she's alright. "But I hope things work out well with it anyway." She sits back down on her bed and grins.
"Yeah, I hope so too," I say stiffly. "I'm just worried if I'll actually be able to do what he wants..." I sigh.
"Oh right!" Emily suddenly speaks up. "I was trying to tell you earlier but you were totally lost in thought. John wanted me to tell you that there will be more work to do tomorrow. So he'll be back in the morning to pick you up."
"Ok, sure." I nod.
"And be more careful this time," she says sternly.
"I will," I nod, immediately nervous when I think back on last time. "It looked like the doctor was going to bite Eryk's head off last time."
"What happened last time?" Eve asks.
"I got hurt," I mumble.
"Didn't you just start working there?"
"It was my fault, I wasn't prepared like I should have been and I wasn't paying close enough attention." As usual, she doesn't seem convinced.
"Let's make sure that doesn't happen again this time," Emily cuts in, "I'll pack your things for you."
"Wait, you don't have to do that," I try to argue, blushing furiously when she begins to go and grab my ingots from under my bed. Having someone else pack my things for me makes me feel even more like a little kid than usual!
Despite my protests, she stuffs the ingots into a cloth sack. "There! All packed up and ready for work!" she says with a grin.
"Hmph! Meanie!" I turn away, but it just makes her giggle.
"Haha, I've never heard you say that before." She laughs a little. "I'm sorry. It's surprisingly fun to tease you when you act your age," she says while rubbing my head from behind to apologize.
"We're the same age!" I cry immediately, then continue staring at the wall, pouting. She knows that's a sore spot for me.
I feel her throw the blanket over me, lying down and hugging me from behind a few moments later. Then she whispers, "I know, I'm just joking. I wanted to get your mind off the bigger problems, just for a bit."
How can I stay mad at her when she tells me that? With a sigh, I roll over to face her, giving a small smile before snuggling together. As I settle in, I take a few moments to generate more earth mana, but it reminds me that I gave Emily lightning earlier. She hasn't slept very well since the monster attack, so I whisper in her ear that I'll take the lightning, and she nods.
Once I've converted it, I finish up making earth. Then I'm off to sleep until tomorrow.