Finley Cai Aies Hall April 24th, 20XX

I woke up to a delicious smell that wafted around the house, the TV’s slightly muted buzz, and the sounds of pots and pans ( of which I did not own) echoed from the kitchen.

My body was heavy as I pulled myself off my bed and to my bathroom. I didn’t particularly remember when I’d got here, but from the dull pain on the back of my head and how heavy I felt, I remembered that I’d passed out at the store. I vaguely recalled waking up for a while at the hospital and being brought back home, but I couldn’t even remember who had taken charge of my safety and transportation.

I walked out of my room in only the bottom half of my pajamas, having only washed my face and hair, and entered the hallway that led to the kitchen and greater living space. My back hurt from having my wings smushed under me as I’d slept. At first, I worried that someone else had seen them, but I vaguely remembered rolling around in my own bed last night and ripping my shirt off to let them loose. No one else had been in my room, so it was probably okay.

My wings drooped and dragged across the floor as I neared the opening to the living room. I noticed that the Tv was on and pinned that as the source of the buzzing noise that had woken me up. I wanted to go in and turn it off, but thankfully, I noticed the two children on the couch and backpedaled into the hallway.

I worried that they’d seen my wings, but thankfully their attention had been fully captured by the neon display on the screen. They were watching a play that had been produced by one of the bigger stars on Squire, a popular social network site. I wasn’t sure if it was totally age-appropriate, but then again, I wasn’t one to know what was appropriate to show a child.

One of them was a little boy that heavily took after Jake. He sat on the floor, so close to the screen that I worried he might need glasses. The other was a little girl that looked a few years older than the little boy on the floor and also looked similar to Jake. Not so much that one would call them clones of each other, but there was definitely enough of a resemblance for someone to tell that they were related.

I fully retracted my wings into my body with a spell and went back into my room to get a shirt on before walking past the archway. The little girl noticed me and waved a friendly but cautious hi to me before returning her attention to the screen as if she owned it.

I shook off the weird feeling that I’d woken up in someone else’s home and continued my journey to the kitchen. Of course, I could have asked questions, but I figured it would be more efficient to ask whoever was in the kitchen. Besides, whatever it was that they were cooking smelled amazing.

“Yeah, no I think you should be more worried about random children in your house than food you’re barely going to be able to eat.”

Aies’s annoying voice funneled into my head as I walked and introduced the fact that although I could eat food in this world, I barely got any nutrition from it. The magic in the ingredients was so low and impure that even if it tasted okay, the appeal was so low. Another factor was also just how little time I spent at home.

Will would often bring over meals that he or his sister had cooked in takeaway bowls for me, but I spent so little time at home that I rarely got to eat them before they went rotten. Cleaning the fridge was always such a chore, but throwing them out the second they brought them over would feel too bad. Using magic had helped a lot, but I still wasn’t sure how to clean the fridge without completely ripping out all the paint on its inside.

But that was when I wasn’t two shades off of ravenous like I currently was.

“Yeah, let’s deal with the two random children later. After all the last time a child entered our apartment without our knowledge turned out great didn’t it?”

Shut up. I didn’t need you to comment.

“Well, since I don’t get to play outside of your mind, this is all I can do to avoid self imploding from boredom.”

“So you say, but you certainly had fun yesterday. Didn’t you, Aies.”

Cai suddenly interjected with a nasty tone and made Aies shut up.

I wondered what they meant by their conversation, but I couldn’t be bothered to chase it down. After all, if it was anything important, they were still just sections of my mind. I’d know about it for sure.

But still…. I did get this sinking feeling in my stomach as I turned into the kitchen. A nagging memory attacked the back of my mind, but it also refused to surface. With things as they were, I could only dismiss the feeling and wait for the memory to come out on its own.

When I entered the kitchen, I was faced with a sight so out of place that it was hard to comprehend for the first three seconds. There, in my sorely underused kitchen, was Jake, a star athlete at school, wearing a bright red apron he’d likely borrowed off one of the cleaning staff and a matching hair bandana. The outfit was completed by the colourful orange mask and rubber gloves he’d donned to deal with the smell of rotted food.

As comical as the sight was, I couldn’t even laugh because of the serious expression on his face as he tackled cleaning the back of my fridge, which I had not touched for over a week now.

He had borrowed a few of my looser clothes from my closet, but his build was so different from mine that even my largest clothes stretched over his body like a set of tightly fitted workout gear.

How completely unfair.

I’d worked out so much with Theodulus and Cambridge lately that I’d hoped I could bulk up a bit, but my body refused to put on even a single extra pound. It was painful to even consider taking on Theodulus’s advice to work out a bit more on my own, so I put it toward the back of my mind.

But then again, Esmeralda had seemed upset that I was putting on a bit of muscle and warned me not to get too bulky; maybe I would use that as motivation to do exactly that.

Jake had an unreasonably focused glint in his eye as he scrubbed the walls behind my fridge, which I could admit hadn’t been touched since the day I’d moved in here and kept half an eye on the clock.

I’d probably stood there for a few minutes when he finally noticed me and frowned at me.

He was clearly worried about something and looked me over once or twice, but instead of addressing whatever it was, he just pointed at the table, which was half set with four different dishes.

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“Hurry up and take a seat. Lunch will be done in a minute.”

I wondered what else he had made as I followed his instructions. At first, I was entranced by how full my table looked and wondered where he had found all the dishes to put the food in. It was a sight to watch him whirl around the kitchen with expertise and orchestrate the few things left on the stove to complete simultaneously, but then I got bored and started to joke around.

“Jake, is it normal to have random hallucinations of children? Does this signify a hidden desire to have some of my ow-”

He scowled and threw a sponge at my head which I dodged…. only to take a towel right to the face.

Well, I could have dodged that as well, but I felt like doing so would only make him angrier.

“Those are my siblings. Frona and Luca”

Ah. I vaguely remembered him saying something about having to pick them up after we were done shopping. But being reminded of that also reminded me of my biggest concerns.

“What happened? Last I remember we were leaving the first store and you mentioned having to go home soon… I don’t remember anything else.”

Jake placed the last platter on the table, a wonderful art of fish layered over fresh lettuce, and straightened his back out with a tired expression. I saw him visibly debate how to tell me what had happened, and a thick stone of anxiety rolled around my stomach.

I’d forced myself to assume that nothing big had happened, although I had woken up in the hospital at one point last night. Seeing him concerned like this made me understand that my assumption hadn’t been correct.

“After we left that last store, you suddenly passed out. The doctors said it was from a mild malnutrition. There was an incident there, so it took a while to get you to the hospital… You really don’t remember anything?”

I shook my head in response to the last question but the thing about malnutrition surprised me. Because the meals were so far and in between in the fairy world I’d figured I didn’t need to eat as much anymore, but I guess it made sense that I would have to eat more in the human world to make up for the lack of magic in the air and nutritional value in the food.

“Sorry man. How much was the bill? I’ll pay you back.”

I brought out my phone and opened up the bank app with the intention of immediately paying him back, but he quickly waved me off with a cool expression.

“It’s fine, just take better care of yourself, would you? You live alone?”

I nodded but was confused as to why he asked.

“Yeah. You see anyone else in here?”

I suddenly got worried that someone else had broken in. It wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened. My body shuddered as I remembered when a hopeful applicant from the company had decided to take things into their own hands and had tracked down my location.

The event had led me to move and do away with the requirement of having a home address listed within the company.

That might have been an extreme case, but the last time someone had broken into my home after that, I’d ended up in another world and almost got stuck there.

There was also the consideration that someone being in my house would leave me exposed when I teleported back into this world… well, the few times I landed at home anyways.

I didn’t know what it was about that transporter and its locating services, but from landing at Sparrow and Will’s apartment, to landing right in the company building. It somehow refused to completely register my loft as ‘home’

Jake quickly shook his head, although he did look at me oddly as he reassured me.

“No, nothing like that.”

He scratched the back of his head with an annoyed and concerned expression that even I had to admit was heartwarming. Now, if only it were a nice older sister type instead of my classmate/friend.

“They said this was probably because you haven’t eaten anything for the past week and had been sub existing on energy drinks… looking at your fridge, I can tell that your dietary habits weren’t great before that either.”

He suddenly ditched the worrying part and just went on to being straight-up annoyed.

“Why don’t you eat?! Even if you’re busy, you should still have time to order in or something. And what about cleanliness? they offer a WHOLE cleaning service here, yet you live in what can only be described as a pigsty. Don’t they offer some sort of catering service here?”

Ah, Jake. You sound like an old housewife.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought as I combated the nagging. He had mentioned that he needed to help out his stepmom a lot with raising his stepsiblings, so I figured he was used to running a household and was frustrated at my apparent lack of ability to do the same… or well, even a fraction of the same.

I could only weakly respond to his last comment.

“It’s a condo complex, not a hotel, why would they offer a catering service?”

He scowled at my teasing tone and played off his embarrassment with an intensified frustration. If he wasn’t such a calm person, I was sure he would have reached forward to twist my ears by now.

“They offer a cleaning service, don’t they? It’s not that far of a jump to think they would offer a catering service as well. And once again, if they do offer a cleaning service, why don’t you use it?”

“That...is a bit difficult to answer. How about we eat first?”

He gave me a curious look but let it go when he saw my reluctance to speak about it.

I held my hands away from the food on the table and busied myself with looking through the emails I’d missed while I was unconscious while Jake took his siblings to the washroom to wash their hands. It took a full seven minutes before they finally returned to the table and Jake gave us all permission to eat.

Although food in the human world rarely appealed to me, I hadn’t eaten for almost a week now, and I was absolutely starved.

The two children kept looking at me with curious expressions and made it difficult to eat well, but I forced myself to ignore their gaze and dig into the first properly cooked meal I’d had for over a month.

Although I mostly ate in the fairy world, it wasn’t like they had things as formal as mealtimes. Eating in groups was put on the same level as teatime and was usually more of a social activity. If not for the frequent snacks that Corin gave me and the fun treats I got from the kitchen staff, I feared I might have long starved to death.

“How long was I out? It doesn’t feel like long, but I’m starving as if I haven’t eaten anything for the past three days.”

Jake replied while replacing all the not-so-discreetly hidden stalks of vegetables on the little girl’s plate. She restrained her urge to whine at her older brother and kept her eyes glued to my face.

Perhaps she was paranoid around strangers and was unfamiliar with the new space. I had never spent more than four minutes with any particular child in my life, so I didn’t really know what her actions meant.

“You slept through yesterday once we left the hospital and it’s 10 now, so probably only been 20 hours or so.”

“So it’s only ten... only ten... It’s ten?”

I scarfed down the rest of the food and ran out of the kitchen to get dressed.

If I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for work and considering I’d recently been absent for a week, I don’t think Will would be impressed.

“You got somewhere to be?”

I slung the tie around my neck, unwilling to fight it into a proper knot and made sure that my hair was as presentable as I could get it before running past a confused Jake.

“Here, hand that over.”

He took the tie from around my neck and tied it on himself but left it loose enough for me to just pull it over my head.

Was this something that everyone except me knew how to do?

“Yeah, I’ve got somewhere to be. I won’t be back till rather late so just lock up behind you… You can keep the keys by the way so feel free to drop by whenever just call first.”

I was a little nervous about letting Jake keep a set of my house keys, but something told me that it would turn out for the better… hopefully.

I shoved my keys and wallet into my pocket before running out of the door. As I was about to close it, I caught the little girl getting up off her chair and waving me a vigorous goodbye.

“Bye!”

I quickly waved back and finished closing the door, but no sooner had I finally gotten the keys into the lock did I have to open it up again. Jake looked at me with a confused expression as I dashed back in and ran to the shelf where I kept my keys.

I changed out the keys for the car with those for the motorcycle and tossed the car keys to Jake. He’d let some of the staff send his car home yesterday. Thank goodness I’d remembered before I got too far.

“Use the car to drop the kids off and just return the keys at school tomorrow. Bye!”