People. There were people everywhere.
I was there, messing with the hems of my backpack, leaning on a tree near the statue of the nameless soldier in Liberty Square, with various flocks of people either talking or waiting for someone else as well.
I had heard that the head of the Fire Agency, the hero Lady Flame, would visit the city for the first time in her decade-long career. She was considered one of the greatest heroes of our generation, and she was probably the reason there was even more of a crowd here than normally. It was all I could do to keep myself from going into full fanboy mode for her appearance.
But training had to, unfortunately, take priority. Perhaps I could go after training was done on my own, or with Birgit if she was interested. But I didn’t really mind either way. All of it was in the pursuit of me becoming a hero.
A hero…
I’d also have to find a way to mend my relationship with Iraklis. I could just go to him and apologise, but that-that wouldn’t be right. I still felt like I was in the right, that he shouldn’t leave, even if I logically knew that to be stupid and wrong.
When I apologised, it needed to come from my heart. I needed to actually feel it, not just know that I should.
I let out a sigh and put a stop to my thoughts. Today was a day for training. Perhaps that would help clear my mind enough.
The Astoria Hotel was on the opposite side of the road, but a couple of dudes who seemed to be in their early high school years were fighting using their powers. From what I could hear, they both had bone-related powers and wanted to figure out who was the superior one.
A crowd surrounded them and, even if they didn’t seem to have powers that were especially destructive, I thought it best to stay as far away from them as possible. I couldn’t see or hear them at that point, so I assumed they must have stopped.
I arrived at six am, sharp. And so, there I was, waiting for Birgit among the sea of people. By the time it was nearly six twenty, I groaned to myself. To think that she was the one who told me not to be late.
I clenched my gloved fists, for the first time enjoying the fact that I was wearing my gloves and didn’t have to be careful regarding my hands and what I did with them.
As if on cue, my phone started ringing, and an unknown number was on my screen.
“Hello?” I said in Greek, picking it up.
“Where are you?” came Birgit’s voice from the other end, speaking in English. I took a very deep breath, clenching my fists before answering her in the calmest voice I could manage.
Tardiness was one thing that I really couldn’t take; it grinded my gears.
“At Liberty Square,” I said, now speaking in English as well, with as much calmness as I could manage as I rubbed my face with my free hand. “It’s six twenty, where in the name of whatever deity you believe in are you?”
“I’m outside Astoria, where are you? Where’s Liberty Square?” she asked with some annoyance audible in her voice.
I slapped myself in the face. Hard. So hard that some people turned around to see what the sound was about. A few moments of silence followed.
“I feel like you’re overreacting.” she said after a while.
“It’s on the other side of the road,” I told her. “On the other side of the road. You’ve been here for more than a week and you don’t know where Liberty Square is?”
“Oh!” I heard her say from the other side. Another silence followed before she began speaking once more, this time in a much more high-pitched voice. “I don’t really get out much?” she squeaked out. a few giggles escaped her.
“Get to the...to the market…building…place,” I said to her, genuinely forgetting the word I was looking for in English.
“What?” she said with confusion audible in her voice.
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“The-The περίπτερο!” I said, giving up any attempt to remember the word in English and just going for Greek.
“You mean the kiosk?” she said, this time at least attempting to hide the amusement in her voice. “The one next to the bus stop?”
“Yeah, yeah…” I said, breathing deeply in order to calm myself. “I’ll meet you there.” I hang up the phone, walking out of the square, stopping before crossing the road due to the cars going by.
Truth be told there was a lot of pent-up frustration in me. For the past week or so, I had been focused solely on my training and studying, because according to Jensen I had to study as well since ‘my performance on the second surprise test was less than satisfactory.’
And, with my communication with Iraklis being practically non-existent, I also found that I didn’t really enjoy doing many things either.
Be that World Power Wrestling, a fighting show where people with powers went wild, following fictional and non-fictional heroes’ news and adventures, or just going out to let loose and have fun. None of it was really, for lack of a better term, fun without someone to share all these things with.
I crossed the road and went to the bus stop. The dudes were still fighting, but this time with their bare fists instead of powers, some older people waiting for the bus and among them was Birgit, once more dressed in her training uniform but this time paired with flip-flops, holding two shopping bags and leaning on the bus stop’s pole and looking at Liberty Square wistfully.
I cleared my throat to get her attention and her crystal blue eyes widened slightly as she turned her attention to me. A small awkward silence followed where we just looked at, and around each other, neither one of us speaking.
“I’d ask for news, but I don’t think much has changed since the last time we spoke?” I said to her in English, and it ended up as more of a question even if I intended it to be a regular sentence.
“You’d be surprised,” she said in English as well, sounding somewhat bitter, before handing me one of the bags she had with her. “Your sweater, sorry for hogging it.”
“I didn’t peg you for the type to easily apologise.” I smiled at her slightly, easing myself into the conversation, and I hoped that she would as well.
I was training to be a hero dammit, someone like Alpha Surge, I should be able to hold a conversation with someone other than my parents or Iraklis.
“Don’t push your luck!” she said in an overly loud voice which almost made me laugh, but then she pointed to me and back at the bag she handed to me.
“I don’t know how it goes in Denmark, but it’s not really common to know sign language here,” I responded, genuinely confused by what she was trying to say.
She sighed before punching the bus sign in annoyance and holding up two fingers uncomfortably close to my face. “One, I have a deaf brother. Hell, you’ve met him, so sign language was kind of a necessity, you idiot!” she said, putting down one of her fingers. “Two, I think it’s pretty obvious that I want you to check your bag. That wasn’t even sign language!”
“Uh… I think you’re projecting some unrelated anger onto me, and I don’t think that’s healthy for either one of us,” I said to her, and suddenly I felt like removing my gloves would have been a good idea, as I saw her tense in a way similar to the one last time we had met at Koules.
But, just as soon as her anger flared up, it seemed to dissipate, as she sighed and looked at the floor. “Just look at the damn bag,” she said somewhat defeatedly.
Deciding that it would be for the best to just go along with it, I saw that, alongside my sweater, there was a bus ticket inside it.
“Where are we going?”
“Um, at a university,” said Birgit as she looked up, seemingly in thought. “It’s number twelve, I think.”
“Number twelve?” I said as I looked down in thought. “So Hellenic Mediterranean University?”
She nodded, a small ‘hm’ sound escaping her mouth as she lightly banged her head back to the pole. “God, this sucks,” she said through her teeth, but it was still loud enough for me to hear.
I fiddled with the seams of my gloves as I tried to think of something to say. I wasn’t good at talking to people. Even when I was with Iraklis, most of the time he would be the one to initiate conversations and keep them going whenever we talked about anything other than the things we, or at least I, were passionate about.
I looked at Birgit, and it was clear to me that she was bothered by something. And it wasn’t because of her posture or expression, which she had done a pretty good job of masking, but mostly because the temperature around her had dropped significantly.
It had gotten to the point where I was tempted to put on my sweater and she was also slightly trembling. Even people passing by could clearly feel it, rubbing their hands together or slightly shuddering.
I let out a small chuckle as I rubbed my exposed right arm. Whatever she was going through, she was stuck in a foreign country, with her only companions being Jensen, who only talked with us about training, and some random guy she knew only for a couple of weeks.
Even worse, that random guy was me.
“You know we don’t have to go training,” I said to her. “We could do something else. I know that Lady Flame is coming here in a couple of hours. Maybe you could try to enjoy yourself and forget whatever it is that’s bothering you? Or we could go our separate ways and do this some other day?”
I wasn’t good at comforting people or really talking to them, but I would hope I didn't do that bad here. Last time I was in a similar situation it was when I… hurt Maria.
I still didn’t remember much of it, just like I didn’t remember much of the day it happened, but it didn’t end well. She had thrown a glass of water at me, which was about the only thing I remembered from that whole ordeal.