Chapter Twenty-Six

Celia was lying on the couch hugging a pillow and staring with wide, horrified eyes at the screen. The room was dark, and when I opened it to see her there, she all but jumped out of her skin in abject horror, letting out a childlike cry of alarm.

There was a mad cackling yandere laugh coming from the screen and just… copious amounts of blood. “Hey, Kayobi… this is…” She shivered. “I’ve been watching these kids kill each other over and over again, constantly reliving their lives… that’s not possible on this world, is it?” She shivered.

Time anomalies were hardly a rarity in the Universe, so I couldn’t blame her for asking. I myself once ended up stuck on a world that was on the verge of destruction. A dictator built a weapon that would collapse stars into black holes, and was threatening to use it on his own solar system if he didn’t remain in power. Sadly, he used it before I could give his office a paint job, but the end result was a time based anomaly that sent me back a week. I ended up reliving that week for the better part of half a year while I did all the research I needed to find him, get close to him, and get the job done. He was a tough one, most jobs only take me a day or maybe a week.

I did not enjoy that. But by the end, neither did he.

So Celia’s question made sense, but it was also obvious to me that now that she was ‘stuck’ she was taking on child traits even faster than I feared.

“No. No, that’s not something that happens here.” I said and she made room on the couch for me, scooching over and staring at me with big, hopeless eyes. At least her awareness was intact, she hadn’t forgotten anything. I picked up a cookie and pointed at the screen, “That’s a genre here called ‘horror’. Humans have created vast arrays of impossible forms of entertainment. It’s all just pretend. You don’t have anything to worry about.” I promised.

Celia had maybe a quarter, no perhaps only a tenth of my experience, but she’d have heard of the time anomalies and other weird hazards in the Universe. In this country’s terms, I was her ‘senpai’ or ‘senior’ who knew more than she did by virtue of my experience.

At most she’d have handled Class A planets, planetary governments whose resources were a threat only to primitive neighboring systems, such worlds had the bare minimum of weaponry and technology to potentially conquer any other world. Their survey and security technology was only slightly better than say… what leaders on Earth guarded themselves with. Those missions would require no team even for beginners and take maybe a few hours at most.

I handled Omega Class by myself, those are worlds with extensive security knowledge, well guarded leaders who have use of a broad mastery of Artificial Intelligence and significant, persistent protection from machines or warbeasts of some sort, and they usually are mobile, with lots of secretive movements. Those usually also have a time restriction in which our agency has to act. Such as that instance with the black hole weapon, or the invasion fleet was already launched and had to be handled too…

I suppose it’s natural she’d look to me for help and guidance.

“Look,” I said with a smile, “things worked out, Suki is back home, I don’t have to go back to the store, so I can focus on getting you back to normal. I don’t know how to revert a ‘human’ shape, I admit. But we’ll figure it out, and nobody has to know it happened. How much vacation time do you have saved up, just in case we need more time?”

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“In Earth terms…” She looked away from me while she was working out the conversion, “I don’t know exactly, but probably a hundred years. Maybe less, maybe more like fifty?”

I froze. “Wait… really?” I asked. I never let my vacation pile up that much.

“Yeah… why? How much do you have? You do a lot harder jobs than me, the reward for those things has to be high, right?” She asked.

“I have maybe… one, two months built up?” I guessed with a shrug. “I take all the time off I can.”

“But you do so many jobs?! How do you have so little?” Celia exclaimed.

“Because… I take all the time off I can.” I repeated myself, “I go out, I take on a few big jobs to get the reward, paint a few offices, then put in my vacation request. I don’t see any reason to save it up for later when I can live my cozy NEET lifestyle in the present. Why do you have so much time off built up?”

I was practically drooling at the thought of a fifty year vacation. Alright, I like my job, I’m good at it and it’s valuable… but… I could relax so much if I had that kind of time built up!

“I’ve never taken one, other than that one day I visited you.” Celia looked steadily at the screen, “I never had a reason to take one before that. What was the point? I just figured… why even bother? If I work, I’m at least doing something. I didn’t have anyone to go with, and vacations by myself was just ‘be alone in a different place than usual’ so… why bother?” She shrugged, it was pretty obvious to me she was trying to sound indifferent.

But the fact that she repeated herself and couldn’t look at me? I had more experience living as a human than she did, plus she’s stuck with the body and brain of a kid for now. So between her inexperience and the body working against her, it was obvious to me that this ‘bothered’ her quite a bit.

“I see. Well, I envy having all that free time, to put it bluntly, you might need to take it. This won’t be easy.” I pursed my lips and inhaled deeply through my nose, then out again. Then perked up, “But we’ll solve it!” I gave her the largest, most encouraging smile my human face could manage.

“First though, why don’t we swap to another series? Something lighthearted will help you relax, I know this absolutely charming one about a witch who kills a bunch of slimes and accidentally becomes super strong. Very easy going, very low stakes, just friendship and fun and occasional shenanigans.” I suggested, and Celia sniffled a little bit.

She didn’t speak, she just gave me a little nod, and when I swapped over to that one, she inched just a little bit closer to me. I think she didn’t speak because she didn’t trust her voice not to break.

That was fine, to be honest, I sort of blamed myself a little bit. I wanted to make friends with her, I figured it would help her relax, come out of her shell, and because she listened to me, she got stuck like this.

Alright, that's oversimplifying. She could have prevented it. But even so, it wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t invited her over. I owed it to her to help fix it, and to keep her secret embarrassment quiet. If I wasn’t willing to do that for her, well, I’d have been a pretty terrible friend to have.

And who aspires to be that?