“Nero! Wait!” The high pitched voice of Cesar cut the air, stopping my hand just centimeters away from Caius’s door. I screamed internally but kept a straight face when turning around. He stood there, looking like a normal, although rather short, Roman person. In a light provided by oil lamps and without the need to focus on more pressing matters I could finally see exactly how he looked.

As I noticed when I first saw him he was about a head shorter than me, making him around 160cm tall. His hair no longer looked red and it had a deep brown color now. He probably painted it to avoid detection after his escape from wherever he was kept. Now without the leaves in it, it looked pretty nice, encapsulating his face like a sort of a cap. His cheeks seemed almost unnaturally red in color compared to his pale face, split in the middle by an equally red upturned nose.

“What do you need?” I got away from the door. As to not talk directly next to Caius’s room. “I’m kind of busy ya know?”

“I’m sorry but this probably can’t wait.” He answered and just led me to my… well, now our room. I looked back once more and followed him.

He closed the door behind me and sat on his bed, fixing his eyes on me. He didn’t speak up for a moment, but when I sent him a questioning look he finally took a big breath and started.

“What should I do?” He started, probably hoping for me to answer him immediately, because he hung his head lower in disappointment when the confusion on my face only became more apparent. “I mean in this place. Like, you've got it all figured out, how to behave here, a nice place to stay, a cute boyfriend.” I blinked twice, trying to contain my surprise. It took me a second to understand what he meant.

“Oh me and Caius? No we aren’t together, no.” He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah okay, sure. Doesn’t matter either way, I just want to know how to not get myself killed here. It’s so much different than where I’m from and… Well, not like I had much experience with ‘real life’ in my time.” He looked to the side, visibly sadder.

So this is why he interrupted me. It could have waited until tomorrow, but his sad expression reminded me too much of myself to judge him for that. All my annoyance disappeared and I spent the next hour explaining everything I knew to him. Then I sent him to bed. He complained about the mattress being too hard and the covers being itchy for a bit, which I ignored completely. Only reminding him that I have work in a couple of hours and he shouldn’t wake me up before the proper time.

Luckily he listened to me and let me sleep in peace. Well, in relative peace because the dreams I had that night were pretty unpleasant, even though after waking up I had no clue what was in them. I think I saw a rabbit?

I woke up perfectly on time - as I liked for the past couple of weeks, with just ten minutes to spare to get myself in a working order. Sadly this left me no time to talk to Caius. But he already left the house either way so I didn’t feel too bad about this. I made myself a quick breakfast, checked on Cesar once more and went to work.

It was hard today. The sun was shining and yesterday's rain made the air feel almost steamy, like in a sauna. A couple of people didn’t arrive on time either, making the work this much more grueling. I was sitting on a bench with my boss, both tired after just an hour, when an idea came to me.

***

“Jesus, you’re still asleep?” I took Cesar’s blanket off. He was not too happy about it, but by the amount of sunlight pouring in through the windows he had to understand that it was pretty late and I was not ‘waking him up in the middle of the night’.

“Don’t you think you shouldn’t use that word?” He asked, looking at the door.

“Which word?” I stared at him confused. .

“Isn’t Jesus like… controversial here?” I snorted with laughter.

“Yeah sure he is. But so what?”

“Won’t you get like… prosecuted?” I rolled my eyes.

“Here? No. I don’t use it outside anyway.” I threw the clothes Lucia gave me a minute ago at his dumb face and waved my hand. “Get dressed, you’re going to work.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“What? Work? Why?” He looked almost offended.

“So you can pay for your room here. Duh.” How could he not understand such a simple concept? Did he think he could get away with living for free?

“Look man, I don’t think I’m built for uh… physical work.” I rolled my eyes and flexed my arm, showing barely any muscles on my (still pretty thin for the ancient Rome standard) appendage. “Oh… Well, still, I just got here, don’t you think I should have like… time to process it all?”

I looked into his eyes. He was bullshitting me, I was sure of that. Not many people would be stalking others and climbing buildings right after a very traumatic experience. And considering that he was escaping from something I had a weird feeling that the “jump” to ancient Rome was something he welcomed with open arms. And yet he looked kind of pathetic like this. Staring at me with his giant eyes, so unbelievably far from home. I started to feel bad for this night stalker, despite all the commotion he caused.

“Okay look. The first couple of days will be easy. We just need a bit of help at work. We are fixing a barn and will need someone to hold a couple of things down, okay? You can take a break at any point and all and…” I sat next to him. “When I got here I also felt pretty lost… But honestly? Working on that farm helped me to move past all this a bit. It’s easier to think when you are doing something physical. And it’s easier to see the sun outside than if you were to sit here all day for weeks. Like I did.”

I smiled at the thought of how far I’ve come. From an unlucky bastard who got thrown into an unknown, almost fantasy world, to an actual human, who actually felt pretty good in his new environment. “I do hope to one day get back home.” I continued. “I have this… image of it in my sleep. But I know that I have to first do something… Earn it, ya know? There is no way we got here without any reason.”

I looked at him. He sat, with his eyes pointed at his knees, nodding his head slowly.

“Yeah… I’ll go.”

I patted him on the back and got up.

“I’ll pack your lunch. Get dressed. I’ll wait for you at the main entrance.”

“Nero? How do you know we are here for a reason? Maybe that’s just it.“

I stopped, with my hand on the wooden door.

“I like to think it’s not.” I answered, exiting the room.

I hated that thought. The thought of it being what actual afterlife is. That we actually died in our own time and got transported back in time. But I had a reason to believe otherwise. It wasn’t just humans who were being found all around Rome. There were weird structures from the future. The Colosseum shouldn’t yet have been built, at the time of Nero’s rule, there were a couple of weirdly placed buildings that seemed to make no sense in the current layout of the city. Something was happening, and that something could maybe have the power to take us back.

***

Cesar was right. He was terrible at physical job and I caught multiple death glares from my boss for bringing him into work today. He couldn’t hold anything properly, his skills with the hammer made my own horrid woodwork look like I’m Leonardo Da Vinci. But what he lacked in any technique he made up with persistence and stamina.

When the rest of us had to take many breaks in the hot Roman sun, he kept on working, seemingly without getting tired or even too sweaty. By the end of the day, he finally got a handle on most of the things too. Well, not in any good capacity, but compared to what he started with he was an expert already. Making me feel actually quite proud, considering that I was the one who was mentoring him the whole time.

I’ve even earned a bit extra for that and my boss was pretty pleased with how quickly Cesar got better. He called me a born teacher. But I was pretty sure my teaching skills had nothing to do with today’s success. Cesar simply put was a blank slate. He obviously didn’t have almost any idea about how to do pretty much anything. Making it easier for him to learn. I felt bad for him however. Whatever it was that happened to him before he escaped was not good in any way.

“Well that was exhausting.” I commented, walking side by side with him, on our way home. Today was monday according to the modern calendar, and we already spent most of it working. In two days - me and Caius would be going to the sword fighting training and I already started worrying how to fit Cesar into all that.

“Yeah… It’s far too hot to be doing any kind of work.“ He wiped his brow, with his shirt. Both of us were topless by now, it made no sense to stay in clothes. “God, I stink.”

“I think it should be ‘Gods’.” I laughed a bit, making him confused for a moment, but he quickly remembered our morning talk.

“Nawh come on, I don’t think they’d target all gods at once.” His laughter was even higher than his normal speaking voice. The kind that gets really annoying, really quickly.

“Yeah, fair. They probably have a god of stinking men.” I stroked my beard, pretending to think about it.

“Like.. Dionysus? The god of stinking drunk men!”

“Oh come on, you say it like partying is a bad thing!”

“I’ve had far too many parties, They get annoying at some point.”

“Oooh you’re a bad boy, huh?” I looked at him, but he didn’t respond and got a bit quieter.

“No it was just… work.” He answered after a moment and sped up a bit. He looked very uncomfortable but before I could apologize for my comment he turned around to look at me. “Thank you. For making me come to work. It was fun.”

“No problem, we needed some help anyway.” I smiled at him.

He nodded and turned back towards the road. “Besides, you’ve got to have some restraint! What’s the point of partying if you don’t remember anything after?”