We arrived at Val d’Europe just past 11, as agreed. As soon as we left the teleportation circle, Cain ran off to greet Etienne who’d gotten there at the same time as we broke our teleportation crystals at St-Lazare, which is to say less than a minute ago.
“I hope you didn’t use the last of your sick day pay to come and see Bibi,” Etienne spoke as we exchanged a greeting kiss.
“She got banned from all public transport,” Cain replied in my stead as he glanced around.
“I thought that was just the metro? What did you do to piss off the SNCF?”
“Nothing!” I exclaimed. “If anything, I de-escalated an incident. But-” I lowered my voice, “Because the police is useless as f-heck, they targeted the one high ranker involved.”
Etienne smiled, and softly scoffed, clearly not believing this.
“I don’t see any clothes shops,” Cain, who’d finished assessing the room, interrupted.
“They’re further on, somewhere. Let’s go,” I led the way.
“So, clothes then lunch, then a movie?” Etienne asked as he walked beside me, taking my hand into his.
“Clothes, then lunch, then the Wild Land,” Cain corrected, pointing at a sign leading outdoors.
I couldn’t hold back an annoyed grunt. We’d just been to one yesterday, and I still found more red sand from it this morning, while I was sweeping the entryway for the third time.
“Come on, it will be fun,” Etienne nudged me. “They have some underwater passageways, and you can see all sorts of aquatic monsters.” Then, hearing my unconvinced grunt, he continued, “And if you’re not in the mood for that, we can check out their tropical section. I heard they built a whole adventure park with ropes and bridges in between the trees.”
I wasn’t sure if he selling it to me or Cain, but seeing Cain’s eyes light up at the mention of the adventure park, I sighed and reluctantly agreed.
The next few hours gave me the strangest sense of deja vu.
I had been to this complex, with its main glass building and the adjacent shopping village twice when I was a kid. There was a very popular theme park a very short bus ride from there, and a massive hotel resort. I didn’t know where any of the individual shops were – or didn’t recognise most of the brands for that matter, but I still remembered the overall layout.
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The theme park had become a hunting spot for various low-level monsters. Banners and TV screens installed throughout the mall informed us that it was a reconstruction of various scenes from movies I had never seen.
The hotels were in the same place as I remembered, allowing guests to rest amidst that rainforest reconstruction Etienne had mentioned. There were multiple barriers, made from both green-coated cement, and ethereal, almost transparent, orange energy, that separated it from the rest of the complex, and any monsters or un-paying visitors that might have wanted to wander there.
The mall itself was packed, on account of the shit weather, and people looking for things to do.
After getting some clothes for Cain, storing them in my holding void, and failing to buy Etienne a new jacket, we had lunch at a speciality restaurant. Well, Etienne and Cain had lunch, while I tried to force myself to eat my veggie burger. It had nothing but leaves in it, but something about them reminded me of that art expo, and all the flowers and vines made from monster guts.
At least their water was fine, albeit overpriced.
“Can I have that?” Cain stole the last of my fries off my plate.
“Do you want mine too?” Etienne, who was a surprisingly slow eater offered.
“No, it looks like you’ll finish them, unlike her,” he replied, his mouth full.
“Eventually,” I added with a smirk.
“Well, I would eat faster if I didn’t have an audience,” Etienne joked in turn, as he slowed down the pace at which he was cutting his monster meat to an unbearable degree.
I chortled and dramatically looked away. Somewhere among the crowd I saw a large figure enter the mall from one of the Wild Land doors. I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it, had he not had bright green eyes, and long, dirty-blond hair. I unconsciously got up, before Etienne tugged down on my sleeve,
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“I … think I’m hallucinated from the weird plants,” I spoke, half-joking, as I sat back down.
The place was crowded, and over half the visitors had bright eyes with unnatural tints, while a partially overlapping half also had unnatural hair colours. All things considered, the three of us fell on the ‘normal end of the spectrum’, with me being the odd one out, having my hair not match my eyes.
“Did you hallucinate that boy of yours?” Cain asked, helping himself to Etienne’s fries.
Etienne raised an eyebrow.
“For the last time, Huang is not ‘my boy’,” I yanked the fries out of Cain’s hand, putting them back on Etienne’s plate.
“So he knows about the oracle book?” Etienne asked. “How did that conversation go?” His tone was somewhere between amusement and concern.
I was about to tell Etienne that this wasn’t the place to discuss that, considering the sensitive nature of the information I held, and the danger of the parties that could have used said information – which in Etienne’s defence, he was yet to be informed off – but Cain cut me short:
“You shouldn’t discuss that here. There’s no way of knowing who’s listening.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Some other time then,” Etienne shrugged.
I smiled. This was one of the things I loved about him. He could let these sorts of things go very easily. Although, this had also been the reason why we’d taken so long to talk about our respective pasts.
I made a mental note to be the one to bring up this topic again sometime. But not today. Today was all about relaxing, and getting rid of Cain at that rope park to get some alone time with Etienne.
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