Chapter 41: A new home
Felix Sythias’ POV (continued):
Walking back through the house, I stopped in the kitchen. Dad wasn’t here, but the food was, and it would be a waste to just let it sit there. It wouldn’t rot, but still. It wasn’t like he ate it, anyway. Walking through the freezer, I picked out a few pieces of high-quality, mana-rich monster meat. Nothing as good as molten canyon pig, but that was alright. There were some excellent pieces of quality giant sand-hare, though. Alex would probably like that a lot.
I put a few pieces of it in my saddlebag, along with smaller pieces of other various monsters. The slight leveling boost it would give Alex should really help him along. It wouldn’t be much, maybe ten percent for a day at most—and that was only because it was the really good stuff—but every bit helped. I wanted to grab some ice cream, too, but it would’ve turned to mush by the time I would’ve gotten back. Some other time, maybe.
Walking back out, I grabbed some rarer spices and herbs from the cabinets, too. Alex wouldn’t know what had hit him after he tried tonight's meal.
Having everything I needed, I left the house—the door locked itself behind me. It was a long way back, and my saddlebag was heavier on one side, so it kept sliding to that side while I walked. It was truly annoying, and I stopped after only ten minutes to redistribute the weight and tighten the straps. The biggest weight was the hare meat, though, and that was one large piece, so moving stuff around only partly solved the issue. Still, at least it was better than before.
After an annoyingly long hour of walking that felt more like half a day, I finally reached the dorms. Once in my room, I promptly dumped the stuff out of my bags and onto the ground. I put all the food away in the fridge except for the hare meat and spice. Then, I put the books on our shared shelf and hid my box of toys behind my bed. If I’d been sharing the room with anyone aside from Alex, I probably wouldn’t have cared. As it was, I made sure he wouldn’t even know the box was there at all. I didn’t want him to think worse of me for having these kinds of toys.
I glanced at the clock. It was still a few hours until dinnertime, so I put the frozen meat into a watertight bag and placed it in a tub of water to thaw out. Then I laid down on the carpet with the book Alex and I were reading together. The characters in the book were going through some pointless and forced conflict right now and I couldn’t wait till it was over. The very next chapter, it was. As sweet and hopeful as this book was, it wasn’t all that well written. I still enjoyed it, but I was glad I got to pick the next book. I already had one in mind. Rivers, which was about an otter-type beastkin dealing with his sexuality and how it applied to his non-accepting religion. I’d read it before, but I really wanted Alex to read it too.
Eventually, it was time to start cooking. The meat hadn’t been entirely thawed out yet, but that was okay. I planned on slow-cooking it, anyway. I took the meat with me to the kitchen, along with the spices and some potatoes. Once I got there, I set everything down and moved over to the hot water bath set on the counter in the corner. The kitchen was empty, so I had it all to myself. I turned the water bath on and tuned the enchantments to the right temperature.
While that heated up, I cut the hare meat into thinner slices—maybe a few centimeters thick each—and dried them off. Once I had thoroughly seasoned them, I put the pieces back into watertight bags, together with a few herbs. I sealed the bags almost all the way and then, using my new way of controlling wind magic, I removed all the air, after which I quickly sealed the last bit as well. I now had vacuum-wrapped meat. Neat. I moved back to the water bath and checked the temperature. It was right, so I put the sealed bags in and set a timer for an hour. They would slowly cook and, because of the bag, wouldn’t fall apart. When they were done, they would be incredibly tender and evenly cooked all the way through.
It was a lazy way of cooking, but incredibly easy and difficult to screw up. Considering the rarity of the meat, I didn’t want to screw it up. It didn’t really affect the taste anyway.
While I waited for that, I cut the potatoes into fries. Once that was done, I put them away in the fridge. Alex wasn’t here yet, so it made no sense to fry them already. I hoped he wouldn’t come back too late. Maybe we should agree on dinner time the next time we split up for the day like this again.
Since I was done with preparations, I sat down in a corner of the kitchen and continued reading. At some point, other students started coming in to cook, too. One of them walked over to the only water bath, then looked around with a very annoyed expression. Then she started making changes to the settings, but a low growl from me froze her in her tracks. Without another word, she stormed off. I stared after her with a bemused expression. If she’d wanted to use it, why not just ask? The rest of the students just shrugged and continued with their cooking. I put the enchantments back to how I’d had them and continued reading.
About ten minutes before the hare was done, Alex walked past, his tail drooping and his shoulders a bit hunched.
“Alex!” I called out, and he turned around. “You want to help cook?”
He looked between me and the hallway to our room a few times before eventually nodding. Once he was closer, I noticed he still looked really exhausted; more so than he should have after a single day. It seemed one good night of sleep hadn’t been enough to make up for the deficit. After dinner I would recommend he go to sleep.
I explained to Alex what he needed to do and had him start frying the fries while I took the sealed bags out of the water bath, which were now filled with well-cooked meat. All they’d need was a few moments in a searing hot frying pan and a small pinch of extra salt. So that’s exactly what I did.
Ten minutes later, Alex and I were sitting in our room eating the rabbit steaks with fries. Alex really liked both, even though he couldn’t taste the mana in the meat like I could, and he made sure I knew it—he only mentioned how much he enjoyed it every other bite. For dessert, I got out a few pieces of candy. Mostly the cherry-apple flavored ones. I liked them, but Alex loved them. I wrote the flavor down in my notebook.
After dinner, Alex had something he wanted to talk about. But before he did, he walked over to the bookcase and grabbed something from the top shelf, which he then handed to me. It was my key, the one to the room. But I had my key still in my pouch, right? I checked to make sure, and now I had two identical keys in my talons. What? Having no idea what to say, I looked up expectantly at Alex.
“The janitor gave it to me yesterday when I got here before you. She said, and I quote, ‘the young master probably won’t mind’ after she handed me the key.”
“Janitor?” I asked. “Oh! You mean Jade? The level 400 woman?” Alex nodded. “She’s our maid, but dad put her to work here since the house would barely see any use with me at the dorms.”
Alex frowned. “You have a level 400 maid? What else do you have? A level 300 cook?”
I scratched the scales behind my ears. “We used to, yeah. But dad and I liked cooking too much, so we let him go. He owns some fancy restaurant now, last I checked.”
“I, uh—I should have expected that, honestly.”
I chuckled, then gestured with the key. “So, why give this to me?” I asked.
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“Well, it’s your room. Some janitor, even if she’s your maid, shouldn’t get to decide who does and doesn’t have a key. That’s up to you.”
I shook my head. Of course he’d worry about that. I grabbed his hand and put the key back in it, then closed his fingers around the key—a remarkably difficult task with talons—and pushed the hand towards his chest. “Keep it.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, you’re practically my roommate now, so it’s only fair you have a key, too.”
I had actually already been considering getting him a key, anyway. Jade was just faster.
Alex looked down at the key. It was made for my talons and looked comically oversized in his hand. He smiled at it. “I guess that answers my other question.”
“Oh, what was it?” I asked.
“I wanted to ask what your plans were for our situation. I’ve been staying here for almost two weeks now, and I was wondering when you’d kick me out.”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t have kicked you out. I think I’ve gotten as used to your presence as you have to mine. No, you’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”
He smiled warmly and stood up to give me the biggest and strongest hug he’d given me yet. I pretended not to notice the few tears running down the sides of his snout and gently petted the back of his head.
“It’s good to have a… home again,” he said, choking up a little. ”Thank you, Felix.”
We hugged for half a minute or so before he let go, though he wiped away the tears before he did. Without saying anything, I gave him a handkerchief, and he gratefully wiped his scales dry. After a few moments of silence, he spoke up.
“If you really don’t mind me staying, do you think you could help me move my bed-frame here? The mattress lying on the ground is giving me a backache.”
I chuckled. “Of course. Should we go now?”
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The next day, Alex sat at the table with Tiki, a math textbook in between them. Tiki tapped her pen against the table, occasionally writing something, only to scratch it out. Alex patiently waited for her to figure it out. When apologizing for taking so long, he told her that so long as she was making progress, he could wait, and that she was doing well. They had all the time in the worlds. That compliment didn’t seem to land right with Tiki. And she slammed the pen down on the table, shut the textbook closed, and stood up.
“I’m sick of this. Three hours and I feel like I know even less than when I started. It’s awful. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
Alex put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “You’re making great progress, Tiki. When we started this morning you didn’t understand variables and formulas, and now you do. You’re also getting better at working with fractions. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you are making progress. Now come on, let’s take another look at this problem.”
She sighed, but didn’t sit back down. “Thanks, Alex, but I think I’m done with math for today. I have other homework to do, anyway.”
She picked up the text and notebook, then left with a wave. When Alex looked at me, I just shrugged. “Everyone has their limits, it seems that she just reached hers,” I told him. “Piece of candy?”
I held out a talon with a few different candies in it. He picked a mint-grape flavoured one and popped it into his mouth. It was the thirty-fourth piece he’d eaten today. They weren’t big, but still, they added up. I was surprised he wasn’t feeling sick yet. It seemed that he really liked his candy. I picked one of the same flavor and put it on my tongue.
“Just how many of these candies did you buy? This is like the twentieth flavor!”
I chuckled and showed him the bag of candies. “I bought five each of all forty different flavors they had. How do you like this one?”
“It’s alright, but too minty for me. I prefer the sweeter ones.” I wrote that down in my notebook. “I have to ask though, why so many candies? I wouldn’t be surprised if you took half their stock.”
I put the notebook away and looked back up at him. “Being honest, it was one part impulse buy, and one part a desire to help. I did promise I would help you discover new things here, right? I figured candy was a good, comfortable place to start. It’s an easy way to get to know new flavors, if perhaps not entirely accurate.”
“Oh.” He scratched the scales on his neck. “Thank you, I appreciate it.”
“Well, that’s what friends are for, right?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that, but thanks.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon reading, doing homework and eating candy. Eventually, Tiki returned to give the problems another shot, and they spent the rest of the evening doing math together. By dinnertime, Tiki looked as exhausted as Alex had last Friday. We ate together and then played board games in the lounge area until it was time for bed.
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The next morning, the first day of our second week of classes, Alex had to wake up early for mundane physics, and his alarm also woke me. Having nothing better to do, I walked him to his class and then finally went to pick up my sparring gear from Scott’s office. I’d meant to do it last week, but I’d kept forgetting. I considered for a moment just leaving it there, but Scott wouldn’t appreciate it. I also didn’t want to go into the changing room again if I could help it. The other students would only just stare at me again.
When Alex was done with his class, we could hang out until it was time to head to class again—he didn’t have math, so we could hang out for almost three hours. We mostly talked about his job hunt.
“None of them wanted me. Even when they were desperate for help, they turned me down or just offered an insultingly low pay.” His tail swept the ground in frustration. I put a talon over it before it could hit me. “They weren’t mean, nor did they chase me away, nor show any, or at least not much, distaste. They just… didn’t want me.”
We were sitting by a tree on the edge of the forest. Alex sat between my front legs. Originally, we’d done it to shield him from the wind, but we found we both quite liked it. He was almost the perfect size to fit in the gap between my limbs. It was also nice to just have him so close without lying on my back for cuddles. I could smell him better like this, too, and I really liked his smell; it was so Alex-y.
“I’m really sorry, Alex,” I said, shaking my head. “I knew it was bad, but not this bad. It does explain why so many lizardkin end up starting their own business or just do contracts, though. Have you looked at any of those places yet?”
He sighed. “There aren’t any close by as far as I know. If Viggi’s dad doesn’t have a job for me, I might have to take you up on your offer for help.”
“Just say the word and I’m sure we can get you a job somewhere. The question is if they will treat you fairly then. With what you told me, I’m not so sure they will.”
“Yeah. I guess I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow then. How late did you say we’d planned to meet up again?”
We continued chatting until we had to go to class, which meant I had to leave early since I had Aerial Combat. Once there, I asked professor Marchie for some exercises I could do and she said she’d have to think about it for a bit. I again took notes from the sideline, but teamed up with Viggi for some theoretical exercises in the second half of the class. It was nice spending time with someone other than Alex and Tiki for once. As much as I loved spending time with them, I wanted other friends too.
While we did the exercise, Viggi and I also hashed out the remaining details of our visit the next day. We would be picking up the food from the restaurant and then taking it with us back to his house—which he assured me would be able to accommodate me, so long as I entered through the back. That sounded fine to me, and in the worst-case scenario, we’d set up a table outside in their garden.
After class, I went back to the dorms since Fundamental Magic was still canceled. It reminded me I still needed to look at the homework for that class, though it’d have to wait until later. I did homework with Alex, did some reading, and went to bed. The next day wasn’t very interesting either. I just slept in, went to class, frustratingly got nowhere in both Advanced Elementalism and Unconventional Casting Media, and went back to the dorms with Alex where we again did homework until it was time to leave for dinner with Viggi.