Chapter 42

“How will… Evy know which room to put your cases, let alone get in?” I asked as we made it back to the streets.

“I left instructions with the receptionist. Besides, they are used to this kind of work. It is what they do,” Xan said as he easily weaved through the throng of people as if he had a clear destination in mind.

I tried my best to keep up as I thought about how I didn’t understand how that would actually work out. How would Evy know which building Xan had booked a room at? How would the receptionists know that Evy worked for Xan? What if another receptionist took their place before Evy could make it to the building? So many questions, and no clear answers in sight.

I nearly lost sight of Xan while I was absorbed in my thoughts. I focused solely on keeping at his heels and nothing else, I didn’t want to get lost on my first day in the city, not that there was ever a good day to get lost.

Ordinarily, being in large crowds of people always had my anxiety going, and that was still happening, but having to keep up with Xan focused some of the attention I would be directing to those around me on him, and consequently, I was less aware of my surroundings.

But I didn’t like it one bit at all. It had me feeling overly dependent on him, and that I just couldn’t abide by. Then again, there really was nothing I could do about it with the kind of financial situation I had going for me. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t let another blunder like the one that happened at the Baronies happen again, I would take care of myself while training to ensure that I kept all the winnings I would gather at the end of the Counties, after all, it was that one injury that had left me penniless.

I still felt the overwhelming presence of all those people around us, I felt like a fish on a hook line, being pulled unceremoniously out of the water. We strolled through street after street, moving past bustling scenes ever so often. I was beginning to wonder whether Choska was just that big, or Xan was leading me around in circles, as it was beginning to feel like we had walked to Sjuma and back.

As we finally made it to a less crowded street, we finally slowed down to a pace that allowed me to pay attention to my surroundings. And what an area in it was. I had known that Xan had taken me to what would be considered the wealthy side of Choska, but the reality of what it looked like still surprised me.

I was never the kind of person that marveled at pretty, pleasing to the eye things, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t realize when someone had made the effort to do something properly, in such a way that others would be able to appreciate the results.

Ever since we entered the city, all the streets we had been through were all paved, and I was finally able to see how. Relatively smooth cobblestones were finely fitted together to form a random patchwork of colors and textures that gave the street a unique feel, but I hadn’t paid that much attention to the other streets, so I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t all a patchwork like the one we walking through.

I looked around more keenly, trying to get a feel of where exactly Xan had brought me to. There were subtle signs of Mana having been used everywhere to create and make things that were necessary for the city’s denizens. Be it the tall metal posts, that had the light crystals for illumination when darkness set in, or the dancing animations that I could see on the glass windows; had Xan brought me to what would be considered the entertainment sector of the city, or were those just mere advertisements made to lure in more customers? I couldn’t even understand what the animations were supposed to be portraying, and Xan didn’t give me enough time to figure it out as he moved on without paying any of them any attention.

As we moved, I noticed the buildings getting a little more… flamboyant, for lack of a better word. Brighter colors, the faint sounds of instruments playing, too bad I wasn’t a music aficionado to be able to tell what exactly they were. I had taken a few music classes on the piano and the flute in my late years of primary school, but the lessons learnt never stuck. My mother complaint about how I had ignored catechisms classes, a big thing for a devout catholic, for music classes; to her, I was rejecting god for satan. What a bad thing I was doing. Me, religion and my mother had had our fair share of moments; for example, when I was around ten years old, I ran away from home butt naked just because my mother was forcing me to go to church. Those were the days.

Xan brought us in front of a building that looked most ornate to me. It was relatively tall with no clear distinction of where exactly one floor ended and another began, as it was clearly multi-floored. It looked the way I assumed a high-end hotel would look, with a broad front as well as a huge double door leading inside.

The guards on either side of the door didn’t even give us a second glance as we approached, instead watching passively the string of people moving into the building. I felt completely out of place, not only because of the difference between what I and the rest of the people entering the building we were wearing, but also because of how heavy my pocket was. For I knew, without a doubt, that mine was the lightest by far.

The inside of the building quickly became as confusing as it had been on the busy streets with the huge number of people that were cramped up together. It wasn’t that the building hallways weren’t spacious, just that the people inside were plenty, all in all, my panic button was blinking rapidly as Xan led me through until we entered what I would considered a concert hall. Or something similar.

We walked onto a balcony like structure that oversaw an arena-like seating, all facing towards a stage at the front of the hall. He had brought me to watch an orchestra, an orchestra!? What kind of person did he think I was? I turned to look at him, already preparing an admonishment for how much of my time he had wasted, but the serene look he had as he watched the stage made me swallow down my complaints. It was already near dusk, I argued internally, how long could we stay?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

…

I should have complained; I most definitely should have complaint.

It was so boring that I dozed off for the most part, or at least I tried to, they always seemed to somehow hit a high key when I finally decided to surrender to the lovely embrace of sleep. I’m sure Xan didn’t even notice just how much out of it I was, what with how much he was engrossed with the performances. Yes, performances; so many of them that I actually lost count. Or was that due to the slips in consciousness I experienced? I couldn’t be sure.

What was so great about them that people spend so much of their hard earned gold, I assumed it was, and their precious time to watch them? As much as I had tried paying attention to at least one performance from start to finish to try and figure out if there was anything I could enjoy, I failed miserably. No, they are the ones that failed to keep my attention. I liked listening to music and watching shows and movies, but there was just something with live performances that rubbed me off the wrong way. I was sure if it had been a recorded performance I was listening to, I would have had a very different opinion then. Sadly, it wasn’t, and I didn’t.

As the group that had been performing left the stage, a set of clowns and jugglers took their place. I was sure they were meant to be funny and entertaining for the patrons as the next performance was prepared, and a break from the monotonous performances, but for me, it felt like the concert hall organizers were just trying too hard to keep the boredom at bay.

It did nothing for my sleep-addled brain other than push it further into sleep’s deadly embrace. Even my fear of appearing ungrateful for not appreciating the performances in front of Xan had long left me. Besides, he wasn’t paying attention to whether or not I liked this thing he brought me to, why would I care if he thought I was ungrateful.

As the performances continued, so did my state of drowsiness keep getting worse, nodding through the rest of the performances like a lizard on a bright sunny day.

“Come on, let’s get something to eat before we head back to our room,” I somehow heard Xan say. Frankly, it felt like that must have been the first thing he said to me ever since we left the room, not that I was complaining. I really appreciated the silence, if only he had picked a much less boring place.

“Is it over?” I asked as he rose from my seat and followed him.

“Yeah.” That was the only response I got from him as we made it to the corridors of the building.

I expected us to head outside but Xan took one of the stairs to an upper level, and I was forced to follow him.

“There is this dish I had the last time I was here, I just don’t remember what it was called,” Xan said as I caught up with him on the stairs.

“And how long ago was that?” I asked him. If I remembered correctly, he said he had been away from Thylom for around four years. It could also be that he was in Sjuma for four years.

“Two years, I hope they still prepare it,” he said as we made it to the top of the stairs, immediately taking a left turn, heading right into an aroma that had my stomach grumbling like a grain milling machine.

It made Xan throw a smile my way as we walked into a corridor that I assumed led to where that wafty aroma came from. “I see you are long overdue for a meal. Sorry I kept you held up there.”

My embarrassment didn’t allow me to say anything to that, only nodding in agreement. After a corner or two, we finally made it to the restaurant but the number of people we found inside kept me from perusing it, only getting a dimly lit view of a place filled with tables of people eating. Xan made quick work getting us a table for two before ordering the food for us when a waiter came for our order.

“If you don’t like it, you can always order something else, on me,” he said as the waiter left. “But I think you will like it, love it even.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. The concert hall wasn’t to my liking,” I pointed out, immediately wiping off the smile he had. If we were going to stick together for long, it would be better for everybody if he learnt early on the things I didn’t like.

“The theater!?,” he said disbelievingly. “But it was so enthralling, I feel refreshed. And satisfied. Like I’ve had the most pleasurable experience of my life.”

I gave him a dubious look, forcing him to quickly add, “Well, not the most pleasurable. But you get what I mean.”

“Yeah, it was fun. For you.”

“Really? Nothing worked for you? Not even the clowns?”

“Especially the clowns,” I said in a dead serious tone, making sure that I left no room for doubt about my feelings regarding the clowns. It’s not that I had anything against clowns, only that they were the bitter icing on an otherwise sour cake.

“Wow!”

We stayed quiet for a while after that, before I decided to ask a question that always seemed to escape me most of the time. “I’ve being meaning to ask, why are there no people living outside the towns in this area?”

“It’s not just here, it’s like that everywhere. At least as far as I know,” he answered.

“What? Why?”

“I’m not sure of the real the reason, but it has been like that as far back as I can remember. The land, it belongs to the kingdom or the empire, and the ruling family gets to decide what to do with it. To build a house anywhere outside the towns and cities, one would have to get permission from them.

“I don’t know. Besides, I’ve never really cared, after all, I’m a people-person, I thrive when I’m around people, something I’m starting to think you are not.”

He was sitting back on his chair giving me an appraising look as he finished that statement.

“Yeah. Give me a nice secluded place, and I’ll be in paradise.”

“What about food?” he asked in mortification, and I wasn’t even sure whether it was feigned or not.

I understood where the question came from, given that we were in a restaurant, waiting for our food, but couldn’t he have thought a little harder? Something that wasn’t so… I don’t know, there?

“I can farm,” I told him.

“Really?” and that look of disbelieve nearly hurt me, nearly.

“Yeah. I was a farmhand before I joined The Grand Competition,” I said, keeping to myself that it was the only thing available to me at the time, and I didn’t have the luxury of finding something else to do.

“Really?” he asked in astonishment.

“You need to start finding new words to use. You are starting to sound like a broken record,” I told him as I sat upright in my chair upon seeing a waiter approaching our table with what I assumed was our food.

“Broken record? What is that?” he asked as the waiter rightfully placed the identical dishes in front of us.

I ignored him completely as my stomach reminded me where my priorities lay. I couldn’t blame it, I was already drooling from the sight and smell of the food presented to me. I didn’t know what it was, and I frankly didn’t care, as I began to wolf it down. I only remembered that I was in a high end restaurant and that etiquette was expected of me when I was done.