Chapter 55
We didn’t spend too much time in Xan’s room before we were out in the city again. I wanted to finally get the notebook I had been thinking about, and Xan was all too happy to go for another shopping spree. I strongly pointed out that I would only be buying the notebook and pens, with my own money, and that Xan couldn’t buy anything for me. At all. Hearing that deflated his ballons, but he still went with me.
Naturally, Sunshine tagged along.
“Where are you from?” Xan asked as we weaved through the strolls of people in the street. Why are there always people in the streets? Didn’t they have anything else to do other than walk around?
“Thaini,” Sunshine replied.
“Really!?” Xan exclaimed.
I wasn’t sure what was so amazing about Thaini that had Xan so excited, then again, I didn’t know anything about Thaini to begin with, or any other Baronies and Counties, even after spending all that time in the library. It had me remember a comment Silas had directly at me on the day I left Yange town.
“We will be passing through there on our way to the Duchies. I can’t wait,” Xan continued, with excitement still present in his voice.
“You talk as if we have already qualified. Careful now, that could just spell bad luck for me,” I dryly added as I tried my best to keep up with them.
“Not sure of your chances?” Xan asked throwing me a sideways glance. “You know, this kind of attitude is the reason you lost the finals.”
“How would you know? We didn’t see each other before the finals,” I said.
“You forget our chat already?” Xan asked in wounded exaggeration.
“That was before the semifinals, not the finals,” I countered.
“And you were already unsure of yourself then.”
“With good reason. Besides, I might not have checked out the other competitors’ Levels, but I know I’m the lowest, and by a lot,” I pointed out one of the reasons for my reticent attitude.
“You are,” Sunshine added unhelpfully, and I stared at her with a surprised-wounded expression. “What? It’s true.”
I swallowed my welling emotions as I hesitantly asked, “Where do they range?”
“Not counting you, the lowest Level I’ve seen is 36, and 41 is the highest.”
I knew that the Level difference was the same as it had been in the Baronies, but somehow, it felt bigger. To me, it felt like it wouldn’t be as easy as it had been in the Baronies to overcome the Level difference, and luck would be less effective too.
“Don’t worry, you still have a whole week to gain more Levels,” Sunshine said, probably after noticing my worsening defeated expression.
That statement didn’t help at all, and I was sure she knew of the reason why. But in case she had forgotten, I decided to remind her, “So do they Sunny, so do they.”
“Ehh… right.”
She hadn’t thought of that! What had she thought the other competitors would do, sit around waiting for me to catch up with them? wait… was she even training? Other than going to the training facilities, that is. That could be considered training, but I thought of it as just going to the gym.
“Get through the Counties and your training will be better then, of higher quality dare I say,” Xan said.
“Higher quality?” I asked in amusement. “You don’t even know what kind of training I’m going through right now.”
He gave me an evil stare as he laughed maniacally, “I have a pretty good idea.”
“Enough about me and my lackluster training—”
“So, you do acknowledge that your training is lacking?”
“If you think it’s so lacking, why didn’t you try to suggest otherwise? I would think that would have taken precedent over things like clothes and armor,” I said.
“That kind of investment is too much, you have to earn it first.”
“Yeah… as I was about to ask before Xan rudely interrupted me, how many languages can you speak?” I asked, turning my attention to Sunshine.
“Just Common Tongue.”
That surprised me, a lot. I had expected a completely different answer. “Really? Not even elvish, or a little bit of animus?”
“No, and animus don’t have their own language.”
“Why? I thought…”
“Maybe they did in the early days, but they were the first ones to get assimilated and it happened so long ago that it has disappeared into the annals of history.”
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“We had this conversation before, why are you asking about it again?”
“We didn’t. The last time, we only talked about the species themselves, not the languages they use, or used.”
“I’m sure we did, you just forgot. I’m starting to see why you don’t know a lot about the Realm of Mesily. It’s not because you haven’t been offered the information before, more that you just forgot all about it.”
“I’m not that forgetful, I can remember things,” I complained.
“Just not most things.”
I wanted to argue against that, but Xan had turned into a shop, forcing me to follow along. The turn was so sudden that I didn’t have the time to pay attention to what the outside of the shop looked like.
The inside I did pay attention to. We had walked into a relatively small shop with a small customer area at the front, a dividing wall, and then the shopkeeper and his wares behind it. The dividing wall was of solid wood from the ground up to a meter above it, and then thin cylindrical wooden poles up to the ceiling of the shop, arranged close together to leave space between them barely enough for a hand to squeeze through.
The shopkeeper was a tall lanky fellow, with an overgrown beard that had most definitely skipped more than a day of combing. He wore average looking clothes in dull brown and grey.
“Welcome, how can I help you,” he said, standing as we approached the counter, creamy white teeth peeking through the bush of hair around his mouth. Why am I even paying attention to that? It’s the beard, blame to the beard.
“We are looking for a notebook,” Xan said, throwing a glance at the displays on the shelves behind the shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper was already talking before Xan was done saying the word notebook, “I have several kinds of notebooks available, from small short-notes to the large ones for the avid scholar.”
His gaze scanned us after making that comment. I didn’t know what he was looking for but I tried my best to avoid direct eye contact with him, pretending to pay attention to the multitude of books I could see behind him. I didn’t know what size would be appropriate for me, but I was sure a large book-like notebook like some I could see on the shelves was not it. He had mentioned small short-notes, maybe they would be perfect for me, something that could fit in my trouser pockets. The problem was I didn’t know how small they actually were.
“Can we see some of your medium sized ones,” Xan requested.
I turned to him with a surprised expression, “Not the small ones?”
“With the amount of time you spend in the library, you would fill one of those in a single session,” he replied.
“How much time do you spend in the library?” Sunshine asked in surprise.
Before I could say anything, Xan answered for me. “He spends around five hours a day, every day.”
Sunshine turned to me with a flabbergasted expression, she moved her lips as if trying to speak before she gave up.
“I don’t remember telling you that,” I told Xan as he analyzed the few notebooks the shopkeeper had brought.
“Have you forgotten who showed you the library? You told me a lot of things then.”
If I remembered correctly, that was the day we spend in the bazaar, and then armor shopping. I must have been too tired by the end of the day to properly control myself. That, or he was lying. I couldn’t put it past him.
“I’m starting to see why he thinks you forget thinks easily,” Sunshine said in a thoughtful tone, putting on airs of a wise old person.
“I only started going to the library like that here in Choska, and I only read about The Grand Competition,” and a few very interesting historical accounts.
“We’ll take this one,” Xan said, talking about a brown leather bound book about a hand wide and just over a hand in length. If my memory served me right, it was approximately the same size as an A5 book on old earth.
Xan then turned to me, “What kind of writing material do you prefer? Pen, quill or stylus?”
“Pen,” I answered almost immediately. The other two were semi familiar to me, but if they were the kind that needed me to dip them in bottles of ink, then that was a no go for me.
Before long, we were done with the purchase and were back on the streets, on our way to a restaurant for a midday meal.
“Hey! I was supposed to pay for those,” I complained to Xan as I realized that he had somehow managed to pay for the notebook and pen without me noticing.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” Xan tried to dismiss but I was having none of that.
“For you maybe, but it is a big deal to me. I feel like I owe you more and more each time we go shopping together. I don’t want that, it’s stressful for me.”
“Well, if you feel so, you can pay for my lunch instead,” Xan said.
I tried thinking about the kind of food he preferred to eat, and then the number of coins I had on me. The numbers didn’t match up at all, in fact, the discrepancy was so huge I stumbled a bit just thinking about it.
“That’s no fair, I could have easily paid for my own notebook and pen, but paying for your lunch will be impossible, and you know it,” I said.
“I can chip in and cover the bill with you,” Sunshine offered.
Ooh sweet, sweet Sunny. I turned to her, shaking my head a little, “You don’t get it all.”
“What don’t I get?” she asked as she looked from me to Xan, and back.
Xan answered that for me for I didn’t have the words to express myself, “It’s not me he doesn’t want to be indebted to, rather, he doesn’t want to be indebted at all. What you are offering is no different than him being in my debt.”
“But I’m offering to help, not to put you in debt,” Sunshine said as she turned to me.
“It’s still a debt,” I answered her, pointing to my brain, “in here.”
What was the issue with the people of Mesily and being generous, or was Sunshine from a loaded family? She didn’t look it, not that she was shabby or had well torn clothes, but she didn’t give off the energy of someone who was used to having lots of money to their disposal, like Xan.
…
“Yes.”
“No,” I said, turning to look at Xan after hearing his answer. “We haven’t even known each other for a week.”
“It’s been close to two weeks since we met.”
“And we have only interacted with each other for like four of those days,” I pointed out to him.
“Do you always count the number of days you have interacted with someone?” Sunshine asked.
“No, not always,” I said as we entered a fancy looking restaurant, cementing in the fact that I wouldn’t be able to get myself off of another debt from Xan. “And its usually until the number of days of interaction get past thirty.”
“So, according to you, we have only known each for two days,” Sunshine said looking thoughtful as she rubbed her chin.
“Less than two days to be precise, but yeah,” I said as I took a seat at a corner table that was completely vacant. I had somehow taken lead when we entered the restaurant, and when no one tried to direct me, I bee-lined for the vacant corner table.
“What do you plan to do after the meal?” Xan asked me as he finally settled on his seat. If there had been four of us, the table would have filled up.
“The library, of course.”
“Shoulda known,” he said as he turned to Sunshine, “What about you?”
Was he looking for someone to spend the rest of the day with? Had he actually expected to spend time with me on my free time during the competition? But I didn’t have free time as a competitor, and I didn’t think I ever would. Not until I got kicked out of the competition.
“I was thinking about spending a few hours in the training facility,” Sunshine said.
The waiter came then, and I somehow found Xan ordering for me again, cursing myself internally when I realized that the meal might pass over what I could actually afford. But I was thoroughly relieved when the waiter brought our meals and I found a healthy serving of boiled maize ears on my plate. There was no way those could bankrupt me.