I spend the rest of the midday break snoozing on Hailey’s shoulder as she offered it up to me. Which self-respecting cat girl would decline such an offer, right?

Anyhow, after my little snooze the three of us head to class only to find out that the lesson had been canceled.

“What, why didn’t they tell us?” Carol looks a bit miffed at the notice on the locked door.

“Uhh…” I open up my cell phone and I browse to my uni’s mailbox. “Apparently they did, Carol.” I show her the mail I had received this morning.

“Really? Do they think I check my mails in the morning? Ugh.”

“We can’t be the only ones, right?” Hailey looks around and just when she does a couple of other students from our class walk around the corner. “Hey, guys, the lesson's canceled apparently.”

“You gotta be kidding me.” One of the students replies as he walks towards the door. “For fuck’s sake. I could have been at home by now.”

“Ain’t that a mood.” Carol replies, just silently enough so that only I can hear.

Our classmates leave almost right away while we stay back for a bit.

“At least we didn’t specifically come to class for this lesson, otherwise I’d be even more pissed.” Carol says.

“I can guarantee you that some people skipped the first lesson and did only come here for this class.” Hailey replies to our friend. “But hey, at least we didn’t.”

“What do we do now?” Carol sits down on one of the nearby chairs.

“I don’t know.” Hailey shrugs. “Do you have any ideas, Ami?”

“I’ll message Sam first.” I quickly type up a message to my girlfriend. Her lesson must not be very interesting as she replies almost immediately.

“Oh. We just got the message that we’ll need to stay around for another hour and a half after our lesson for some team meeting.” She texts back. “Why don’t you go to that new retro arcade with Hailey and Carol? So you don’t bore yourself to death <3”

“Do we have a retro arcade nearby?” I say out loud once I have read the message.

“Not that I know off.” Hailey shakes her head.

“Me neither.” Carol does so too.

“What retro arcade?” I text back.

“There’s flyers of it at the kiosk where Max and I bought our food.”

“Oh! Thanks for the tip, babe! <3”

“No problem sweetie <3<3<3”

I explain where to find the flyers to both of my friends.

“Now we need to go back to where we came from… but sure. I don’t have anything better to do right now.” Carol gets back up from her recently acquired seat. “It might be fun to take a look at some old games.

“If it’s an arcade, wouldn’t that classify as ancient already?” Hailey comments as we start walking.

“I think retro will never go out of fashion, will it?” I reply. “Isn’t it one of those timeless words?”

“Perhaps.” Carol shrugs. “Then again… clothes from ten years ago are already retro too so I don’t know.”

“Not to forget ‘vintage’.” Hailey ads.

“Ah, right. Would you like a vintage red, mademoiselle?” Carol offers an imaginary glass off wine to Hailey.

“Oh, I definitely wouldn’t mind dearie.” Hailey brings one hand to her chest while she accepts the glass of wine with her other. “How sublime.”

The three of us start laughing at their little act. What a happy bunch we are.

We find the flyers Sam talked about at the kiosk.

“Oh, it’s not that far from here, we don’t even need to take the tram.” Carol orients herself. “It’s just a bit up that street over there.” She points into the surrounding park.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Alright then, let’s go.” I say as we are quickly back on the road again for a short walk. We quickly see the neon signs appear as we walk into the street where we are supposed to be. The signs are clearly very old but have been cleaned up really well. From outside we can hear the sound of coin-operated machines.

“I do hope there’s some kind of exchange station around her, otherwise we won’t be doing much playing.” Carol laughs. “Who even has coins nowadays.”

“I might be able to summon some from our vault from inside of Turn of Destiny. But I suppose paying in actual silver and gold coins wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“You can do what now?” Hailey asks.

“Ah! And about Turn of Destiny, you didn’t tell me about that rumor I heard!” Carol ads.

“Oh, I forgot.” I laugh and scratch the back of my head. “Uh… but first things first… I actually don’t know if I can summon those coins or not. I haven’t tried yet.”

“And what’s stopping you from doing it now?” Hailey asks. “There’s no camera’s nearby. And if there are it would look like one of those easy magic tricks.”

“I suppose you got a point there.” I concentrate and recall how my sister did it back in Turn of Destiny. “Purse.” But instead of concentrating on an actual purse, I just thought about a couple of golden Dwargon.

“Wow!” Hailey calls out, presumably the skill had worked. When I look down I see five golden Dwargon in my hand. Hailey proceeds to take one out of my hand. “It weighs a lot too.”

“It’s an actual gold coin, so yeah.” I nod.

“Real gold… in my hands… who’d have ever thought.” Hailey looks at the coin in all of its detail.

“It’s pretty weird to see it out of a game, that’s true.” Carol takes one out of my hand as well. “So this is from the nation your party went to?”

“Yep.”

“It looks pretty cool.” She then puts the coin back. “I’ve only been able to get my hands on a couple of silver Vinavian coins so far.

“You’ll be able to get some more money soon. It’s not that hard to get money.”

“Says the person who has been playing together with the professionals.” Carol gives me a wink.

I pout. “I’m sure you can get it as a normal adventurer too…”

In the meantime Hailey is still staring at the coin.

“Do you want to keep it, Hailey?” I ask. “We wouldn’t miss a coin or two.”

“Can I? This is incredibly valuable, isn’t it?”

I shake my head. “As I said, we really have plenty. We’ve got quite a lot of money after saving a city.”

“Oh, wow. Yeah…”

Hailey looks incredibly excited in the meantime. “C’mon, Ami, you really got to tell the story after we are done with the arcade.”

“If you help me remember otherwise I might forget again.”

“I’ll make a mental note.” She gives me a wink.

“So I can really keep this coin?”

“Yep, but I’d prefer if you didn’t sell it or anything.”

“Of course I wouldn’t! This is practically a coin from another world, right? It’s one of a kind. I’ll treasure it forever.”

“Thanks Hails.” I smile.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you.” She gives me a quick hug and then carefully puts away the coin in a little cloth bag which she presumably uses to put away her earrings or something like that. “Are you both ready to enter the arcade now?”

“Yep.” I concentrate away the other coins into our vault and head towards the other side of the road with my friends following behind me.

The inside of the store is a bit darker than I’d first thought it would be, but that’s probably to make the different lights of all the machines pop out better. I guess those screens aren’t adapted for full light conditions.

A gentleman in his late forties is standing behind the counter of the arcade and welcomes us as we walk in. “Welcome, ladies.” His completely gray hair fits pretty well with his t-shirt which portrays some old sci-fi game I’ve never heard of before.

“Hello.” Carol gives him a polite wave and approaches the counter. “We’d like to try out the arcade.”

“Of course that’s why this arcade exists after all.” The man smiles. “Do you want a short explanation?”

“That’d be nice.” Hailey gives him a nod.

“Alright, the basic principle of this shop is as such. These used to be coin operated machines but we’ve all adapted them so that you can play without coins. As no-one has coins anymore, it just wouldn’t be practical although there are also ways around that but I’m digressing.” Well, that’s one of our questions answered already. “Basically, you pay us up front for a certain amount of time. We will give you one of these very cool bracelets;” he shows us a couple of neon-pink bracelets. “We do have different colors as well.” He adds. “But I thought it went well with your friend’s hair.”

“Oh, thanks.” I giggle.

“These bracelets will be charged with the amount of time you pay for. As long as you still have time left, which you can see here;” He points at a little display on the bracelet which says ‘00:00’ at this time. “You can use this to activate the different games around the store.”

“That’s a pretty neat way of doing it.” Carol nods at his explanation.

“Thank you, we thought it was pretty elegant as well.” The man smiles again. “How long would you girls want to charge for?”

“Uh… what do you think, girls?” Carol asks. “An hour or so?”

“Let’s make it two or three.” I reply. “Might as well since I have to wait for Sam.”

“Right, is that good for you too, Hails?”

“Yes, that sounds good.”

“Okay, we’ll have three hours each, mister… oh! And can we buy some food here?”

The man nods while he’s dialing in something in his cash register. There are some food vending machines in the back with small dishes. We’d like it if you eat them in the designated area though. Just to keep things sanitary. And of course, don’t forget to wash your hands afterwards.”

-Ami, try not to look too interested in the food vending machines, okay? We are here to play, not for food… food is always nice though…-