Luckily for me, yet strangely hurtful nonetheless, Helen made a face that basically told me that she more than expected me to make risky jokes. -I’d never do such a thing… in a public space… that is not school-related… okay… I probably would… But not all the time!-

We then finished our food, by the look on Ria’s face, we could see that she was more than content with the amount of food she’d had.

“Do you want to continue shopping, ladies? Or do you want to call it a day?” Helen asked, looking at her wristwatch.

“I think we can call it for today, but let’s take the scenic route in towards the car so that Auro can get some more practice in.” Em grinned.

Helen nodded.

Ria looked up at me and whispered in my ear. “Rora, you can always take off your shoes when you get tired of walking on heels. Ladies do that all the time.”

“I’m fine, Ria. But thank you for the suggestion. I want to prove to Em that I can do something if I put my mind to it.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s why she’s taunting you, Rora.”

I looked at Em, who was smirking at the two of us. “You are probably right about that.” Em knows me really well, after all. “Let’s pay the bill and let’s get back.

Em signaled the waitress to get the bill, which we received shortly after. “This definitely isn’t a cheap place, but it’s not like we can’t afford it.”

“Do you want me to pay my end of the bill, lady Emma?” Helen asked and already reached for the inside of her jacket.

“No. Of course not.” Em shook her head. “This is part of your job, after all. And even if it wasn’t, we still pulled you in here. It would be a bit unfair.”

Helen just silently smiled and nodded.

After Em paid the bill, we left the shop. Aileen and her date were involved in a rather energetic conversation about motorcycles, so we decided not to interrupt them. She did quickly wave us goodbye though as we left our table.

Once we were outside, we started walking in the same direction we’d been walking in before.

“We can take the right corner at the second intersection, so we walk through the part of this shopping area that borders a strip of flowerbeds.” Em guided us forward.

“A strip of flowerbeds?” I asked.

“It’s something I read about in a flier!” Ria replied. “There are lots of colorful flowers there, like roses and tulips. The picture in the flier was really nice.”

“Why didn’t we go that way then to begin with?”

“Well… we had to pick and this was the first shopping street we encountered.” Em shrugged. “The other street to the other side borders the city’s river.” She pointed to the left. “But they still need to update the street tiles. So unless you want to test your skills on badly laid cobblestones, I suggest we go to the right.”

“You make a good point there.” While I was getting more confident with each step, cobblestone was still a bit too much to handle for me at the moment. So I just followed her directions.

We were keeping up quite the pace, Em clearly wanted to drill my heel-walking skills in me before the weekend was over. After we took the intersection to the right, I did notice that Helen was falling a bit behind, which, considering her personality and character, was a bit strange to me. Ria noticed it as well.

“Helen, is something wrong?” The smallest of my girlfriends asked.

Helen looked up at her, a bit surprised that we’d been paying attention. “Oh, I was just thinking about something.”

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“Hm? Thinking about what?” Em slowed down the murderous pace just a little.

“I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen that woman in the ice-cream store before… But I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just something about that scar…”

I looked in front of me and looked at Em. This was bad. I didn’t really know what Helen did before she was a driver for Em’s family. But if Helen did the kind of work that I thought she did… then that might not be very different from what Aileen has been doing the last couple of centuries.

“Maybe you’ve just seen her walking around on the sidewalk while you were driving. I’ve read a study that people tend to remember others with distinct facial features even if they’ve only seen them from the corner of their eyes.”

“Is that so?” Helen looked up at Emma.

“I can try to find the study for you if you’d want to. It’s pretty interesting.”

“No, I believe you, Lady Emma.” Helen then smiled. “The text would probably be too hard for me to understand anyway.”

“You are definitely selling yourself short, Helen.” Em smiled back.

Helen smiled at her once more, and now, apparently without anything left on her mind, walked past us to take the lead instead.

This gave Em the opportunity to drop back a little so she could chat with Ria and I in relative privacy.

“Did you just completely bullshit that?” I asked. “You don’t read scientific magazines.”

“I most definitely do, I just hide them when you come around so you don’t get intimidated.” She teased me. “Jokes aside, I did make it up, although you got to say, it did sound believable, right?”

“I would have believed you.” Ria nodded. “It sounded very convincing.”

“That’s true.” I nodded as well.

“Hey, and maybe there is actually a study like that, who knows.” Em smiled.

“Hmmm? It’s not part of your hidden science magazines, then?”

“You don’t believe me at all, do you?” Em asked. “I mean, the fact that I hid them from you is a lie. I just read them in our library.”

“What kind of magazines do you read then?”

“Mainly about technological advancements and stuff like that. Sometimes medical science too.”

“Emma’s so smart.” Ria gushed with a big smile on her face.

“You’re smart too, Ria, your test scores are even better than mine are.”

“Yeah… let’s just keep talking about you two. I’m completely fine with that.” I laughed. I’d rather they didn’t talk about my tests at all.

“Your last test was really good, though!” Ria switched her attention to me.

“That’s true. And you are pretty smart too, you just don’t like studying that much.” Em added. “As much as I joke about you, I really respect you, you know.”

“I do, otherwise you wouldn’t be my girlfriend.” I winked.

Em walked over and quickly gave me a kiss. Ria did so as well.

We had finally reached the street that had the flowerbeds. From the word ‘strip’ I’d imagined this strip of flowers to be a lot narrower than it actually was, but when we stood in front of it, it almost looked like a veritable field of them. There were a couple of paths through the flowers as well, so you could easily reach the street that ran parallel with this one.

“How did they even make enough space for this?” I asked, as Helen had taken the corner to walk back to the car, but it was still quite a distance away.

“I read there were a lot of vacant houses here, they were starting to fall into disrepair and it would’ve been incredibly expensive to restore them. So instead, they tore down an entire block of houses and put this in its place.” Em replied.

“Ah, so if you’d come here, let’s say, five years ago, this would be a narrow street with another row of houses?” I pointed at the edge of the flowerbed.

“Mhmm.” Em nodded. “It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Definitely.”

Helen chuckled, she must’ve been following the conversation. “If you think that’s hard to imagine. My grandmother has pictures from the city I grew up in before they started to lay down highway systems. Those areas are completely unrecognizable now.”

“Time changes a lot, doesn’t it?” Ria posed a rhetorical question.

“It does.” I replied and that sent me thinking. With the amount of time that was now at our disposal, we will see all this change happen right in front of us, more change than anyone can probably imagine. People like Epiphania who’ve been around since most villages even existed, that must be so weird to think about…

“Rora?” Ria poked my arm.

“Ah, sorry, my mind was in the clouds.” I chuckled.

“Oh.” She smiled. “It’s just that Emma asked you something but you didn’t reply.”

“Yeah, terribly rude.” Em smiled.

“Sorry, what did you ask?”

“If Helen should take you home first, or if we should go past Rias.”

“Hmm, what do you think, Ria?”

Ria just shrugged.

“Let’s go past my house first so she can hug Shima once more before she goes.”

“Shima!” Ria’s response told me I’d answered correctly.

I took Ria’s hand into mine and squeezed it. “After Monday, you’ll be able to visit as long as you please. I’m sure of it.”

Ria smiled back and gave my hand a squeeze as well. “I know.”