Chapter 31: Chapter 31

"Eris, isn't it?"

"Uh, y-yes?"

Me and the black-haired girl I remembered from that day were standing near a shelf a few steps away from the room’s main table. She turned her head away from a boxed figurine to look at me with a puzzled face, her somewhat messy hair flopping around.

We were standing in the same game shop I saw on my date with Izzie. There didn't seem to be much traffic in the late Wednesday afternoon. A few people were busy browsing things further in the store, and the shopkeeper, a burly, middle aged man with a large moustache and a somewhat chubby appearance seemed to be busy browsing something on the computer he used as a point of sale.

There was certainly something improper, even wretched about me coming here, under these circumstances—yet I didn't feel it at that point. Strange things go through your head, when your actions catch up with you, when you realize you're trapped. I believe that feeling, and the shock still not worn off, is what caused me to be so composed—to be honest, I don’t fully know what it was.

It took the girl a couple of seconds before a strange look of realization overcame her face. Her pupils first widened then contracted, and as she looked at me with her deep turquoise-green eyes, she exclaimed, "Wait... wait... Matt?!"

I knew I guessed right. She never gave up that frizzled hair look, or the baggy clothes. It had to be her.

"Oh my god! Long time! I mean... It's been years!" she suddenly turned happy. "I last saw you... when... graduation ceremony?"

"Yep," I confirmed, nodding slowly. It was really long ago. I lost touch with so many people...

"Jeez, I didn't think I'd see you again," she continued. "We... uh... didn't exchange any contact info..."

That was true. I remembered that even though neither of us were popular, we didn't seem to have much more in common than that—or at least I never got to learn about it, usually hanging out with Tim and a few other guys who were all into anime or electronics anyway. She was well liked enough by the popular kids to not need my time. But she was never mean to me. The one thing I remember about her was how she apparently wrote a lengthy essay for an English class, discussing and comparing two shounen anime. I only learned of it by overhearing a teacher talk to her, slightly concerned by her predilection towards suggestive scenes and violent sword fights, but still appreciative for the depth of the research she did. I guess I could have taken my chance back then and talked to her, but if you've ever been in the kind of social standing that makes you hang out with guys find more excitement in discussing their PC's CPU than three-dimensional women, you'd know approaching girls wasn't something you'd normally practice.

Thankfully we both grew up a bit since then.

"Yeah, stuff like that happens," I smiled.

"What have you been up to?" she asked, setting the box aside. "You look... better than last time I saw you!"

"Oh... This and that... I had to find a way to make ends meet after moving out."

"You moved out? Wow, did you go study?" she seemed genuinely interested.

"Well..." I paused, but her face seemed to be genuinely inviting, "education and career are not exactly going the way I wanted..."

"Aww, that sucks," she replied, but there wasn't a sense of disdain in her voice I expected.

"So you're into tabletop gaming now?" I asked.

"Oh, this?" she twitched nervously, as if a bit embarrassed, "Y-yeah, I kind of picked it up after graduating... I couldn't really find much stuff to do and then..."

"I used to play DnD back in high school," I said, realizing then that, had things gone differently, we might have picked it up together. I leaned slightly against the shelf, in a sudden display of confidence. "But it's never too late to pick up."

My smile appeared to make her giggle and look down at her feet.

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"It's dorky but fun... Really, if you still play, you should come by here some times..."

"Well aren't you a playboy," the soothing voice in my right ear tried to jostle me away from the conversation. But I stayed the course.

"Maybe, I often find myself busy with things throughout the day, and then once I'm free the store is closed..."

"Aww, too bad," she said again with that slightly flirtatious tone, "work sucks!"

"Yeah... actually, I'm in between jobs right now," I said.

I heard something shuffle and scrape to my left.

"Really? Me too! Do you have an idea what you'll do next?" she asked, moving her legs awkwardly one in front of the other.

"I... uh..." I froze up in a moment of genuine worry as I saw a small, opened box of pre-packaged cards on the shelf, positioned precariously behind Eris's head. It was moving. Ra'zizi's hand was pushing it, very slowly tilting it towards the edge. "I think I might want to look into... Some on the job... training..."

"Matt?" Eris seemed confused.

I locked my eyes with the demon. I tried shaking my head to get her to stop, but she only nodded with a malicious grin. The moment Eris turned her head, the box was about to tip over the edge. It fell on the ground, just as she looked up, making a racket when it hit the ground, spilling the rest of the cards, which caused her to scream and the shopkeeper to look up.

"Hey! What's going on?"

Eris, shaken a bit, started apologizing.

"S-sorry! I must have nudged it aside."

"Be careful with those! They are expensive!"

He came by to make sure there were no damages—luckily for us he didn't have either of us pay for the slight scrape in three packages. Seeing Ra'zizi position herself next to a more expensive set and grin even wider, eyes wide and staring at me, I turned to Eris.

"Hey, this is very sudden, but... Do you wanna go for drinks?"

"Huh?"

"There's a cozy bar down the road..."

The remnants of my awkwardness felt like they were creeping in.

"Oh yeah..." she hesitated a bit and bit her lips. "Well... sure! Let's have a drink, catch up," her reply was a mixture of excitement and hesitation. For the first time, I realized, I saw someone who seemed to feel more awkward than me.

Ra'zizi growled quietly as we left the store.

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