Chapter 16: Chapter 16: Friendship

Over the course of the next few months, I asked for my mother's permission to “go play with my friends” more and more often. She always tagged along with me, because I was still too young to go anywhere by myself and the Ocean’s Call remained an ever-present threat. My parents did seem to be increasingly aware of how little influence it had on me, but even if I seemed mostly immune to it, they were naturally afraid of leaving a four year old alone in a dangerous situation either way. The fishing boat my father worked on was also repaired after another week or two, so he was usually out during the day. He always returned in the evenings and took a few days off every so often, so I still saw him, but I didn’t spend as much time with him as I had while making my first rune.

I took these months as an opportunity to get to know my fellow transmigrators a bit better. We were going to be seeing each other a lot in the future, and we were eventually going to be braving the monsters of the Market together as a team when we died. The two seemed interested in becoming closer as well, and the three of us quickly became more than the team of acquaintances we had been in the Market. Unlike other people, we had a certain understanding of each other, and an emotional bond that wouldn’t fade away after our deaths, which made it easier to understand each other and sympathize with each other when we reminisced about our old lives or talked about the quirks and oddities of this world.

After the first month, I paid particular attention to Sallia. I was increasingly concerned about her mental state. With how frustrated she seemed in this life, I wanted to check up on her and see if there was anything she needed.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Sallia one day. She had a particularly bad distractibility episode earlier that day, and had lost focus no less than eight times while trying apply some fish glue to a piece of wood. Even though the girl’s flightiness was pretty amusing, it was also obvious that having such a hard time keeping her attention on anything was difficult for her. Since she seemed particularly frustrated that day, I pulled her out of the situation and into her room, where she could cool down a little and get some space.

“I’m holding up, I guess. It’s… difficult. Seeing you and Felix start building runes makes me nervous.” She shook her head after thinking about it for a while longer. “No, that’s not quite the right word. I feel frustrated since I can’t do anything like that. I want to start building my own runes too. I’m really worried that I seem to have gotten such a bad set of Stats in my first life. After all, we only have five lives to start out with. You and Felix are off to a great start already, and whenever we figure out how to buy lives, I’m sure you two will have plenty of Achievement left over to invest in yourselves after buying some Lives. But I’m…” She sighed, shaking her head again. “I’m sorry. I’m trying really hard not to be bitter about it, and make the best of what I have right now, but… the three most important stats in this world, as far as I can tell, are Absorption, Willpower, and Fortitude. Fortitude to keep you alive long enough to grow up, Willpower to allow you to spend long periods of time building Runes and resist the Call of the Ocean, and Absorption to create runes more quickly and increase the upper limit of runes you can control. I am two grades below average in ALL THREE of them. My mother finally told me about runes a few days ago because I kept pestering her about it, and I tried to form my own without the fish stones, since you can theoretically make runes with or without fish stones as long as you can sense mana in the air around you. Even if it’s harder, I thought I could use it to prove that my Stats aren’t going to hold me back in this life, and I also wanted to prove that I can do things I need to get done with or without a high Willpower Stat…

“It was a complete disaster. Ever since then, my mother is trying really hard to distract me whenever I mention the topic again. I know it’s because she doesn’t want to waste fish stones, and she thinks I’ll probably grow out of my attention problems when I get older. But my parents also need fish stones to trade for expensive services in the island, and neither of my parents have ‘maxed out’ on runes yet, either. Their Absorption Essence can still reach a little further. If my mother keeps ‘waiting for me to mature a bit’ she might never stop waiting. I’ve been looking through as much information as I can find from the little information bits you can buy, and I’ve learned that Transmigrators have less variance than normal kids - and our personalities are already formed when we’re born. While a normal human changes a lot as they’re growing up, we change much less because our personalities are already formed the moment our soul attaches to our body. So I’m probably never going to have an ‘easy’ time concentrating on stuff until we return to the Market, and waiting for that long feels crushing.” Sallia sniffled a bit, and looked like she was about to cry. I gave her a hug.

“It’s supposed to be harder for kids to form runes, so you don’t need to worry…” I stopped what I was saying. Telling Sallia she would need to wait a few more years… didn’t seem quite right. I certainly didn’t think it would improve her mood, or help her grit her teeth and hold out longer. In the first place, if Sallia was saying that we developed less mentally as time passed, Sallia really might have to deal with her current problems until we returned to the Market. Giving her a false hope to latch onto didn’t seem like a real solution to the current problem.

I had an idea, but I hesitated. What I was about to do might come back to bite me later. In fact, in some respects, it was a terrible idea, especially since right now all three of us were struggling to eke out a little more efficiency and power for ourselves. The Market would be incredibly dangerous when we returned to it, and none of us knew if we would survive going back and facing the skeletal spellcasters again. We didn’t even have a guarantee of our own safety, and while the three of us shared information and talked about the Market, this would be a little different than our previous cooperation. It would require me to unilaterally spend resources I needed to help Sallia. I hesitated for a moment.

But if nobody reached out to the other, we wouldn’t grow closer together. And I liked Sallia and Felix. We had escaped the Liches at the Market together, and at that time, Sallia had pulled Felix and I into the pool when we were too stunned to react. I liked them both, and I didn’t want to see them hurting or in pain. 

If nobody takes the first step, nothing will change, I told myself, working up my courage. I took a leap of faith.

“I’ll help you. You’re struggling a lot with controlling your distractibility and getting resources and runes in this life, right? I’ll help you however I can. I can give you a few of my fish stones and help give you advice. I’ll… need to sneak them out of the house so that my parents don’t notice. So I don’t know how many I’ll be able to get you or how often I can get them to you. But my parents gave me enough fish stones to help me get through my second or third rune, and I can sneak a few fish stones to you. I’ll give you enough of them that it’ll become easier for you,” I said, giving her as big of a grin as I could. “And then I’ll sit with you and help guide you through the process.”

Sallia seemed to perk up a bit at the thought, before she deflated again, but her ears stayed partially perked up as she looked at me. “My Absorption Essence is low, and my Willpower is low. It’s going to be really… I mean, are you sure?” Sallia had a strange expression on her face - a weird mixture of depression and anxiety, along with a tiny bit of hope. When I saw her expression I knew that she was interested, even if she was trying hard not to be a burden.

“I can definitely help you get started!” I said, injecting more force into my voice. “I’ll help you get through this. That way in the next life, if I get trash stats you can help me and return the favor,” I said, giving her a wink to let her know I was joking. I was helping her because I wanted to. There was no other reason besides the fact that it felt good and I didn’t want her to feel bad anymore.

Sallia seemed like she had been depressed for most of her time here – she needed someone to help her get back up and keep moving.

Was helping her right now strictly correct?

No. Not at all.

Sallia’s mind was still at least partially affected by her body, and I was willing to bet that she would have an easier time absorbing mana as she got older. As much as Transmigrators came into this world with a fully formed personality and set of memories, I had experienced first hand the fact that our thinking was still at least partially influenced by our bodies. After hearing what Sallia had said, it seemed likely the influence was reduced, but it was definitely still there. Right now, Sallia was around four years old, just like Felix and I, meaning she was probably far less efficient at absorbing mana than she would become in the future.

But Sallia seemed depressed and anxious whenever I talked to her. I knew that she was struggling to feel optimistic about this life. Since I already liked her and enjoyed spending time with her, I wanted to make her feel better. If that required wasting some resources, it was a fine price to pay to cheer my friend up. I would figure out how to deal with other problems when we returned to the Market.

I spent the next few hours going over the basics of how I had formed my first rune, explaining it as clearly as I could to Sallia. The next day, I smuggled her an extra fish stone to help the process along. 

Sallia really had a hard time sitting still for long periods of time. I could tell that she was trying her hardest to focus, despite her Grade 3 Willpower. She knew how important this was for her, and I could tell that she appreciated the fact that I was stepping in to help her when I didn’t have to. She didn’t manage to feel the energy in the air around us or in my fish stone by the time we were done on the second day, but at the very least she seemed to feel better. 

The next day, I went to Felix’s house with my mother instead.

Unlike Sallia, he was doing quite well for himself. His body had finally finished adjusting to his first rune, meaning that he would no longer hurt himself if he started working on his second rune. Combined with his above average Absorption Essence and Willpower, along with the abundant resources his mother had, he was already preparing to start pushing towards his second rune. Felix’s mother praised him to the skies as a future talent, and even hinted that he would one day follow her footsteps and protect the village from the landbeasts of the forest. Her half-paralyzed face didn’t betray her emotions terribly well, but when she smiled and bragged about her son I could feel how proud she was and how much she loved Felix.

Felix and I played tag, talked about how sick we were getting of a diet of nonstop fish, and compared and contrasted the first worlds we had lived on. I learned that he had lived in a society that, by my world’s standards, would have been somewhere in the very early industrial age. For my part, I spent a great deal of time describing to him what my world’s technology had looked like. At least, the parts I remembered well enough to describe. He seemed endlessly fascinated by the concept of trains and phones, despite the fact I barely remembered how they worked, and started trying to put together little scraps of wood and cloth to model what I was describing to him. Despite the fact that he was using clumsy child hands to put together scraps of material, after a few dozen tries he started getting surprisingly close to a small model train, although his little cellphone looked incredibly odd even after several rounds of revision from him.

After that, I brought up the main topic.

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“I want to know if you’re interested in helping Sallia out,” I said.

“With what? Is she working on a project or something?” Asked Felix.

“No, it’s a mental issue. Since coming to this world…” I began outlining my concerns about Sallia’s mental state. Her depression because she had a hard time focusing, her bleak outlook on this life, and how hard she was trying to form runes. I also talked about smuggling out my fish stones to help her.

He seemed startled as I talked, and I finally remembered that he only had grade 4 Perception in this life. Maybe it made it genuinely hard for him to notice things about other people? 

“I’ll definitely help out as well,” said Felix, firmly. “I didn’t notice the problem at first, so thank you for pointing it out to me. I won’t let you be the only one trying to help her - I’ll smuggle some fish stones out as well. My mother keeps tighter control of my supply than your parents, but I’ll find a way. Let’s stick together and help each other whenever we can.”

* * *

“I think I got it! I got it, Miria!” Sallia squealed in excitement, holding the fish stone I had given her. I was sitting next to her with my eyes closed, trying to sense mana in the air. Since Sallia was chewing through my fish stones, I needed to develop this skill earlier than planned or I would really struggle to make up for my fish core deficit later. 

I placed my finger on the fish stone Sallia was holding, sending my mind into the stone and trying to sense the energy inside of it. Then, I cracked a grin as I turned back to Sallia.

“You did get it! Good job!” I said, giving her an excited grin. The energy inside of the fish stone was a bit lower. Even if the difference wasn’t substantial, it was definitely noticeable.

I gave her a huge hug. It had been four days since we started working on these sessions. 

I actually found this to be more than a little bizarre. It had taken me a full week to sense any form of energy inside of the fish stone. Sallia’s absorption Essence stat, as well as her Willpower Stats, were both two grades lower than me. These two categories seemed to be the most important ones in this magic system. How did she succeed so much faster than I did? I was more than slightly baffled by this.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel more happy than puzzled. Sallia’s cheeks looked like they were about to cramp from smiling. Regardless of the reason behind Sallia’s weirdly high speed, I was just happy that her mood had improved.

This was a huge step for her.

“Good job, Sallia!” said Felix, from a bit farther away. Like me, he had donated a few fish stones to Sallia and was now trying to figure out how to cope with his diminished resources. “I’m glad that we’re all starting to get our runes going. This is a great first step.” He also gave Sallia a hug.

“I… I promise I’ll pay you both back for helping me! When we get back to the Market, I’ll give you some of however much Achievement I get in this world!”

I snorted. “I don’t want the Achievement – I want us to be friends. If we aren’t mistaken about how the Market and reincarnations work, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. I could spend all eternity traveling through the multiverse alone, hunting for Achievement and trying to dodge whatever caused the Market to become a pile of rubble. However, I seriously doubt that kind of existence would be a happy one. I just want to spend more time with both of you.”

“I really like that idea!” said Sallia, exhibiting a childish exuberance at the thought. Then, she seemed to realize that her body was controlling her emotions, and she turned a little red. “I mean, ahh…I’m glad that we might get to keep moving forward together. Having some companions would make things much better in the future, especially if one of us gets a particularly bad birth situation or bad stats in a given world. This is a rather advantageous scenario, so I would be… I mean, it makes me happy that…” She trailed off, slowly turning red as I resisted the urge to chuckle. 

Felix also smiled. “I certainly don’t mind the idea. If we’re going to keep being reborn and living over and over again… spending that time with you two doesn’t sound half bad. Here’s to a better future together,” he said, raising an imaginary glass of alcohol in toast.

I was both surprised and more than a little glad that toasting each other was customary in his world as well. I also raised an imaginary glass to our future together, and Sallia did the same.

Our friendship was different now. In the Market, we stuck together because we stuck to each other to survive, because none of us knew what was happening and wanted a group of people to improve our safety and share information. We were pushed together by circumstances, and while we had good impressions of each other, there had been no telling what the future might hold. But what we had now was different. After pooling our resources together to help Sallia and looking after her, I could feel the nature of our relationship slowly changing from cooperation to genuine friendship.

Even if there was no blood bond linking us, that day, I felt like I had a family again.