Chapter 26: Chapter 8: Revival City Part 3

They were in what Zavier presumed to be Yafu’s room. It was just that. A single room with a chair, a table and stained mattress. Shredded and burned papers sprawled across the floor, and the walls had a rainbow of stains splattered across them. There was a small vent in one of the upper corners of the wall. The sunlight peeking through the blinders was the only thing illuminating the dreary room.

“You don’t really live here?” Anenna said slowly. Even she couldn’t hide her concern.

Yafu brushed the concern off as he answered, “Here and the room across from us on some nights. The only people on this floor since I started squatting here are Eeyl and I, so you guys can get the room of your choice all to yourselves here. This is the only one with a table though.”

Zavier was scanning the discarded papers on the ground. A lot of them were typed reports and architectural drawings. He thought about asking Yafu about these items but decided against it in lieu of a different concern.

“Your hallmate, he’s not crazy is he?” Zavier needed to know if he should lock his door at night.

“He’s pretty far gone but he doesn’t really move except to go get food and drink once a day downstairs, so I doubt he’ll bother you much. Just say hello when you see him and it should be fine. He’s been my only neighbor for almost an entire cycle now and we’ve managed the hall together fine.” Zavier disagreed with Yafu's characterization of fine, but this wasn’t the time for cleanliness judgment.

“What are Blooders? Should I cover any wounds around him?” Zavier inquired.

Yafu had a little chuckle. “No, no, you’re fine. Neither of you are Blooders anyways.”

“What is a Blooder, though?” Zavier asked a second time

“It’s a pretty derogatory name for those with red aura. There is a lot of disdain for those with that color from the majority of people on the warm planet, who have a yellow aura.” Anenna injected from the opposite corner of the room. She had laid down on the mattress, a de facto claim to the table room undoubtedly.

“So it’s like racism for your world?” Zavier asked. The more he could get Earthen equivalents, the more he might be able to navigate this world.

“What’s that?” Yafu asked. Zavier looked at Anenna. Anenna gave a look back that clearly indicated she was letting Zavier field this one.

“Some people, not me, but some people” Zavier paused to find the right words, “are prejudiced against other people with different skin color than them. It’s a big issue on Earth.”

“You mean like people who are tanner in the face than others?” Yafu naivly replied.

“Kind of, but not entirely. It’s way more complicated.” Zavier was very much ready for a topic change.

You are reading story The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai at novel35.com

“Well that’s fucking stupid!” Yafu exclaimed abruptly.

Zavier shrugged. “How is it different from the aura color thing?”

Yafu hesitated, clearly trying to pick the right words. “I don’t really agree with it but there has been some history. Red aura people are originally from the cold planet, and the yellow aura people are from the warm planet here. If you have children with two parents of different aura color their kids will all have the same aura color as one of the parents at random. This has caused issues for people who are rather prideful with their soul color. The weird thing is the Immortal King allegedly had an orange aura color, the only known one in history. The same people who celebrate that as a symbol of his unified destiny to rule sometimes are the ones who want to keep their colors sorted, so to speak. There was also a really bad failed revolution backed by a lot of people with red aura some two hundred cycles ago. It really should be ancient history by now but there’s a lot of people who hold grudges from before they were born.”

Zavier definitely had a counterpoint to make a long with a small history lesson for Yafu, but he bit his tongue. He was just too tired for that right now. Anenna was also giving them a tired death stare from the mattress. She was clearly ready for them to leave her be. Zavier and Yafu took the hint and filed out to the room across the hall. The room here was almost as dirty as the other one but there weren’t as many damaged papers as the other room. This room lacked a table but had two mattresses propped up on opposite sides of the room. Perfect.

Zavier crashed on the one to his right. Yafu accordingly took the one of the left. As he sank into the mattress, he was confronted with just how tired he was. The mattress was pretty much shot and did not smell very good at all, but felt so soft to his tired limbs. It had been a long day.

Right before he was about to fall asleep, Yafu chirped up, his voice carrying across the darkness of the room, “I think she’s wrong, you know.”

“Who’s wrong?” Zavier mumbled not lifting his face from the mattress.

“Anenna. She’s wrong about you.” Zavier gave an inquisitive grunt in response to Yafu providing tacit approval to continue in the lowest energy way possible. He was vain enough to want to hear this out. Anenna had not said much that was kind to him.

“When we first met, I thought I had won the lottery.” Yafu started, clearly building towards a monologue.

“I love you too man.” Zavier interrupted sarcastically. A period of silence followed. Zavier got a little nervous. He hoped his crassness had not discouraged Yafu. His uncomfortableness with whatever this was had just shined through.

To his relief, Yafu brushed off his teasing and continued in a serious tone, “I felt like an idiot most nights the last two cycles. I decided one day to track and take down the most notorious group in the Biterrene from this dump. It was crazy and incredibly ill-advised for me to try this. I was very likely wasting my time. But I did it anyways. I was sick of talking myself out of it for cycles. What I really wanted to do and stuff. I just decided I would rather embarrass myself and prove how hopeless it was than live how it seemed I should while ignoring my goals. It was the wrong choice despite my journey since. The odds were against me and I was more lucky than prescient on things and I still think this will ultimately end poorly for me! When I met you, I tried to treat you like everything else in the world. An obstacle to what I wanted. But for whatever reason, you helped me. Not because you cared for me, but because you made the same choice I did. You had an inertia you hated and took the worse path just to break it. It’s the wrong decision that so many want but few become so determined to actually take. I think Anenna sees that as stupid and a sign of the failures of your life which she blames you for. Whatever dissatisfaction you had with your life, I don’t really blame you. I don’t really believe any of us were born free of our circumstances. Who we are is so much forced on us by everything and everyone we share our existence with and it makes it practically impossible to change that. Unless you're willing to lose so much and so badly. You took that on. You fought back against yourself. I’m sure there are others out there, but you're the first person to show me that I’m not alone. So Anenna is wrong, you might be pathetic but your choice to help me with Shen is a step away from it not towards it. You doing that …I don’t feel as crazy and stupid as I did before I met you.” There was a long pause after that. Zavier racked his brain, grasping for some filler words to buy him time to give a well thought response to Yafu. Before he found the right selection, Yafu bailed him out, “You don’t have to respond. I don’t want you to. Just know that's what I feel if you ever feel like an idiot for making the choices you made.”

Zavier obliged Yafu’s request and left it be with no comment. He probably would have lied to Yafu, affirming it. He felt like he owed Yafu that after he let Zavier into his soul, if only briefly. But the truth was he did not think Yafu and him were very similar at all. He knew better. Yafu was truly courageous. The shredded papers on the floor in the other room were testaments to this. He could easily imagine Yafu spending night after night in squalor here for the exact reasons he had outlined. 

Zavier was different. He really did grab onto Yafu irrationally out of desperation like Anenna said, but Yafu was the catalyst for everything. Whatever the equivalent choice was in his life, there was no way he would have taken it without Yafu. He was as sure of that as just about anything. He had the same dissatisfaction in his life that burned deeply, so deeply that he latched onto Yafu’s drive the second he could to escape. But he was never going to change it on his own. He walked down this path because Yafu put it in front of him, and ultimately that’s what he did; go down the path in front of him no matter how much he longed for a different one. As Anenna correctly assessed, truly pathetic.

You can find story with these keywords: The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai, Read The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai, The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai novel, The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai book, The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai story, The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai full, The Dream Carrier: An American Isekai Latest Chapter