Chapter 196: ~Chapter 68~ Part 1

"The C-menu? Really?" Josh grumbled aloud by my side as we walked across the unnecessarily spacious cafeteria of the school with our shiny metal food-trays in hand. The place was as unnecessarily elegant as always, though because of the changing season making even the least developed placeholder reconsider their options in face of possible hypothermia, it looked even busier than usual.

"What? It has fried cheese today. I like it," I defended my preferences, only for my friend to honest to goodness scoff at me like I just said something unexpectedly low-brow.

"Then you should've bought the deluxe French platter. It has lobster bisque, chicken marengo, mozzarella sticks with tomato sauce, and two macarons! Way superior both in terms of quantity and quality."

"But not in price," I noted. "It also sounds a tad too heavy for me. I'm fine with my non-deluxe cheese and fries, thank you very much."

"Your loss," Josh shrugged. "If I had your money, I would've already tried out half the deluxe menu by now."

"You already have," I pointed out while deliberately glancing at the tray in his hands carrying a large bowl of some kind of curry dish with roasted meat in it. "And on my money, no less."

"Don't get bogged down by the small details," my friend responded while suspiciously averting his eyes, and while I would have liked to press the issue, we were already right next to the table the girls reserved for us, so I ultimately decided to drop the topic altogether and silently took a seat next to my sister instead.

Josh settled between Ammy and Angie, while my two girlfriends were occupying a different side and immersed in a discussion I didn't want to disturb.

"About time, you slowpokes," the Celestial girl grumbled before we even sat down. "My lunch almost got cold while waiting for you two."

"You could've started eating without us, you know?" Josh pointed out and got promptly dismissed by his childhood friend.

"That would've been just rude," she proclaimed with a huff, but her mood immediately turned around when she got a whiff of Josh's dish. "So, what did you get this time?"

"Kaeng phet pet yang," my friend stated while proudly puffing out his chest for some reason. "It's a Thai dish with premium ingredients."

"Leo bought it for you again, didn't he?" the class rep asked while she picked up her utensils, and my friend answered with a grin and an unabashed 'Yep!'.

"In my defense, it is better to feed this glutton what he wants rather than to listen to his grumbling all through lunchtime."

"Hey! I prefer the term, 'foodie'," Josh objected to my completely fair and objective choice of words, but we all ignored him and dug into our dishes instead. Well, most of us.

"Chief?"

I glanced over to the side where my girlfriends were sitting, and they were both giving me curious looks.

"What, is there something on my face?"

"You should know what we want to know," my dear assistant noted, and Elly piled on me with a series of intense nods. I locked gazes with the both of them for a few seconds, but alas, it was impossible to do more than that, and so I soon let out a long sigh and slouched my shoulders.

"No, I didn't actually write 'millionaire philanthropist record magnate' into the 'your desired career path' field. I might be silly from time to time, but I'm not an idiot."

At this point Angie let out a self-conscious chuckle, but no one seemed to pay attention to her, so I decided not to bring attention to it either.

"So? What did you write then?" Elly pressed on with eyes all but sparkling with curiosity.

"I didn't write anything. I completed the questionnaire on the green booklet, just to see what it would say."

For some context, there was going to be a job expo at the local university in a few days, so the school administration decided to follow along and make it career orientation week for us, meaning a couple of the lessons were dedicated to the teachers (read: Mrs. Applebottom) handing out a bunch of brochures, questionnaires, and other tests apparently designed to help us narrow down our future occupations.

This was apparently really important, since it is common knowledge that whatever career path a high-schooler with zero work experience picks from a fancy pamphlet is going to be the one they are guaranteed work in for the rest of their lives, with absolutely no chance that outside factors, such as job availability or other obstructions would play a role whatsoever. Insert massive sarcasm quotes here.

For the rest of the week, we would have guest speakers from universities and employers from around the island, as well as the option to visit the actual expo. I personally considered this to be a monumental waste of time, but my girlfriends apparently found it inexplicably amusing, so I had no choice but to go along with them.

"The long one?" Judy asked, and I nodded, so she immediately followed it up with, "What was your result?"

"Movie-director," I answered flatly between two fries.

"Wow. That's significantly less wacky than I expected," Angie commented while sneakily trying to poach a slice of meat from Josh's bowl, and for once, I could totally agree with her. Not on the food-snatching part, but the other one.

"I know, right? I thought it would give me something zany, like the captain of a crab-fishing ship, or professional tricycle repairman, but instead I got something stock like that."

"I think directors are cool," Elly told me, probably just to cheer me up.

"Thanks, though I probably won't become one. What about the rest of you?"

"I just wrote down 'inherit the family business'," the princess answered, and she glanced at Judy, apparently waiting for her to follow up on her.

"I did the short test," she stated a tad dourly. "It told me my best career choice would be scanned document typist."

"What is that?" the class rep spoke up for the first time since we sat down, obviously intrigued by the odd result.

"It is a person who takes old documents and receipts that were digitally scanned, and re-types them so that they can be searched by computers," Judy explained with about as much excitement as such a description deserved.

"That sounds really dull," Ammy noted, and my girlfriend nodded in full agreement.

I, on the other hand, felt really cheated. The long questionnaire didn't have anything weird like that! I should have done the short one instead! Thinking so, I angrily bit into my fried cheese, nearly burning my tongue in the process.

"Ugh, hot!"

"Ah, here," Snowy came to the rescue with a glass of cold water, and I accepted it without any hesitation.

"Thanks," I told her, only to quickly realize that she, like the class rep before, didn't engage in our discussion at all. "So, sis? What did you write?"

"We didn't have any consultation," she answered, and only then did I remember that she was one year younger than the rest of us. Well, at least on paper, but let's leave those hairs unsplit for now.

"A fair point, so let me rephrase the question: if you had to, what would've you written?"

This time she contemplated for a long while, but in the end she shook her head all the same with an apologetic, "I… really don't know. This is all new to me, so I never really thought about it."

On second thought, she had a point. Before I adopted her, she was pretty much enslaved by her brother and had no agency over her future. Combine that with how Abyssals were supposed to be locked away from mundane human society, and I really couldn't blame her for not having any plans for her future.

"In that case," I began after taking another sip from the glass in front of me, "What do you enjoy doing the most?"

"I… like doing housework?" she answered more than a smidge uncertainly, and Josh immediately jumped onto the bait.

"That's right! You could become a maid at Elly's place!" he declared, but my draconic girlfriend immediately poured some cold water onto his enthusiasm.

"That won't do. When we get married, Neige is going to be my sister-in-law, so we obviously cannot have her working as a maid! If anything, she would get some maids of her own!"

"It's also more of a… um… hobby, I suppose?" Snowy added in a mousy voice, so Josh had no choice but to give up with a disappointed look on his face.

"Admit it, you just want to keep seeing her in a maid outfit," Angie teased him while chewing on a piece of meat she stole without any of us noticing. I had to give it to her, if 'food pilferer' was a job, she could become world-class in no time.

"Like hell I would admit that in front of Leo," Josh fumed in return, much to his childhood friend's amusement.

"Saying it like that is practically the same as admitting it anyway," Judy sent out a verbal jab, made all the more impactful by the dignified way she was slicing her steak while she said so. By the way, she was apparently learning etiquette from the princess as part of her 'bridal training'. They seemed to be having fun, so I once again refrained from raining on their parade, and instead I directed a questioning look at my nervously sweating friend.

"Don't listen to them, I'm completely innocent! No impure thoughts at all!"

Seeing him flustered like that was pretty amusing, so I allowed myself a small chuckle at his expense before addressing my sister again.

"Aside from housework, is there something else you like to do?"

"I like drawing," she stated, which immediately caused another stir in the group.

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"That's right! I've seen Lili's sketches once, and they are amazing!" Josh exclaimed with undue excitement, and to my surprise, Ammy seemed to echo her sentiment.

"I agree. Her artwork is really outstanding."

"I just had a lot of practice while drawing Sigils," my sister muttered as she humbly accepted all the praise.

"I don't want to be a wet blanket, but how do you actually make a living with drawing artwork nowadays?" my assistant asked, and her question immediately put a damper on everyone's enthusiasm.

"She can become a painter," Angie proposed.

"I don't think that's a well-paid job," Josh countered, only for the Celestial girl to poke him in the shoulder in response.

"I'm not talking about that kind of painter, but the artist kind! You know? The people who paint portraits and landscapes and throw random colored paints onto a canvas, and then other people put their work into galleries and stuff."

I wanted to point out that her last example felt a little off, but Josh beat me to the punch.

"Is that even a viable option? I mean, I would think that the stereotype of the 'starving artist' exists for a reason."

"You are thinking of high-art," I told my friend while taking another bite out of my slightly less piping hot food. "There are many other practical fields where drawing and painting skills are important."

"That's what I'm saying," Angie agreed with me right away. "For example, once Leo becomes a famous movie director, Neige can draw his concept art and storyboards!"

"I won't, but that's just one field where artists can find employment these days," I noted, and I would have continued to eat if not for the princess throwing a trick question at me.

"What about the future?" I gave my girlfriend a questioning look, and so she clarified, "What I meant to say was, what do you think would be a lucrative job for an artist in the future?"

I had an inkling of why she was asking, but I really couldn't see any harm in it, so after I gave it some thought, I ultimately settled on the answer, "A graphics designer, I suppose."

It wasn't just a stab in the dark either, as it was based on the current trends I could see in the Simulacrum around us. With the technology level steadily rising, it would inevitably lead to the internet getting ever more wide-spread. However, though we already had a couple of 'staples' of the information era, like social media platforms and intrusive advertising, practically all of the sites I have frequented had really rudimentary designs. Sure, a lot of that was probably due to the coding side having to catch up to the demand, but one still needed actual artwork and designs to go with that, and it was a market that was sure to boom in the future.

"What does that entail?" came the next question from the princess.

"Making logos, advertisements, creating designs for web pages and user interfaces, those kinds of things," I rattled off whatever came to mind. "For example, she could be working with your company to design your homepage or work on the individual cover arts."

"And you say this is going to be viable in the future?"

"Erm… sure?" I responded a tad uncertainly.

"That's good enough for me," Elly declared with a serious expression before she faced my sister. "What exactly do you need? Painting tools? Modeling kits? A studio? Maybe one of those fancy new electronic drawing boards?"

"Do you mean a graphics tablet?" Snowy ventured a guess, and the princess nodded right away.

"Yeah, that! Just tell me what you need, and I will get it for you! Do you also need a team to work with? I can get you a few assistants too if you want…"

"Hold your horses, princess," I chided my overbearing girlfriend a little. "Don't you think you are putting the cart before the horse?"

"Not at all," she stood her ground with a confident smirk. "Since you are not willing to exploit the narra— I mean, that thing you are not willing to exploit, I will do it myself."

"I get it, but that doesn't mean you should overdo it like this," I noted as I let my brows descend a bit into a frown.

"I'm not overdoing it! It's a business investment, and you have to be decisive about those!" Elly argued back. "Not to mention, shouldn't it be Neige's decision?"

"Yes, but as her big brother, I feel like I should give my own perspective on this," I told her, but since she didn't budge an inch, I decided not to get bogged down in this and relented with a not at all peevish, "Fine, fine. Go ahead and discuss the details between yourselves, just don't come crying to me later."

"Let's switch places," my other girlfriend proposed on the spot. Snowy gave me an uncertain peek, then directed one to Judy, but at the end of the day she obediently picked up her tray and the two of them switched their seats without any complications.

"Are you sure this is going to be all right?" Judy inquired the moment her butt touched the chair, earning her an ambivalent shrug from my end.

"You know, Dormouse, I really don't want to tempt fate by asking 'What's the worst that could happen?', but in this case, I honestly can't see how this could backfire. Let's just leave the princess to her devices for a while."

"If you say so," my dear assistant mirrored my shrug, and for the next minute or so we focused on our meals, ignoring both the business-discussion on our left and the rambunctious childhood friends getting into an argument about why Josh picked 'professional restaurant critic' for his preferred career path. This lasted exactly until Judy asked, "Do you have any plans for the afternoon?"

"A couple of things," I responded before downing the last piece of fried cheese on my plate. "I will have to take Elly to the base to make the contract, then I will have to arrange a working space for the sentai duo. I will probably need to get some of their equipment from their previous workshop, and for that, I will have to see Lord Grandpa, so that will take up some time too.  Oh, right, and I will also need to see the nurse."

"I don't believe you want a second opinion on your hand," Judy guessed with unerring accuracy.

"Nope, I just want to get an exemption from PE classes for a while."

"What was that about exemption?" Josh cut in with a skeptical brow raised high.

"I'm still not in top shape, so I'm going to get Peabody to let me ditch the afternoon PE class," I told him without any reservations, and my friend's shoulders immediately slouched in disappointment.

"Oh, maaan… I was actually looking forward to PE today! The teacher promised that we could play baseball again, and I really wanted to use the opportunity to beat you while you were down…"

"That's tough, buddy," I responded in a flat voice. "For the record, how much did that thing you are eating right now cost again?"

"Come on, that's below you," he attempted to dismiss my comment with a smile, but when I kept up the stern façade, he quickly added, "I was obviously joking, so please don't threaten my future as a critic."

"How is that…? You know what? Never mind." Like that, I disengaged from the conversation and returned to Judy's topic. "So, just to answer your initial question, I have a couple of things lined up. Why?"

"Mom wanted to invite you over for dinner," she said, her expression telling me she wasn't a fan of the idea. "She most likely wants to show you our holiday decorations, but if you are this busy, I suppose you can't."

"I could try to squeeze it into my timetable," I offered with a smirk, and my dear assistant instantly shook her head.

"No need, I will tell mom you couldn't make it."

"I don't know… You are making me awfully curious about these holiday decorations of yours."

"They are really not that interesting," she denied, but I wasn't going to let it go that easily.

"But you helped to make them, so I feel that it's my boyfriendly duty to inspect them in great detail and—"

I got that far before Judy delivered one of her pointed yet somehow entirely harmless kicks at my shin.

"Keep this up, and I swear I will really, undoubtedly, one hundred percent certainly start to hate you."

"I might be mistaken, but I could distinctly remember something about you and me and being in love and stuff, so I think that ship has already sailed," I pointed out, only for her to counter me with:

"I can still do it. I will just have to compartmentalize my feelings so that I can both love you at times and hate you at others," she explained while wrapping the bony end of the lone remaining chicken drumstick into a napkin for some reason.

"So you want to reinvent yourself and become a modern tsundere?"

That comment immediately made my girlfriend freeze in absolute shock. Once she overcame that, she looked me in the eye and told me, dead seriously, "I apologize. I very nearly made a terrible mistake. I don't know what I was thinking."

"No harm, no foul," I responded with a chuckle. "By the way, what are you doing?"

"You mean this," she stated while picking up the chicken leg, and after I nodded to confirm her words, she gestured for me to follow along.

First, she glanced around the dining hall, and once it seemed like nobody was paying attention to us, she casually put the drumstick under the table. Not a moment later, the upper-body of a little girl appeared out of the shadows, kind of like a famous movie shark breaking the water surface, and with a meaty chomp she bit onto the food offered to her and disappeared with a muffled 'Twangyuu!'

And just like that, the rest of my lunch break was spent digesting whether a grinning little girl arising from a shadow and biting onto something was cute, or absolutely terrifying. I would have asked Josh for a second opinion, but when he tried following in my assistant's footsteps, he got bitten again, so I felt like he wasn't entirely unbiased.

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