Chapter 27: ~Chapter 9~ Part 2

"Stop touching me!" the princess hissed into my ear, and the stifled groan of misery I let out as a response could barely even begin to convey the exasperation I felt.

"I don't have much of a choice, now do I?" I retorted while adjusting the annoying package on my back, making sure to get a firm grip.

"Ow! You did it again!"

"As I said, I don't have much choice. You were strangling me."

"That's no excuse! A real gentleman would put up with it!"

This time I groaned aloud and then muttered, "How did it come to this?"

"Mostly your own fault," Judy stated coldly at my side, her otherwise emotionless voice sounding unusually sharp.

"How was that my—?!" I halted my outraged question mid-word and raised a single eyebrow in the process. "What are you doing?"

My assistant looked over at me, though her fingers never stopped tapping on the screen of her new phone even as she spoke to me.

"I downloaded a word processor and now I am testing it." Her fingers kept drumming so fast on the touch-screen keyboard of the machine that I wondered if it could even keep up with her pace. "I am making new observations."

"... Such as?" I asked, against my better judgment.

She looked at her digital notes and said, without looking back, "You graduated from flirting and now you are a full-blown molester."

"No, I am not!" I objected loudly, startling the princess on my back and nearly dropping her in the process. I quickly readjusted my grip on her thighs and continued to carry her.

"You are touching me again!" she protested on my back and I lightly shook her in frustration.

"I told you, I am only holding onto you." Judy nodded to herself at my side and began tapping again. I looked at her flatly and repeated, "As I said, I am not molesting anyone, I'm just carrying her! I'm completely innocent! It's not even the first time this happened!"

"A repeat offender then. I better make note of that too."

I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly, trying my best to express the depth and profundity of my outrage, but in the end I could only shake my head in despair and reiterate a previous question: Just how did things turn out like this anyway?

One didn't have to look too far back to answer that query. The ad hoc birthday party, while starting out on the wrong foot, was ultimately a resounding success. Though it took some very amicable and in no shape or form violent persuasion (if you don't believe me, just ask my lawyer), I managed to convince Joshua that a life-size Dodge Viper cake was a bit of an overkill for just six people, not to mention imposing a spoiled-celebrity-level hurdle on the bakery staff. In the end, I chose a huge, tiered strawberry cake instead, which was a tiny bit too sweet for my taste, but otherwise I had no complaints about it.

The rest of the party went without a hitch, and while I wouldn't have called it a blast, we had a really fun and relaxed afternoon... though I was mostly just listening in the background as I knew nothing about the most common topics, such as local gossip or the new popular TV shows. Josh didn't seem to have such reservations, spending a roughly equal amount of time with all the girls, including Judy. Still, all things considered, it was a nice diversion from our unrelated toils and troubles, and it also served as a perfect opportunity to familiarize the group with my assistant.

Once we finished (and they made me pay the bill, of course), we broke into two groups. Angie, Josh, and the class rep went one way, the rest of us the other, courtesy of the fact that we lived in two different neighborhoods. As for what led to the current situation... let's just say, the princess decided to once again reinforce my impression of her being a total klutz by managing to fall over, on flat ground, no less, and hurting her ankle after another of her declarations of undying hatred towards me triggered by an innocent question about whether she would've liked if I took her home. And thus we reached the present, whereas she was situated on my back in a piggy-back-ride, me taking her home anyways, and my assistant picking the worst moment to mess with me.

"Please tell me this isn't your way of getting back at me for the cake," I asked the girl still immersed in poking her new toy at my side. Judy looked at me blankly and shook her head.

"No."

"Are you sure? You seemed unusually enthusiastic about that car-cake..."

"I wasn't." She paused for a second. "Joshua just made it sound really interesting." She paused again, this time for a bit longer. "I also liked the strawberry cake. And the party. It was... nice of you to indulge me. Thank you." She said so and returned her eyes to the screen in her hand. Needless to say, I couldn't help but smile at her unusually earnest words.

"You are welco—" I started, but my words were cut off alongside my air supply.

"Stop squeezing!" the princess exclaimed on my back while simultaneously putting me in a choke-hold.

"You are the one squeezing! Stop trying to strangle me!"

I shook her a bit and she finally calmed down. For the next couple of minutes neither of us said anything, so I had some time to think as I looked over the evening streets. The sun was so low that there was only a little of its red light left painting the buildings, yet it wasn't dark enough for the street lamps to light up yet. Maybe because of that, but the dim streets of the residential area felt surprisingly spooky, especially with the monotonous background noises my brain was already filtering out due to sheer repetition. It also didn't help that there were no placeholders on the streets either. They probably followed their schedules to the letter in the evenings as well as they did in the mornings, I presumed.

I looked up and for the first time noticed the first heralds of the starry sky. It should have been quaint, but at the moment all I could think about was whether the flickering pinpricks of light I could see in the darkening skies were artificial. After all, no matter which of my hypotheses I considered as a basis, they couldn't be real giant balls of hydrogen-fusion; there was no way this dream/simulation/whatever would detail something that distant and irrelevant. I was just about to wonder whether I should get a telescope to study them when I was startled by a pair of soft mounds pressing against my back. I stiffened for a moment (no, not like that) and glanced back at the princess. She was resting her head over my shoulder and, contrary to just a few seconds before, she was pressing her entire torso against mine. I raised a questioning eyebrow at her and she immediately averted her eyes.

"D-Don't get the wrong idea!" she sputtered, but instead of separating herself from me, she clung to my back even harder. "It's just cold!"

I raised my brow even further. "Is it?" It was still early autumn, and while I wasn't planning to grow bananas in this weather, it was still balmy enough that I felt thoroughly baffled by her statement.

"Yes!" she vehemently pouted, and I would have left it at that if not for outside interference.,

"Maybe it's just your clothes?" Judy quipped at our side without looking up from her phone, and the girl on my back dangerously narrowed her eyes in response.

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"Actually, that is a good question," I interrupted, trying to sound reasonable. "You are both wearing the same school uniforms."

"It's not what you wear, it's how you wear it," came the ready response from my assistant.

"... And just what is that supposed to mean?" The princess repeated herself, though this time her question sounded more genuine and less confrontational. When she didn't get an answer she petulantly puffed her cheeks and pointed her customary finger at my assistant. "Why are you even following us around if you only speak to ridicule us?!"

"I'm not following you in particular. I'm with the chief. He is going to take me home afterward."

"What?" The princess proceeded to squeeze my neck on purpose, though she tried to make it look like she was just losing her balance. "Are you taking her home with you?! Are you in that kind of relationship?!"

I pointedly cleared my throat and frowned at my assistant. "I told you people will misunderstand if you say it like that." Judy only shrugged her shoulders and returned to her phone, apparently making some new notes, so I addressed the princess next. "I am taking her home the same way I'm taking you home."

She momentarily stiffened. "W-W-What do you plan to do to me?! Is that the kind of man you are, one that takes advantage of injured girls!? I should have known! I knew you didn't smell right from the first time I met you!"

I would have facepalmed if my hands weren't occupied, so instead I did the second best thing and groaned so loud it hurt my throat.

"No! I am taking you to your home and then I'm taking her to her home!" The princess mouthed a silent ‘oh' and fell silent. "Seriously, what the heck is wrong with you two?"

Neither of them answered aloud, though the princess did start squirming on my back.

Thankfully, we were near our destination; I could already see the huge brown roofs of the mansion down the street. It was just as needlessly huge and gaudy as I expected. I set my jaw, readjusted the princess on my back, and thought about relaxing things while trying to ignore the soft girly-parts still squished against my back.

It only took a few subjectively long minutes to get to the mansion gates, but no matter how hard I tried to relax, for some reason the closer we got, the more irritable I felt. Anyways, said gates were overseen by a single black-clad man. He was tall and lean, though not wiry. His hair was pitch black save for two wide strips of pale grey on the sides, a color scheme that was so closely mirrored in his thick goatee that I had to wonder if he had it dyed that way on purpose. The only thing sharper than the pair of dark eyes situated under his bushy (yet inexplicably well-groomed) eyebrows was his suit, a custom-cut ensemble with pure white gloves and shiny black leather shoes. In fact, he was so impeccable just looking at him made me feel frustrated... for some reason. As I said, I was feeling kinda irritated at the moment. Anyways, I could tell who he was without even having to ask; Sebastian couldn't have looked more like a butler even if he tried.

As we got closer I quickly became aware of the bone-chilling glare he was directing at me, though I was so thoroughly inoculated against those by the princess that I didn't even mind. I wanted to return the gesture, but by the time we got into speaking distance, he closed his eyes and began shaking his head.

"Again, milady?" He spoke as he glanced up at the girl on my back. His voice was impossibly deep and raspy, like he was smoking cigars made of sandpaper or something, and he had a hint of an accent. Maybe german? Anyhow, instead of answering, she only hid behind my shoulders, which made the old servant glare at me even harder. We were off to a rocky start, it seemed.

"Can you stand?" I directed the question to the girl on my back after tearing my eyes away from the man's irritating gaze. She silently nodded, which was surprisingly meek coming from her, and so I let her down. To my further surprise, she was still sticking to my back like she was trying to hide from the scrutinizing glare of the butler.

"This is a different one," he stated dryly.

"If by ‘a different one' you mean the guy carrying her home then yes, it is," I answered in a sour tone, but he was apparently completely ignoring me as he continued addressing the princess.

"Milady, your father might have allowed you this, excursion, but you should not take it as an endorsement of promiscuity."

I rolled my eyes in frustration.

"Seriously now, does everyone in this town have their heads permanently stuck in the gutter today?"

"I did not give you permission to speak," Sebastian growled, finally looking me in the eye.

"Then it's a jolly good thing I don't need one, I suppose," I answered with fake joviality before I turned around and faced the girl hiding behind my back. She was red as a lobster and at first refused to stop staring at her toes, but after a few pokes, I got her to look up.

"Yes?" she whispered in a very uncharacteristically tame voice.

"Listen, you should stay home tomorrow or your ankle will never heal at this rate."

She looked at me with wide doe eyes and was about to open her mouth when she was cut off by the outraged hiss of a positively fuming butler.

"Insolence!"

I looked at him over my shoulder and gave him a huge nod. "Yeah, interrupting people when they are talking is rude. Shame on you."

For a second or ten, the tall servant kept repeatedly opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, an opportunity which I used to convey the rest of what I wanted to say to the princess.

"I'm serious, at this rate, you might permanently damage yourself. Stay home tomorrow and then rest through the weekend too."

"But... But I have to go to school..." She protested meekly and I could barely stifle a chuckle. I never thought I would ever see her as subdued as she was at the moment, though I was a little troubled about why Sebastian's presence led to this kind of reaction. I decided to worry about it later.

"Listen, if you are worried about falling behind in the race for Josh, I will send him over to deliver the homework to you. I might even be able to convince him to come alone so you can have him all for yourself for an entire afternoon. How does that sound?"

She quickly turned a different shade of red (maybe I should put together a color-chart for her one of these days...) but ultimately shook her head.

"What about the girl?"

"... What girl?"

"That prowling succubus," she hissed, her usual temperament finally showing through her restrained exterior.

"Oh, you mean her? Don't worry; I should be able to do something about her."

The princess' eyebrows shot up at once and she looked at me incredulously.

"You can?"

"Sure, I already talked to her, remember?" As if just remembering the time she tried to tackle me, her eyes twinkled with recognition, though she still looked doubtful. I sighed and smiled at her reassuringly. "She is no more troublesome than some other girls I know. I should be able to deal with her just fine."

She was still looking at me funny, but before she could say anything more I could see a dark shape reflected in her eyes and she wilted like a flower in the microwave. I looked over my shoulder and immediately staggered back.

"The hell!" I exclaimed as I barely restrained myself from throwing a decidedly non-diplomatic punch by sheer reflex. "Have you even heard of personal space?"

Sebastian wasn't fazed by my outrage and instead he continued staring at me from a few centimeters away. We were roughly the same height, but somehow his glare made him seem bigger at first glance. Since standing my ground in this situation would have meant standing so close to him I could feel his breath on my face, I decided to be the bigger man and take a half-step back.

"Just who do you think you are?" he growled, exposing all 52 of his teeth in the process.

"Leonard Dunning," I answered without missing a beat. "And you are?"

I could see a vein bulge on the old servant's forehead.

"I am Sebastian von Fraenir, steward and headmaster of the Dracis household's servants," he declared between clenched teeth.

"Neat," I smiled at him in an overt show of nonchalance. "Could you please make sure the princess stays home and doesn't exert herself tomorrow? I would be much obliged; it takes a lot of effort to look after her."

I didn't get an answer. Instead, Sebastian glared at me, but this time his eyes were cold as an iceberg. He raised a hand and the gate automatically opened, letting through two identically dressed (not to mention identical looking) French maids. I was actually a little impressed, as I thought maids like that only existed in fiction these days. But then again, one could argue that this world was fiction in some ways, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised after all.

The two maids, short and thin with tidy bubble-cuts of auburn hair, got the princess between them and headed towards the mansion. She could barely say her goodbyes before she was taken through the metal gate towards a third maid, a tall young woman with two long braids of platinum-blonde hair, and it immediately closed behind them, leaving me alone with Sebastian. Well, okay, technically Judy was still there as well, but she had completely removed herself from our circle and spent all her time typing on her phone at a good five paces away, so for practical purposes it was just the two of us.

The aged servant looked me over, his eyes suddenly sharp and discerning, even a little interested. Finally, he took a sharp breath before asking:

"What did you call milady just now?" His voice was strangely soft, like the proverbial silk hiding steel underneath. I blinked in response.

"Crap... I called her princess, didn't I?" He didn't answer, but the twitching of his brows was enough of a clue to guess. "Sorry, force of habit."

"So you know."

Honestly, I still didn't know diddly squat about her, but I wasn't one to let that get in the way of some good verbal sparring, so I shrugged my shoulders and told him, "Well, it wasn't hard to figure out." For the first time, the man's face showed an emotion different from acidic disapproval as he raised a single, curious brow. "I mean, how many blonde-with-ringlets girls living in a mansion with a grumpy old butler do you know?"

That seemed enough to satisfy his curiosity for the time being and so the butler's gaze swiftly returned to its normal acidity levels.

"And what exactly do you plan to do with this information?"

"Pardon?"

"What is your angle?" he growled accentuating each word individually.

I sighed before I knew it, much to his confusion.

"Is being paranoid this common in this household?" The question seemed to take him further aback, so after a short grunt I decided to elaborate. "I do not have an angle or agenda or anything. I'm not even particularly interested in the princess beyond finding her amusing from time to time. I am just collecting data."

"Data?"

"It's complicated. No offense, but I doubt someone like you would understand."

Sebastian narrowed his eyes and made his voice drop an octave, which nearly put it into infrasound territory.

"I want this to be clear, boy: You are playing a dangerous game here. If I find out that you pose even a sliver of threat for the Dracis family, you and I are going to play the most dangerous game."

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"You mean the one where we play tennis on the wings of a plane with a live grenade while riding on feral grizzly bears?"

"I... No... I mean... NO!" The man took a step back and looked at me with eyes wide open, an expression that looked downright comical after all this time. "Who even comes up with something like that?!"

"Well, as much as I would like to claim credit, I actually saw this on the net," I paused thoughtfully and raised a contemplative finger to my chin. "Also, you do not ‘play' the most dangerous game. The word ‘game' in that context refers to 'prey', so you should have said we would be hunting the most dangerous game, which I have to respectfully decline. I mean, I know that rich people have weird hobbies, but hunting people is still a little iffy if you ask me."

Sebastian silently waited for my explanation to end.

"You are right, of course. Only I will ‘hunt' the most dangerous game, and I am more and more tempted to start right away."

"So long as we are clear on that," I commented in the company of a chipper smile. "Oh, but before I go, remember what I said: make sure she stays home. She is pretty reckless and I wouldn't put it beyond her to try attending classes anyway."

"Just go," the man growled.

"Oh, and before I forget it, you might want to call a doctor. I don't want to sound like a worrywart, but she hurt that same ankle like five times by now. That can't be healthy."

"Fine, now go!" Sebastian snarled between clenched teeth.

"Okay, bye," I turned around but instead of walking away I did a full 360° turn and smiled at the butler with a raised finger. "Oh, before I forget it, I wanted to tell you that I love what you did with your hair and beard. It looks great. Did you dye the white parts black or the other way around?"

"GO!" he finally bellowed and I did just that.

"Fine, fine. No need to be that loud. See you later." I waved at the seething man and began walking away. After about twenty meters Judy joined me, her face as blank as ever.

"Your skills at getting under people's skin are quite impressive."

"What can I say? It's a gift." I answered with fake modesty. "He was also really irritating," I muttered under my breath, but she didn't seem to care. Instead, she was busy flicking at her phone, making small sweeping motions to scroll through her notes. At last, she seemed to find what she was looking for and looked up at me.

"Question: What was that part about the..." She looked at her notes as if to double-check, though I already knew her memory was better than that. "'Prowling succubus?'"

"Oh, that? It was about Mystery Girl X. You know, the white-haired girl Josh was talking about before?"

"I see." She poked the screen a few times in response. "And you have already talked to her?"

"Yeah, before your birthday party."

For some reason, the corners of Judy's mouth seemed to tense up, a small gesture that I would've probably never noticed on someone else's face. I was really getting attuned to her, I concluded, and I might have even considered that a good thing if her next words weren't: "So you have already flirted with her."

"No!" I protested aloud, getting tired of her accusations. "I was most definitely not flirting with her. In fact, if anything, she was flirting with me!"

"Was she?"

"Yeah!"

"Did it work?"

I gave my assistant a look so flat it was nearly two-dimensional. "No, of course not! She was terrible at it."

"I see. So your extensive experience with flirting reached the point where you can criticize others for their lack of technique."

"No," I stressed the word so hard it nearly devolved into a grunt. "What I meant is that she was really, really clumsy about it. And no, I didn't give her any leads, I only asked her not to cause trouble during your party."

"Oh."

For the next couple of second Judy refused to meet my eyes and instead buried herself into her little screen. Maybe she was feeling guilty for teasing me, I wondered? Of course, she soon destroyed the moment by throwing another inappropriate question my way.

"So, are you really not interested in Eleanor?"

I gave her a pointed look and sighed.

"No, I'm not. She is pretty and kinda amusing, but I have only known her for a few days... Though technically the same could be said about everyone else I know, I suppose."

"What about the other girls?"

This time I gave her a downright severe look.

"Are we really doing this?"

"Research," my assistant answered bluntly while flashing her phone at me. The sigh could not be stopped.

"No, I am not particularly interested in anyone."

That comment made her face twitch for a moment, but I had no idea how to interpret it. I didn't have the time to ponder its meaning either, as she immediately threw another question at me.

"Could you describe how you feel about them?"

"Didn't I already give you my analysis on them?"

"Yes, but I want to know about your personal opinion." The look she gave me at this point was especially serious, and she stressed, "We are supposed to collect observations separately, and I need a baseline to put mine against."

I clicked my tongue, half irritated and half impressed. So many things happened in rapid succession recently that I almost forgot about the reason why I had Judy along for the ride.

"Yeah, I got it."

She nodded and tapped on her phone, "Angeline?"

"Well... She is pretty cute and a bit of a troublemaker, but it is fun to be around her, so I suppose she's okay."

"I see. Amelia?"

"Who?"

"Ammy."

"Oh, the class rep? She is pretty enough, and I especially like her hairdo. She is nice and helpful, but she could use some help with her reservation,s and I still cannot figure out how she keeps finding my blind spots to startle me."

"Uh-hm. What about the new girl?"

"Mystery Girl X? She is pretty, I suppose, but I don't really know much about her. For some reason, she was also trying to repeatedly hit on me to change the subject when we talked. I am really curious why."

I finished speaking, but Judy didn't say a word. I turned to her and found her looking at me with a small frown, which when extrapolated through her deadpan was effectively a full-fledged glare... but then again, she also had her mouth set in a strange way, so maybe she was... pouting?

"Is there a problem?"

"According to you, you do not flirt."

"Yeah?" I answered hesitantly, not really getting where this came from.

"Then how come the first thing you note about every girl is that they are ‘pretty'?"

"Because they are?" I answered with no small amount of bafflement. Judging by my assistant's unchanging expression my explanation was unsatisfactory, so I quickly elaborated. "Listen, every girl is pretty in this world. That's just how this place works."

"Does that include me?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't it include you?"

"I see..." She looked away from me to type.

"Speaking of the opposite sex," I grabbed the conversation by the horns before she could change gears again. "What about you and Josh?" To my sincerest surprise, Judy stumbled and nearly fell over before she caught herself. "Whoa! Careful!" I withdrew my extended hand once I was sure she was steady on her feet and shook my head. "Listen, just because you are writing into your phone instead of your notebook, it doesn't mean the ‘don't take notes while walking on the street' rule is suddenly void and null."

She nodded, though it took some more prodding to get her to put away said phone into the same breast pocket where her notebook resided just this morning.

"Good. So?" She looked at me uncertainly, so I repeated the question. "I asked: do you find yourself attracted to Josh?"

"No," she answered with a startling hardness to her voice.

"Really? You seemed pretty receptive when he gave you that phone strap." I pointed at the colored strip poking out of her pocket, which she unceremoniously tucked away in an instant. "Did you get hit by his harem-protagonist magic?"

"Most definitely not," she answered, and this time I was almost 100% sure that her frown was hiding a pout. I made a mental note of that, then I chuckled and waved my hand dismissingly.

"Sorry, sorry. I just felt like teasing you. It's not fair that only I get embarrassing questions." I paused thoughtfully for a second before I continued with, "Though to be fair, I didn't entirely ask you just because of that; I am actually curious if you started to like Joshua. I actually want to know whether he really has something of a ‘harem protagonist aura' that affects girls." Judy shook her head a wee bit more vehemently than usual, but I decided not to comment on it. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. He is handsome, but so are most of the guys in our school, and he is not my type."

"So it's about personal preference. But wait, you say most guys are handsome?"

"There are exceptions."

"Really?"

Judy pondered for a second before she answered. "One guy in 3-B. He is obese and wears thick glasses."

"Oh, him? He doesn't count."

"No true Scotsman?"

I wanted to ask ‘Where did you even learn that term?', but I refrained from derailing the conversation.

"No, he is just an otaku-archetype."

"Otaku?"

My skeptical brow climbed my forehead without my consent, but she didn't seem to be able to read it, so I told her, "So you know what ‘No true Scotsman' means, but not what ‘otaku' does? I should really give you that list of required reading materials I was talking about this morning. Anyways, an otaku is someone obsessed with a hobby, usually anime, and they are..."

And with that, we successfully sailed past the stormy (and awkward) waters of the ‘How do you feel about person X?' line of questions, and instead we fell into the comfortable pace of one of our research discussions, which in this case mostly meant that I was explaining pop-culture- and storytelling-related tropes as she asked about them in quick succession. It was a strangely relaxing experience, and before either of us knew it we were already at the intersection we met in the morning. Without further prompting, I led her down the road on the left, towards her house. We were almost there when suddenly she asked something peculiar.

"Are you really going to deal with the new girl?"

"Hm?" I probably made an embarrassingly slack face when I got hit by the non-sequitur (we were talking about what a ‘donkan' male lead is like just a few seconds ago, you see), but I managed to gather my wits in a few seconds. "Oh, you mean Mystery Girl X?"

"You promised it to Eleanor."

"That, I did," I answered just a touch coyly as we came to a stop in front of her house. Judy looked curious, no doubt intrigued by the smile on my face as I reached into my coat's inner pocket and took out a phone. It was a different model than mine, and more importantly, it had a big red heart engraved on its back in a tribal-tattoo style. "She dropped this when the princess tackled her."

Judy looked at the phone from several angles like it was some sort of artifact she had to study before she looked up at me again.

"What do you plan to do with it?"

"I... honestly don't know yet, but it should be a good enough excuse to ask her out for a talk."

"You only met her once and you already want to ask her out on a date? How bold."

"Why you little—!" I scowled theatrically at the retreating girl. "I thought we were over this!"

"Goodb—"

"Welcome home!"

We both froze in our tracks as Judy's getaway-jab was foiled by a painfully energetic voice following the creaking of the front door. In said doorway stood a tall, young woman wearing casual clothes and bunny-slippers, though I couldn't see most of the former because of the frilly yellow apron she had draped over her. Without missing a beat she opened her arms wide and glomped my unprepared assistant in a giant bear hug, her long, curly ponytail whipping around her head in the process like a brown avalanche.

"Mom!" Judy protested, which sounded especially funny in her stoic voice. "Stop embarrassing me!"

"Don't be silly, darling!" Judy's mother smiled as she noticed me. "A friend of yours?"

"Yes. He just took me home."

"Oh, what a gentleman!" I could only blink awkwardly at the woman's perma-smile, which was in polar opposite to her daughter's permanent deadpan. She was one of those moms; the kind you would mistake for an older sister. "Please do come in, we are just about to have dinner!"

"Mom, don't be overbearing."

"I have to respectfully decline," I wedged myself into the conversation. "I have some important things to do, but I thank you for the invitation."

"Oh, what a nice boy. Maybe some other day, then." I gave her a tentative nod and said my goodbyes. I couldn't even tell if Judy returned the courtesy, as she was completely overshadowed by the adult woman at her side waving after me... with a ladle in hand.

"Well, that just happened," I muttered to myself while barely managing to suppress a smile.

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