"Atalanta-san, not to sound ungrateful, but-"
"Hm?"
"Isn't this a bit, too much?"
Nfirea felt inclined to agree with Enri at the moment. Unfortunately, his nodding went unnoticed as his head was completely covered by the mountain of clothing he was struggling to carry in his arms. Off to his right, his current houseguest was no better. As it was, only a peek of golden hair could be made out through the amalgamations of fabrics threatening to topple her thin frame. Only the feline-like woman (his mind couldn't help but make that comparison, even though Enri said she herself didn't see it) accompanying them was still somehow visible, despite her own luggage not being in any way inferior in quantity.
"Of course not!" said woman brushed her off in her usual gentle, amused tone. "The upcoming trip is very important to both of you, isn't it? It's only natural that you'd have a suitable set of attires to choose from."
Nfirea didn't disagree with the idea itself, but this was clearly overkill.
"At this point, they would need a separate carriage just to be able to transport all of this." His argument was appropriately punctuated by a sudden gust of wind that threatened to destroy the structural integrity of his load. Thankfully, Atalanta swooped into his rescue, her moves swift and graceful.
"If your patron is even half as wealthy as you described him, suitable accommodations would be a triviality." she refuted.
"And that's not even considering the cost of all of these." Enri tried to support him. "You're being way too generous with us. Can you even afford to spend that much money?"
"Enough." She sternly cut them off. "You shouldn't be dwelling on such unimportant matters. Your priority right now should lie in preparing yourselves for tomorrow. Dinner should be ready by the time we get back, eat well and get a good night's sleep. You'll be meeting Ma-this Ainz Ooal Gown person, after all.
It was true, not even a week after he had sent his potions he had received a response, brought via a three-eyed raven, of all things. The little winged creature had been knocking on the bedroom window all morning trying to get his attention, immediately disappearing in a sudden *poof* as soon as its mission was complete. That little casual display of magic would have amazed him to no end, if not for his attention being completely stolen by the letter it dropped on his desk, said letter which was currently framed on one of his walls, proudly on display for all to see.
The letter itself was almost abruptly short, comprised of a simple invitation to Lord Ainz's home, followed by a short description of the time and place he was going to be picked up if he accepted, as well as allowing him to bring Miss Emmot along if she desired. Apparently, all he had to do to accept was to write his response on the piece of parchment, which he rushed to do, almost spilling a can of ink in the process. As soon as the ink touched the letter, it started glowing, before vanishing altogether as if the paper had never been touched. Nfirea didn't think it was possible, but now his impression of his mysterious benefactors managed to soar even further than before. He started to even doubt that such a person could even exist in this world.
Their current predicament was a result of what followed after that. He had practically jumped his way downstairs, startling Enri as she was cleaning the store. When he had told her the news, he became privy to the treat of watching her expression change from bewilderment to excitement, and then to panic, all in the space of a couple of seconds. She started muttering to herself that she wasn't even close to presentable for such an occasion, worrying that she would embarrass herself before her saviour.
Nfirea had wanted to tell her that she already looked really pretty as she was and that there was no need to worry about her appearance. Yet before he could muster up the courage to give life to his thoughts, he was beaten to the chase by Miss Atalanta, who just so happened to overhear the conversation as she was passing by. Her response was to drag the two of them against their will through every clothing store in the capital, a process that took about ten hours before its completion. She had been utterly deaf to their protesting, although most of it came from Nfirea himself. Enri always seemed to act a bit meeker when dealing with their neighbour.
Store after the store had been passed at blinding speeds, as they were forced to try on hundreds of outfits in quick succession. He had managed to take a quick look at a few of the price tags, and the cost had been enough to make his head spin in his place. The only saving grace had been seeing Enri try on all those different outfits, as her face got redder and redder with every single change of clothing. Hmm... now that he thought about it, this might actually have been the greatest day of his life.
Atalanta bought almost every single thing they tried on, including even more 'questionable' sort of outfits. He'd feel a bit bad about throwing those into the trash later, but that was a small price to pay to prevent experiencing that particular brand of humiliation.
And that brought them to the present, where they slowly trudged along back home, earning the confused looks of every person they passed by. To be honest, Nfirea was pretty sure that there was no space in the house to deposit all of their shopping, and he had the impression that Miss Atalanta hadn't given that problem much thought. They had to figure out something soon, his arms were getting a bit tired at this point, and he was sure Enri was probably the same. The load in his hands felt quite heavier than before, probably a byproduct of his exhaustion.
"Need any help, Mr Bangs?" or maybe not.
Nfirea nearly lost his footing from the surprise, as a childish voice spoke up, muffled from underneath the layers of fabric. By some miracle, he managed to no drop anything, staring in disbelief as a small head wiggled from behind a couple of shirts, revealing a pair of round, green eyes and a scar that ran across the left side of the face.
"Jackie!" he cried out, doing his best to calm down his racing heart. "How are you in there?"
"We saw a lot of clothes, and we thought maybe mommy Atalanta had hidden a surprise in there?" she innocently responded, using that weird way of referring to herself. "But there was none ..." she continued, her features souring a bit.
"Jackie!" the silver-haired woman shouted from behind, wiggling a couple of candy apples in her right hand ('When did she have time to buy those? And where was she keeping them?)
Her face beaming up, the little girl smoothly freed herself from the prison of fabrics and rushed towards the golden delights. "Now, be sure to share them with the rest of the girls, yes?" she told her as she handed them the sticks. "And be careful not to get them all over yourselves, you already had a bath today!"
"We will!" she obediently responded before biting into the sweet fruit, an expression of bliss crossing her face as she eagerly enjoyed her treat. It was Atalanta's turn to stumble on her feet, nearly brought down by the overly display of cuteness.
"Follow us!" After she had finished, she started walking towards the house next to the shop, gesturing for Nfirea and Enri to follow. "We have a special place where we keep all the things mommy Atalanta buys for us." Ah, that made sense. Miss Atalanta's spending habits were most likely not a one-off. Now that he thought about it, he didn't think he ever saw either Jackie or Alice wear the same thing twice.
Despite having been neighbours for a good while now, this would be the first time he had ever been inside their house before. It was a fairly normal living space, most things considered. Nothing too expensive or extravagant, but everything seemed to be very neatly organised. If everything, it was too neat. If not for the very realistic family portraits hanging on the walls and the occasional stray toy, the young pharmacist would have had trouble believing anybody even lived there at all.
"In there." Jackie pointed towards the room at the end of the corridor.
Opening that door had been like stepping into another dimension. The room itself was gigantic, to the point it somehow felt as large as the entire house. You could even host a ball in there, not that there was much space left at this point. Rows after rows of drawers occupied the entire place, perfectly aligned with one another, staunch soldiers of timber in perfect marching formation. Not that he would know, but this was the sort of wardrobe he imagined the Princess might have. Every single one was a slightly distinct colour, and labelled things like: 'summer ', 'winter', 'Sundays', and 'play date'. What even was a Sunday?
"You could dump everything in there," Atalanta chimed in, coming from behind. "I'll organize them before heading out tonight."
"Oh, where are you going?" Enri asked, causing the woman to scowl slightly.
"Work." Came the single-word response.
Behind the long strands of hair covering his face, Nfirea looked at her in apprehension. Not the fact that she would be so unenthusiastic about it surprised him; anybody that spent 5 minutes with her could tell she despised having to be away from her children for too long. The thing he found himself interested in was that he had absolutely no idea what the woman did for a living.
Working in the evening was not exactly common, but nothing to raise an eyebrow over. But when combined with the rest of the discrepancies, it did make everything a bit suspicious. The woman had clearly no shortage of income, just looking at this whole room was proof of that, yet she chose to live in a small house in such an unassuming part of the city. If she could afford all of that clothing, she was sure she could afford to live in the wealthier, and honestly, safer districts. 'Unless she was hiding from something'.
A bunch of unsavoury thoughts and ideas started popping into his head, but he stopped himself from continuing that train of thought. There was also the idea of just directly asking her about it, but a feeling at the back of his mind made him refrain from doing so. Their neighbours, while certainly on the odd side, had been nothing but kind and helpful to them ever since they moved. He had no right to start poking his knows in their private affairs. Even though, he still couldn't stop himself from looking over at Jackie's scar.
"I see" Enri answered. If she shared any similar thoughts with him at that moment, none of it showed on her face. "We could watch over Jackie and Alice while you're gone if you'd like."
"They could stay over if they'd like," Nfirea said. He could give the two his bed, he doubt his jitters for tomorrow would allow him to get a wink of sleep anyway.
Atalanta seemed to ponder a bit before answering, absentmindedly ruffling Jackie's hair in the process. "If you'd be so kind, I'd appreciate it."
"Yey, a sleepover!" the young girl exclaimed, grabbing him and Enri by their hands. "Come on, let's go tell the others!"
Atalanta stopped in front of the doorframe to watch as the little assassin ushered the two upstairs, the boy struggling to hide his blushing face as his free hand briefly brushed by the girl's own. Atalanta could feel a small smile creeping her way in. She was smiling a lot lately, more than she ever would have expected to have for the rest of her life. It was a pleasant feeling, one that she did not wish to let go of. Yet as she stepped out into the growing shadows of the evening, her face hardened back into her usual impassive mask. So unlike the Madness that plagued most Berserkers, a sense of tranquil serenity washed over her, her senses sharpening as she became one with her surroundings. The only sound remaining was the light tapping of her boots, signalling the beginning of her hunt.
"Bam, you're dead!" Alice boastfully proclaimed as she hovered above the young pharmacist, her wooden pointed at his chest.
"AAAAH, please spare me!" he dramatically shouted, squirming around in 'pain' all over the wooden floor, earning a few amused giggles in the process.
"You'll never catch me alive!" Enri joined in, as she sidestepped a coordinated attack from both Jackie and her sister.
"Wait, not fair!" Nemu pointed accusingly at a doll sitting behind her, "You're only around to come into the yellow zone after you rescue the Princess!"
"There's an exception to that rule if you drink from the magic teapot beforehand," Alice exclaimed.
"Wait, we thought the teapot was poisoned if you drank from it when there was a full moon." Jackie said.
"Good point, is there a full moon tonight?"
Nfirea had to admit that he wasn't 100% sure how the game exactly worked. It had started as a simple 'capture the flag' type of thing but after a while, it had devolved into a pseudo-hide-and-seek/ cavalry battle. The little girls seemed to change the rules on the fly, quickly getting bored with an idea before adding five new ones into a hodgepodge of games that didn't follow any logic at all.
They seemed to have fun though, and if he was honest, he was enjoying himself too. Most of the past month had been spent with him brewing tens, if not hundreds of new mixtures, most of whom would have been theoretically classified as poisons and/or biohazards. There were multiple burning marks on his hands from spilling accidents, and he was fairly sure that he lost like half of his sense of smell from the fumes he had accidentally inhaled. So all in all, it felt good to take a breather once in a while.
That didn't mean this could go on forever though. After it had long since darkened outside, and with the help of a very loud and tired grandmother, they finally managed to put the three little balls of energy to sleep. While Enri was busy tucking the children in his bed, he took the opportunity to pick out everything he needed from the room for tomorrow.
"What about you?" Enri asked as they walked out into the narrow hallway, gently closing the door behind them. "Where are you going to sleep tonight?"
"Ah, don't worry about it, I can just go downstairs and make myself comfortable on a chair or something."
"But this is still your house, you should have a good night's sleep at least!" Nfirea noticed that she was weirdly fidgeting with her hands as she spoke for some reason. He was really glad she was worrying about him, but there really was no need to. "I mean... if you want... the bed in the other room can fit both of us..." She shyly added, prompting his mind to immediately turn blank.
At that moment, he could feel every one of his motor functions fails him, rendering him completely frozen, unable to even blink.
"Nfirea-san, are you alright?" Enri asked, as more and more seconds passed without any change to his situation happening.
"Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I'm good. Great even. I think I heard something downstairs, I'm going to check it out."
Enri didn't have any chance to say something else as he practically jumped down the stairs, collapsing with his face onto a nearby table, a vain attempt to get his breathing back under control. Every time he felt like he was getting close, an image of the two of them in the same bed flashed in his mind, causing his heart to race out as if he was running a marathon. A part of him felt really ashamed that he ran away like that, but all he could think about was what he was going to do now. 'I mean, she just asked me that because she wanted to help me out. Yeah, there are no ulterior motives here. It's not like that, I could just go back upstairs and tell her...no no no, it's impossible for me to do that!"
What finally got him out of his downward spiral was a loud knocking on the door, the creaking of the weary wood echoing through the room. Nfirea stared ahead, his brows shooting up as he tried to figure out who could be in front of the house at such a late hour. He was pretty sure that the closed sign had been properly hung up, so it couldn't have been a customer. He tried to make out the visitor from the nearby window, but the moon's light was currently blocked by the clouds overtaking it, unable to pierce through the darkness outside."Oh, it might be miss Atalanta. Maybe she got back earlier than she expected."
As he opened the door, however, there was another person standing there. Before he knew it, the potion maker's heart reached his ears once again, but now it was for a different reason. The woman politely standing in front of him definitely had attractive features: piercing red eyes, short fair hair, generous curves that were still clearly visible even through the large cloak she was wearing. But he couldn't call her beautiful. No, not while that disgusting twisted smile contorted her features, a smile that only knew pain and revelled in the suffering of others. For a moment he could imagine a thin line of blood dripping from those lips, stretched so much until they were nothing more than a thin line. His blood.
"Beautifull evening we're having!" For Nfirea, that pleasant greeting sounded more vulgar than any cuss or blight. He tried running away, yet before he could even make a move, he suddenly lost all feeling in his legs. He collapsed onto the floor, that horrible smile burning in his eyes as darkness welcomed him.
Author's note:
What kind of music festival ends at midnight? That's not even enough time to get drunk, and that's like 70% of the experience