[Mousa POV]
My eyes slowly opened, still groggy from sleep.
"Hm~…"
That was pretty much the first sound that came out of me as I woke up from my slumber and stretched myself under the blanket. My whole body felt heavy in that comfortable way where you knew you could easily fall asleep again if you just closed your eyes for another ten seconds.
I stared upward for a moment, still half asleep, while pieces of the dream I had just woken up from slowly came back to me.
What kind of crazy dream was that?
I had dreamed that I got thrown into some place called a Hollow, where these monsters called Ethereals were trying to kill me every five minutes. Then, because apparently my brain decided that wasn't crazy enough, I somehow got some weird Gacha power that could give me stuff from games and anime. Powers, abilities, items, even fucking Chocobos.
I even fought monsters with invisible Air from Fate as gauntlets like I suddenly became some kind of anime protagonist overnight.
I stayed quiet for a few seconds, thinking about it.
"It was a cool dream."
Terrifying? Yeah. Would I ever want to actually experience something like that in real life? Absolutely fucking not. Still cool, though.
"Anyways, back to sleeping again."
I pulled the blanket up higher and sank back into the cozy bed. Whatever time it was, I clearly wasn't ready to deal with life yet. If there was one thing university had taught me, it was that when you had the chance to get more sleep, you took it.
I turned onto my side and curled myself up a little more, sinking deeper into the blanket. The bed was warm, the pillow was soft, and most importantly, there were no monsters trying to kill me. Honestly, that sounded pretty perfect right now.
I was about to close my eyes again when something started bothering me.
I could see.
Not just a little bit either.
I could actually see the ceiling clearly even though the room was pitch dark.
I blinked a few times.
Then I looked toward one of the darker corners.
Still pretty visible.
"Night vision, huh?"
I stared for another second.
Honestly, that was pretty cool. No more turning on my phone flashlight whenever I needed to move around at night. No more accidentally stepping on something. No more smashing my toe into the corner of a table at three in the morning and trying not to scream loud enough to wake up the whole house.
That alone made night vision worth having.
I paused for a second. Wait… night vision? My sleepy brain finally started catching up, and that was when the thought hit me. Wasn't that something I got from—
I frowned and sank a little deeper into the pillow.
"Nah. Too early for thinking."
Future Mousa could deal with that problem.
I rolled over again, still wrapped inside the blanket like some kind of human burrito. Instead of getting up normally like a functional person, I started rolling across the bed because walking required effort and I wasn't ready for effort yet.
One body roll. Then another body roll. I probably looked like a fish that had somehow ended up on land.
"Ugh…"
After turning around enough, I finally got a better view of the room. That was when I realized something else.
This place was way too organized for my room.
There was a desk with a PC sitting on it, along with some electronics and books that looked like someone actually used them instead of just buying them and forgetting they existed. A few more books and random things sat neatly on shelves, and everything seemed to have its own place.
I kept looking around from inside my blanket.
There were some posters and pictures on the walls, a few decorations here and there, and then my eyes landed on something hanging off to one side.
A bike was hanging on the wall, which made me stare at it for a second longer than I probably needed to. " Why is there a bike on the wall ? " Maybe whoever lived here really liked bikes, or maybe they just ran out of places to put it. Either way, I couldn't really judge. My own room wasn't exactly some masterpiece of organization either, and compared to this place, it was definitely a lot more chaotic.
I shared it with my brother because having enough space for everybody to get their own room was expensive as hell. There was usually some random stuff lying around, clothes somewhere they probably shouldn't be, cables everywhere, and at least one thing we had both agreed to clean up later and then completely forgot about.
This room was a different story. Whoever lived here clearly had their shit together. Everything looked clean, organized, simple, maybe even a little boring compared to the mess I was used to back home.
I rolled onto my back again and stared at the ceiling.
"Yeah definitely not my room."
The words left my mouth before my brain fully caught up with what I had just said. I stopped moving, still wrapped in the blanket, and looked around again. The room was dark, I could somehow still see perfectly fine, and nothing around me looked familiar.
I slowly blinked.
"Wait."
The realization hit me properly this time, and I shot upright so fast that the blanket almost went flying off the bed.
"Ach, Neee…"
I immediately started patting around the bed before remembering my phone should still be in my pocket. I shoved a hand into my cargo pants and, thankfully, felt it there.
My phone was still there, so I pulled it out and pressed the power button. "Come on…" Nothing happened. I frowned and tried again, holding it down longer this time, but the screen stayed completely black. "God damn it."
I turned the phone over in my hand, hoping maybe the screen was just being stupid, but then I noticed the damage properly. The screen was cracked, and the whole thing looked like it had gone through almost as much shit as I had yesterday. I gave the side of it a couple of taps before trying the button one last time, but still nothing.
"Yeah, okay. You're dead."
Great. There went my easiest way of checking the time, calling somebody, looking something up, or doing basically anything useful. I let out a sigh and let my arm fall back onto the bed for a second.
Part of me really wanted to stay there. The bed was way too cozy, and whatever was happening outside could honestly wait another few hours, but unfortunately my brain had finally decided to wake up.
"Alright… get up."
I pushed the blanket away and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing both hands over my face before forcing myself to stand. Weirdly enough, my body felt completely fine too. After everything that happened yesterday, I should've been sore as hell, but there was barely anything.
Then Hestia's Blessing came back to mind.
"Ah. That explains it."
The first thing I noticed after that was what I was still wearing: the same cargo pants, the same T-shirt, and the same hoodie I had worn on the train. Only now it looked like I had spent the last day rolling around in dirt, which, to be fair, wasn't that far from the truth.
There were marks all over the fabric from everything that happened inside the Hollow, and I didn't even want to guess what some of the darker stains were. I pulled slightly at the front of my hoodie and looked down at myself.
"Yeah… I look terrible."
At least nobody had changed me while I was unconscious, so that was one small victory. As I looked down at myself again, another thought suddenly came to me.
My yellow Chocobos.
I closed my eyes for a second and focused on that strange feeling I had noticed before. Both of them were somewhere downstairs, and somehow I just knew they were there even though I couldn't hear or see them from here. It was still weird as hell, but by now I was pretty sure it had something to do with the Gacha and whatever connection it had created between us.
"Definitely the Chaos Gacha doing that."
Probably some kind of connection because I pulled them from it. Honestly, I wasn't going to question that one too much right now. Knowing they were nearby and safe was good enough for me.
I was about to head toward the door when a thought suddenly stopped me.
Wait there was still something I needed to do first.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out four small tickets, spreading them out between my fingers. Two Bronze and two Silver.
I stared at them for a second. I had gotten the notifications before I got exhausted as fuck and passed out. Apparently almost dying, fighting through a Hollow, dealing with the big Ethereal, meeting a Bangboo, and somehow getting out alive had earned me a few more pulls.
"Four tickets…"
I slowly sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked at the tickets again. Part of me wanted to save them, but remembering how many times I had almost gotten myself killed yesterday killed that idea pretty quickly. If the Gacha could give me even one useful thing before I went wandering around somewhere completely unknown, I might as well take the chance.
At this point, the Gacha was also becoming weirdly comforting. I still didn't fully understand it, and some of the stuff it gave me was complete bullshit, but it was one of the few things here that actually felt like mine.
I spread the tickets out in one hand and looked over them again. Two Bronze and two Silver. Honestly, four pulls didn't sound too bad.
"Please man just give me something useful this time."
I brought my hands together for a second like I was actually praying, but then a horrible memory came back to me.
That Bronze pull.
[Lactation]
My face immediately twisted.
"…And none of that weird bullshit again."
I pointed at the tickets like the Gacha could somehow see me. "I mean it."
After that disaster, I wasn't taking any chances. I took a breath, rolled my shoulders, and grabbed the first ticket.
"Alright. Time to gamble again."
I ripped it and activated it immediately.
[Fake Weapon]
|Trash Ability|
Allows you to create illusionary weapons in your hands for intimidation purposes.
I stared at the description for a few seconds before another message appeared in front of me.
[Put Fake Weapon in the Ability Slot?]
"Ah, YES please."
Ability Slot: (1/1)
The moment I accepted it, I lifted one hand and tried the ability out. A weapon appeared in my grip almost immediately, looking real enough that I probably could've scared the shit out of someone if they didn't know any better.
The only problem was that it was completely fake.
I looked at the weapon in my hand for a second before changing it into something bigger.
A rocket launcher.
I slowly grinned.
"So basically, I can threaten people with a rocket launcher now."
Good pull.
I still had no idea how something like this landed in the Trash Ability category. Sure, it couldn't actually hurt anyone, but if some guy suddenly pulled out a rocket launcher in front of me, I probably wouldn't stick around long enough to check if it was real.
I dismissed the fake weapon and looked down at the remaining tickets.
"Alright. Already onto the next one."
[Lovers]
|Rare Trait|
You are better at understanding others and expressing your own feelings through speech or words, making yourself understood better. For all intents and purposes, this is essentially talent in communication.
I raised an eyebrow.
"Huh."
That was actually pretty good.
It wasn't some crazy combat ability or anything, but being better at understanding people and explaining myself could definitely help me.
"Okay. I'll take that."
Next one.
[Bureaucrat's Eye]
|Uncommon Trait|
You have the eye of a bureaucrat, allowing you to easily understand all legal jargon and loopholes in contracts, as well as quickly brief documents. This will definitely save you some time in any world with an established government.
(If not, the ticket this trait came from can be rerolled.)
I read the description twice.
"…Okay, this is good."
Maybe not exciting, but useful as hell.
As a student, dealing with contracts, documents, and all that legal stuff was annoying enough already. Anything that saved me from reading fifty pages of bullshit just to understand one important sentence was already a blessing.
And considering I was apparently stuck somewhere completely unfamiliar, understanding contracts before accidentally signing my soul away sounded pretty important.
I looked at the final ticket in my hand.
Silver.
"Come on. Give me something beautiful."
For extra luck, I gave the ticket one big smooch.
"Don't disappoint me."
Then I ripped it up and activated it.
[Blade of Hatred]
|Elite Item|
An old, worn, and rusty blade covered in dried blood. It is about as strong as it looks unless the blade is brandished against a target that has inflicted suffering on the user. In that case, the blade powers up proportionally to the amount of damage the target has ever inflicted on the user. Against anyone else, its power drops back down. Against a mortal enemy, it might be as powerful as a legendary blade, but against someone you are fighting for the first time, it may as well be trash.
I stared at the description for a few seconds before looking down at the rusty blade that had appeared in my hand.
"That is incredibly specific."
I carefully turned it around, looking over the old blade and the dried blood covering parts of it.
"Would probably be a good weapon in Guts' hands."
For me, though, I wasn't really a vengeful person. Most of the time, if I had beef with someone, I would eventually forget about it or just stop caring enough to stay mad.
Then Dullahan immediately came to mind.
That bastard had annoyed the hell out of me yesterday, and apparently the blade agreed because it suddenly grew by about an inch in my hand. That wasn't much normally, but considering how small the blade was, the difference was pretty noticeable.
I stared at it.
"Oh."
Yeah, apparently that counted.
That changed things a little. Considering how much that bastard had put me through yesterday, this thing could probably become terrifying if I ever had to fight him again.
"Okay, definitely keeping you."
The blade itself was pretty dull right now, so I carefully shoved it into one of the larger pockets of my cargo pants. It didn't fit perfectly, though, and part of the handle still poked out from the top like some oversized ruler.
I looked down at it.
"Eeeh… good enough."
With that handled, I stood up from the bed.
The pulls could've been better, but who cares? Compared to getting fucking Lactation last time, this was a massive improvement.
"Alright. Now I'm ready."
I walked toward the door and slowly turned the knob.
Creaaak.
I immediately stopped.
"Oh man…"
I hated this shit.
Why did everything become ten times louder at night? During the day, you could slam a door and nobody cared, but the second everyone went to sleep, suddenly opening one normally sounded like you were breaking into a bank.
I slowly opened it just far enough to squeeze myself through.
Creeeak.
I looked back into the room.
Nothing.
"Very stealthy."
Once I was outside, I carefully started making my way toward the stairs. At least I didn't have to move around with my hands stretched out in front of me, hoping I wouldn't smash my toe into some random piece of furniture.
Thank God for Bast's night vision.
I could see the stairs clearly enough to walk down without much trouble, although I still moved slowly because waking everyone up after they had apparently taken care of me would be kind of a dick move.
When I finally reached the bottom, I stopped.
Right in front of me were my Chocobos.
Both of them were sleeping near the end of the stairs, cuddled together with their long necks crossed over each other like some giant yellow pretzel.
I stared at them for a second.
"That's actually really cute."
I automatically reached toward my pocket before remembering that my phone was broken.
"Natürlich."
That would've been a perfect picture too.
One of the Chocobos shifted slightly in its sleep and let out a quiet sound.
"Kweee~"
I smiled for a second before noticing the actual problem. They were blocking the way.
I looked to the left, then to the right, but both of them had somehow managed to position themselves perfectly across the path. There really wasn't much space to squeeze through without waking them up, which meant the only option left was going over them.
I took a small step back and stared at the gap between the two Chocobos. "Alright…" I bent my knees slightly and prepared myself, hoping I wasn't about to make a very stupid mistake.
"One… two…"
I took a breath.
"…Three."
Then I jumped.
For one horrible second, I thought my foot was going to clip one of them, but I somehow cleared both Chocobos and landed on the other side with only a small stumble.
I immediately turned around.
Neither of them woke up.
I slowly raised both fists in victory.
"Still got it."
With that little mission completed, I finally looked around properly. The place definitely seemed like some kind of shop. There were shelves and stands around with all kinds of stuff on them, and after walking a little closer, I noticed one of the cases sitting there.
I picked it up and turned it around in my hands.
"How did they call this stuff again…?"
I stared at it for another second.
"VHS, right?"
Yeah, VHS.
I could make out the cover pretty well. It looked like there was a blonde woman sitting inside some kind of coffee shop, but the text on the case was another story. I tried reading the title, then tilted the case slightly like changing the angle would suddenly make the letters understandable.
Nope.
Couldn't read shit.
"Coffee Mate…?"
That was the best guess I could make from the picture.
I put the VHS back where I found it and finally walked over to what was obviously the front entrance. I grabbed the handle and tried opening it.
Nothing it is locked.
Well, that left the other door near the counter.
I turned toward it and opened it instead. The room behind it looked more like some kind of backroom or staff area than anything meant for customers. The first thing that caught my attention was the massive computer setup taking up a good chunk of the room. There were multiple monitors connected to it, all showing different windows and data, and one of the screens had a progress bar slowly moving across it.
[Analyzing… 67%]
I stared at the screen for a second.
"No idea what that's for."
The rest of the room was quieter. Off to one side, two Bangboo were plugged in and charging, their little ears twitching every now and then even though they looked completely inactive. I watched them for a moment, half expecting one of them to suddenly wake up and start talking, but thankfully, they didn't.
Then I noticed someone sleeping on the couch. He had silver hair and looked around my age, but I had absolutely no idea who he was. Judging by the fact that he was sleeping here, though, he probably lived in this place.
I was about to look around the rest of the room when something on the table near him caught my eye.
Keys.
I looked toward the direction of the locked front door, then back at the keys.
"Please be for the door," I muttered.
I quietly walked over and reached for them, but just before I could pick them up, the silver-haired guy shifted slightly in his sleep. His face scrunched up like he was about to wake, and I immediately froze with my hand hovering above the table.
Oh, come on.
I waited there without moving until his expression relaxed again and his breathing returned to normal. Still asleep.
Good.
I carefully touched the keys first, making sure they wouldn't start jingling the second I lifted them. When nothing happened, I slowly picked them up.
"Keys secured."
I quietly made my way back toward the front door and tried one of the keys in the lock.
Click.
I stopped for a second, then slowly smiled.
Nice the lock opened.
I slipped the keys into my pocket since I'd probably need them to get back inside later, then carefully pulled the door open just enough to squeeze through. Before stepping out, I glanced back toward the two Chocobos still sleeping together near the stairs.
One of them shifted slightly in its sleep but didn't wake up, which was good enough for me.
I stepped outside and quietly pulled the door shut behind me, making sure it didn't lock itself again.
Click.
The cool air hit my face immediately.
I took a slow breath and looked out at the unfamiliar street in front of me. Everything was quiet, dark, and completely unknown.
Alright time to explore this place.
There honestly wasn't that much to see at first. It was the middle of the night, after all, so most of the street was quiet and almost everything was closed. I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets and started walking anyway, looking around as I went.
The first place I noticed looked like some kind of music shop. There were posters in the windows and instruments displayed inside, but the lights were off and the door was locked.
"Music shop is closed."
A little farther down was what looked like some kind of mechanic's store or workshop. There were tools, parts, and other equipment visible through the windows, but that place wasn't open either.
"So much for exploring."
I kept going and eventually noticed a train station nearby. Seeing one made me slow down for a moment. Considering the last thing I remembered doing back home was falling asleep on a train, I wasn't exactly excited about getting near another one right now, so I decided to leave that alone and continued walking.
There were a few signs glowing above the shops, but just like with the VHS earlier, I couldn't understand any of them. It was still strange as hell that I could understand everyone perfectly fine when they spoke, but the second somebody wrote something down, I apparently became completely illiterate.
That was definitely going on the list of things I needed answers for.
I stopped walking.
Actually, who was I even kidding?
What the hell was I doing?
I had been wandering around this strange neighborhood like I was sightseeing, checking out stores and looking at whatever caught my attention, but none of that was getting me any closer to understanding what had happened to me. I didn't know where I was, why I was here, or how I was supposed to get back home.
The more I thought about it, the less sense any of this made.
Maybe walking around had just been my way of avoiding thinking about it.
I let out a slow breath and turned around, making my way back in the direction I had come from. Before long, I found myself standing in front of the same video store I had woken up in.
I sat down in front of the building and rested my arms against my knees while staring at the empty street.
"I don't even know what I'm trying to do."
For the first time since leaving the store, I didn't have anything distracting me. No strange shop to look at, no train station, no signs I couldn't read. It was just me sitting there with way too many questions and absolutely no answers.
I was still lost in my thoughts when a voice suddenly came from somewhere in front of me.
"What is a kid like you doing out here this early?"
I quickly lifted my head, surprised that someone had gotten that close without me noticing.
A man was standing there, a tiny man with red skin and four bamboo arms, looking at me before glancing toward the video store behind me.
"If you're waiting for the video store to open up, you're way too early," he said. "They don't open until ten. The managers are probably still sleeping."
I glanced back at the building for a second before looking at him again. So at least now I knew when the place opened, and more importantly, there was finally someone awake I could actually talk to.
"Uh… no, I'm not really waiting for them."
The man raised an eyebrow at that before looking between me and the video store again.
"Then what are you doing sitting outside Random Play this early?"
For a moment, I didn't even know how to answer that. Good question, honestly. What was I doing? Wandering outside in the middle of the night in some place I didn't know, wearing dirty clothes, with a broken phone in my pocket, after surviving monsters inside a shifting death zone? Yeah, saying that out loud would probably sound insane.
"I… don't really know," I admitted after a few seconds, rubbing the back of my neck. "I just woke up and wanted some air."
He looked at me for a second longer, and I had the weird feeling that he could tell there was more to it than that. Still, he didn't push immediately.
"You don't look so good, kid," he said. "You look like you lost a fight with the road."
I looked down at myself. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
That got a small huff out of him, not quite a laugh but close enough.
"You from around here?"
And somehow, that simple question was harder to answer than it should've been.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. My brain was already spinning. I couldn't exactly say Germany and expect that to solve anything. I still didn't even know how much of that I should tell people. Hell, I barely understood it myself.
"Not really," I said in the end.
He folded two of his arms and kept the other two relaxed by his side. "That obvious, huh?"
I let out a breath through my nose. "Is it that easy to tell?"
"You're sitting outside somebody else's shop before sunrise looking like you got dropped out of the sky," he said. "So yeah. A little."
Fair enough.
He kept looking at me, and I noticed that unlike Billy, or even Nicole probably would, he wasn't joking around much. He just seemed… observant. Like he had already seen enough weird people to know when somebody was having a bad time.
"Hungry?" he asked.
The question caught me off guard.
My stomach betrayed me before I could answer.
Grrrlll.
I looked down immediately. "Traitor."
He snorted this time. "I'll take that as a yes."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the nutrient pills I still had, holding it up between two fingers. "I've got these."
He looked at it, then at me.
"That your breakfast?"
"More like emergency ration," I said. "It fills me up."
"That doesn't mean it counts as food."
I stared at the pill for a second, then slowly put it back in my pocket. He had a point, but I wasn't really in a position to be picky.
He jerked one of his arms toward the building across from us. "Come on. Shop's not fully open yet, but I'm already getting things ready. You can sit down for a bit."
I looked at him, then at the shop he was pointing to.
"You sure?"
"You look like you need something warm," he said. "And I'm not leaving a kid outside Random Play looking like that. People are gonna think I run a terrible street."
I blinked at him.
That was probably supposed to be funny, but honestly it helped a little.
"Thanks," I said quietly as I got up.
He turned and started walking, clearly expecting me to follow. I did. My legs still worked fine, which was probably thanks to Hestia's Blessing, but my head felt heavier the more awake I became. Maybe because now there was less chaos around me and more time to think.
That was the dangerous part.
We entered his shop, and the warmth inside hit me almost immediately. It smelled good too, like broth and cooked food and the kind of place that had actual life in it even before opening hours. It made me realize how weirdly tense I'd been the whole time outside.
"Sit," he said, pointing me toward a spot.
I sat down without arguing.
For a few moments, there was only the sound of him moving around the kitchen area, preparing things, the light clatter of utensils, the low bubbling of something heating up. I just sat there and watched, my hands folded in front of me, not really sure what I was supposed to do with myself.
"So," he said after a while without turning around, "you wanna tell me what's got you sitting outside a video store before dawn looking like the world just ended?"
I stared at the counter.
That was the thing, wasn't it?
For me, it kind of had.
Or at least it felt like it.
"I think…" I started, then stopped.
How was I even supposed to explain this without sounding insane?
"I think I'm very far from home," I said instead.
That was probably the safest way to put it.
He didn't laugh. Didn't question it either. He just kept listening.
"I don't know where I am," I went on. "I don't really understand what's going on, and the more I think about it, the less sense anything makes."
Now that I had started, it got harder to stop.
"Yesterday I was on the train. That's the last normal thing I remember. Then all this happened, and now I'm here, and everybody acts like half of this stuff is just normal." I let out a quiet laugh, but there wasn't anything funny in it. "And maybe for you it is normal. I don't know. But for me it isn't."
He placed a bowl down somewhere behind the counter.
"I don't even know what I'm trying to do right now," I admitted. "I walked around outside like that was going to help somehow, but I don't have a plan. I don't know how to get home. I don't even know if I can."
My throat suddenly felt tight.
That annoyed me more than anything.
I hadn't cried in years. I could still remember the last time properly, somewhere around when I was twelve. After that, not really. Maybe a watery eye here and there, sure, but never like that. So feeling that pressure behind my eyes now, that slight sting, made me immediately look down.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
Not happening.
I rubbed at one eye quickly and pretended it was nothing.
"Sorry," I muttered. "I'm just tired."
He didn't call me out on it. Thankfully.
"That happens," he said simply.
A moment later, he came over and placed a bowl in front of me. Noodle soup. Warm, steaming, simple, and right then it looked like the best thing I had seen in hours.
"You should eat first," he said. "Problems usually look a little different on a full stomach."
I stared at the bowl for a second.
"Thanks," I said again, and this time I meant it even more.
He gave a short nod and went back to what he had been doing, giving me space instead of hovering over me. I appreciated that.
I looked down at the soup, and for a moment, I decided to focus on something simple. Something normal.
Food.
That I could deal with.
Alright. Be positive. One thing at a time. I was alive, I was out of the Hollow, I wasn't alone, and now I had hot food in front of me. That counted for something.
I looked around the counter and then back at him.
"Uh… do you have a fork?"
He stopped moving.
Then he slowly turned his head toward me.
"A fork?"
"Yeah," I said, already feeling like I had done something wrong. "For the noodles."
He stared at me like I had just insulted his ancestors.
"I do not allow forks for noodle soup."
I blinked. "You… don't allow them?"
"No." his words came absolute
"That sounds less like a preference and more like a law."
"It is a rule in my shop."
I looked down at the soup again, then back at him.
"I'm not exactly great with chopsticks."
He crossed two of his arms and looked completely unimpressed. "Then you will learn it now
I stared at him.
And he stared back.
I slowly looked down at the bowl again.
This was either going to be the start of character development or a public humiliation before sunrise.
It's probably both.
I picked up the chopsticks and stared at them for a second.
"Alright. How hard can this be?"
The first piece of noodle slipped out almost immediately and dropped straight back into the bowl. I tried again, this time squeezing harder, but that somehow made it worse.
General Chop watched me struggle for a few seconds before shaking his head.
"You are using too much pressure with sticks."
"I'm fighting for my life here."
"You're trying to eat noodles soup here."
"Its basically the same thing for me right now."
He showed me quickly how to hold them properly, and after a few more embarrassing attempts, I finally managed to grab some noodles without dropping them.
I immediately took a bite.
"Wow. This is worth it."
He gave me a grin. "I know, right? I'm really proud of them."
The soup was actually really good, especially after surviving on nutrient pills and whatever else I had eaten yesterday. I just sat there quietly and ate without thinking too much about Hollows, Germany, or how completely screwed my situation might be.
By the time I was halfway through the bowl, the darkness outside had started to fade.
I glanced toward the street and noticed the sky slowly getting brighter.
By the time I was halfway through the bowl, the darkness outside had started to fade and the first signs of morning were beginning to show.
I looked down at the soup and smiled a little.
Things were still completely messed up, but at least I was alive, out of the Hollow, and not alone anymore.
For now, that was enough.
Chapter 6 End
Author's Note:
I finally finished this chapter. I was actually about to lose it.
At first, I lost what I had written because I didn't save it so I had to rewrite everything and try to get it back to how I originally had but then i didnt like it had to remake it. But it's finally done now.
I also didn't want to make Mousa look stupid or like he was just ignoring everything happening around him. He still has common sense and can obviously tell that none of this is normal. He's just trying to avoid thinking about it too much because the more he does, the worse everything starts to feel.
I actually had the most fun writing his interaction with Chop. That was probably my favorite part of the chapter.
I'm also not really a big fan of writing long monologues, so I tried not to overdo those.
That's all for now. I was trying to get this chapter close to 6,000 words.
Bye bye.