Gently, he continues, “I told you the first thing you learn in a guild is that you’re never alone…but the second thing you learn is that you’re an asset. A tool for making money. Never being alone isn’t a comfort; it’s a command. Most jobs can’t be done alone, period, but too many believe they’re better finished alone. No one watches anyone else’s back. You exist on a team that cuts through enough danger sosomeonegets out alive. Everyone hopes it’s them.”
“That’s horrible,” I whisper.
“Yep.” Samson rubs the back of his neck. “So horrible that even when you find yourself in a place with people who would doanything to keep you safe, you prefer solitude because you’re too used to watching your back for knives.”
“I’m so sorry, Samson.” Guilt gnaws an immediate hole straight through my chest. “It must be terrifying putting a practical stranger up in your own house. No wonder you aren’t sleeping. Was just the idea that someone was living next door stressful?”
His bewildered look hits me, then scans me, then twists into something amused. “Um. No, Lemonade. I don’t think you’re scary.” He cuts a finger through my hair, pinning it over my ear. His thumb just barely coasts across my cheek as he pulls away. “You’re sweet. Mostly sugar water with only a few drops of lemon juice, which are reserved pretty solely for Austin.”
“Right.” I grimace. “For Austin. Who saved your life.”
Samson shrugs. “He only lets me forget it because I saved his first, along with his sister’s. She gets away with everything where her brother is concerned because they’re all they have left now that their grandparents have passed. I am assuming you know their parents aren’t the greatest?”
“Yeah. There was some dialogue in the game that suggested their childhood wasn’t fun.” If I’m honest with myself, it’s the similarities in our upbringing that make him even more unbearable. We may not be able to choose our parents, but we can choose to break a cycle of meanness. Aurelia is proof of that. I hope I’m proof of that. Austin has no excuse for his behavior.Hurtdoesn’t abide by the transitive property; it multiplies exponentially, unless, of course, you put in the extra effort and cut it out of the equation. “I probably don’t have the full story, though.”
“I know I don’t.” Waving a hand, Samson turns to grab an orange from his bag. “On account of my tendency to not strike up conversations with people. Or, generally, leave my farm. Most of what I learn about people is against my will.” He peelsthe orange and offers me the first slice. “You’d be surprised the trauma people will share while I’m trying to deliver milk and eggs at the general store.”
Tenderly, I take the slice, blinking in a daze at the warmth that comes from sharing an orange with someone. Absently, I joke, “Thanks for the milk. If only you’d come before my dad went to get it himself. Sniff.”
Eyeing me, Samson bites into his own slice. “What?”
I snap out of the daze and find his eyes. “Dads go to get milk and never come back?” I wince. “Is…that not a thing here?”
Of course it wouldn’t be a thing here.Whywould it be a thing here? It was probably a side effect of the internet. My attempt at humor, foiled by cultural disjunction. If only my knees worked, I could throw myself off this cliff.
Unbothered, Samson hums. “I’d like to know more about your old world. Were there any parts you liked?” His gaze lowers, and he plucks another orange slice. “Anything or anyone you miss?”
“Hot water,” I say, with more enthusiasm than is perhaps wholly sane. “I miss hot water.”
“Hot…water?” His eyes narrow. “Don’t we have that here?”
Red fills my face, and would you look at that? I’m cradling my orange slice and the last two bites of my sandwich—not eating, again. “Yes. I mean. No. Not straight from the tap.” I lift my orange slice hand when I shrug. “I feel bad wasting your time when you heat water for me since I can’t get the wood stove to work on my own yet, and—ugh—electricity. I miss modern convenience. Gem power just isn’t the same even if it functions to create lights and fridges…orcold boxes, you call them here. In my world, we had the ability to do all sorts of things with electricity. One switch, and our stoves heated, no fire necessary. We had washing machines and dryers to clean our clothes. In my apartment, there was a room full of them downstairs, and you’dgo with a book or something and try not to make eye contact while your clothing cycled.”
The confusion riddled across Samson’s brow makes me pause. In the opening, he says, “So…there’s no one you miss?”
My muscles deflate as a sense of smallness takes hold. “Nope. All my phone messages were my boss telling me when to come into work, or my Aldi pickup telling me they’d like me to fill out a survey.” My attention drifts toward the ocean; it reminds me ofFlorida. But only in the vast emptiness, not the beauty. I didn’t live where the ocean was beautiful. I lived where you couldn’t see two inches deep in the murky water. “Oh. Also sometimes my messages included a bank code to get into my account. Depressing times where I could see I had a striking four dollars to my name after bills.”
“I’m not sure I understand what everything you just said means.”
I let a choked laugh escape. “It’s not really important. The point is: I had no friends, my family sucks, and so I…” My chest tightens. “…I haven’t lost anyone that I hadn’t already decided I was better off without.”
If…I am here by classic isekai rules… If I am dead in my old life…I don’t even know that my parents would care.
I suppose, in some ways, it’s nice not to have people to mourn.
After all, the things I miss are just that.Things.
So if they’re all I’ve lost, it’s kinda like coming out of my own storm, grateful to be surrounded by people who care even when I have next to nothing left to my name.
“Are you okay?” Samson murmurs.
Sniffling, I push my glasses up with the back of my hand to try and scrub my tears on my sleeve since my hands are still full of food. “Yeah. Sorry. Thinking about it just makes me so glad I’m…here.” I fill my lungs and look ahead at the town, the tinyhouses, the wounded land, the stray person going about their usual schedule. “Kindness like what you’ve offered me is foreign, and I just…I hope that I’m repaying you and the town back well enough for all that you’ve done for me in both this reality and my old world’s, where I relied so much on this game for comfort.”
“Because of you, we’ve turned years of recovery into seasons. But I don’t want you to live here thinking you have to work toward some unspoken idea ofenough.” His big hand settles on my shoulder, dwarfing me and drawing my attention up to his kind blue eyes. “I, for one, like having you around, so just that is more than enough, okay?”
More tears flood down my cheeks when I blink.
Samson…likes having me around?
