New Game Plus

The New Friend

"...hello?" I say to the two siblings standing in front of my gate. Despite just seeing me yesterday, why are they already making contact with me? Are they already expecting results? I can't exactly tell them that I'm not blending in at all, so I can't exactly speak to other people and find out who's violating the rules.

"Oh, hey Aria. Sorry to suddenly come by, but are you busy today?" Ash asks me. I shake my head in response to this.

"Great, then Raina has a request for you!" He pushes his sister forward, who for some reason has a dress on, even though it's only been about 20 minutes since the school day ended.

"...Ah, okay..." she mutters. She clears her throat, and then suddenly yells, "Can we go eat ice cream!?"
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Ten minutes later, we're both eating ice cream at a parfait shop. We ordered one large parfait between the both of us, and shared it together. I've never eaten ice cream while I had my bandages on, so this experience was a first for me. The parfait we ordered had 5 different small scoops in a bowl, each a different flavor. I, in particular liked the 'cookies and cream' flavor, but it seems like Raina enjoys mint.

Honestly, I didn't expect her to be a person who enjoyed sweets, but here she is shoving ice cream at a really fast pace. I find it hard to believe that she isn't affected by eating all of that at once. I got a brain freeze after about 10 seconds of consuming it as fast as she did. When we finished it, she had a satisfied smile on her face, and it made me smile looking at it. When the waiter came over to take our payment, his face turned red upon seeing us. I had no idea why, though. Did we annoy him somehow?

Anyway, I paid the bill because it seemed like Ash forgot to give Raina money for the ice cream. I had about 15 gold saved up from what my parents have given me over the years, so I always carry around 1 gold in the form of silver and copper coins. I put the coins in a pouch that I usually leave in my school bag, so it was convenient that I brought it with me this time. After paying the bill, we both leave the shop and walk around downtown together.

I didn't realize it before, but now that I'm walking side by side with her, I noticed that she was about 10 centimeters shorter than I was. It shows that I really don't seem my age, huh? We go around window shopping, when she suddenly pulls on my arm. I turn to see what she wants, and I see that she's pointing at a clothing store. I see a gleam in her eye, and a playful smile on her face, which made me inclined to shake my head.

"...we're going anyway!" She says, and drags me into the store against my will.

A few minutes later, I'm being forced into a light blue, frilly dress with a ribbon tied onto it. I'm no good with this kind of stuff, but I don't know how to refuse pushy people like her and Thoth. She tries on different dresses as well, many which completely makes her look like an angel. I can feel my cheeks heating up a bit when I see her smile at me in those clothing.

After trying on dresses, we go onto clothes that fit me more than the dresses did. We both try on boyish clothes; t-shirt, pants and all. I find it far more comfortable than the dresses, and I liked the way I looked in these. Raina also fit the look very well, seeming very tomboyish because of her short hair and figure. In fact, I think that she'd look nice in anything, which made me feel slightly inferior to her.

I buy some of the clothing we tried on for the both of us, which she tried to refuse but I insisted on it. We leave with about 2 bags of clothing each. I just spent all the silver I brought with me, with only about 4 silver left in the form of copper coins. Clothes were pretty damn expensive, I didn't expect it to cost me 94 silver in total. I spent 2 silver for the parfait we ate, so today I nearly used a whole gold coin's worth of money.

It's 5 PM, so we had about an hour left until my curfew. Raina wanted to show me something, and made me follow her through the city. We reach the slums area, near the parking lot where I usually met up with Thoth whenever we went out to the dungeon. She runs into an abandoned apartment building, which looked like it was about to collapse any minute now. Inside, we go by the receptionist desk and walk up the stairs. After reaching the third floor, the stairs were collapsed, and we weren't able to progress any higher.