Ch.63— Everything But a Job

Amy arrived at the main gates soon after leaving the cafeteria and found Stella and Alba already there.
“You came!” Stella said, hopping off the wall she had been leaning on a few moments ago.
“Mmm?” Amy tilted her head. “I’m the one who wanted to go in the first place.”
“Yeah, right. It’s just I had a feeling you wouldn’t. I don’t know why.”
Amy continued walking, and both Stella and Alba fell into step beside her.
“Anyway, how are you feeling?” Stella said, gesturing vaguely at Amy’s bandages. “I mean, you arrived late and looked pretty tired this morning.”
“I’m fine, thank you. I just didn’t sleep properly.”
“Hopefully, we don’t make your day worse,” Alba said. “We—or rather, I wasn’t sure you’d actually want company today, honestly,” she said while glancing towards Stella, who returned the gaze with a roll of her eyes. “You’ve had a pretty busy week, it seemed.”
“Don’t worry, I appreciate you coming,” Amy said, and meant it. She still wasn’t entirely sure why they wanted to help her, given that a week ago, their conversation had been limited to mumbled hallway greetings; if she had to describe their current relationship, it was ‘not strangers, but not much more than classmates’.
“No biggie, we like helping,” Stella said. At the same time, Alba added, “It’s a pleasure.” Then the two of them suspiciously glanced at each other and nodded.
Amy raised an eyebrow, then spoke, “So what’s the plan?”
“Plan? Oh, right!” Stella strained up, then looked at her with a somewhat nervous smile. “So neither of us has ever actually had a job, but I’ve lived here my whole life, and Alba is practically a local by now, so we know pretty well where to look. You’ll have a job in no time, don’t worry.”
“Sounds almost organized.”
“We’re very organized people,” Stella said. “Yes. Very professional. Very organized.”
Alba shook her head with a smile, and Stella hit her on the toe.
What is going on with these two?
The first place was a bar with a sign in the window saying they were looking for people. Amy went up to the counter, gave her most polite smile, and asked if the position was still open.
The owner said yes in about four seconds.
Wait, really? That easy?
One look at her face and her uniform and he brightened up so much it almost felt like Amy was doing him a favor—
“Actually,” Stella suddenly cut in, “we were thinking of checking a few more places first. This is the first place we visit, you see, and everybody knows you aren’t supposed to take the first offer. Actually, I remember hearing about a family who—”
“We’ll think about it,” Amy interrupted.
Stella looked at her, then smiled; meanwhile, Alba sighed.
The second shop was a tailor’s. This time, Alba interrupted. “The interview process seems like it could take a while, and the paperwork sounds tedious.”
No one had mentioned an interview process; the tailor had simply asked when Amy could start.
“Right…” Amy said, following them back out into the street.
By the third shop, and their third interruption, Amy realized these two were up to something.
Could she have just ignored them and taken the jobs? Absolutely; they weren’t being forceful or trying to ruin her chances by being rude.
But their antics made her curious.
By the fourth shop, a clothing shop, she noticed that after asking and getting a proposal they semi-rejected, they ended up buying clothes with Stella’s money.
During the fifth and sixth, which were also clothing stores, they did the same, this time with Alba buying some for Amy as a gift.
They continued like that for a few more, and by the eleventh, she was fairly sure they hadn’t even asked for a job.
“Look, Amy, isn’t this birdcage really cool?” Stella said, examining a birdcage shaped like a miniature cathedral.
They were currently in a store that sold many decorative birdcages while holding multiple bags of clothes.
“We’re supposed to be finding me a job,” Amy suddenly said, earning Stella and Alba’s attention instantly.
Stella blinked at her, her expression went blank for a second, and then she smiled. “Right. Job. We’re doing that.” She glanced at Alba, who was suddenly very interested in a table. “Actually— okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m starving. Like, genuinely faint. I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast, and I think better on a full stomach, which means you’ll get a much better job out of me if we eat something first.”
Amy looked at her for a long moment, then at Alba, who was still staring at a table completely unmoving, then sighed and nodded. “Fine. Food first.”
 
-————-　■　-————-
 
Honey cakes or pastries from a sweet shop were a weird thing to have if you were hungry, and yet that was what they were eating.
They were currently sitting at a table in a little plaza in front of the shop where they bought their food. On the other side of the plaza, children were making fun of a clown-dressed man who was failing spectacularly at juggling glowing orbs.
It was still afternoon, but Amy had a feeling that if they kept wasting time like this, it wouldn’t be for so long. Weirdly enough, she really didn’t mind much.
It was weird. She had never imagined the city to be so peaceful. Maybe it was because, in the manga, whenever Crow left the academy, something happened.
Pigeons, children running around, nothing on fire…this was some children’s fantasy story stuff.
“You’ve got a weird face on.”
Huh…?
Amy turned her gaze to look at Stella, who was staring at her with raised eyebrows.
“I’m…just having an epiphany.”
Stella tilted their head, making Amy sigh.
“It’s just that I might actually be having fun despite not having found a job yet.”
“Really?” Stella said, eyes wide and a grin spreading across their face. “You’ve had ‘having a nice time and hating that you’re having a nice time’ face for like an hour, so I was kind of confused if you were actually liking this whole thing.”
“I didn’t have whatever face you just described.”
“You really did,” Alba interjected.
“…” Amy only sighed before speaking, “Why are you two actually doing this?”
Stella and Alba exchanged a long look; they both seemed hesitant about something and were mentally communicating with each other. After a long pause, Stella sighed and turned to Amy.
“Okay, fine,” Stella said, “Completely truthfully and honestly speaking…we…just wanted to get acquainted with you and hang out— Don’t take this the wrong way; we were planning on helping you find a job from the beginning, but we actually didn’t expect that it would be so easy, so we sort of…stalled…”
Amy squinted her eyes and tilted her head. “I’m very confused right now. Like I understand the words coming out of your mouth but not the thought process.”
Stella avoided her gaze, then looked down at her lap. “What I mean is that that opportunity suddenly came out, and we’ve been thinking you’ve been looking down for some time, and somewhat in your own bubble, and as the only commoners in first-year Class-S, we have to look for each other, so we thought this was the perfect time to hang out, and maybe…become friends…?”
“Just to be clear, this was all Stella’s idea,” Alba added quietly.
Stella was embarrassed and covering it with a grin. Alba wasn’t quite meeting her eyes.
…I won’t lie, of all things I expected, this was not one of them…
“I…appreciate it,” Amy said. “Really. But next time you don’t need an excuse. You can just ask; I would have said yes.”
“Really?”
“Mmm…” Amy trailed off and couldn’t get herself to nod, so instead just looked somewhere else.
“Room for one more?”
A copper-skinned woman with golden eyes and brown hair asked, already sitting.
Amy blinked at Iris. “Is this a coincidence?”
“Yes and no.” Iris stole one of Amy’s cookies and took a bite before Amy could react, then made a face. “Vanilla? Blondie, that’s a war crime. Also, you people are terrible at job hunting. I randomly saw you entering stores and decided to follow for a bit. You sure you aren’t just hanging out?”
Stella laughed hard enough to nearly drop her cone, then rapidly covered her mouth. Alba just shook her head.
For a while, the four of them just sat there. Iris had ordered food for herself and occasionally made conversation, but for the most part, nobody really spoke; rather, they watched the clown drop an orb directly into his head and pretend to fall unconscious to a round of applause. It was, Amy thought, disgustingly nice. She could get used to this. She probably shouldn’t, given what was currently on her satchel, but she could.
It was just then that Iris suddenly turned her head sharply towards somewhere.
“You’ve been standing there for ten minutes! Just come out already, unless you don’t wanna join!”
Amy followed Iris’ gaze and found nothing but a shadowed alley and a stack of empty crates.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then a woman with pale white hair, skin, and eyes, and with slightly reddened cheeks and ears despite her stoic expression, stepped out of the alley.
Lain moved stiffly, like someone caught mid-crime—her hand still half-tucked into her school bag, shoving something rectangular deeper inside. Amy was pretty sure it had been a book.
“…Iris,” Lain said.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist,” Iris responded with a grin.
Lain said nothing further. She crossed the plaza with stiff, measured steps and stopped at the edge of the table before sitting in the last remaining chair.
“So,” Amy said after a moment, “were you following us, or was that also a coincidence?”
“…No.” She paused, then said, “Yes…”
“Which one?”
Lain’s ears, already pink, went a shade darker. Time passed, and she didn’t respond to the question.
“You could’ve just walked up like a normal person,” Iris interjected around a mouthful of pastry. “We don’t bite. Well—Amy might.”
“I don’t bite.”
“The upturned lip thing you gave Professor Kaelen this morning sure suggested otherwise.”
“That was a smile.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Iris reached over and stole a piece of cookie from Amy again, which made no sense since she had her own. “She does this,” Iris said to Amy, jerking a thumb at Lain. “Hovers. Watches in the shadows, stalking her prey until they reach an isolated hallway and killing them in cold blood.”
Lain almost made the motion of rolling her eyes. Then, after a moment of silence, she spoke. “I didn’t want to intrude…”
“You’d have had to actually reach the table to intrude. You were forty feet away.”
Lain ignored her.
Amy tried to read her face and got nothing. If she was stoic before, now she was a statue. So instead Amy slid her plate of pastries a few inches closer to her. “Try them. They are pretty good.”
Lain looked at the plate, then at Amy, then reached out and took one.
Both Amy and Iris smiled at that.
Some time later, Amy realized the atmosphere at the table had changed.
Stella, who six or seven minutes ago had been mid-argument about the moral superiority of pistachio, suddenly found her hands fascinating. Alba’s easy smile went politely neutral. Lain was even more still than usual.
Both girls’ eyes kept flicking toward Lain and then away. Only Iris seemed unaffected.
Is it because she’s a noble or something?
Watching people tiptoe around someone they weren’t familiar with wasn’t new, but it was strange with someone who looked like the human version of a rabbit.
Iris brought everyone’s attention back with a clap of her hands. “Anyway, what was the plan today, exactly? Besides the excuse of searching for a job.”
“I wasn’t planning anything special,” Amy said, and meant it, mostly. “I truly just wanted to find a job. School’s orders, remember.”
“That’s it? No secret errands, no mysterious detours, no super duper mysterious fate business?”
Amy thought for a second, then added, “…I guess I might swing by the sewers later. Just to look.”
Iris stared at her for exactly one second and smiled. “…There it is.”
It was right after that conversation and the silence that followed that Lain suddenly spoke. “If you need a job,” she said barely above a whisper, “the teahouse would take you.”
Everyone looked at her, but Lain didn’t explain.
“…The teahouse…?” Amy opened her eyes a bit wider as she realized what Lain was talking about; the place Libris had first brought her after arriving in this world, where she’d first crossed paths with Crow.
“If you are talking about the Dreamer’s Brew,” Iris said, “it’s not open today. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow. So I guess that frees up your schedule.” She turned to Amy with an entirely too satisfied grin. “Sewers it is, then.”
“Wait—” Stella interjected. “I thought the sewers were a codeword. The actual sewers? Like, underground?”
Amy nodded.
Now that she thought about it, she had gotten used to so many crazy situations lately that going to the sewers seemed normal. But really, who goes to the damn sewers casually?
“Is something happening? Is it going to be dangerous?” Alba asked in a quiet voice.
“Something happening…” Amy tilted her head, then shook her head. “There shouldn’t be anything dangerous over there; I just wanted to check something,” Amy said, which was true, probably and hopefully true. “Want to come?” Amy proposed after a second.
Alba glanced at Stella, then at Iris, then at Lain, and finally down at the table. “I think I’ll stay here and take care of the bags.”
“Yeah, I’m with Alba on this one,” Stella said after a second. “I don’t particularly like smelly places and dangerous adventures.”
“We aren’t going on any kind of ‘dangerous adventure’. Probably.”
“‘Probably’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence.”
Amy turned to Lain instead. “What about you?”
Lain blinked, then nodded after a second.
“Great,” Amy said. “Then let’s—”
“Hey.” Iris’ voice cut in. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
What even is the point in asking…?
“Iris. Do you want to come to the sewers?”
“Yes!” Iris said, already pushing back her chair.
Amy stood and brushed the crumbs off her uniform.
“Then let’s not lose any more time.”