Testing My Luck in the New World

Volume 1 - Chapter 4

The loneliness bread from inaction had silently taken its toll on me over the years. To anyone else that asked, I would have claimed I was doing fine, but in those secluded moments locked up in my apartment, after I shut off the computer for the day and had nothing else to distract me from my thoughts as I laid in bed much like this, I knew how much I hated it.

But buying a person to fill that void? It almost feels like the sort of backwards, half-assed approach to the problem of loneliness that a cliched, but sympathetic movie villain would make.

Then again... If I had someone like her, I could practice talking as much as I wanted and work to rid myself of this shyness. And if I'm lucky, after sitting down with this hypothetical person for a while, we could even grow to like each other and things could result in a real relationship.

The thought of buying a slave in hopes they'd become my girlfriend was almost laughable, cringeably so, but the argument for that and using them as a source of therapy for my shyness was all too convincing.

I continued to argue with myself for a while before deciding to just head over to the eastern-quarter and see what was going on. Surely, I didn't even have enough money to buy a person in the first place. I knew the value of gold compared to silvers and coppers now, but I had no idea how their value compared to a person. Maybe once I was shut down, laughed off for my wallet not being fat enough, I could put the thought to rest.

Back on Earth, I'd been on a diet for a while and was making pretty good progress thanks to all the disappointing reflections the mirror showed me each time I stepped into the bathroom. Seeing the disgust and hatred in my own face eventually prompted me to at least start improving my physical appearance, if not the social abilities I ruined alongside it. And as things go, I inevitably slipped up and ate some junk food from time to time, if say, a co-worker brought donuts to the office and I didn't want to rudely reject their kindness. After these slip ups, I would allow myself to binge and just eat whatever I felt like, all to get the want out of my system so I could continue the diet proper the next day. It slowed any and all progress I made to a halt, but it helped. Quitting cold turkey wasn't something I could see myself doing.

Maybe that's what I needed now. I was shown something deliciously tempting, now I needed to work it out of my system to set myself back on the right track. I just had to keep imagining how it felt to have finally mustered up the courage to confess to that jogging girl and move forward.

Hinging on my lacking knowledge regarding the monetary system destroying my desire to go down that unforgivable road, I got out of bed.

After checking the direction on my compass out in front of the inn, I headed East once more. I had no idea if this is what the goddess meant by "head East," but for the sake of moral righteousness, I had to hope it wasn't. Especially after the un-asked for upgrade she gave to my nether regions. I didn't want to think this thing was controlling my mind.

Doing what I could to look like a troublemaker, I attempted to stealth my way over to the eastern quarter, simply so nobody would ask me what I was doing or where I was going. I got several strange looks along the way, but I think because of that, nobody bothered me as I pushed through the crowd. So, in a way, I suppose my attempt at sneaking both failed and succeeded at the same time. After maybe ten minutes of this, I stopped trying all together.

Once I entered the East-quarter of the city, which I could only assume was truly the eastern quarter because of how close I suddenly was to the massive wall bordering the city and because my compass was pointing in my desired direction, I wasn't all that as impressed as I was upon first entering the city proper. The surroundings didn't seem to change all that much. The only real difference from the center, the Merchant's District, was that there were far less people wondering about. Where the main street was packed tight with people working and playing, this section seemed comparably devoid of life. Although, that could just be because it was getting late in the afternoon.