44 Volunteering (1)

I relaxed while drinking tea in the porch of Luke's villa as the robots did most of the work. Luke busily commanded the robots on where to water or plant the seeds on his tablet while sitting down on a comfy armchair beside me.

This was actually not bad. I thought we would actually have to water and plant the flowers ourselves while I forgot that almost everything was automated here.

When I finished drinking my tea and my strawberry shortcake that I ordered from Luke's kitchen, I felt absolutely bored. How many more hours did I have to burn through at the villa? I looked at the timer in my marble to find there was about 28 more hours left.

Oh great! Luke's villa was located inside the vacation area in the first district. Each mansion had numerous gardens and courts filled with decorations inside the gated community. I didn't know how working on his family's garden helps make the 'first district a better place'. But, since I was here in the vacation area anyways, I wanted to explore what was outside this mansion.

"Can I go explore what's outside the mansion?" I asked Luke for the nth time.

"I told you that you can explore what is inside the mansion until I'm finished with the garden today, but not outside," Luke responded for the nth time again.

However, there was not much to explore in Luke's bare villa. How could there be no forms of entertainment here?

When I went inside each room, there was no signs of TV or gaming computers. The villa consisted of exercise rooms, swimming pools, fancy bedrooms, a ballroom and luxurious washrooms from what I discovered so far.

Oh and a fancy living room to welcome guests! So there was absolutely nothing to do here!

"Come on Luke! There is absolutely nothing inside your mansion as usual." I complained while pulling on the sleeves of his new customized shirt.

I wouldn't be complaining this much if I got to pack my supply of otaku goods in the dorm. But before I could think of them, I found myself waking up in one of the rooms of the villa. I kept tugging on Luke's shirt as he eventually started to frown when his new shirt was starting to become stretched where the sleeves were.

"Rika, stop stretching my shirt. It's a new one after you stretched all my other shirts," Luke seemed sullen as he briefly placed the tablet on the table.

"Then can I go outside? I promise I'll be back before sunset?" I pleaded.

"Just wait for two more hours. I'll go outside with you after I finish coding the instructions on how the garden should be decorated." Luke sadly looked at his sleeves.

It took about a half hour before I happily skipped towards the entrance of the villa. Luke finished earlier than he said he would.

"Rika, walk properly." Luke scolded me.

I started walking like I normally did in school to prevent Luke from changing his mind. "Let's go outside the gated community first!" I announced with excitement.

We were almost out of the gated community when we bumped into Shelly and Alex. "Shelly?" I shouted in confusion when I thought she would be working at one of Alex's libraries.

"Rika!" Shelly warmly smiled back.

"Why? How are you here?" I asked with a big smile.

"Alex's new library is inside one of his vacation villas." Shelly responded.

What a coincidence! Was this whole volunteering thing a scam?

"Oh. Where are you going now?" I asked.

"Alex and I are going to the newly built mall inside the gated community. It's actually really close from here." Shelly pointed at the tall building towards the left.

"Well we're going outside the gated community!"

Both Alex and Shelly looked surprised while Luke still looked dispirited from his new shirt being stretched.

"I've been here many times before but I've never been outside the community" Shelly's eyes widened from great curiosity.

"Come join us then!" I welcomed Shelly.

"Hey! Don't drag Michelle into another mess Rika." Alex interfered between us.

"You don't have to come then!" I yelled.

I grabbed Shelly's hand as we both walked towards the large gate. Once we were outside the community, we found ourselves on the edge of the cliff overshadowing a tourist area that was inside a beautiful beach.

It was going to take forever to walk down. I jumped as Shelly screamed as she fell while covering her dress from going up from the wind.

"Rika!" Shelly complained when we landed safely.

"Sorry, I'll try telling you beforehand when I jump down," I tried to look pitiful.

Shelly quickly forgave me as she looked around our surroundings in wonder. Luke and Alex were still on the edge of the cliff deliberating on whether to jump down or not to follow us.

Many cute shops surrounded us, the one right behind us sold grilled octopus and yakisoba. "Let's get one of these!" I pointed to the shop.

Shelly and I ended up buying two sticks of twisted potato chips, five grilled octopus sticks and a cup of shaved ice.

We sat down on those typical beach chairs as we opened our mouths to eat the savory goods. Just when I was about to bite down, Luke took my grilled octopus sticks away from me and I ended up biting my own lip.

"Hey!" I yelled angrily.

"How do you know whether these are safe or not?" Luke shouted back.

"I will when I eat one of them." I quickly grabbed a bite of the potato chip in my other hand.

Sooo good. I smiled with pleasure as Shelly also grinned from eating a piece of the grilled octopus. Luke resigned after seeing the food was safe. While both Alex and Luke watched, us smile from eating the delicious food, Shelly and I ended up finishing everything.

"Where do you want to go next?" Shelly turned to me.

What did we need at a beach?

"There!" I shouted, pointing at a shop selling cute swimsuits.

Shelly heavily blushed as Luke intervened, "We have swimsuits inside the villa."

Luke did have swimsuits inside the villa, however, it did not give 'going to the beach' feeling at all! It was just ordinary clothes spelled to be waterproof with mana. I quickly dragged Shelly to the store and tried on a lacy yellow two piece and handed Shelly the same design but in blue.

We got out of the changing room to find Luke and Alex murmuring to each other with words like 'improper' and 'irresponsible'.

Not wanting to hear the constant criticisms of Alex and Luke, I dragged Shelly to the beach with a big beach ball that the store gave us as a bonus.

"Come on!" I shouted to Shelly with eagerness to start playing.

I taught Shelly how to play with the ball inside the soft waves that reached the height of our knees. Luke and Alex just sat down in the beach chairs while eating some of the food that they didn't let us eat before because it 'wasn't safe'.

Suddenly, a big gust of wind blew the ball far away to the deeper part of the ocean. "I'll go get it!" I yelled to Shelly.

"Wait." Shelly grabbed onto my wrist.

"I'll come with you."

We swam to the ball to find a small island not so far away from where we were. "Do you want to go try exploring?" I asked with anticipation.

"Are you sure?" Shelly had a bit of worry in her voice.

"Why not?"

We swam to the island to find it bigger than we thought it was. It was filled with trees full of tropical fruits near the edge of the island.

"Let's go deeper inside," I continued.

After thirty minutes of seeing only luscious trees, we found a building that resembled a resort from my past life.

The resort looked like it was empty with not a single person inside. However, there were flat screen TVs, gaming computers, and video games deeper inside the resort as part of the entertainment section.

My eyes must have started to glitter from exhilaration as Shelly stared at me like she was greatly confused.

"Who's there?" I saw a wisp of the familiar honey-brown hair coming down the stairs leading to the first floor.

"Whoever you are, you are trespassing onto the family of Nuelle's property so I advise you to-" The person warned.

"Ben!" I shouted while unintentionally interrupting him.

"Rika?" Ben's eyes widened.

"Is this your place?" I tried to contain my excitement.

"Yea, I didn't expect to-"

"Can we please stay here for the rest of the week?" I started to beg.

"Pleeaase. Luke's villa is empty and void of any forms of entertainment and this is the first place where there's something decent to prevent me from dying from boredom." I continued pleading.

"I thought middle schoolers were doing volunteer work during this time?" Ben recalled his memories.

"Can't we just say I was volunteering at your resort to make the first district a 'better place'?"

"We all know this volunteer work thing is a scam anyways!" I finished off.

Before Ben could respond, I quickly did a dogeza, "I promise I won't make your resort messy."

Ben unconsciously nodded like he couldn't believe how I was behaving, "Thanks for nodding, I'll leave after a week" I quickly said before Ben could respond.

I rapidly left the frozen Ben to turn on the precious flat screen TV that I rarely got a chance to see ever since my reincarnation. "It's so beautiful," I whispered while tears came out of my eyes.

"Umm Rika. Don't you think we should change out of our swimsuits now or his floor may get wet." Shelly reminded me while confused why I was crying with one of her eyebrows up.

"Oh, we'll also borrow your washroom too," I added to Ben who was speechless from my shamelessness.

Ben's resort was really nice. I thought it would be the regular jacuzzi like Luke's house, but he had a whole floor dedicated to hot springs produced from mixtures of mana crystals rocks in each section.

After changing back to my regular clothes while completely in bliss from using the hot springs, I went to the dining hall with Shelly as we were getting hungry. Ben was already seated in one of the chairs with the table being filled with tropical fruits glistening from the light. Croissants, cakes, and piles of grilled meat also toppled over each other, making my stomach rumble.

"Wow! We were getting hungry anyways!" I placed some food on top of my plate while I thanked Ben.

"I don't mind you staying for a couple of days with your friend, Rika. But do your partners know that you're here?" Ben turned to me.