Arc 2 - Chapter 1: The Hero Archetype (3/4)

"What's this, you stupid brat?" 

She threw the sheet in Yu's face and Yu, not understanding what had happened, immediately started crying. 

He didn't even know what his crime was, it all happened in an instant. The mother of the orphanage rushed in among the children, grabbed Yu by the collar and threw him into a corner.

"I'm sick of dealing with you."

She lifted Yu, who was crying with his back against the wall, by the collar again and slapped him hard across the face. 

"Stop crying!"

Children wouldn't stop crying when someone told them to stop, so Yu kept crying.

---

"Oh but..." He sat up on his elbows and looked out the window. The last rays of the sun were leaving the city.

"I should have seen it coming."

For a long time he had a disturbed sleep pattern. He slept in the morning, woke up at night, ate breakfast when others had dinner, and ate dinner when others had breakfast.

Even when he set an alarm, he could only stay awake for a few hours, falling asleep again at the first opportunity. If he had to stay up all day, he could do so with difficulty, but as soon as he got home he would go to bed, wake up late at night and stay awake again until morning.

"Neko slept all day too. I hope she manages to sleep through the night, so I can ask her to wake me up in the morning."

He could wake up somehow in the morning, but he didn't know how to keep himself awake for the rest of the day.

"Instead of thinking about future nights, let me think about tonight, what am I going to do? I don't want to walk the streets." If he wanted to live, he had to make it a point to stay out of danger. "Let me spend the night learning to read and write."

He wondered how he would live in a world without the internet. If he wanted to learn something, he would have to ask someone to teach him and he was not used to that. Even at school, instead of listening attentively to the lectures, he would go home and study the day's topics by looking them up on the internet.

"Neko, wake up."

Neko had tried to stay as far away from Yu as possible while she slept. She had left a gap in the middle of the bed and curled up at the end of it. She looked like she was going to fall.

"I can't blame her for wanting to stay away from me. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't want her to be around a stranger, especially a man." He remembered Neko's words. Her mother had no friends. "But now I'm the only one close to her, and technically she's the only one close to me, because I don't know anyone else."

He called out again as he gently shook her shoulder to wake her up. If he continued to sleep, the time he stayed awake at night would be longer. Yu knew what happened when he couldn't sleep at night, when he stayed awake at night his mind was filled with negative thoughts, telling himself over and over again how hopeless his life was.

He didn't want Neko to go through the same thing.

The girl woke up mumbling and looked at Yu with glazed eyes. At that moment Yu began to wonder if he had done the right thing by waking her up, maybe Neko had been in a beautiful dream that she didn't want to wake up from and Yu had woken her up to the horrible reality.

"If the situation I'm in was a dream, would I want to wake up?"

"We need to eat,"  Yu said.

The elven woman, had charged him including the food. Yu Valarfin could not rest until he had exploited a product or service he had paid for to the fullest. 

"Do you want me to bring it here for you?"

"No need."

He thought Neko would accept the offer, he was even sure that she would reply 'well done, stupid human, you will serve me'.

She sat up in bed, stretched and looked out of the open window, the sun would soon disappear completely. She hadn't planned to sleep for so long either.

"Can't we go shopping for clothes?"

"No, it's tomorrow."

In the world, shopkeepers usually closed their shops and went home before sunset. Here too, probably most shopkeepers would close their shops at sunset and the stalls in the market would be packed up.

"But the inn we were at charged for dinner, so it must be open at night."

"In the Mora, everything closes at night."

"But she charged us for dinner, and since it's in the evening, she should give us dinner in the evening."

The room they stayed in was on the third floor of the inn and the other rooms, like theirs, were single rooms with bathtubs.

The inn did not exceed or fall short of Yu's expectations. It was a pleasant place, similar to the inns he had seen in anime, except that the rooms were small in size. A few landscape paintings were hung on the walls and there were pots on the floor. The plants were like those in his world.

The stairs were well maintained. Although they were made of wood, none of them creaked on the way down and the railings looked solid.

The place where the food was served had to be on the ground floor because it was full of tables. When they went downstairs it was hard to find a place to sit. Randomly turning his head and looking at the stairs, the elf saw them, the one who had given Yu the room.

"You look better," elf approached and held out her hand.

Her appearance was as beautiful as Yu expected an elf to be. She had two long ears poking out of her long blonde hair, green eyes and smooth skin. A tender smile settled on her lips.

Women like her were hard to find in his world, but since they were in a fantasy universe, her body was also fantastically beautiful. The elf's height was equal to Yu's, her back was narrow, her breasts were large and her legs were long.

"My name is Lucia Leafera, I own this place."

Lucia had an appearance that could be included in the 'onee-san' category in the world waifu literature. That was why Yu had called her 'elf sister' from the inside.

"Her hand is so fucking beautiful!"

Holding Lucia's hand brought out the dying teenager in Yu for a moment. Something told him that if he threw his brown hair in front of his eyes, this world would turn into a wonderful paradise.

"Yu Valarfin, this is Neko."

"It's a bit..." Yu held up a finger to silence Lucia.

"Shh... Don't say that, she's sensitive about her name."

When Yu said the same to Rie, Neko heard it and was angry that her name was being criticized.

"And Lucia also knows the meaning of the word 'neko'? I wouldn't even know if I didn't watch anime, so how do you know? Or is it that Turkish is not actually spoken here, but your words sound Turkish to my ears and my words sound in a different language to yours? If there is such a thing, it should be understood when writing. But the word is Japanese…"

If they spoke a different language, even if the spoken language was automatically translated in Yu's brain, it would have to be revealed when writing. If the spoken language was different and Yu's hands and eyes did not have an automatic translation system, he would not be able to learn to read and write.

"But I can't deny that she's right, how about we pick a human name to use during our mission?"

"I am a supreme being, a sword fairy. I don't need a human name, this name is good." Neko was in a let's-get-out-of here mood.

"So be it." He wasn't going to try to take away the name her mother had given her.

"But-" Lucia approached the two of them and brought her fingers to her lips. "You mustn't say in public that you are a sword fairy, and Mr. Valarfin, you mustn't try to give her a name before she accepts it. Fairies only accept the names they want."

"Why do we have to hide the fact that she's a sword fairy? Are they racist?" He didn't know why people shouldn't know.

"So they don't steal it, of course." Lucia whispered.

"Can I find out more about this?"

Since he was going to be with Neko, he would have to worry about what he had just heard.

He and Lucia sat at an empty table and ordered their food