Chapter 4

f hate is what you need~ a soldier I will be~

I'm a demon with a shotgun~ fighting til the wars won~ I don't care if he-

~

"Fuck, that's loud," I said groggily after I turned off my phone alarm, which was right beside my ear. I was pretty sure it was not right there before I fall asleep, but then again I was also pretty exhausted after practically emptying my mana pool, so my memory was kinda blurry, oh well.

I sat up on my bed for a few minutes trying to fight off the sleepiness, then I got up, washed my face, brushed my teeth, you know, what any normal person would do after a night of sleep. After that I changed into my workout clothes and did a little stretch before my morning run, then I set off for the park again.

~

I arrived in front of my apartment, tired and sweaty. I opened the door and was greeted by.. nothing. I sighed, reminded once again that I live here alone in Japan, but it was my own choice to sign up for the study abroad program.

Now that I thought about it, Mom was pretty approving of my choice when I thought she was not gonna give consent to the idea of me living alone away from her, she usually was pretty protective of me for almost basically the smallest thing, and very secretive about who my father was. Strange, like almost all the recent happening around my life, I didn't think of it much at that time because I was excited to be given approval, but now it was at the front of my mind.

You probably thought I was a pampered kid with how I explained the situation with my mom, but you also have to understand that my mom was a single mother, we only had each other, and she didn't have many friends either, well that I know of, because her work took most of her free time, but Mom did have a pretty stable job and salary because of it, so money was never a problem. She was the best mother I could have hoped for, she worked in the HR section of a big multinational technology company in the US, almost always coming home late but never forgetting to spend some quality time with her son. I missed her, I hope she's okay.. I should call her sometimes.

I sighed happily remembering my mother and got into the shower, feeling gross with all the sweat after the run. After I showered I make a basic breakfast toast, nothing special, just a toast topped by mashed avocados and a sunny side-up egg, and my favorite drink, a cup of coffee. While making it, I wondered if cooking skill exist in my system, but I guessed I need to make other than simple food to get it, or use a variety of ingredients, I shrugged, not really caring about cooking skill, I seated my self on the kitchen table, and then began to eat my breakfast.

I devoured my toast in record time and finished my coffee promptly after. I set the cup down and stare at it, feeling like I missed something, I hummed to myself, "oh yeah, where's the chocolate cookie?" I recalled, "Hey, boss lady! Please answer if you hear me, didn't you promise me a cookie with that one achievement just yesterday? Where is it?" I said to my roof, once again, this was getting out of hand, I should just stop already, trying to communicate wi-

-----------------------------

Achievement!

!Stop bothering me!

Check your damn inventory,

Yes! You do have one.

Reward:

-Getting reminded by the supreme deity about an obvious game mechanic.

----------------------------

"oh, I got an answer! I mean, sorry," I said sheepishly, didn't really expecting to get an answer, I was just curious, so there's that I guess, "Inventory," I murmured, excited to have my own dimensional storage, after a moment a new screen was presented in front of me, having the same blue transparent background as any of my other screen so far.

The inventory was a 10x10 collection of square, quite a big space. All of them empty except one on the left topside corner, which was the promised chocolate chip cookie, I didn't really sure how to grab and place item from the inventory so I just tried 'willing' it to my hand, as usual. And it succeed, the cookie was there, in my right hand, just a regular cookie. Huh, I didn't know what I was expecting really, so I just shrugged and decided to do some test with my new inventory.

After a while I found that, as I predicted, and hoped, the inventory did freeze anything that was placed inside them, I knew this by trying to place a bottle of water that I heated and then plucked it from inside the inventory after an hour, and the bottle was still hot. So that was cool, the other thing I found was that I could only store things inside of it if I was touching it with my hand, even things as big as my couch could fit, so that was also pretty amazing. What I still didn't know, was if I could store living thing inside, not that I would do it, mind you, I imagined it wouldn't be a good place to stay where ever the inventory space was(you know, considering time literally stop inside), but it would be nice to know, but for now I just assumed it wouldn't work.

One more important thing to note was the fact that I couldn't stack the same items. I didn't really care in the end because I was grateful I even had one, nothing to do about it.

~

It was ten in the morning after I did some test with my inventory, and it's Saturday, so school wouldn't start till Monday, was my idle thought as I sat, just relaxing at one of the bench in front of my apartment. And it was then, again for the umpteenth time today, I felt the weird space awareness that was the result of my new Space Manipulation perk, why was it a perk anyway? Wouldn't it be more.. fit as a skill?

Anyway, as I said, I was just relaxing in my apartment front porch when I felt something with my new.. sense, yes, space sense, much better. It was from the door to my rear left, about 4 meters from me, which meant the guy from the next door. No I didn't know who it was, but I was quite certain it's a guy, because of the lack of a, let's say a round bump from their front, two bump if you wanted specific, their bottom was also pretty flat, so there's that, heh. It felt really weird to be able to told that just by sensing, but I was half relieved and half disappointed I couldn't really sense accurately past all the clothes. On one hand I wouldn't want to sense every guy junk, that would be gross, but on the other hand, the ability to sense past woman clothes.. I heard the door opening so I wiped the silly grin on my face as fast as possible.

"Oh, hi there!" said the guy after he turned his head to look at me, he was a big dude, not asian, and I assumed his height was above 180cm, cause he looked taller than me, "you're the guy that just moved in, right?" he continued, his hand motioned to my room door.

"Yup, that would be me," I answered with a small smile, this was Japan, and people were really polite here, so I tried to be one as well.

"Marvin, I saw you brought in your things two days ago while I was returning from work," the guy, Marvin said to me while offering his hand, I shook it, his grip was solid, and his hand callous, I noted idly.

"Yeah, I'm a new transfer student, you see. From the US," He tilted his head a little bit, questioningly, "Oh! I'm John, nice to meet you, Marvin,"

He chuckled, "well met, John!" he said, his tone jovial. "as you've probably figured out already, I'm also not from around here," He continued conversationally, and I just raised my eyebrows, "though there seems to be many newcomers these past months around town," he said.

"What do you mean? This is a resort town," I answered confusedly, I didn't know why that would be worth mentioning.

"No, I didn't mean tourist, I mean there's literally an influx of people settling down, you know. I also heard similar thing from the news." He clarified, "eh, but what do I know, I'm also fairly new here, not even a year yet," he shrugged his shoulder, and then he smiled again, "Never mind that, I best be on the way, see ya around, John!" he turned around and waved at me, so I waved back,

"Yeah, bye, Marvin."

I stared at his back as he departed, but before he got around the corner, he turned back at me and said, "oh yeah, John, why don't you visit the gym sometime? I saw you running earlier," he said, wait what? This was beginning to get weird, I thought internally to myself, "I worked as a trainer at the local gym, so yeah," he shrugged.

"Sure, I'll check it out sometime, don't know when I'll be able to, honestly, school's about to start," I answered also with a shrug, "where is it anyway?" I asked him,

"Near the park, just ask the locals if you're in the area, they'll point you to it." He waved again and finally leave this time.

Weird, first, he saw me when I moved in, and then he also saw me when I ran, which was pretty early. And I didn't see him a single time before now, maybe just a coincident, I decided internally, it was then my system decided to give me another surprise in the form of a new skill, and followed by another window.

-------------------------------

New Skill Gained!

Observe X

Focus on a person or object to get their information.

Results may vary.

-------------------------------

Name : Marvin Howell

Age : 21

Level : 8

Relationship : 55

Hp : 125

Mp : 10

Opinion about you : He thinks you're cute

------------------------------

What the fuck?! was he gay?!

Not that there's something wrong with that of course.

Never mind that, more importantly, Observe, huh? Why did I just got it now, though? Also, why did it have an X rather than I, I assumed that mean max level, but why?! I sighed for the, I don't know how many times today. Fuck it, I needed to walk.