“I won’t ask you to do anything extra for me but if I were to ask you would you stop giving players broken powers? It’s really annoying to deal with.”
“No, if I were to do that you wouldn’t be able to keep your promise to me. There needs to be a force for disruption and disorder, unfairness, if not the people would not accept that world. You are too kind so you would create a world that’s too fair, orderly and equal for them to accept it, if I left you to your own devices. Then again that’s why you were chosen.”
It sounded like a naturalistic fallacy to me but our positions were parallel, there was no way they were going to meet, so there was no point in debating.
“Are you really a saintess? You sound more like a devil to me.”
“Would a devil do this for you?”
The girl transformed into her older self and kissed me on the lips.
“I-I didn’t consent to this.”
“Your breath tastes like tobacco.”
Yeah that’s what you get for kissing me while I am smoking. The saintess got up and pressed the ‘stop’ button.
“This is my stop. The Grand Old Man of History has great expectations for you but I know that you will meet them. Goodbye for now.”
“Aren’t you going to try to stop her from getting away?”
“If anything it’s not us that are letting her get away, it’s her letting us get away. Do you really think we can stop her?”
I got off the bus right after her but she was nowhere to be found. We were in South London now, around Morden. There was probably not enough time for me to play the eroge in the bag I had with me or to admire the anime posters I had bought.
Grrr.. Grrr.
“That wasn’t me!” insisted Helena.
I touched my stomach.
It had been such a long time since I had experienced hunger. I mean I could experience hunger in Albion Online if I wanted to but obviously like most players I just turned that off.
After passing by a large dilapidated mosque which had once been a church and had now been converted into a data centre for Albion Online, I reached the local underground metro train station. Thankfully, even if most shops in the British high street had been closed, Greggs was still open, even if it was only a blue-coloured self-service vending machine now. Unfortunately, the food looked kind of dried up, like they couldn’t be bothered to change the contents of the vending machine until the very last moment.
“H-hey I could go back home and cook something for you. I mean for both of us. These days in London most people just order everything online directly from warehouses so you won’t find much to eat on the street. I mean if they want to get a good look about what something looks like or if they want to meet they can already do it in Albion Online. Of course, it’s different in the country-side and smaller cities where you still find shops.”
So I have only managed to ruin London and a few large cities in Britain. Good to know, but as the Saintess said I wasn’t done yet.
If you exclude my time at the hospital, this was the first time that a woman other than my mother had made a meal for me, then as now it had been by Helena. I wondered what Lain and the others were up to. Was Rina able to tard-wrangle the whole lot of them in my absence? At least I hoped so.
“Why Indian?”
“It’s not Indian. It’s Sri Lankan. Don’t ask me what’s the difference. Anyway, I wanted to make something special rather than the bland hospital food that I used to make you.”
I didn’t want to sound sentimental, so I didn’t say it, but I did enjoy those hospital meals too.
“Also, don’t let strange women kiss you just like that.”
“Oh, yes, sorry about using your body like that. It would be a lie to say I didn’t expect that at all.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant.”
“?”
Helena seemed to be sulking for some reason.
St Paul’s Cathedral was one place which had not changed due to the encroachment of the virtual world on Britain. I guess one thing that had changed though was that you no longer needed to pay a fee in order to enter it since it wasn’t getting as many visitors now. Not that there would normally be any visitors at midnight though.
