Chapter 198: Nighttime Activities

Chapter 198: Nighttime Activities

Erani and I sat in a tent out in the hills beyond town, near the Goblin forest. We’d found a nice, secluded spot to set up, simply lying inside to get away from the sun and keep ourselves hidden from anyone who happened to pass by.

It’d only taken about a minute for us to look through the shop’s wares, grab a few of the things we needed, and head out soon after. The clerk was shocked, but didn’t do much to stop us when he realized how little we were taking—and that he’d most likely be getting it all right back when we were inevitably arrested soon.

But with just a couple hours left before I’d need to activate Time Loop, law enforcement didn’t have much time at all before I’d simply undo the whole afternoon, like nothing had happened. Now, we were simply waiting out the clock. It’d be best to wait as long as possible, so we’d told Ainash to plan on getting here about fifteen minutes before we had to go. That way, she’d the maximum amount of time possible to work with the Goblins consequence-free, and Erani and I would get some extra time of our own, too—though we didn’t have as much to do with it now.

It was pretty much just a waiting game for us, now that we’d finished our business in town. We both lay on top of the same sleeping bag so we didn’t have to deal with the uncushioned ground as Erani read through that small book she’d gotten from one of the dinner patrons, and I went through a manual of my own which detailed some of the different monster species in the local area. I wasn’t seeing much I didn’t already know by now, but it was good to read it as a formalized text, rather than just having pieces of knowledge gotten through overhearing conversations and reading through job descriptions.

The whole time, I continued to practice Noxious Grasp, which in turn helped Erani practice Angelic Shield, which had gotten past the Spell Crystal barrier recently, so it could finally start Ranking up again, the Rank 10 Upgrade she’d chosen being the one we had talked about a while back, the one which made Angelic Shield block all damage from a hit before it broke and became unusable for some time, rather than only blocking the amount of damage she could afford with her available Mana.

That was how we passed the time for a while, lying next to each other in the somewhat too-small tent and reading our respective texts.

Eventually, I finished skimming through the short booklet and sat it down next to me on the tarp floor. Erani was still reading her own, leaving me without much to do—though, I still certainly enjoyed the time simply by merit of the fact that I was lying down next to this beautiful woman. It was times like these where I had to make a concerted effort not to stare.

Part of me wanted to reach my arm over and around her so I could pull her closer into an embrace, but—

“But what?” Index said. “Just do it.”

I blinked at its sudden interjection into my thoughts. What? No, I’m not going to—

“Why?”

I don’t want to interrupt her when she’s reading, and I don’t even know if she’s—look, why do you even care?

“My goal is for you to be happy. I can read your thoughts, you know—I know doing that will make you happy. So just...do it. Considering the fact that it risks literally nothing, compared to something like fighting and killing a monster, the relative amount of happiness it provides compared to the difficulty or potential for a negative outcome, it’s basically, like, the most perfect opportunity a person could be provided. You can do something tiny and easy, and get free happiness out of it. Of course I’m going to tell you to do it.”

I don’t think you can boil Human interpersonal relationships down like that. It’s more complicated. I don’t want to upset or annoy her, and you never know—

“I do.”

Index. You can’t read her mind. Maybe me, but not her.

“But I still know she’d be fine with it. It’s literally just you putting an arm around her, dude; it’s basically nothing. Man, you Humans get so insanely anxious about this sort of thing. Don’t you get in life-or-death fights every day? This should be so easy. Just do it. If she gets annoyed, that’s still a lot better than getting stabbed in the gut or something.”

Just...leave me alone, okay? Shut up. It feels weird to talk about.

I took a breath and resituated myself on the sleeping bag, now feeling like I was a thousand times more aware of every movement I made, and that Erani made, and overanalyzing every little thing. She shifted a little so her legs were less in contact with mine, did that mean she wanted to get away from me? Or maybe she was just tired of lying like that. Maybe Index was right, maybe she was sitting here waiting for me to make a move, and not doing anything was what was annoying her. But wouldn’t she avoid moving away from me if she wanted me to make a move, because doing that might accidentally scare me off? Or maybe she wasn’t thinking like that. Was I just completely insane for thinking this way?

Ugh, I thought to myself. You are so fucking stupid. You’re already basically dating! You’ve kissed, and everything! Why do you still feel like this around her? She likes you, and you know it, so you should be able to move past this adolescent bullshit.

But maybe the mature move, then, was to just do nothing and leave her alone. Wouldn’t it feel kind of weird to just randomly reach around and bring her closer, now? We’d already been lying down for a while, so it would just be awkward to force her to completely change her position like that.

I fought the urge to shake my head and sigh at how ridiculous I was being. During quiet moments like these, I felt like I somehow got so anxious for no reason. I wasn’t very used to doing anything romantic past the initial flirting phase, and I really felt like my inexperience had begun showing itself in my mind. It was just so easy to do romance stuff before, when our lives were so constantly on the line, since it felt like it didn’t matter. But now, it was like nothing else mattered. I just needed to occupy my thoughts with something else and get my mind off of it. Maybe I’d pick that booklet back up and re-read a couple of the more interesting sections.

Erani suddenly closed her own book. “That was pretty neat. I think I got a couple good facts out of it, at least.”

I blinked a couple times, and nodded. “Oh, good.”

“Here,” she muttered, looking back and forth at the ground on either side of us, “uhh, let me reach over you and just put this over there. Not much room on my side.”

“Sure.”

She got up on her shoulder, using her good arm to grab the book and put it down on my side of the tent. Since she didn’t have a second hand to prop herself up on, she was close to me as she reached over my body, her face almost touching mine. But she wasn’t looking at me, so she couldn’t see my face flushed red. And her chest brushed against my body as well, pressing up on mine, so I could feel her—

“Woah, dude,” Index said, “I’m looking at your emotional gauge right now, and your ‘arousal’ score just jumped to seventy percent. That’s insane! I’ve never even seen a single emotion pass fifty before.”The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

“Index,” I muttered through my teeth, “shut the fuck up.”

Erani leaned back and looked at me. “What?”

“N-nothing,” I said. “Just...Index is being annoying. Y’know, always in my ear, and stuff.”

“Oh,” she said, pursing her lips. “Okay, I guess.”

“Man,” Index continued, “you just need to have sex with her already.”

What?!

“You’re insanely horny! I can tell. This is the first time the two of you have just laid down next to each other, doing nothing. Every other time you’ve both been in the same bed, one of you fell asleep before you could even think about it, and you would’ve both been too tired anyway. Now, you’ve just gone on this whole date, you have time where nothing will interrupt you, and you, Arlan, are very clearly in the mood. Just do it!”

That’s—I blinked, trying to sort out my flustered thoughts. That feels like it’d be a bad idea. What if she doesn’t feel the same way I do?

“Oh, don’t give me that. I can see her when you’re not looking, I can see the way she stares at you.”

Wait, she stares at me? I mean, that’s beside the point. It’s still not the right time. We’re in a tent in the wilderness. And what about Ainash? When we try to transfer memories, she’ll see all of them.

“Oh, shit!” Arlan looked much more concerned, suddenly. “I didn’t mean that! I wasn’t thinking, and I just said what came to my mind when I noticed, and—well, not that I really even wanted you to...”

He groaned and lay back down, flopping onto his back. Erani could just barely hear him mutter, “Index, you are such a fucker.”

“What...” Erani frowned, slowly lying back down on her side. “I know you didn’t want to talk about it before, but do you mind letting me know what’s going on between you and Index? Maybe...I don’t know. Maybe I could help out?”

He sighed. “It doesn’t—well, it does concern you, I guess. That’s kind of the problem. I don’t think you’ll really appreciate the topic, and it’d probably just be weird to bring it up.”

“That’s okay, I promise I won’t mind,” Erani said. Really, she’d do anything to reassure him into talking about it now. The moment he said it was about her, her curiosity became so strong she’d stop at nothing to hear what this was.

Arlan sighed. “Yeah, okay. Ugh, I don’t even know how to say this. So basically...What? Index, you know I can’t say it like that. Yes, I know it’s about you, but that doesn’t mean you get to put words in my mouth. Really? So what, I’m just some messenger in this conversation between you and her? ...Okay, fine.”

“What was that?”

“Index wants to say what it was talking to me about. It says, quote, ‘I was just making the simple point that both you and Arlan would be much happier if you had sex already.’”

Erani’s face filled right back up with the red that’d only just begun to fade away. “W-what?”

He rubbed his face with his hands. “It says, ‘You’re already dating, just do it already. Now’s a perfect time. I can tell you’re super attracted to him, that’s been out there for a while. You have nothing to hide, so why not just do the thing you’ve been wanting to do forever? Plus, Arlan’s like—’ Okay, Index, you know I’m not saying that. What? No, it’s not ‘unfair’ that you don’t get to...Ugh, fine. Erani, I just want to make it clear, these are Index’s words, not mine. ‘...Plus, Arlan is, like, super horny, all the time. And it’s specifically for you. So just fuck him already.’”

“I, I...” Erani was at a complete loss for words. “That’s what it was talking to you about? Why? How did that even come up?”

“It’s committed to my happiness, remember? And it seems to think I’d be a lot happier if we had sex. Right now. Wouldn’t shut up for the past fifteen minutes about it.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, I probably should’ve just kept that to myself. It’s not your problem. We can drop it if you want, you don’t have to say anything at all, we can just go back to doing whatever, and I’ll try to ignore Index.”

Erani looked down at his face, suddenly completely unable to take her eyes off of it. The little contours around his nose, giving it its angular shape, the way his eyes seemed to never rest, even when closed, shifting around beneath his eyelids like he was always thinking about something, the way his shaggy hair constantly drifted down to the tops of his eyes, so he had to bring his hand up and push it out of his face...

“U-um,” Erani stuttered, “I don’t...”

Arlan opened his eyes, looking up at her. Were they always that bright? Even she could tell that, no matter how casually he was pretending to act, he was hanging onto her every word.

“I wouldn’t—” Erani continued, “—maybe eventually, not now, but eventually, be opposed to it. I-I mean, if you’d...um, be okay. With that.”

Arlan nodded hesitantly. “Uh, yeah. Okay. Eventually. Index, does that work with—no? No. Okay.”

Erani chuckled lightly. “It’s not satisfied?”

“Not even remotely. It said that was pitiful of us,” Arlan said with a laugh. Then he seemed to get more serious again. “Um, though, if you wanted...I mean, maybe it doesn’t have the totally wrong idea. About, y’know, the timing.”

Erani tensed up at the thought of doing...that...right now. “...I don’t know.”

“Right, right,” Arlan said, cheeks going red. “Sorry. Shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

“No, I mean...” Erani sighed. “I kind of agree. That sounds...nice. It sounds great. I’d love to. But...you’re about to use Time Loop, right?”

He frowned. “Hm? I mean, I guess, but I doubt it’d take an hour and a half. We’d have plenty of time.”

“No! Er, no, not like that. I mean, when you use it, and we go back to before this ever happened...I don’t know, doesn’t that feel weird?”

“What do you mean? You’ll get to keep your memories. And Ainash won’t see as long as we tell her not to look into the memories we give her, if that’s what you’re worried about. Index was the one to point that out to me.”

“No, it’s not like that.” Erani sighed once again. She wasn’t sure how to even say something like this. “I mean, even if we remember...doesn’t it feel wrong? To go back and undo our, er, first time together? It sort of cheapens the moment in a way, I feel like.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “I guess I don’t see what you mean. Maybe I’m just too used to Time Loop, but it’s not like anything actually gets reset. Like, if we keep our memories of it, it effectively still happened, right? Didn’t you say something like that earlier?”

“Well, maybe, but I still think there’s something to be said about being able to...I don’t know...exist in the timeline where we did that together. Whether or not it functionally changes anything, I want to do this in a world where everything’s real, and our actions have lasting consequences. It’s not about memories; it’s about building something with you that can’t be erased. On a metaphorical level, I guess.”

He smiled in that way that he always did when he was about to say something stupid. “So, you’re saying that we can’t have sex because of a metaphor?”

Erani laughed and rolled her eyes. “Arlan. I’m serious.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get you. Not like I’ll fight you on it, at least. If you want to wait, we can wait. Have a nice, non-time-related date someday, and do something special then. I guess...I don’t know, it feels kind of cool, to think about having sex in a timeline that’ll end up getting reset. We have this unique opportunity to keep this moment to ourselves. In a world that nobody else will even remember—that nobody else even exists in, effectively. We can use it to say ‘This moment is ours, and nobody else’s.’ Like, we’re sort of the rulers of the universe, right now. At least, in a way.”

Erani smiled. “That sounds egotistical.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Maybe we’ve earned some ego, after everything we’ve been through.”

“Maybe.”

Erani leaned in closer, lying her head on Arlan’s chest, and he wrapped his arm around her, bringing her in tightly as if he was trying to make up for lost time.

Arlan sighed. “We can wait. For now, let’s just lay here, maybe take a nap or something. Doesn’t matter what we do. I’m just happy to spend the time with you.”

Erani felt something welling up in her chest as she drew her hand across the marks on Arlan’s ribs. Muscles, bones, scars...she wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing, really. But the more she dragged her fingers along those bumps and lines, the more that feeling in her heart strengthened. Eventually, she just said, “Yes, I agree. I’m happy, too.”

And they lay there, the pure moment shared between them enough to sustain their smiles for a lifetime.

In the end, though, their bodies pressed up against each other like that, with Erani fondling Arlan’s chest and him rubbing his hand along her back and shoulders, they ended up getting way too horny to ignore it, and they had sex anyway.