[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapters 835 & 836. (Patreon)

Chapter 835: Adjusting to the new life (Part 1).

I waved goodbye to my group of friends at the top of the stairs and watched them leave. Eric and Steven would wait for the bus nearby while Luna and Ruby would leave by car. I expected Steven to have a car, but he said he was a nervous mess behind the wheel, so he didn’t like driving.

 I sat down to the side of the top step and waited for the girls. Seems like I finished earlier than then this time.

…

For once.

…

Why do I think things?

I happened to see Julian Jenkins walking down the stairs, too. Either he didn’t see me or he deliberately avoided my gaze, but our eyes didn’t meet. I’d seen him talking to a few people in class, and for what it’s worth, the usual arrogance in his tone seemed to be mostly gone. Still, we hadn’t said a word to each other, and I don’t think even Eric had talked to him at all. It suited me just fine, honestly, but Frey’s words about keeping an eye out for anything strange made me wonder if he wasn’t up to anything again.

…

The fact that he hadn’t said anything regarding what happened that time with Mila was a bit concerning in and of itself. He knew the supernatural existed now, didn’t he? Was he afraid I’d do something to him if he said anything about it? I’m pissed at myself that I sort of hoped that was the case.

Grudges are so hard to let go of…

Someone sat next to me, and a head of long, blonde hair was suddenly resting on my shoulder.

“What are we looking at?” Sarah asked me.

I sighed. “People, I guess. How was your day?”

“Boring. Wednesday classes are pretty dull. Well, most classes are pretty dull, but Wednesdays are the worst.”

“Bye, Sarah! See you tomorrow!” A girl said, waving at Sarah as she walked past us, holding hands with another guy.

“Bye! And watch where you’re stepping,” Sarah told her.

I chuckled. “Your friends, right? I think I remember seeing you having lunch with them.”

Sarah nodded. “Yeah. Nice people. A bit weird, but who isn’t?”

“Yeah.”

Sarah wasn’t the only one who arrived with more company. Grace also parted with three girls before she joined us, and then we saw two guys waving goodbye to Alice.

“I thought you knew we weren’t allowed to be friends with single men,” Sarah said, smirking. I poked her on the ribs.

“Not funny.” I have no say on who they’re friends with. I just don’t want guys pestering them.

“I caught them talking about the specs of the latest MZD sports car and getting them all wrong…” Alice said, sighing. “I could help but butt in and we ended up getting along. One of them is married, actually.”

“Woah,” Grace and I exclaimed. “Wait, but he’s a freshman, right?”

“Yeah, I was surprised, too,” Alice said, smiling. “Apparently got married the second he graduated high school. His wife is a year older.”

“Hm. Maybe we’re not alone in our brand of weirdness,” Sarah said.

“The world is big,” Grace said, nodding.

Noelle finally arrived, and with her a girl about her height who quickly said hello and goodbye to us before saying goodbye to Noelle with a quick kiss on the cheek that was more cheek-on-cheek than a kiss.

“She seems friendly,” Alice said, chuckling.

Noelle giggled. “Yeah, she’s… very affectionate.”

I smiled. “You seem in a good mood today,” I said as we began to walk down the stairs.

“Do I? I’m kinda pissed, actually,” Noelle said. 

I blinked. I was fairly certain I felt some sort of personal satisfaction from her. Were my senses off?

“What happened?” Sarah asked her, raising an eyebrow. “Who do we have to kill?”

“Yeah, we need names,” Grace said.

“Girls…” Alice sighed.

“I… don’t actually know their names. It was a group from my class. They were trying to bully Mandy and me like it was high school. It was pretty pathetic.”

“What did they say?” Alice asked.

“They saw me showing Mandy the miniatures I painted with Fern and they were saying it was childish and that we were virgins who’d never get a boyfriend.” Noelle scowled. “Mandy got really upset, so I had to say something.”

Ah. “Did you put them in their place?” I asked her, grinning.

Noelle blushed and smiled shyly. “Well… I’d like to believe I did.”

There it is. There’s the personal satisfaction.

Grace gave Noelle a hug from the side. “Awesome. Tell me every detail.”

“M-Maybe when we’re with Mila and Diana…” Noelle said.

I took a deep breath as my heart stirred.

Not that I forgot, but what Noelle said brought it back to the forefront of my mind. Although she left a couple of hours after us and, accordingly, would arrive a couple of hours later, too… Diana now lived with us. She’d come back to our house every day. The mere thought of having to account for one more plate for dinner was exciting.

Oh, and speaking of…

“We need to buy groceries after picking Mila up,” I said. “Turns out making breakfast, lunch and dinner for six people every day empties the pantry really quickly. And now we’ll be seven…”

“We’ve yet to see our electricity and water bills, too…” Alice said. “Those are coming this week, I think.”

“Depending on how it all goes, we’ll have to adjust our budgets,” I said.

Still, we should be fine. The house was upfront payment for my help with Luke’s potion, but I still get paid a fair bit for my work at the bar. We even got a raise for how well the bar was doing, too. Noelle was also earning well from streaming, Mila also earned some money from sponsorships in her social media, and though I have some mixed feelings about it, Mila’s, Grace’s, Sarah’s and Alice’s parents are still giving them allowances. Diana was adamant about adding a part of her earnings to the pool, too, which is fair.

Well, this first month would be the time to figure a lot of this out… which felt very strange and awkward to even think about. I… never had to worry about it before. Mom would do it all, never even mentioning it to Isabelle or me beyond telling us to take shorter showers and to not leave lights on when we weren’t using them.

…

You don’t really appreciate the work your parents put in for you until it’s your turn, huh? I’ll give her a call later. Maybe invite her and Isabelle for lunch on Saturday…

************

Chapter 836: Adjusting to the new life (Part 2).

We picked Mila up and went to a supermarket as planned. We had to buy a lot of rice and pasta. Fruits and vegetables, too, but not too much to avoid them going bad. Milk, eggs, coffee, bread… What else? Beans, canned stuff…

“How are we on salt and sugar?” Alice asked me, walking beside me as I pushed the cart.

“We’re good, but we might as well throw in some more. Some pepper, too, now that I think about it,” I told her.

Sarah added a few bottles of juice and some sodas. Mila threw in cereal and yogurt. Noelle reminded us that we were almost out of butter. Grace… mostly looked around.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.

“That I think this is my first time going grocery shopping…” she said. “As far as I can remember, everything I needed was always at home.”

“Right, you had staff at home, didn’t you?” Noelle asked.

Grace nodded. “I always made sure to clean my own room, but they did everything else around the house. From shopping to gardening and cooking.” She sighed. “It’s not like I’ve never stepped inside a supermarket… but I’ve never had to think about what I was missing at home. Nothing was ever missing.”

“Sometimes I wonder how you turned out so… competent in most areas while growing up as a spoiled princess,” Sarah said without malice.

“You know… I wonder about that, too,” Grace admitted with a nod.

“She hates being looked down on, so I bet she matured purely out of spite,” Mila said.

Grace snicked. “You know what? It’s likely.”

No one can tell it to you like it is like your closest friends, huh?

It ended up being about as expensive as I expected, which is to say very expensive. Still, we’re talking about a household of seven, and I suppose a big reason our pantry emptied up so quickly was due to the amount of guests we had. Our family gathering alone was like 20 people.

As we went back home, Mila looked back at the girls from her seat at the front of the van and asked, “So? What are your plans for the weekend?”

“I’m going to Alex’s shop next Monday,” Alice said. “He asked if I could help with some stuff.” 

“I have no plans, really, and I blame Oliver for it,” Sarah said.

“What? What did I do?” I asked, frowning.

“I used to spend my weekends going out and spending them with friends, but now I mostly stay at home. You’re a bad influence.”

Mila snickered. “Yeah, I blame him for it, too.”

“You’re all free to make your own plans. You even have your own cars. I have nothing to do with it,” I said.

“Yeah, but staying at home is fun, too…” Sarah admitted with a sigh.

“Welcome to the better side of life,” Noelle said, grinning. “We indoor types have always known it’s the superior lifestyle.”

“I mean, I used to go out on weekends, too, but now I live with almost all the people I used to hang out with,” Grace said with a shrug. “So what’s the point of going out?”

“That, and our other friends now come to our house,” Sarah said. “And when they don’t… It’s hard to say no to spending a full weekend just fucking.”

I chuckled, but… she did raise a good point. Not about fucking on weekends, which was also valid, but about going out. 

“As much as I like staying at home, we should probably make an effort to go out and do other things,” I said. “Like going to see a movie or going on hikes.” Which reminded me… “On, and speaking of… Um… Noelle, have you heard of an anime convention happening in two weeks?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah! Mandy was asking if I wanted to go with her. I told her I’d see if I could because I wasn’t sure if we might have some guests at home again. Why? Do you want to go, too?”

“My classmates want us to perform there on Sunday,” I said. “I… agreed. We’ll form a band for that day and put on a 30-minute show.”

“Oh, then I’m definitely going!” Noelle said, giggling and taking out her phone. She started texting. “And I’m bringing Fern with me.”

“If you’re playing, then we’re going, too,” Mila said. “Right, girls?”

“Of course,” Alice said. “We’re not gonna miss it.”

“You… don’t really need to, you know?” I said. “It’ll just be a 30-minute show, and the convention is all about anime and stuff, so…”

“What, are you embarrassed that we’ll be watching?” Sarah asked, smirking.

“A little bit, yeah,” I admitted. “It’s not likely to turn out great. We only have two weeks to practice. Besides, we’ll only be playing J-pop.”

“Come on, we want to watch, Oliver. How could we not?” Alice said. “And you just said we should make an effort to do other things.”

She got me there…

“I’m surprised they got you to agree,” Grace said. “You’re not big on J-pop, are you? And to play in a band on top of that.”

I sighed. “Well… I guess it’s an opportunity I didn’t want to say no to. These people… They’re all really good. They’re better than me. I guess I want to give it a shot at least once. We really might suck, though. They’re all good, but playing in a band is different than playing on your own.”

“Nah, you guys will kill it,” Mila said. “I mean, I don’t know how much I believe that the others are better than you, but you’re already super good. So if the others are at your level, then there’s nothing to fear.”

I wish I could believe it as much as she did. Eric had gotten better since high school, Luna and Ruby had a lot of experience, and Steven was already 10 times the guitarist I wish I was. I could only hope I wouldn’t hold us back. But then again, agreeing to go into this even knowing it might be a huge mess… Maybe this is a type of confidence, too?