Chapter 335: Chapter 335 - Dinner Date To Dissuade, How Did It... pt3
The ’benefits’ part of the *packaged* friendship should feel more limited than it does. Taking me out to expensive places needs to be punished for the beliefs this behavior creates. And if I can make her not enjoy her time with me, even better.
> It’s best that she accepts things. How they are and will be. That there is not some long future waiting with me. Just a short while of fun before everything... expires. <
"Some structures of obligation rarely require verbal contracts to be spelled out to the letter. In fact, sometimes things are left out intentionally, despite all parties being aware of what is expected. What sort of dues are owed."
She seemed more intrigued than offended - and honestly that was not the response I’d anticipated. Not to essentially telling her, after everything she has claimed to me since we met... that I yet do not trust that she will refrain from seeking more and more forms of repayment.
Her knuckles on one hand press into her jaw as she rests her elbow on the wood table. Something I’m sure is supposed to be bad manners in this world. Or was it alright as long as food was not there? So complicated.
"Naturally, I find your foreign insights on power fascinating. If you’d like to talk more about the society you came from, I’ll listen intently any time. Though there is no invoice to balance here. Have you even considered that my personal hope can be separated from all gifts given?"
"Not once. But if your claim were true, how fortunate for me, then. As I do have rather expensive tastes."
I allowed my smile back to her to take on a sneering edge. To be as impolite and willful as I can be. No matter how much a part of me is suggesting I should stop.
Or how much I’m fooling myself that it is just Vrika pushing at something in me, despite the black wolf sitting silently in what is now a small cave in my soul. Watching me flail and bark at the too-friendly white wolf.
"Yes. I have noticed the expense."
"Hm? So you have been tracking them after all?"
"No. I asked Claire not to tell me anything when it comes to money. But I have seen you eat and can only imagine the bills."
I leaned forward while biting my lip, deciding to double down. To make it clearer the kind of intentions I’m claiming to have. With the best look of disdain on my face that I can manage.
"With how liberally I’ve been using your card, you realize I will take you for all you are worth. That *is* the sort of person I am. No matter what you seem to think."
Warm laughter was followed by her leaning across the table just like I did - because she has no compunction mirroring me at all! My eyes danced down across the clean satin material of her clothing as it refolded and shaped to her movements...
And I pinched my thigh to keep from yelping and retreating to her push. It was silly, but only at that point did I actually realize how little distance there was between us at the size of this table. So easily, one could reach out and hold hands at the center while seated normally.
> So easily, could she burst forward and steal a kiss - or bite my neck. Yes, I am concerned about both things equally! <
"Less than ten thousand dollars for clothing from quality stores... after weeks of having my card to use? When you arrived here with almost nothing to your name? That’s hardly what I’d call *liberal* use, Citra."
I blinked, thrown off balance by her words as much as the proximity of her face. Was that all so much money represented to her? Besides, I’m quite certain the figure is much less than five digits total. But that counts as a trivial expense?
More importantly-
"You just said you were not tracking what I bought."
"I said I did not ask Claire, but Anise speaks without listening sometimes. Besides, if creature comforts is not all you wanted help with, I’d still consider my personal funds a bargain. For learning you exist that day."
Fierce orange eyes held mine, intensity coming off of every intoned word. My fingernails scratched at the table as I backed away a few inches. Her hand seemed to be magnetized, following between the empty plates at the same speed across the lovely reddish wood.
"And while learning to chase you, I’ve come to suspect there’s considerably more depth to your interests and ways of living... and how you deal with whatever you need to in order to feel comfortable with yourself is just a part of things."
Her hand curled to what I think was a piece of dried pineapple, bringing it back to her lips and beginning to chew. With all the momentum stopped in its tracks, I reach back out and grab a handful of things.
Consuming them while sulking in my mindscape, underneath the stupid rooftop greenhouse that decided to settle into place again... I reassess my attempt to present myself as *only* shallow, materialistic, and greedy. How it failed because I tried to hard to sell it.
> I do think I am those things, too. Really. If I was not, would I be so concerned with the debt I owed? <
I just wasn’t careful and sabotaged the timing of everything, but I also felt seen through in a way that was both disconcerting and oddly freeing. However, at this rate it seems like I will not even be able to add ’compulsive liar’ to the list of reasons she should stop pursuing me. Not if I can’t even reliably lie right to her face.
"So... have you always preferred clothes like these? Before you came, er, into Helene Duskpaw?"
"Before I was stuck in this world at all? Yes."
"Tell me more, Princess. I’d love to hear it."
Hearing that name, that title said without the gravity it always had in my world... but somehow with a mysterious amount more *respect* to it... I found I wanted to.
To just talk about my life over a meal. Especially if we’ll never be doing this again.