There are two empty seats next to each other, and only three people altogether in the train station, waiting. According to what our culture had taught us, only one of the three would sit, and the other two would pretend to have preferred to wait for the train standing. The one who ended up sitting was a woman, and one of the two standing one, a man, thought twice whether he should sit next to her or not, even though he was already so close to the seat before her. The man chose to stand.
It's nothing weird, according to our culture, to not communicate at all to strangers. Our body would constantly seek for something to do, especially the eye; looking at the tool shop, the train rails, or the ruins on the vast hills beyond it. But that's not what our eyes are really trying to look at. More than anything, our eyes constantly want to look at people.
"May I sit here?" I asked the lady, and she replied with a smile and a nod, then continued to pretend that I wasn't there.
She was older than me, but it's not like she's old; I was the one who was young. 15 at the time. I noticed she was trying to look at me too, not in the eye, but just checking my shoes, my clothes, or the bible I was carrying. Countless of times she also noticed that I noticed her, and that I was doing the same thing. I saw the way she dressed and the things she brought with her; a proper white and beige dress which, from where I came from, would qualify as a wedding dress, and a worn-looking bow and quivers of arrows.
From a simple look, anyone would start to judge people by their appearance, it's just normal. There are so many thoughts going on inside one's head when they look at other people, but from the outside, everyone pretends to not care about anyone else, even to someone who happen to sit next to them. I, however, concluded that her combination of dress and bow and arrow just didn't make sense at all. But, being a proper stranger, and because I noticed she was doing great acting like one too, I didn't bother to ask anything about it. Instead, I did something no stranger would do to another.
"Do you mind if I talk to you?" I said. I would only say this if I know she was not doing anything either. Having a sudden urge to pointlessly count the number of arrows she had or pretending to be looking at the view whenever I notice she was looking at me doesn't count. After having a little moment to think about what I should say to her, I finally said: "Are you looking for someone?"
She shook her head. "No...I'm travelling alone. Why?"
"I don't think you get my question. I have a friend, he's a merchant. He have this really brilliant business idea, an idea that is both original and would bring him lots of money. He never talk about it to people, though, he have only told me. He just doesn't want anyone to steal his idea, losing a business idea means losing money and he's very stubborn about it, because, well, he's a merchant," I said. "Anyways, so I ask him the same question: 'are you looking for someone?', and his answer was exactly like yours. I rephrased the question back to him: 'I mean, this. Just complete this sentence: wouldn't it be nice if I know a certain someone who would help me in achieving whatever idea I have?'. He answered: 'ooh. Okay. Let me think', so he thought and answered again, 'well, my business has something to do with working together with a blacksmith. It'd be great if there's a blacksmith, or blacksmith in training, who's willing to cooperate with me.' There. What about you?"
She didn't answer, of course. Maybe the question is too personal, maybe she didn't want to share it with me, or maybe it's really a secret. But I knew she was thinking about it.
"I'm a stranger, that's why you don't want to answer, right?" I said, and before she could say 'no it's not like that' or anything along those lines, I said "It's ok. But at least you kno what I'm talking about right? Unless you have a perfect life with all the right people in it."
"No, no...you're right. I am thinking about it," she stared to the hills in front of us, saying nothing else while being lost in thought. I was guessing she must be wishing for a committed lover or something; she looked like she's in that age.
"And what's your effort in order to find this person, miss?" I asked again. She thought about it again, but didn't answer. "The train will come, and you'll get on. You'll look for an empty seat, just like how I ended up sitting here. The train will probably be really full that you'll have to sit next to a stranger you know nothing of, or maybe it'll be somewhat empty, and there'll be only you and one or two other people in the same car. Would you start looking for this person then?"
"I...I would probably have to get to know them first, right?" she answered.
"So will you talk to them?"
"I..."
"You don't have to answer that. I'm not telling you to do anything, everyone have their own way of doing things, right?" I said.
"What should I do, then? I want to meet this person, this person I don't even know yet, and I know I should get to know people in order to find him. Please don't just leave the topic hanging, I'm...I mean it...when I say I am looking for someone."
"That's good. There's two things that I can say to you. First, don't stop looking. It's natural, it's part of being human. We're social beings, we can't live on our own, we all need the right people for every individual, whether it's friends, lovers, business partner, or enemies, or anything. Those certain people are more important than any amount of things or money that we have."
"I realize that. I'm older than you, so I've found myself in many situations where I had to think about this. But what can I do? Everyone's really not cooperating, no single person that I've met in my travels seemed to actually have this need of 'someone', they all pretend that they're okay. Some maybe are, but I'm sure many of them don't and are looking for this certain someone for themselves too, but not even a single person I've met are showing it, showing that they're looking for this someone..."
"That's why, the second thing is, whenever you feel like looking and don't know how to, just look around. The examples are everywhere. Don't look at other people, of course, if they're all being silent. Look at ants, bees, wolves, cats, or pretty much any other species. They socialize, they communicate, and they do so to everyone of them. They don't choose who to interact, they simply interact with everyone. You don't ever see ants refusing to interact with another when they meet, do you? Or dogs, you don't see any dogs refusing to sniff at each other's butts when they meet, right? They may be friends or be enemies afterwards, but being enemies is not a bad thing either, at least, it's better than not communicating at all. Don't you think? When conflicts are created, a resolution comes afterwards, if not, then the conflicting sides can refuse to interact for a good reason. That's still a lot better than refusing to interact without knowing each other at all beforehand."
So far, the woman could only listen, I realized I've been the only one talking. "How old are you?" she finally asked.
"I'm...younger than you, at least," I wondered a little about the question. "My age doesn't matter, right?"
"Right..." she said. "I'm sorry I changed the topic. So, how about you?"
"Me?"
"Are you looking for someone?"
"Ideas are indestructible, ideas are bulletproof, but an idea is only real to whoever thinks of them. I have an idea, and the people who I'm looking for are those whom I want to share my ideas with."
"Which are?"
"Strangers. Like you."
Mael, 14th of Light Summer 458
I want to be a healer.
You know, holy magic practitioners who makes everybody gather around them, constantly asking for heals or ressurections.
Yeah, those ones.
However, some people always look down on them. No one really wants to pick a support class and I just can't find one to ask about the class personally.
The one good thing I like about them is, people tend to help healers mainly because they're so rare in numbers and how much they're on demand by others.
Or so I heard.
The first step is, of course, get to the town. There are almost no class masters that can help me pick my profession in the village. Unless if I want to be a farmer.
So once I get to Melbas, I discovered two options.
1. I can either go to the church and work my way to become a priest, or
2. Head to the magic institute and choose to be enchanter.
Enchanters aren't like priests who specialize in healings and recovery spells. They can also support in elemental attributes and has more spells in general. I like the sound of that.
So I head to the institute.
Really? Would I be willing to study magics, spirits, and spending weeks in the library? Would I really qualify for such a smart and knowledgable class?
So I head to the church.
I really like the idea of priest, you know. Every other class requires a certain cost to perform their abilities. Communication skills and bargaining for merchants to get discounts, strength for warriors to fight, concentration and intelligence for wizards to cast their spells, and so on.
For priest, it's faith.
Ooh, by believing hard enough you can ressurect the dead, or withstand a swarm of demons.
With faith, everything is possible.
You get the idea. I don't see anything hard about being a faithful priest, so why not, right?
After a few minutes talking to the head priest, I walked out with a healing wand. Apparently the head priest wanted to see what I would do with this basic healing ability.
I'm so ready to heal people now.
Today, I walked around the town as a servant of god. I healed everyone, everyone thanked me, and I was doing this for the whole day until I saved this warrior in the woods from getting killed by a monster.
Luciano "I just saved your life."
Warrior "Thanks a lot, man!"
Warrior "You've been a great help!"
Luciano "Yeah."
Luciano "You know what?"
Luciano "I haven't eaten anything and maybe you can spare me some food?"
Warrior "Oh, I can't help you with that."
Luciano "Come on."
Luciano "I did save your life."
Warrior "I didn't ask for your help."
I thought I could fill my stomach with faith and good will. In fact, this 'power of belief' that I've been using to heal people is making me a lot hungrier.
Really. Is helping others not popular these days? The warrior that I saved was also a complete beginner, and he probably don't have a lot of money to begin with. He had to do errands for other people to get paid, or get loots from monsters or anything to sell.
I on the other hand, am stuck with no money, no food, no fighting skills, nobody to help me start out, and a healing wand that its only real purpose currently is to benefit others at the cost of my own hunger.
I learned something today. Healer class are rare, just like any other supports. They're all either:
1. Healing.
2. Starving to death.
Seriously, there's just no way for someone who's being support to survive in this world. I need to be able to do things on my own too, like warriors or something.
Before I die of exhaustion, I passed by a training camp for those who's interested in becoming a warrior. There's a lot of people signing in, completely different than the empty church I went to before.
...
So I head to the training camp.
Fuck yeah warriors. Fuck being support.
Haha.
Shut up.
: :
The training camp was packed. It's filled with former farmers, travellers, and mostly, ambitious youngsters. I would call myself one of those youngsters, and just like everyone else in here, we were all pretty much confused what to do. The trainer had to take care of everyone and it's taking way too long for my turn.
Since I don't like waiting, I went outside and see what I could do with all the training dummies around.
The training site outside was also packed, Everyone was hitting everything with the training wooden sword lying around. Due to some of them having never hold a sword before, wooden swords would occasionally fly all over the place. Apparently someone was giving too much effort swinging them instead of holding it properly. One of them flew right next to my foot, followed by a girl who came up to it. After noticing me standing right there, she suddenly gave up on it and decided to look for another one.
"Is this yours?" I asked her. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to understand me. Her extra eye on her forehead pretty much explained that she wasn't even human. That eye closed only after a small glance, though. Lazy eye. "This," I waved the sword up and pointed at it, "you threw this?"
"Yes," she looked embarassed as she said it.
"So you do speak english!" I said, and I was wrong. She looked twice as confused as before. 'Yes' was probably all she could say.
I knew trying to communicate with her is pointless, so I tried speak in body language and see if I could get her to understand anything. I had nothing to do anyways.
I spent at least 10 minutes and all I figured out was, she could only say a 'yes', 'no', 'sorry' and 'thankyou'. The 'sorry' was about nearly giving everyone a bruise(apparently she was the one who threw all the swords around), and the 'thankyou' was when I suggested that she had to be an idiot to be this bad with swords. She clearly had no idea what I was saying.
"Quite an interesting girl, isn't she?"
I looked back and saw another big guy like the trainer inside. "She thanked me when I made fun of her flying swords technique. Is she serious?"
"Oh, she's very serious," the, --well, I'll just also call him trainer--, said without any doubt.
Just before I questioned his definition of 'interesting', he started talking to the girl in another language. The girl responded by talking so fast and full of expression that I wish she could also talk to me like that. However the trainer didn't seem to understand half what she was saying.
"So, what's she saying?" I asked.
"She said swords are horrible and she hates it. Throwing them is much funner."
"Interesting," I said, and I noticed she seemed to embrace that fact with a smile.
After the long wait, the trainer from inside gathered everyone around outside and told us to pair up. Most of us didn't even know each other, so there were some other trainers who did the pairing.
By the rule of cliche, I should be paired up with the girl earlier. I chose to be warrior, so I should start getting the main character role, right? I mean, warriors are such a main character profession.
"...and you're with...this guy!" one of the trainer pat me on my shoulder. Before me stood an entity I knew I wouldn't get along with.
It was a boy around my age, but much more protagonist-looking than me. He's taller than me, well-built figure with a messy black hair. His face showed he could be funny and still able to look cool and calm as he take out his sword and said to me "lets bring it on, then!"
"You know, we could be paired up to a cooperative purpose. That guy haven't really said anything but make pairs," I said.
"I know. I know. But the pairing is taking too long, maybe we could spar a little while we wait. It would help us get along better too. Waiting is bo-ring."
I could only sigh and agree. Before some practice match, I should really decide what weapon I'd be using. There were swords, shields, hammers, spear, and axe, all designed to only cause slightly bruise when used to hit someone.
It took me a long time to decide, I had never even held anything as basic as a sword, let alone the rest.
I liked the idea of spears, at least. Keeping a good distance while maintaining offense. That's right.
As soon as I picked it up, my partner rushed up to me while shouting, "le-ets be-giiiin!", jumped towards me and landed his own torso on the tip of the spear I just picked up. "Guh!"
Hey! A practice fight is good to get to know each other. We just met two minutes ago and I now know that my partner is impatient and retarded.
"Alright everyone, listen up!" the trainer called everyone again. "Here's what's happening. Today we have two very special guest who will help us with your third test. I want everyone, by groups, to come up here and you'll be facing this girl."
The flying swords girl was right there, and the trainer wanted us to go against her? First of all, did he mention 'third test'? I didn't remember doing any 'first test' or anything.
"If you can at least touch her with your weapon, you pass. You can try as many times as you want, but it's only going to be per pair."
The first two who tried also thought it was a joke. Until an arrow landed nicely on their forehead.
"Oh my god she just murdered somebody!" I screamed, and so did some other.
"Oh, right. She's an archer, and she's pretty fast. Don't worry, her arrows will only knock your head; it's not a real arrow. That doesn't mean it won't hurt, of course. So try not to get hit or parry them. If anything, this lovely priest," he presented a really beautiful woman sitting in the back, "will recover you in no time!"
"Call me Regin," she smiled.
The whole crowd fell one by one to the archer girl. Every time she shot, bulls-eye, bulls-eye, bulls-eye. And here my partner was still writhing in pain on the ground from the unintentional spear stab earlier. I asked Regin to heal him and then waited for my turn. A lot of people kept on trying but no one made it so far. I was starting to think most of them injured themselves on purpose just so they could be tended by the smiling Regin sitting over there. Wow, I was really checking on her.
Anyways, the first time we tried, my partner rushed in and the archer shot him a nice round bruise on his forehead. The second time we tried, my partner rushed in and the archer shot him a nice round bruise on his forehead. The third time we tried, my partner rushed in and... this is getting nowhere.
"Take cover!" I said, "and stay there!"
The training camp was full of wooden dummies and fences and climbing board and everything else, enough to use it to our advantage. Her arrows could only shoot in a straight line, and if she's willing to risk it by moving a bit closer, we should be able to reach her without spending too much time in her bow's line of projectile.
The fourth time we tried, my partner rushed in and...you know the rest. But this time, I was close enough to reach her. She was quick; she took another arrow and pulled a shot at my direction, almost pointblank.
Throwing them is much more funner, I remembered her words. Well, her translated words.
I didn't mean to do it, but I lost my grip when I thought it would definitely hit her if I let go at that moment. That's when the arrow knocked my forehead mid-air, and I landed on my head. I probably broke my neck. I probably died.
"..that's how you're supposed to do it! I'll wait 'til he's awake, I don't want to point this out twice...oh. He's up!" the trainer shouted. I heard the crowd cheering first, and when I opened my eyes, Regin's face was right there in front of me. I sat up and looked around.
"That's one thing I wanted to teach you guys. Use. Your. Brain. We've been getting a lot of complaints saying that we're promoting idiocy instead of fighting skills. That's not cool, guys," the trainer said, and everybody laughed. "It's not funny. All of you would've end up dead if I let you guys pass without getting this on your brain. All. Of. You. Especially this boy's partner," this time, he pointed at my partner who's still lying on the ground.
The other trainer took over and reminded everyone the test was still going. The archer girl was still shooting everyone, and even with the other trainees implementing what we just did, she still managed to send every single one of them back to Regin.
"Just using your brain is not enough. There's one more important thing you need to know, and if you figure this one out, taking her out would be a breeze. Remember what I said; use whatever weapons or tools around to your advantage."
One by one, the trainees took the hint. Some of them started to use a shield and successfully blocked the incoming arrows. It took them a couple of tries, but in the end she had to block the swords with her bow, and that already counted as a defeat.
"Let me try again," my partner raised up. He prepared himself with a straw-sewn full body armor and asked, "I can use this, right?"
The trainer just nodded, and everyone let out a loud 'aaah'. The rest of the afternoon was all well, and after the trainer took everyone's names, he announced that everyone passed.
Except for me.
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