Published August 24, 2020
Chapter 07.
“This place is really shady, are you setting me up?”
At this point, I was already accustomed.
Humans can adapt to anything, they say.
Even though I’m only somewhat over a half human, so that explains the part of me still frustrated by his total lack of trust and suspicion.
“If I said ‘not at all’ would it be less suspicious to you?”
“Not at all”
“Please don’t just go and copy/paste lines.”
“You are still not worth the work to come up with original ones”
“And you say that after all that speech about language on the bike, how inconsistent can you be?”
“Well, actually a good part of that was in The Art of Writing from Schopenhauer.”
“At least come up with some original ideas!”
After that honest plead, I took a deep breath, and assured him, even though I doubted that, deep down, he would trust it:
“I didn’t set you up, Isac, I really want to help you, and even though I can’t do anything directly, I want to take you to someone who can.”
“Sorry, I don’t believe in 100% good intentions. What do you gain from going out of your way to help me?”
“Frankly? It’s the only thing I’m good for, helping people I mean, so that’s what I do, there’s nothing grandiose about it, I just can’t really do anything else but that”
“I don’t understand your point.”
“Don’t worry, even I am confused. But anyway, don’t worry, by no means I’m only helping you out of the good of my heart, and as clichê as it may sound, just being able to help you is a more than good enough reward.”
Literally.
Isac tilted his head a bit, trying to make sense of my half-assed explanation, and after a while,
He nodded
Man, I must look really pitiful
“I think I can understand where you are coming from. Well, they say low IQ is co-related to depression and low self-esteem, it seemed that theory wasn't all that far off.”
“Look, the depressed part is true, but do you need to ham fist my stupidity so much?!”
“I am being nothing but realistic.”
Alright, calm down, Hon’i
Deep breaths. Actually, they were more like deep sighs.
“Hey, before we get going, is there anything I need or should know about this ‘person’?”
I’ll let those single quotation marks slide.
“Well, to be honest, I don’t know all that much about her myself, just that she was a good enough person to help me out at a time of despair. Her name is Gaen, and she specializes in cases like mine and yours, I think that’s about all you need to know.”
“I don’t know why, but this name sounds like a cheap reference.”
“You know, could you at least not point it out?! And do you even read that franchise?”
“Of course, I am a cultured person.”
“More like an otaku- Ouch! Don’t just go throwing other people’s bags around!”
“Oh, so if your life isn’t at risk the thing in question isn’t going to vanish. Good, good.”
“Now I was reduced to a guinea pig.”
“It’s better than your original status on my book, at least guinea pigs are useful.”
I have some things to say about that, but I don’t want my bones broken...
Now that’s a tough issue.
“Oh, yeah, also, don’t be surprised if you happen to see a kid walking around there. My cousin likes to hang out here.”
“That’s an interesting choice, I can’t see how someone would be comfortable in this wasteland.”
It seems this person has a real thing for insulting me.
He is so talented at that that he can do it even when he isn’t trying.
“I guess it’s custom”
“Well, I can see you getting used to it, but actual normal people, I find it difficult. So, can we go?”
That’s my line.
I would say.
But Isac looked somewhat troubled.
I won’t lie,
I can’t understand him completely, much less imagine what is going on on his head, but there was a chance that he was letting his guard down and because of that became afraid that if we kept talking the thorns would show up again, so instead, I answered:
“Let’s...”
Chapter 08.
“Yo, Mayoi, how’re things going? Pretty good I see. Is this the second guy you bring here? Haha.”
“Please don’t put it like that.”
That first sentence was Gaen’s.
At the exact moment we stepped into the first classroom on the third floor she said that like she already knew we were coming.
Which, knowing this woman, probably was true.
“Boy, you sure like to keep me expecting, do you have any idea how bored I was waiting for you here?”
“How did you even know I was coming?”
“I heard a rumor.”
With that vague answer and a giggle, she switched her look from me to Isac by my side, who was with his default unfriendly expression that hardly faltered or changed since that moment of surprise back at the school.
“Hello young one, how may I help you?”
Gaen asked in a friendly tone, she, of course, probably already knew who Isac was and what problems he was facing, she was that kind of person.
You could say she saw through everything.
But even this person who seemed to know everything from what I heard had her rules:
1-Never reveal any more than necessary
2-Only help those willing to seek for it
So following those, she simply asked that.
“Hello ma’am, My name is Isac Drakenberg and I am a classmate of Hon’i, he told me you could help me with my problems with what he called a neighbor.”
“Apparently he met one and after tha-”
“Thorns come out of my skin every time i feel compelled to open up to someone, or someone gets through my guard. I know how to talk Hon’i. Please go sit down on some corner”
“I thought you wouldn’t wanna talk about it, so I thought I was being a bit sensible.”
“Do I need to explain? Why would I without even knowing anything about this person?- by the way, I don’t mean to insult you Gaen.”
“No insults taken, young one. But thorns, huh? Would you mind telling me when it began and if you saw anything remarkable around that time?”
“If I told you, would you be able to save me?”
“Save you? Sorry, no can do, young boy. The only one who can save you is yourself, all I can and intend to do is give you the means to do it.”
“You know, there were a lot of people who told me that same thing in the past, all of them made my problem even worse, will things with you be the same?”
“How do you intend to find out? If you want, please feel free to walk out of this classroom, the door is right there. But if you do that because of your fear, you will never know what you lost by not letting me help or, at the very least, hear you out. So what will you do? I can’t lend you a hand if you don’t tell me anything. The choice is yours.”
“...”
He
Isac
Looked... Scared.
Like he didn’t know what to do.
I was frustrated at myself for being unable to do anything, but Gaen was right, painfully right, the choice was entirely his and no one could or had the right to make it for him, so all I could do was wait, wait for his answer.
“I- saw a porcupine. Four years ago I witnessed this abnormally huge porcupine.”
He began.
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140,859 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
Ok, it's been a few days so I've just popped back to reread the end of your last chapter. It can sometimes be helpful to put a quick summary of what's happened so far in a spoiler at the top of your work. That way, someone new to the story can give it a review without reading the previous chapters. Up to you whether you do this or not but I find it can be helpful
I like the way your dialogue flows and how your characters interact with each other. Sometimes though, I think you need a few more dialogue tags so that it's easier for the reader to keep track of who is speaking.
I think all of this can be on one line.
As before, I would combine chapters 7 and 8. A new chapter is only really needed when you change the scene drastically or you want to denote time passing (there are of course other reasons such as cliffhangers) and I think your two chapters here could be combined to form one longer one.
My main critique with this one is definitely the lack of dialogue tags (he replied, I said, he asked etc.) just to work out who is talking when as you have lots of large chunks of dialogue and at the moment it's hard to keep up!
I'm also assuming that Hon'i is the name of your main character, which hasn't been clear for me up until now (and actually still wasn't until I read Lezuli's review) so perhaps you could have Isac address Hon'i by name?
Hope this helped!
Icy
Hello again! I'm back yet again. The light novel-like atmosphere of the story keeps getting better. I feel like you're really starting to get the way the story flows. The handle on your characters is also quite nice.
Of course, without further delay, I'll get on to the good stuff.
#1: “If I said ‘not at all’ would it be less suspicious to you.” Right here, you should end this in a question mark since Hon'i is asking Isac something.
#2: "Her name is Gaen, and she is specialized in cases like mine and your's" there are a few things here. One would be 'she is specialized in' should probably be something more like 'she specializes in'(it'll make more sense that way). And since 'your' is already possessive, you don't need to have the apostrophe, so it should simply be 'yours'.
#3: "I know how to talk Hon’i. Please go sit down on some conner" Two things here, I don't understand what 'sit down on some conner' means. Did you perhaps mean counter? And two, the sentence should end in a period.
And that's all I have for you! These chapters really made me laugh. I hope to read the next bit soon!
Hello man! Thanks for showing up again and for your review.
To be honest, I didn't even notice the #1 and #2 at all, so that helped quite a lot.
On the #3, I actually meant "corner", I think I mistyped, so thank you for pointing that out.
I'm really glad that you are liking it so far! Tomorrow there will be more so I hope to see you then!