Dice
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01 - A Regular Day
🕑 Added 2024-06-22 22:58:20 +0000 UTC"No, I swear, people these days just don't get cinema anymore!"
An obnoxiously loud voice carried through the already busy café, just as it had been for the past five, uninterrupted minutes. It was as though the man that it belonged to was in some kind of competition to see who could be the most annoying and socially unaware. Meanwhile, the young woman across from him seemed to try and hide her face between her own shoulders to avoid the glares from the other people around. As though her silence was an invitation for him to continue, the man once more opened his mouth, "You can't blame them though, the trash they show these days-"
"An iced Caramel Cappuccino for you, and a simple black coffee for you," with a smile on his face, the young server placed two cups onto the table in front of these two customers, interrupting the 'conversation'. Staring up at him, the man clicked his tongue, quickly turning back to the woman across from him, but the server wasn't quite done yet.
"And it would be much appreciated if you could lower your voice, you are disturbing the other customers," he quickly added, wearing a professional smile on his face. The man scoffed and shook his head, as if he had just heard a distasteful joke.
"This is a public place! What, we can't even have a conversation in public anymore?"
"Actually, Café Runic is a privately owned business, so if you're not willing to quiet your voice, we reserve the right to remove you from the property," the server retorted before the customer had even been able to close his mouth again.
With a click of his tongue, the customer glared back. But, he also started to notice the server tapping the wooden serving platter with his finger very obviously, basically wanting to drag attention toward it. And at the base of that finger, the server's red and and recently-bruised knuckles became apparent. As the man looked back up, seeing that customer-service smile combined with two absolutely unsmiling eyes, he meekly shrank back. Figuring that the problem was solved for the time being, the server looked at the woman seated at the table, giving her an encouraging wink before turning back around and heading toward the counter.
"Ah, how little I miss having to deal with that myself," the man lazily leaning onto the counter said with a reminiscent smile, but the server just rolled his eyes in response.
"You're the owner, I'd actually appreciate it if you did 'deal with that' every once in a while."
"And what, take away my little knight's job? I wouldn't dare!"
"Don't call me that."
As if hurt by the blunt rejection, the owner touched his hand to his chest, "What, your mother can call you that, but I can't?"
"Yes, actually," the server sighed loudly, glancing past the man in front of him, "Runar."
"Ryan," the owner, Runar, replied with a puzzled expression, but Ryan just shook his head, "No, the milk is bubbling over."
As the confusion on Runar's face was replaced with panic, he turned around, seeing that he left the hose of the milk frother inside the pitcher and hadn't fully closed the valve again. As he hurried to clean up after himself, Ryan heard the café's bell ring as another customer entered through the door. He looked around a little nervously before spotting the counter with Ryan stood in front of it and quickly approached him.
"Welcome! How can I help you?" Ryan asked, returning back to his customer-service mode, and the young man kept glancing around the space, "Uhm, do you guys maybe have another door somewhere? My girlfriend can't get through your main entrance..."
With a raised brow, Ryan looked past the worried young man, spotting a figure stood in front of the door outside. Smiling, since this wasn't the first time this happened, he motioned for the young man to follow him and walked over to the door. He pulled it open and stepped through, quickly looking up at the person in question, her single large eye starting to well up with embarrassed tears.
"Hey, it's all good, nothing to worry about!" Ryan said with a smile, trying to calm her down as he pulled the door shut behind him again. He then quickly stepped aside to make some space, "Just give it a try, reach out to the door."
A bit confused, the young cyclops girl did as told, pushing her hand toward the door handle. As she did so, with a quiet sound of stone rubbing against stone, the bricks around the frame shifted aside to make way for the expanding wooden door.
"We've got an adaptive doorway. Cyclops, Minotaur, Giant; as long as you fit into our main space, the door will work," Ryan explained, looking up at the surprised expression of the two customers, "We're still trying to figure out how to make that more obvious. If you have any friends that also belong to larger species and enjoy some good coffee, feel free to let them know that our door opens for anyone."
Excitedly, the young woman walked through the door which had now grown enough to let her pass through. Ryan followed behind and glanced at the door that returned back to its standard size, and guided the couple toward a table that could accommodate them both. And after taking their order, Ryan returned to the counter to pass it on to Runar.
"Seriously, can't we just put a sign out front? You know everyone's always confused about that," Ryan complained, but Runar just groaned as he started working on the orders, "I know, I know, you've been annoying me about that for a few weeks. I'm working on it, okay?"
"Why'd you even have to go with that kind of thing? That can't have been cheap."
"A friend offered to install it for free when I opened the place. And it's much better than having three different doors or something, like some places do," Runar complained, "And if we don't do that, it would have to be a single massive door, but a door for a three and a half meter Cyclops is going to be annoying for, like, a one meter Gnome to open. And I swear to the gods I refuse to get one of those stupid motion-sensor sliding doors."
"What's your issue with those anyway?"
"They fucking ignore me all the time," Runar clicked his tongue, putting the finished orders onto the counter in front of Ryan, "When you're done with that, go ahead and call it a day. You started early today, anyway."
A bit surprised, Ryan looked back at Runar, "You sure? I don't mind working a little longer. It's pretty busy, y'know?"
Runar locked eyes with Ryan, holding up his finger and pointing at him like a warning, "Don't make me repeat myself. There's some packages for you anyway, go take care of those. I don't like the clutter."
"I've seen your bedroom, dude."
"Point taken. Now shut up and get going already."
Ryan smiled lightly, choosing not to fight against it. After bringing the ordered coffee and pastries to the young human-cyclops couple, he made his way to the back of the café. He quickly hung up his apron, unlocked the door next to him, and walked up the stairs into the apartment above the café, grabbing the two cardboard boxes from the hallway on the way to his room.
Ryan pushed shut the door with his foot and placed the boxes down on his desk, and then looked around for something to open them with. His eyes landed on his exacto knife and he quickly ran it through the tape holding the cardboard box shut. As he opened it up, a broad smile formed on Ryan's face.
"Oh hell yeah," he let out as he pulled the content out of the box; it was a model kit, depicting an old, and probably historically inaccurate, orcish armour. It was colourful and exaggerated, and an orc's dark green skin peeked out underneath the armour's cracks on the box art as the warrior prepared himself for battle.
With a happy hum, Ryan threw the now empty cardboard box onto the pile next to his door, "I thought it was only going to arrive on Thursday."
He placed the kit onto his desk and then glanced over at the other box. It was a lot heavier than the kit, and the name written at the top of the return address stuck out. 'Mary Locke'.
He used the exacto knife to open this one up as well, and the first thing he saw was an old t-shirt that he specifically said he didn't need anymore. With a sigh, he threw it over onto his bed to put it away later. The rest of the box was filled with bags of homemade cookies, some of Ryan's favourite snacks, and a few non-perishables.
He pulled out his phone and looked at his recent call list, dialling one of the numbers toward the top before he put his phone on speaker. As the call went through, Ryan put the box onto the ground and started to open the model kit, pulling his small toolbox over toward him.
With a slight crackling, the call connected.
"Hey mom," Ryan quickly said, "How are you?"
"I'm well honey, I just got home!" Ryan's mother replied with a happy voice.
"How was work?"
"Well, slow, nothing big happened. Someone still keeps stealing Janice's lunch, and we think maybe it's Sandra again, but we don't know for sure," she replied, updating Ryan on matters related to people he never met and was never going to meet, as Mary usually does, "How are you doing though, how is school going?"
"School's fine, exam season's over so things are pretty chill right now. I've been working more, and hanging out with Silvia and Modak and stuff," Ryan replied, as he started removing his new model's individual pieces from the plastic frames with his clippers, before he put them into different sorting boxes to keep track of them.
"That sounds nice, how are they doing? Oh and how is your uncle?"
"Silvia and Modak are fine, they're also just happy not to have to study all the time anymore. And Runar, he... well, he seems to be doing alright. Not any worse than he always does, at least," Ryan pointed out, lightly scoffing, "Honestly, I've got no idea how he's been managing without me, though. The café is pretty popular, and Runar is... well, Runar."
"Be nice to him! He's letting you live with him rent free and even pays you for any work you do," Ryan's mother replied, but he couldn't help himself.
"Yeah of course, I'm super grateful, but the guy never seems to sleep and is constantly walking around with circles under his eyes that make him look like an undead."
For a few moments, the person on the other side of the call was silent, before quietly agreeing, "...Well, that's also true."
Ryan laughed silently as he continued clipping the pieces, a sound that was becoming clearer to Mary during this quiet moment.
"Oh, are you doing another one of those toy model things?"
Ryan stopped for a moment, trying to consider if it was worth it to correct her on the 'toy' part of what she said. It wasn't. It wouldn't have been the first time anyway, "Yup, just got a new one. It's apparently inspired by this 300CE armour from the orcish independence war, but I think the word 'inspired' is carrying a lot of weight here."
"Well, as long as it looks nice!"
"I guess so."
"That reminds me though, did my care package get there?" Mary asked, and Ryan quickly glanced over at the box next to him.
"Yup, thanks again, by the way. You don't always have to send me so much stuff. My shelf is filled with so many cans I'm starting to look like a prepper", Ryan pointed out awkwardly. He was happy to get packages from his mom so often, but at the same time, the guilt of having her do so much is something that he couldn't help but feel just as strongly every time.
"Nonsense! Better a prepper than starving!" with an immediate reply, Mary shut down any further complaints from Ryan, "But anyway, there should also be a small box at the bottom there, I found it in your dad's old stuff. It has a bunch of those toy model tools, so I figured you might have a better use for them than I do."
Surprised, Ryan raised a brow. He thought that at this point, they knew about all of his father's stuff, so hearing his mom say that she 'found it' was surprising, "I'll take a look later and see what I can use. Thanks. But how are things on your side, you said there was another small street fest thing happening before?"
"Oh yes, right!" Mary replied in an upbeat, excited voice, "I nearly forgot, but I met Johnny's mother there, and apparently Johnny awakened recently! I think she said it was some sort of physical class, something like an Enhancer? Apparently he's starting a business now!"
Ryan held back his desire to sigh at that information. Johnny was a good guy for sure, so if anyone deserved to awaken, he did. Especially with the fame and flashiness that usually came with being an Enhancer specifically, it was better for a guy like him to get that class. At the same time, Ryan hadn't spoke more than a sentence at a time with Johnny since 8th grade, so he couldn't say that he particularly cared all that much. Though, maybe there were some slightly jealous undertones to that.
The conversation continued like that, speaking of relatively mundane matters for around twenty more minutes. By the time the call was over, Ryan had removed all the model's individual pieces and had even started flipping through the model's guide to double-check that he had the right idea about all the pieces.
"Make sure to eat well," Mary said, a smile audibly on her face.
"I will, you as well, mom."
"Of course. Love you, my little knight."
"I love you too, mom. Talk to you later," Ryan said, as he reached over toward his phone, ending the call. He twisted his chair around and leaned forward to the care-package his mother had sent, shuffling through the items inside. And just as she had said, at the bottom of the box, Mary had hidden another small, but wooden box. He was surprised to see something as intricate as it was, considering how long it must have been stowed away and hidden. It didn't seem like something that you would keep in an inconspicuous place. He pushed the latch to the side, and quickly revealed the objects within.
Some clippers, a metal file, a couple of brushes, as well as needles and thread, and even a small handkerchief. It seemed to basically be a random assortment of stuff, but it was still pretty high-quality, even if at least two decades old. Not that he figured he would have any use for these. The tools that he had were newer, and in a clearly much better state. The ones in the box were all quite pretty though, with intricate patterns on their surfaces, so Ryan might clean them up and display them with his models.
As he pushed everything in the box around, he noticed something glistening in response to the rays shining into it from the window. A thin red layer of light filling the box completely. It was a gemstone, neatly cut into shape. Not large by any means, barely half as big as his thumb, but it wasn't something that he expected in here. Though, Ryan also didn't expect a silk handkerchief, but something about that gemstone stuck out, as if it didn't belong.
He reached his hand into the box and picked up the red gem, the refracted light now covering his fingertips. Or at least, Ryan assumed that it was refracted light, but the shine was far too strong for just that. It was glowing, not through the sunlight, but through its own power.
Ryan's eyes focused on the stone, practically enthralled, he felt a sharp stinging, as if someone had stuck a needle into his eye from outside his periphery. But it didn't really hurt either. It was intense and focused, but not painful. And as the feeling subsided, something entered his view.
***
[Congratulations! You have awakened as a Spirit Keeper!]
