by Sarah Lin
After so many nasty surprises, Rick was able to hold back his flinch, but he still winced at the newest surprise. "Wait a minute, I need to pay you just to check me? And you might just get the results and then turn me away?"
"That's how this works, kid. You expect me to just eat the cost of every person who wants to rent an apartment?"
"I don't know, I figured you'd have some kind of special system for it... and why do you need a portfolio analysis? You've already seen my lucrima portfolio!"
The landlord stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head. "If you're really worried about a tiny fee, then I don't think you're in a position to be renting any real apartment, much less mine. This tour is over. If you ever come back, you'd better have documentation of a lot more lucrim in hand."
Just like that, it was over. An old instinct urged Rick to apologize, but he suppressed it since the landlord was being an asshole. Another part of him wanted to lash out in anger, but he knew that it was just because he felt humiliated. This hadn't been the first time the poverty of his family had embarrassed him, it was just that he'd thought that he'd gotten past that...
When he got out onto the sidewalk, he just stared for a while, mentally catching up. The first thing he tried to do was call Uncle Frank, then angrily hung up when he didn't get a response. A moment later he realized that it was night on the other side of the world, so of course his uncle wouldn't answer. He called again and left a message saying that he needed advice on housing issues.
Framing the problem in a rational manner went a long way toward calming him down. He'd faced nastier challenges from people who wanted to maim or kill him, so he could get through this. And though the experience had been bitter, he felt reassured that he had made the right decision to stop fighting in the Underground.
The days when someone could make a living just by being strong were over. His martial strength wasn't useless, but it was good to remember that for many people, that strength didn't have any significance. If he wanted to build a meaningful life for himself, he needed to consider more than one path.
What path he intended to take, he wasn't sure. In ancient times he might have been valued, with elders pouring investments into him to boost his strength, but now he only had himself. He found his mind wandering to the agents of the Global Lucrim Authority that he'd met. They had nice clothes, an abundance of lucrim, and almost universal respect. Maybe taking that job wouldn't be so bad after all.
Rick gave the aura technique another try, but he still wasn't sure about several of the details. Besides, in his present state, he wasn't going to accomplish anything complex. What he needed was to talk to someone, but he didn't want to burden Melissa with his own problems.
After a while, Rick pulled out his phone and made a call he hadn't intended. "Lisa? Hi. Nothing's wrong, but I was wondering if we could reschedule our next sparring session..."
Chapter 7: Eastpark with Lisa
Eastpark was unusually busy, so they needed to go further off the beaten path to find a good place to train. Lisa was as focused in her assault as usual, though her level of lucrim was no longer so overwhelming as it once was. She didn't bother to artificially lower her generation rate anymore and the fights were still enjoyable, especially since she was doing it for lucrim development, not martial ability.
Since it was nearly summer, Lisa had turned in her usual jacket for a blue blouse. Usually she wore t-shirts, but he had to admit that this look suited her. It was easy to imagine her strolling into an apartment and getting respectful treatment. Then again, she'd taken an unusual route in exploring lucrim massage and he found himself wondering exactly why.
Once they finished they moved to one of the picnic tables. Lisa had her hair up, as usual, but took it down to fix her ponytail. She smiled at him, but saw how troubled he was and let the smile fade. "What's wrong, Rick?"
"Things didn't go well when I was trying to look for an apartment and I'm still irritated about it." He told her what had happened, trying not to let his bitterness come through. While he spoke, Lisa listened carefully, but she also opened her backpack and pulled out a pair of water bottles and sandwiches. There was no wrapper, so she might have made them herself, but Rick was too distracted to think much about it.
When he finished, Lisa shook her head and made a sympathetic noise. "That guy was an asshole, but I'm afraid you're going to run into that attitude more. My parents know some landlords and they tend to do whatever they can to screen out tenants they might not like."
"But he wasn't trying to cheat me with those background check fees?"
"That's standard." Lisa took a bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully before speaking. "I guess I never really thought about it. Getting into a good apartment, there are a lot of little fees. That probably makes applying impossible for a lot of people."
"Huh. What about the ridiculously huge deposit for being a fighter? I can see them needing some insurance, but... really? That much?"
Lisa winced. "Judging from some of my professional clients' complaints, it can get even higher than that. Fighters judged a risk will make a landlord's insurance skyrocket. Now, in this case, he probably raised the number a bit on you to make you go away. But if you're trying to get an apartment yourself, you're probably going to need a pretty big security deposit."
Sighing, Rick assumed that she was right. "I can't afford to flush that much money down the drain, though."
"Oh, you'll get it back when you leave the apartment, unless you really do blow up the place. Landlords used to try to weasel people out of fighter deposits, but the guilds and sects came down hard on that. Thanks to some lobbying, there are really strong laws on the books to prevent fraud like that."
Though that was slightly reassuring, it actually didn't change the situation for him: having six digits of lucrim locked away in a security deposit was something he just couldn't afford. He needed that lucrim for his own development. With no solution in sight, Rick just munched on his sandwich in silence.
After a little while, he realized how much he'd been talking about his own problems. Lisa sat alongside him without any sign of discomfort, but he reflected that he was being self-centered. For some reason he thought about telling her that her blouse looked nice, then decided that was stupid. They had an agreement to trade training, so it would be dumb to risk that.
Instead, he gestured with his sandwich. "These are really good, thanks."
"You like them?" Lisa smiled more broadly than he'd expected. "I didn't ask, but I figured you wouldn't mind. I always get hungry after training."
"Yeah, thanks." He realized too late that he'd repeated himself and desperately sought for another good topic to keep things from getting awkwardly silent. "Has your business been going okay lately? Come to think of it, did you have trouble getting apartments, since you don't get normal pay stubs?"
Lisa made a face. "Yeah, landlords really don't like self-employed people. But since I have a lot of decent clients, I was able to show them my tax returns instead. Ugh, not that I want to think about that... no, business is going pretty well. I'm actually expanding a bit, thanks to you."
Rick blinked in confusion. "Thanks to me?"
"Don't you remember? You said that I did a good job explaining lucrim techniques, and that got me thinking. Nobody had ever said that to me before, so it really lit a fire under me."
Though he remembered now, it had been an offhand comment. Apparently it had meant much more to her, and he was just glad to see her looking so inspired. Not sure quite how to respond, he just nodded and smiled, then went back to his sandwich while she spoke.
"I got to thinking that I really should be doing more than giving my clients massages. I'm not a real expert, but they do ask me a lot of questions. Not taking advantage of that, at least getting referrals, was just leaving money on the table." She immediately raised a hand as if to ward off an objection. "Now, don't worry, I'm not going to become an influencer and try to peddle my patented secret lucri
m growth formula online!"
"Wouldn't dream of it." Rick grinned, trying to imagine Lisa doing that kind of thing. He thought that she might be able to, but it definitely wasn't her style.
"I actually thought about writing a book, but... I don't know, I'm not sure I have the writing gene. But I do think I have some talent for crafting lucrim supplements. Not any kind of genius creations from scratch, but there's a lot of room for people to create customized blends specifically for individual fighters."
"Huh, so you're kind of doing customized nutrition programs for your clients, but for lucrim?"
"Just like that! Quite a few already have someone or turned me down, but several agreed pretty easily - apparently they approve of the work I've done with them." Lisa set down the rest of her sandwich and frowned at the ground, an odd tension entering her body. "That's just a slight boost, though. If I want to really turn this into a successful new part of my business, I need to create and market my own blends. And that's tougher."
"You seem to know a lot about it, though. Or is the problem getting people to trust you?"
"A bit of both. The main thing is... it's mostly science, but there's some uncertain art to it that you just can't determine without real experiments. So, I..." Lisa shifted away further, not making eye contact. "I was wondering if you might be willing to help me out with that?"
Rick stared at her, trying to read between the lines. Was what she was asking illegal in some way, or was she just nervous to ask him? It didn't seem that unreasonable, not after everything that had passed between them, but maybe he was missing something. "Sure, why not?"
Immediately the tension on Lisa's face eased and she smiled at him. "I was afraid you'd be insulted."
"Why?"
"Well, I just... I wouldn't dare use any of my clients as a guinea pig, so I wasn't sure if you'd be upset that I was just using you to run tests. It's not that I want to take advantage, it's that I trust you more. I definitely wasn-"
"Heh, it's fine, Lisa." Rick cut her off with a light touch to her arm and was surprised at how she jumped just a little. "That honestly never crossed my mind. I was actually thinking that it'd be a bit unfair on my end, just taking free supplements from you."
"Oh, it wouldn't be like that." Lisa hastily shifted to face him again, though she didn't move her arm. "I mean, I definitely wouldn't charge you for it, but these would be real experiments. I'm experienced enough that I'm sure none of them would be seriously harmful for you, but some of them would be ineffective or even slow your growth a bit. It's not a small thing I'm asking here."
"Don't worry about that - it can't be worse than everything Granny Whitney forced me to take, can it? Besides, I trust you to make good guesses."
"Thank you, Rick. That means a lot." Lisa paused, smiling at him, and seemed about to say something else, but at that moment Rick's mind spat up something that had been bothering him. He pulled away to reach into his bag and root around for the little white box.
"That reminds me, I had a really strange experience when I went to that job offer I mentioned earlier..." He told her about the position and oddities of the trial session, including all the details of the strange fight with Damian. Lisa listened carefully and asked a few questions until eventually he opened up the box and showed its contents to her.
"Hmm." Lisa bent closer and peered at the crystal vial for a while. "You've gotten a professional's opinion?"
"Yeah, I did. It's some kind of uncommon serum, worth a decent amount because it's useful for developing speed techniques. I was thinking about using it on my Bunyan's Step Lucore, but I wanted to check with you first."
"Well, I don't see anything suspicious about it. It seems like it was a real gift in exchange for cooperating." Lisa straightened up from the box and stared at him somberly. At some point they seemed to have drifted further apart and he wasn't sure when. "Do you think that's all he wants, though?"
"No, probably not." Rick sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Given that he seems to have a ton of money, I really doubt he's just looking for a job. Even if the job itself is legit, I'm afraid it might end up being a real complication."
"I'd be concerned about your mental health if you didn't think that. The Global Lucrim Authority is a serious organization, Rick, and anything they consider a problem is equally serious."
"I know. Some of my instincts say that I should just clear their trial and then immediately give up, but on the other hand... I haven't gotten any other calls back and this is maybe the best job available to me. Even if it ends up getting me in over my head, it might be my only chance to make some headway."
Lisa sighed and looked at him with a strange expression he couldn't interpret. "Rick... are you going to spend your entire life running from one disaster to another?"
There was clearly more behind her question, but he didn't feel capable of picking it apart. Instead he just answered as honestly as he could. "I don't want to. But sometimes I worry that the safe path is just a dead end, so I'll need to keep taking risks."
She nodded as if she understood, but didn't answer. Rick put the vial back into its box and tucked it away, figuring that he would deal with it later. Judging from her mood, it was clear that their idle chatting was over, so he might as well ask the other major question he had for her.
"I actually wanted to get your input on that weird aura technique. I think I remember most of it, but I'm clearly wrong about some details, because it's just not doing what I saw it do..."
As he explained, Lisa devoted herself to the problem and had some good suggestions. Rick felt like he was a bit closer to an answer, and their session overall had gone very well. Yet he still felt as though something had gone wrong.
Chapter 8: Winnowing Options
With only ten days remaining until the job trial, Rick thought that he was partway to success... at solving the least concerning of his problems. Attempting to recreate the Vice President's technique had led to a very similar aura flow to the one he remembered. He was sure that he'd made a few errors, and there were a few issues he wanted to work out yet, but he thought that he'd figured out enough to pass the trial.
Beyond that, he just had too many problems. It was almost easier when the problems were thrown at him one after another, because he could just focus on putting out the most urgent fire. But this time, all the problems crept insidiously closer without any emergencies. Some of them were issues that couldn't be solved in a day, either.
He remembered living that way, both with his parents and with their extended family when his parents weren't capable of taking care of him and Melissa. The problem was, when they did have a moment free of disasters, they never did much to improve their lives or prepare for the next one.
Though Rick thought he had done a better job than his parents, he needed to do even better. As soon as he finished his usual meditation on the couch, he went looking for a pen and piece of paper. Then he sat down and tried to identify all the issues he needed to handle.
Getting a better job wasn't an issue, more like a broad goal that contained other problems. Rick wrote it bigger and then identified objectives beneath it:
Eliminate the aura leech.
Improve ether tier and score.
Obtain better qualifications.
Yet those felt more like goals too, not logical steps. Rick chewed on the end of his pen for a bit, then made a separate list under "find a new apartment":
Save up 100,000 lucrim for the fighter deposit.
Research the adult CLAT.
Find a better job.
The absurdity of that immediately struck him - all his problems were just tangled up. If he'd been born into a richer family, even a middle class one, he would have been set on a better path without any parental debts or other setbacks. Then he might have started out with a good ether score and known about all the little details like background check fees and fighter deposits.
On top of that, he wasn't even sure what job he wanted to get or if he really wanted
to move to a different apartment if it would be so much trouble. Rick wrote "Make job and apartment decisions" above the other lists, then scribbled the whole thing out in irritation. No, this wasn't helping.
Maybe it was better to focus on the simple pieces of the problem that he could remove from the equation. One immediately leapt out to him: saving up for the fighter deposit. Even if he didn't try to get a different apartment, he could use that money for anything else. That was no breakthrough, since he already saved money whenever he could, but it was good to set it out of mind.
Currently he had about 5000 lucrim hidden around the apartment. He needed 95,000 more. There was one simple goal that wasn't entangled with the rest.
Thinking about the entanglements, he realized that there was another major problem: deciding exactly what he wanted. He always had the vague idea of getting better qualifications than his meager high school degree, but hadn't actually made a decision. Maybe he should take that head on now.
Going to college was the obvious choice, either to get a normal degree or for a combat certification. Yet when he forced himself to really think about that option, he knew he wouldn't take it. He wasn't suited to become a business major or something, and getting a combat certification through a university program would be ridiculously expensive. Just being able to dismiss that option made his problems seem a little clearer.
Joining a combat sect was another clear path, and it wasn't so easy to dismiss. His victory in the multi-tier tournament might actually count for something there, as would his combat skill. But it would be signing over a significant degree of his freedom, and he wouldn't do that lightly. In the stories, heroes joined sects just long enough to use them and then left, but these days the sects were backed by multinational institutions who would make him sign contracts. If he actually tried to exploit or cheat a sect, he wouldn't make it through with miraculous good fortune. Still, he couldn't ignore the possibility of joining one for good.