"Hey, Felicia.""Hmm? What is it, Cole?"
"I thought of an interesting idea."
Felicia c.o.c.ked her head towards Cole who now had a playful smile on his face and eyes that were screaming of a scheme. Felicia was slightly surprised by such an expression.
In the short two months that she had known the man, his face would either hold a calm smile or absolute nothing at all. There were a few times where he had a few bursts of anger when Val came over for visits but it was mostly played as a joke and nothing ever too serious.
"What is it?"
"Why don"t we play a little game?"
As Cole said this, he pressed his palms together and when he opened them, two cards appeared on each of his hands.
"What"s this? I didn"t know you were a magician."
Cole simply smiled and gestured for her to take one of them. Felicia alternated between Cole"s smiling face and eventually took the card on Cole"s right palm.
It had regular old card pattern with the exception of a purple lightning bolt in the middle. Felicia had then recognized it as a pack of cards that Val had brought with him when he visited one time. He had said that they were a deck of magic cards that could do stuff.
As for what kind of stuff, he didn"t know and just forced it onto Cole.
When she flipped it up to see what was on it, what appeared was only a blank slate. She raised an eyebrow towards Cole and it was if she was saying, "The f*ck is this?"
Cole was busy looking at his own card and didn"t pay notice to her. Felicia then checked her card again just to make sure.
And then all of a sudden, it was as if ink was dropped onto the card and began to slowly spread.
After a few seconds, it had then revealed a cla.s.sic drawing of one of the Tarot Card. The Tower.
When Felicia raised her head to look at Cole again, he revealed his own card which had the simple number 5 on it.
Felicia tilted her head to one side as she didn"t understand what was the meaning of the two cards.
"Looks like I have 5 years."
"5 years? To do what?"
Cole put the card in his pocket and said to Felicia.
"Guess."
And then went back inside the house as Felicia wore a puzzled expression.
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When Eva woke up and went down the stairs along with her bunny, she was greeted with the sight of her Papa reading a book in the dining room with a black coat hung over his chair and Felicia browsing through a cooking magazine while taking down notes on a piece of paper. They sat opposite from each other and for some reason, the atmosphere felt so peaceful.
"..."
Her first instinct was to go back up the stairs and into her room to pinch herself numerous times to make sure she wasn"t dreaming. As for why that was her first instinct, it"s because a situation like that had happened where she dreamt the previous Cole was a kind and loving person.
*Sniff*
But in the middle of silently moon walking away, a pleasant and familiar aroma reached her nose.
"That smell is..."
Eva"s faced turned stern and her body stiffened. Her eyes traced back to the source of the aroma. It was as if there were all kinds of dramatic video effects happening around her.
*DUN*
Her eyes locked onto the dining table, and there, she saw it (Barely though, she"s too short). A white cup with warm milk and steam rising from the top was resting on the dining table. She weighed her options. If she tested out if what she was experiencing right now was a dream or not might take too long thus causing the warm milk to cool down which would lead to a bad end.
She could go in but that might break the nice atmosphere and she didn"t want that either. Her little head constantly went back and forth from the stairs to the dining table.
She got stuck in an extremely pointless dilemma. And please keep in mind that all of this was happening in complete silence and was overly dramatized.
Just as her tiny head was about to explode from over thinking, a pair of hands had brought over a tray with a warm cup of milk and a plate with some pancakes covered in maple syrup.
"Are you going to just stand there or are you going to have your breakfast? If you don"t, Cole"s going to finish it all!"
"Hey! You can"t blame me for having a sweet tooth!"
"Eh?"
Felicia gave a calm and mature smile, one that Eva was unused to while Cole retorted in the background.
Felicia"s smile felt like that of a responsible older sister"s, different from the one that was clumsy or cute. In could even pa.s.s as a smile of a...
...Mother...
She was stunned by the subtle difference that she ignored the warm cup of milk and hot fluffy pancakes placed right in front of her.
Well, not completely. She had taken a few bites and sips but her eyes were still glued onto Felicia"s visage. A bit of the maple syrup from the pancakes had started making its way down Eva"s agape mouth due to this. Felicia just chuckled and gave a wry smile as she wiped it off with a table napkin on the tray.
This had snapped Eva out of her daze for a bit and sat on the dining table in deep thought as she continued to devour her milk and pancakes.
Cole let out a grin at the sight and put down his book as he stood up from his chair. He ruffled Eva"s silver hair and loosely laid his black coat over his shoulders.
Eva jolted a bit with the sudden head pat. And when she raised her head to get a clear view of Cole, she felt the same kind gentleness and maturity from Cole. Well, he already had that same kind of air around him after a week or two of interaction with her.
"Did something good happen?"
Eva felt like giving up on finding a reason for their slight shift in behavior and just ate in peace. After all, she was still just five. She"d rather spend all her time reading all the storybooks in the library rather than endlessly search for something.
"Maybe it"s just their clothes."
Although it was a bit late, Eva finally took notice of the outfits that were different from their usual attire. Eva"s anime maid costume was swapped with a piece that allowed her more breathing room and a longer skirt while Cole wasn"t wearing a business jacket but he had a vest on instead.
The fact that people don"t have multiple sets of the same kind of clothing didn"t seem to have stuck with her yet.
"Well then, I"ll be going now."
Felicia then escorted him outside and sent him off to work.
"Aah… This scene…"
Eva then remembered a certain ill.u.s.tration in one of her favorite storybooks. It was colored using watercolors and the outlines had a pencil feel to it which it gave a feeling of warmth and coziness. The art was also cute and was purposefully made for that of a child"s eyes.
But it wasn"t because of the factors above that she recalled that certain ill.u.s.tration, obviously. It was because of the scene that the ill.u.s.tration had depicted.
It was of a wife sending her husband off to work while their child cheerfully ate their breakfast. As the little bunny thought this, a warm fuzzy feeling rose up in Eva"s little chest.
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Cole once again stood in front of the〈S.T.E.L.L.A〉Headquarters main building, every time he stood in front of its giant metal doors, Cole couldn"t help but wonder where exactly the place was.
When he roamed the premises for a bit before he asked to be teleported back, he found out that the land they were on was finite and below what the eye could see was essentially a pure black void that spelled out death for anyone who fell into it.
Cole wanted to ask Gemi and Mini yesterday but he figured he would be filled in on all the details about the place since he was going to be a Department Head.
He had his own thoughts as to what the position exactly entailed and wasn"t that bothered or stressed out by it at all.
It couldn"t be compared to commanding an entire fleet, could it?
"Well, you could say that your workers could be your crew. And that the building is your ship."
Out of literal nowhere, Libra had appeared behind Cole and joked around for a bit. Cole didn"t bother to ask as to where he was the entire morning.
"Oh, me? I was just wandering places and decided not to come in and break the nice family atmosphere you had going on earlier."
"When did you have the ability to read minds?"
"I can only read yours because of our Contract. You like to read those "light novels", right? Isn"t that a common cliche in them?"
"I used to read fantasy a lot but I eventually stopped reading them due to the overflow of s.e.x-driven, non-existent personality traits, hypocritical b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for a hero. That"s mostly just the j.a.panese Isekai ones. And the ones I mostly read came from the〈Times Zone〉or at least the time of it."
Cole and Libra left it at that and then walked into the building.