Chapter 4

Even the double coffee hadn’t prepared me for all this cringy nonsense I was forced to film, and the fact that it was raining didn’t help at all. At least Vera didn’t mind it, as she ran around babbling some bizarre things about Dullahan so fast that my brain couldn’t process what she said. I guess I should consider myself lucky. If, by any chance, our channel got any views, my faith in humanity would crumble; I was sure of it.

At least, I needed to admit her enthusiasm towards the initiative. It was relatively long-lived compared to the other things she had tried so far. Of course, at one point, she would get bored with it and go back to spending her days on the sofa reading weird stories that gave her all sorts of wrong ideas. But still, at least she tried.

“Freja, Freja, come!” she waved at me, and I slowly walked towards her.

“What?”

“Look at the sunrise, it is so beautiful.”

She leaned into me and snapped another photo of us that, with some luck, I would manage to delete before she posted it anywhere. I glanced towards the east and the sun.

“I guess…”

At least it was getting light, so her chances of slipping on the wet ground and hurting herself had dropped slightly. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

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We walked hand in hand towards Ennistymon. I had never expected it to be that far, but I really wanted to show her the waterfalls. She liked all the nature stuff after all, so I thought that she would be happy about my surprise.

Just why did it have to be so far… The hotel we were supposed to be in, the one I had so carefully chosen for us, was so close to them that I could probably have seen the waterfalls from our window. It was a great compromise. I didn’t mind the nature, as long as I didn’t need to do any boring stuff with it…like walking to see it.

Being useless at most of the boring stuff adults were supposed to do didn’t mean I couldn’t make my girlfriend happy whenever I could, though. Like when I came up with this TikTok idea… I had known for a long time that Freja loved me by then, but was too afraid to admit to her feelings and pretended to misunderstand every single confession I made. Luckily, I remembered the pretend relationship trope that I could use to help her overcome her trauma. With time, she would dare to open up to her feelings, if only she could think of me as her girlfriend. Plus, it wasn’t too far from pretending we were girlfriends online to monetise our channel. It was a win-win scenario.

It was a bit of a shame that we missed the date in the aquarium and other cool stuff we could have done if we had dated like normal people. But at least Freja had finally accepted her feelings and overcome her dark past that had prevented her from accepting love.

I looked at the road ahead and sighed.

“Freja ... how much longer do we need to walk?”, I groaned.

“Around 10 minutes. We are almost there.”

I blinked. How could someone put ‘10 minutes of walking’ and ‘almost there’ in the same sentence? Such a distance could only be covered with a warp drive, which we unfortunately didn’t have, so for sure we weren’t ‘almost there’.

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She almost collapsed in the middle of the road, and I needed to resort to bribing her with her favourite candy to make her walk to town by herself rather than being carried on my back.

But not to my surprise, as soon as we reached the town square, she pulled out her phone to film, totally forgetting about how tired she had been just a few moments ago. I sighed. I had gotten pretty used to her sudden mood swings, but considering the fact that I had actually considered carrying her here, she should show some gratitude. If I had ever wanted to get myself a pet, I dropped that idea a long time ago…

I knew I needed to be careful now and constantly keep an eye on her. This place looked like the perfect tourist trap, and she looked like the perfect prey for any con artist who would try to sell her something we didn’t need. Especially when she engaged with them, first trying to get an interview for our show. I could only imagine what sort of nonsense they would spin if they realised that we are after Dullahan, and how much all that stuff would cost me.

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The moment we were done filming, Freja took my hand and led me away from the town square. I wanted to look around before we went to the waterfalls, but I didn't have the heart to oppose her excitement to see them. We could have had a picnic or something when we arrived, but it was raining, so I needed to come up with another plan. After all, I didn’t want her to get bored on our trip.

I took her hand, and we walked alongside the river. At least this part of my plan hadn’t suddenly disappeared, and the path by the river I had chosen was still in this dimension. Of course, I knew it might not stay here forever, but I had stopped entertaining the idea of getting transported to another world since I met Freja.

I didn’t think she would like it as much as I did. She had a real job that she liked, and most of the people who found themselves in another world were similar to me, so they didn’t have anything in the real world that they would miss. Except for the food, maybe… The thought made me hungry, so I tried to sneak my hand into Freja’s pocket, where she kept candies. She pulled my hand away and gave me a look.

“If you are hungry, you should have some real food.”

I looked at her, confused.

“Why…? We dropped health and fitness Pinterest a long time ago”

I had come up with that idea, hoping Freja would like it. She was sort of a fitness freak. Most of the time, she preferred to walk somewhere rather than to take a bus, like most people would do. But it didn’t work.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. I had correctly calculated that the baking time would take around two episodes to watch, but I hadn’t accounted for the fact that there would be a special between them. After the fire alarm rang, Freja banned me from using the kitchen, and the project died out.

I pulled at her sleeve.

“Hungry…”