Chapter 4_Starting Cave

 Tomiko walked for about fifteen minutes, following the directions that Chimon gave. His bubble floated behind her at a respectable one foot away from her head.

The two of them approached a cave. Its entrance was above ground and easily accessed by walking, but wasn’t connected to a mountain face. The entrance was just cut into a small mound with walls that looked no more than two feet thick. It was an unnatural-looking structure that only served as an entrance underground.

Looking inside, it seemed to slope down gently into the dimly lit tunnel. The ground was flat and easily walkable. The walls were craggy but rounded, giving the impression it wouldn’t hurt to accidentally bump into. Nature seemed to have accessibility in mind when designing it.

After giving the entrance a quick once over, Tomiko entered the cave. It got cooler. The air was dingy. She was a little nervous, but was committed to putting on a stoic face.

Only a five minute walk downward before she encountered a creature. A large bat blocked their path. It was about three feet in size, covered in thin, short fur, and had glowing lime green eyes. It hissed at Tomiko as she approached.

Chimon started explaining "OK. So for this creature you're going to want to…"

But Tomiko wasn't listening. She bolted at the enemy. She unsheathed her sword mid run, and swiped at the bat. However, it was not as easy to draw her sword as she thought, and because of that she missed her mark while being closer to the enemy than she wanted. It would be best to keep herself at mid distance, since her sword had reach while the bat would most likely need to bite to deal damage.

A moment later, the bat did just that. It closed the little remaining distance between them and bit down on her extended right arm. Tomiko opened her mouth to let out a yell in pain, but quickly noticed it did not hurt.

'This is strange.' Tomiko thought to herself. She then tried to swat the bat off with her other hand, but it was not responding. None of her limbs were responding.

"You're at 85% health and falling!" Chimon shouted from behind. “Mild paralysis status countdown started.”

The bat got startled by the sound of Chimon’s voice, and detached from Tomuko's arm.

Tomiko still couldn't move. She felt helpless standing there. It was pathetic that she would be defeated by the first enemy.

"Ten seconds till paralysis wears off!" Chimon piped up again.

Tomiko started to understand, she couldn't identify how the battle was going, she needed to get that from Chimon. It seemed inefficient to her. However, she really did not like the pain she felt losing the last time she dived. She wouldn’t let it happen again. Not in front of her client. She would be a professional now.

The paralysis wore off, so she brought her sword back to a striking position. She looked up at the bat and paid close attention to its flight pattern. It was erratic. Moving back and forth, side to side, and slightly outside range Tomiko could close without overextending.

"Wait for it to attack and then strike." Chimon coached.

That was already what Tomiko was planning to do, at least, she thought it was after he said it. What she did know is that she didn’t like being told what to do. It crossed her mind to strike when she saw it get a little lower, just to spite Chimon. As she thought it, the bat fluttered a little lower. It was just barely in range. She went for it. Tomiko swung her sword as the bat dipped.

It connected!

Tomiko watched as the bat fell to the ground about six feet away. She sheathed her sword and faced the direction that led deeper into the cave.

"That wasn't enough damage!"

The bat got back up and darted at Tomiko. There wasn't enough time for her to draw out her blade. She leapt out of the way as the bat came zipping by. From prone, she saw as the bat quickly turned itself around and continued its pursuit.

Her sword was stuck between the ground and her body. She wouldn't be able to draw it while pinned underneath her. Chimon's stuttering made it hard for her to think straight, as he tried to say something useful. The words weren't coming out.

Despite being distracted, Tomiko grabbed a rock close to her head and chucked it at the bat.

It hit!

The bat exploded into a puff of smoke. From the smoke dropped two small green crystals. They looked no larger than an inch each. Both hit the ground with a satisfying jingle.

They had survived their first encounter.

"Well, that was thrilling." Chimon said, trying to make conversation.

Tomiko was a bit shaken by what happened. Her ego was a bit bruised. It had been a sadder display than she wanted to perform. Only a little better than her first dive.

Chimon recommended going over to pick up their reward, but Tomiko was lost in thought. After about an uncomfortable silence, Tomiko got up, picked up the two crystals, placed them in her pocket and walked deeper in the cave without saying a word.

Despite having someone physically attached to her, she felt very alone.

They kept traveling deeper into the cave. The next few encounters went a lot smoother. They faced a few more bats, a cave spider, and some ooze.

Chimon kept reminding or bringing up random helpful pieces of information, and Tomiko kept acting like she didn't hear. Not that his words were of no use. She was only barely registering what was going on around her. It was like a flow state where everything was subconsciously taken into account. She felt detached from the situation she was in. Going through the motions, but her mind was elsewhere, circling.

Chimon could tell something was wrong, and decided something needed to be done. He moved over in front to face Tomiko with his bubble for a head.

"Hey, listen." He shouted with his best annoying game character impression.

The reference was not understood. Tomiko just looked over at him, annoyed. She waited for a follow up.

Chimon got nervous. His simplistic face shifted to reflect.

"Um…" he delayed trying to think of something to say. He didn't expect his video game reference to go unnoticed. "... instead of placing drops in your pockets, in this world to place items in our inventory you need to place them in my head for me to sort.”

Tomiko's mood went from unfeeling to rage. How dare he correct her again. How dare he use a tone like he's doing me a favor. How dare he wait until now that her pockets were uncomfortably full.

"That's it! I quit!" She retorted back to his advice.

She went into settings and logged out. She knew she couldn’t pull off the sharad anymore. Her confidence was too damaged.

They both quickly appeared back at the portal in the alley.

Tomiko looked back at Chimon ready to yell at him some more, but when she turned she saw that his face was fuming. 'Why was HE angry?’

But Chimon erupted "Why did you leave before adding the loot to our inventory! That was an hour's worth of progress wasted! It's like turning off a game before saving! Who does that!"

Tomiko was frozen with shock. Chimon had been fairly meek up until that point. It seemed like she crossed a line. Why should it matter to him anyway, the terms of the quest said she got all the loot drops. Perhaps something else was going on that she wasn't seeing?

They both stood in silence until Chimon cooled off. He took out a bag of candies and started munching down on them. Comfort food? He was eating a lot of sugar though. It almost made Tomiko sick to watch.

"I'm sorry I yelled." Chimon said with a mouth full of candy. "I just, really wanted this to work out."

Tomiko felt put in the position to apologize. He was the client. All he asked for was to be accompanied to this world, and was intending to pay her handsomely for doing so. As strange as the situation was for her, Chimon wasn't really doing anything that creepy. He was actually being useful. He genuinely wanted Tomiko to succeed. To have a good time. But Tomiko was putting him down at every chance she got.

She knew she needed to apologize. She wanted to apologize. Something was making it hard to do so though. Every ounce in her being was telling her to find some way to place the blame on anything else. But she knew that was not true. As much as she searched, the one at fault was her.

"I'm… sorry"

Chimon didn't look too impressed with the struggling apology, but took it anyway.

"Alrighty, so... do you want to recover your loot, or are you done?"

Tomiko thought about it for a little bit. If she left now, it would feel like a complete failure.

"I want to go back in. Do you still have time?"

"Yeah, I don't have anywhere to be."

Huh, just like Tomiko. She was not about to admit that to him. It was possible her dad might notice if she was out too late. Or he would just skip dinner again and not care.

"Ok, but this time, we should walk in at the same time. It makes loading faster for this portal."

With a bit of a better understanding of each other, they both entered the portal with their different motives still to themselves.

Fortunately, the crystals were lying right where Tomiko logged out. They didn't enter the world in the same spot. The portal had materialized them at the entrance of the cave.

It took them a lot shorter to reach the same spot in the cave. Partly because Tomiko had leveled up a couple of times, she was not even aware when it happened. But her effectiveness was mostly due to Tomiko listening more to Chimon and his strategies.

“Paralysis is one of seven status conditions that exist in this world. There is also sleep, poison, curse, blinded, deafened, and exhausted. It’s best to heal outside of battle so as to not waste time during a fight. These glowing circles let us heal for free. This cave doesn’t have any, but keep a lookout for traps.”

She still did not like it. It put her in a position of feeling not fully in control, but she supposed it was what having a 'support' on an adventure should feel like. There was not much else Chimon really could do. He was just sort of along for the ride. Then Tomiko got to questioning, why was Chimon so eager for this quest? He wasn't really experiencing the adventure, he was giving away all of the rewards, and he was even paying for a test run.

Something still felt off about the whole situation. Was there a loophole she had missed in the quest description? Or perhaps he was still waiting to make some sort of move on her? She decided to continue with a bit of caution.

Then something occurred to her as she approached the end of the cave. Chimon not only knew a lot about diving and games similar in nature, but he knew a lot about this portal. He kept using terms like 'in this world' or 'this portal'. His comment about traps not being in this cave was very telling. And when they entered for the second time, he knew that both tags needed to activate close to each other to enter faster. He already knew that two people were linked and needed to wait on the other person to enter properly, and that was probably one of the things he would have explained had she not stormed in the first time. He had a lot of experience in this world. But, where was the other person he would have been diving with?

After reaching the end of the cave and defeating the boss, an albino cave bear, they collected all their earnings and logged out.

Chimon was the first to speak. "So… uh… same time t-t-tomorrow?"

Why was he getting so nervous all of a sudden? Was he suddenly embarrassed to talk to a girl, despite being literally attached for the past three hours. Whatever, it was harmless.

"Sure, I can work it into my schedule. Just as long as I can keep getting the loot."

"Yes, of course!"

"Ok then, bye."

Tomiko started to walk away, but before she made it to the entrance leading back to the street she heard Chimon shout out after her.

"I know you probably already know this, but you need to cash in your loot at a store that will accept it! The closest dealer is in the park next to the crepe stand!"

Tomiko felt a spike of embarrassment before briskly walking in that direction. She was planning on just going to the bank and hoping that they would help her out. She only heard from Aio that there was a way to make money portal diving, and had not thought about the logistics of getting paid.

As she walked, she thought more about how Chimon told her about it. He probably figured out that Tomiko would not know what to do, but told her in a way that gave her the benefit of the doubt. She appreciated that. He did not need to either. Chimon could have just left her to struggle and figure it out herself. He was too kind after how rude she was.

'What a nice guy' she thought to herself. Still a nerd, and there was still something he was not telling her, but she felt a lot more at ease with the idea of working with him than when they first met.

It was a short walk to the park. She was half expecting it to be closed, but someone was indeed standing there to the left of the confection stand. The figure was standing behind a shabby wooden counter that had wheels and foldable surfaces for portability. However, one of the wheels was broken, so it did not seem capable of moving. The person wore a black hoodie with a large logo spray painted on front.

The logo depicted a cartoon styled trading scale bisected diagonally by a portal. Tomiko also noticed that a large sticker of the logo was slapped on the light post behind the person and the crepe stand. It was high enough that she could see it over the cart, but not higher than the crepe stand. The sticker seemed to be positioned in a way that made it visible only to those who were looking for it.

Now that Tomiko had a good look at the logo, she felt as though she had seen it in places before. She was not sure where, but it definitely had a sense of familiarity and omnipresence.

Tomiko approached the hooded figure. It was difficult to make out the features on his face, or her, it wasn't really clear. They spoke to Tomiko with a voice that made the difference even harder to tell.

"Welcome. Can't say that I've seen you around. Are you buying or selling?"

"Selling." Tomiko said as confidently as she could while also being sort of intimidated.

"We'll see about that." Calling Tomiko's bluff on confidence. "Show me what you have to offer."

"Ummm" Tomiko stalled as she pulled out her tag and went to the inventory under her profile created that day.

The trader rolled their eyes, or at least, moved their head in a motion that made it look like they were rolling their eyes. They then proceeded to direct Tomiko to the connection setting so that they could link up and trade without having to exchange tags. Tomiko had forgotten how important it was not to give someone else your tag, especially someone you did not know.

The trader took a quick look at their own tag screen. "Profile for portal JP2-00732 I presume?"

“Yes" Tomiko answered, realizing that was the government identification number for the portal.

“You need to mark what’s available for sale.”

“Oh right, I knew that.” She frantically did so on her device.

"Hm." The trader briefly looked at what she presented on their tag. "Well I can't give you anything for the unique items, as it seems to be a fairly unpopular world to dive into. That being said, it does look like the world's currency is transferable to other worlds."

They looked up at Tomiko and shot her an unidentifiable look. "Consider yourself lucky."

The hood then returned to the screen of their tag. "It looks like the conversation rate and economic stability identifiers have already been synced up. So there isn't any room for negotiations. How much are you looking to convert and to which currency; or perhaps I can still interest you in my wares?" They made a waving motion over the counter to bring attention to the merchandise.

Tomiko briefly looked over what they had to be respectful, but had already made up her mind.

"I would like all of it to be converted to cash."

As the trader walked her through the transaction process, Tomiko took inventory of the items available for sale. They were varied and many not purchasable from conventional stores. Some items that stuck out to her were several used notebooks, a stag beetle in a jar, carved rocks, a switchblade, very large underwear and a few glass soda bottles filled with definitely not soda.

The trader must have picked up on Tomiko's confusion because they began to explain. "These items have been seen to become useful starting equipment in various worlds. Either that, or merchandise people are willing to pawn off for currency in other worlds." Tomiko noticed the game console and bag of what looked like blood as they said that.

She was given her money in Japanese yen. Including what she already had saved, as well as the 3000 yen Chimon gave for diving, it was more than enough to cover rent for the month.

She wasn’t exceeding her rent goal by much but she was pretty surprised what she could earn in an afternoon. Two more jobs was what she was expecting to need for the month.

"Oh by the way…" the trader caught Tomiko's attention as she was turning to walk away "... You got a pretty good thing going if you can make that much currency in an S rank tear. Some free advice for a newbie, keep your trade secrets to yourself."

Tomiko returned a cautious smile and a thanks before heading home.

It was about 7:30 pm when Tomiko got back to her apartment building. She thought about going home first, but decided to go straight to the landlord to pay the rent. It would save her the trip back up the stairs, but that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to go to the landlord first. She wanted to delay having the conversation with her dad about how she got the money.

She had not really thought that far. It was more likely in her mind that the quest would not work out. That something would get in the way; like the person would be too openly a perv to work with, or there would be some loophole that would keep her unpaid, or it was a setup for a mugging, or even a trap to get kidnaped. She wanted to think that the latter two were just her being a bit paranoid, but they were actually what she was most expecting to have happened.

But expecting the worst scenario did not matter now. She had the money, and she had to think of a way to explain having it.

She knocked on the door before ever reaching a solution. Just winging it had become her default way of dealing with things recently.

Rin opened the door very shortly after Tomiko knocked. A life of dealing with emergencies made the landlady very used to being responsive.

“Oh… Tomiko. Just getting back from practice I see. They really keep you out late don’t they?” Rin said, trying to make conversation. She liked to stay up to date with her tenants. A bit on the noisy side to be considered professional.

“I have this month's rent.” Tomiko said, ignoring the small talk. She was hoping that it would make it easier to brush her off when she asked about the money.

Tomiko couldn’t help but notice the smell of curry emanating from Rin’s residence. It had been a while since Tomiko last had homemade curry. Since mom left.

She felt colder.

“Oh. Does this mean that Mr. Tetso went to work today?”

Tomiko did not want to commit to lying about something she knew Rin was more than capable of finding out through other means. Because of this, Tomiko just shrugged her shoulders and shifted her eyes to the side. She was trying to display that she did not want to talk about it.

However, this display only made Rin more observant. Seeing that Tomiko still had her backpack on, it was unlikely that she would have even gone up to her apartment to receive the money from her dad. Her deduction reasoned that the source was from Tomiko.

Alas, Rin was not one for tact. As soon as she put the pieces together, her emotions came out and covered Tomiko.

“W-w-what! You're way too young to be holding a job! Especially with practice after school! Where are you going to find the time to study! No! You didn’t quit your club to get a job! I knew you were coming back a little later than usual. If you don’t have an extracurricular, I don’t think your grades are high enough to get into a college! Don’t tell me you’ve given up on college! What kind of job did you even get! I know the job market has been crazy since the tears arrived. Please tell me it’s legal!”

This was exactly what Tomiko didn’t want to happen. She spoke up so that the questions would stop.

“I didn’t quit track. We didn’t have practice today, so I made a little money with my spare time. It worked out really well, so I’m going to continue. Don’t be surprised if I come back later.”

Rin took this in a very wrong way.

“Don’t tell me you… you…” She trailed off.

“Of course not.” Tomiko snapped, “It’s legal, and I have our rent. That’s all that’s important”

It was hurting Tomiko that Rin was trying so hard to care. ‘Why couldn’t she just back off. She is only making this harder’.

“Tomiko... if you really wanted, I could have helped you find a job…”

That was the last straw.

“I don’t need your help!” Tomiko turned and ran up the stairs. She quickly unlocked her door and slammed it behind her.

The lights were off in her apartment. It was a bit too dark, as usually the kitchen lights were on while her father was home.

Tomiko checked her phone as she took off her shoes. There was one unread message. It was from dad.

“I went in to work today, but they have me working late to make up for lost time. Sorry.”

Her hand trembled a little. She went to sleep hungry that night.