Sensation Seeking

“You should ask her. She is the violator.” I said calmly, trying to keep my cool.

“The contract doesn’t say the person who violates the contract should be punished, but that the violation of the contract will lead to punishment for those who signed the contract, including you.”

“Did I sign the contract? It was Lyla who signed it.”

“She signed it for both of you.” And my exaggerated claims of slavery didn’t sound so exaggerated anymore.

“Let’s assume that this logic is valid. The contract still doesn’t list the content of the new contract I have to sign and the deadline for the signing.”

“You are forbidden to find any work or enter any city until this is sorted. Can you survive like that?”

“I can make an empty contract and sign it myself.”

“You will never get my signature that way.”

“What if I have a new business idea that can convince you?”

“Oh… What is it?”

“Before that, I have to ask. Do you know any magic that can affect the mind?”

“Of course not. It’s one of the fundamentals. God, death, logic, and the mind. These four things are untouchable by magic. The mind houses the soul and the ability to use magic. It is self-evident why it cannot be influenced.” It was as I thought. They still think of the mind as indivisible and immaterial. That was a trap that restricted how people back on Earth thought about the brain for thousands of years. I could use this as my bargaining chip.

“What if I tell you that I can heal disturbances of the mind? That those cases of supposed possessions are solvable problems of the soul.” I wasn’t trained to be a clinician, but I had a general grasp of psychopathology, so I could at least contribute my knowledge.

“There are nobles who will spend a lot to fix their children. The problem is to convince them that you can help them.”

“I’m sure you can get me some legitimacy from the church.”

“You can say that, but you have to demonstrate to me first that you actually know what you are doing.”

“Give me a shop to run. I’ll start small and build up my reputation.” The truth was, I wanted to train someone else to be the therapist. Just not me. I couldn’t heal anyone.

“Then I will draft a new contract right now.” He tore up the second copy of the old contract again. How many times will he keep doing it? Though I had to admit he looked cool doing that.

“I will just assume you have other copies of it.”

“You’re absolutely right, and copies are made to be destroyed. Why else would you make them?” He wrote up a contract in no time, clearly used to doing it. He used simple vocabulary that I could recognize, but each word still had the potential to trap me in an unfavorable bind, so I made sure to read it carefully. The contract stipulated that another contract had to be signed if my business idea wasn’t profitable. I wished I could ask a lawyer to look through it for me, but as far as I knew, there weren’t any in the city.

I stared at the contract. There must be something to express discontent about. In my hesitation, Zeroc shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “You will fail like this. Success isn’t possible if you are so reactive.” I had no riposte to his brutal remark. My gaze still lingered from word to word on the contract, but I wasn’t really reading any of them.

Out of his pocket, he pulled out a scroll for the fourth time (the third one was parchment for the new contract). I had given up questioning his tricks.

“This is a map to the elven city, Melhnora, where Lady Lyla is from,” he added.

This information struck me like a lightning bolt, invigorating me with a burst of energy. I shifted my attention to the object in Zeroc’s hand.

“Do you want me to give it to you?” Each of his words gouged into my skull, and I barely held back my desire to leap at him. He could use the map to alter the contract to his advantage. More importantly, I felt no urgency in seeing Lyla. She could finally be happy, free from failure and humiliation, free from me, who had been nothing but useless. Zeroc was wasting his time trying to recruit me. My business plan would honestly be more likely to fail than succeed; I only proposed it because it was the only alternative I could think of to lower the stakes. I fiddled with the fire necklace around my neck.

“It’s this face! This face of yours is just so irritating!” Zeroc’s whining tore me out of my mind. He wound up his arm and tossed the map at a giant fern to get it stuck between branches.

“Why did you do that?” I yelled, no longer able to hold back my emotions. Despite the magic or whatever that cooled down the room, my body still burned up. Ah… I have been lying.

I wanted to see Lyla again. Her overblown sense of confidence; her careless straightforwardness; the way she acted before thinking. Living with her reminded me of the time I spent with my grandfather in my past life. He was also clumsy and gullible, but also caring and honest.

I wanted to understand her. The voice and pain that might result from our connection, those that I felt from the boar, the shifter, and even Coyote, I would gladly suffer through all of that if that meant I could understand her better. A wretched scream burst out of my mouth, a sound that was somewhere between the death cry of the boar and the shifter. I charged at the fern.

“Just hold on a second here. You can’t topple the plant. That’s against the rules.” Zeroc opened a tinderbox on the floor and took out a flint and steel. He smiled at me. “You will never know what a fire can do.”

I took a step towards Zeroc. He shook his head and shifted the striking steel closer to the flint. A warning to stay back. I stopped in my tracks. With the tools in his hands, it should still take some time to start a fire, but he could also stop me with brute force. Convincing him politely was my best move here. “Are you insane?” Oops… That slipped out unintentionally.

Luckily, Zeroc didn’t seem offended. He even chuckled. “Not really. I’ll make sure the fire stays within the building. It’s my property. I can do whatever I want in it.” Great, he wasn’t insane; he was just rich.

“What do you want me to do? Do you want to change the contract?”

“No. I think the contract is fair enough for both of us now. Why don’t you guess what I want? If you get close to the answer, I’ll give you a chance.”

“How would I know?”

“I believe in you.”

“You… you…” Memories of my interactions with Zeroc flashed into my mind. He seemed to act on his whims, a different brand of impulsiveness from Lyla’s. There was always a calculation behind his seemingly spontaneous actions. And why would a merchant agree to help the royal family and neglect his business? Deep down, what he wanted might be…

“Entertainment. You want to be entertained.” I said. There might be logical loops in my thinking. There might be information I missed. That was why I could be wrong. But I still had to commit to the conclusion I had reached. I wanted to second-guess myself, a form of self-flagellation, but all that had to come after getting the map to safety.

Zeroc put on his signature creepy, wide grin once again. “Then, entertain me.”

A deep breath calmed me down and got more ideas darting around my head. What would be the most dramatic way to retrieve the map? There was not much I could do, but… thinking back at what Coyote said, a plan blossomed into being. A reckless performance that would make Lyla proud.

I grabbed a chair, which was lighter than I thought, and rushed outside. The warm outdoor air engulfed my body. Among the blocks of buildings next to the greenhouse, I picked out one that had a flat roof. The chair helped me break through the window without a hitch. I ran up the stairs. On the top floor, there was a trapdoor to the roof. My speculation paid off. Coyote mentioned that she fell from the roof, so there must have been a way to get up there.

Once I climbed onto the roof, the breeze crashed into me. That sensation instilled fear and doubt back in me. Zeroc never said that my answer was correct. And what would I even say or do once I saw Lyla again? I tightened my grip on the chair and set my eyes on the glass roof of the greenhouse. Oh, so that was what they meant by a flow state. Maybe I had experienced something similar before, but it was the first time I had felt the unity within me. The stray thoughts that still pestered me a moment ago crumbled under the full extent of my agency.

Zeroc wouldn’t let me fall to my death. Who else would fulfill the contract? I readied myself for the last stretch. Through the glass, I could locate the map amidst the intersecting foliage. Chair raised, and with a loud smash, I shattered the roof. A cold draft rushed out, competing with the breeze blowing behind me. Gently, I lay the chair down for a well-deserved rest. It had done its job well. The next part depended only on me.

I jumped.

The layers of leaves broke my fall, though the feeling of them poking my skin was uncomfortable. I missed my target, but disturbed the vegetation enough that the map slid off. After the close contact with the fronds, Zeroc caught me as I expected him to.

I scrambled my way off Zeroc’s arms. In my struggle, a glass shard from the roof scraped my leg. It didn’t stop me from getting to the map and embracing it as tightly as I could.

“Actually, you were wrong. I wanted you to show me that you have the drive to go higher again, but entertainment is nice too. After all, money can’t buy amusement directly.” My mind didn’t register Zeroc’s words at first, and even when I did, his deceit was nothing compared to the surging joy in my heart.

We finished up signing the contract, and Zeroc brought me back to the store. The greenhouse was two blocks away from it, with no need to pass any back alley. Coyote was waiting for us at the counter, which was rare as she mostly stayed in her room.

“Thomas, I have something to tell you,” she said.