Chapter 8_Desert Tension

The rest of the weekend went by as per normal for Tomiko. She studied more for school, cooked a little, and made small attempts to clean the apartment. Tomiko wasn't a particularly tidy person, but she drew the line at empty beer cans lying around the kitchen and living area.

On Monday, Tomiko told Aio about her large weekend shopping trip. She initially thought to tell her right away before school even started, but got a little nervous with all the passersbys. She knew full well that Aio was going to make a scene, so she decided to wait until lunch where they could be far away from as many classmates as possible.

The suspense was eating at her a little, knowing very soon Aio would be shouting with excitement. But it was nice. It had been a while since Tomiko had good news to share with someone.

“YOU DID WHAAAAAAT?” Aio screamed so the next two classes could hear her.

Tomiko tried to calm her down so they wouldn’t get in trouble, but nothing could stop Aio once she got excited.

“No way no way no way no way! You're joking!”

Tomiko just gave a serious shake of the head to indicate she had indeed bought a game console. She was also trying to tell Aio to stop shouting with her head nod, but the subtext was lost on the enlivened high schooler.

“This is amazing!” Aio let out a huge gasp, like she had just now realized what this actually meant as far as changes in her life instead of simple surface level excitement. Any onlooker would have assumed it was Aio who had made an exciting big purchase. “I could come over to your place and show you how to play, or give you strategy advice, or even just watch and laugh as you get the hang of it”

“Oh… um… maybe once we get the place fixed up a bit…”

That wasn’t a complete rejection from Tomiko. Her apartment did need some major fixes and cleaning before it was guest ready. But Tomiko wasn't too excited about the idea of having people over. The idea of someone judging her on something she was still in the process of learning didn't bother her, well, actually it did; but the bigger problem was she wasn't ready to let anyone in that close yet.

Aio saw she wasn't invited from the look on Tomiko’s face, but took it in stride. This was already a big step for Tomiko, and Aio wanted to be there for it.

“Did you just get the console, or did you get any games with it? Did you manage to get one of those fancy bundles? Some of those are really good deals, but hard to get around this time of year. Did you get an extra controller? I can bring one over if we need. OH OH OH! Please tell me you put on a screen protector! Did the store clerk remember to recommend one!”

Tomiko was hit with so many questions at once. She wasn't able to get a word in over Aio’s excitement until her friend paused briefly for breath.

“Calm down will you. I can’t answer while you're still talking.”

They spent the whole lunch talking about it. Neither of them finished eating before the next class started.

Tomiko was expecting at least one item to need a return, but Aio seemed to approve of every purchase. Even the screen protector, which Tomiko confidently thought would be a waste of money, seemed to be very important to Aio.

Aio apologized for probably spoiling many of the good parts of the story during stretches at practice. She was most likely thinking about previous things she had said during class. Tomiko said it wasn't a big deal and wanted to experience it first hand. However, she retained very little from when Aio talked about the game. Not that she was ever going to admit it.

Tomiko had a strange thought while on her run during practice. She realized she was more happy about Aio being excited, rather than her own excitement about having something nice. Tomiko was still finding it difficult to see herself enjoying video games. It made her question why she really bought it. She never reached a conclusion, but it was all she could think about during practice. Pondering the meaning behind her own actions.

After practice, the two of them went their separate ways. Aio seemed particularly more happy when talking to her dad. He tried again to turn around and wave to Tomiko, but missed his chance yet again.

Tomiko entered the back alley, ready to continue their quest. She kicked the side of the dumpster to alert Chimon of her arrival.

With no fuss, they went into the portal.

They had spent the later part of last week still speed running through the Grembo hill. Tomiko had gotten it down to a science.

Start. Run up the hill without stopping at a slight curve. Side step to the left 15 seconds in to avoid a Grembo. Engage boss. While the boss is spawning, turn and cut down an approaching grunt. Dodge bosses initial attack. Lunge with sword. Time.

Tomiko fully intended to continue doing this for the week. But Chimon had something to say.

“I think we should move to a different area.”

“Why is that?” Tomiko replied.

“Well, as I’m sure you noticed, the rewards are decreasing the more we run through. In addition, your stats are no longer going up. The boss is the only one that gives you any XP, but I’m pretty sure it’s just one point.”

Tomiko started to see the problem.

“Okay… so what would the next easiest area be?” She said.

“I was actually thinking we could skip a few areas, since you're at a much higher level. We could probably go to the desert region, or even the thick forest.

Tomiko started to feel a bit conflicted. The new information presented to her was already messing with her expectations of what they would be doing that day. And on top of that, Chimon wanted to skip areas. This conflicted with her expectations of what Chimon was hoping to get out of questing with her. Tomiko had assumed that he was looking for something and needed to go through all of the areas looking for it.

Thinking back, she really didn't have a reason for making such an assumption about Chimon’s motives. He hadn't said anything leading to such a conclusion, but it just seemed to make sense to Tomiko and she clung to it.

Having evidence that contradicted the assigned motive challenged Tomiko more than what she was ready to handle at the moment.

She started getting hot with embarrassment again, but wasn't going to let it lead to a loss on her end of the conversation.

“You know… I haven’t asked many questions so far, but I need to know… why are you on this quest?”

“W-w-what do you mean?”

“Like, I appreciate the money and all, but like, what are you getting out of this. If you're not getting any of the drops, why do you care how much I make by defeating enemies?”

“...”

“I’ve been hesitant to ask, because I thought it would be something lame like trying to be close to a girl for a large amount of time, but it’s been a week and you haven’t made a single move on me.”

“D-do you want me to make a move on you?” Chimon said with red lines displaying on his bubble head.

“Of course not!”

“Right, right, right. Of course. T-t-then I fail to see the problem.”

“The problem is that I don’t know what you’re after, and after this much time, I thought you would tell me by now!”

“I… I don’t see why I need to.”

Tomiko questioned why she wanted to know as well. She was already this deep into the argument, so she wasn't going to back down. It wasn't an option at this point. But the emotions seemed to bubble out of nowhere. She hadn't even noticed it was worrying her, and now it seemed like she was ready to quit over it. She intended to have a detached ‘I don’t need to know the details’ kind of professionalism, but something within her needed to know.

Not having a good reply, she decided to reflect.

“Why do you need to keep it a secret from me?”

That got Chimon really nervous. His bubble expression changed from nervous to scared.

“B-b-because… because… be...cause…” He trailed off.

Tomiko didn't think she went too far, but still gave Chimon some time to think about it.

“I’m… looking for… something”

“Okay...” Tomiko said a little cautiously, not wanting to lose her momentum, but also kind of excited that she was getting somewhere. “What are you looking for?”

Tact wasn't one of Tomiko’s strengths.

“I... can’t tell you.”

“Why not!” Said Tomiko.

“You wouldn’t understand!”

She was unsure why, but those words hit harder than Tomiko wanted them to.

“...Okay. I won’t pry if you're going to wine about it. However, I do need to know a little bit more. Like, one more thing to go off of.”

“Like what?” Chimon asked.

“How about… do you know where it is? If you didn’t, then I don’t see why you would be willing to skip areas.”

“...Yeah. I have a good idea where it is.”

“Okay. Where is it?”

“It would be somewhere in the caverns of mourning.”

“Okaaaay. What does that mean for us?”

“It’s one of the most dangerous areas of this world. We will still need to level up quite a bit before we can go anywhere near there.”

With all of this new information, Tomiko had to take a moment to process. She wasn’t too upset about being manipulated, in fact, she wasn’t really being manipulated at all. He just wasn’t being clear about what his objective was. That is assuming Chimon was telling the truth. But this was probably one of the best scenarios.

“Right. I guess now we have our heading.” Tomiko said.

“What?” Chimon asked.

“Well, to be quite honest, I didn’t really have a goal, so I kinda made my own…” Tomiko’s mouth was admitting things before she could approve whether they were true or not. “...but now that I have something to work toward, I’m ready to move on.”

She came off a lot more supportive than she intended. Yet, she didn't regret it. She felt closer to Chimon. Closer to someone.

Together, both Tomiko and Chimon approached the next area. After some discussion on level and combat readiness, they decided to skip to the desert area.

Not that Tomiko wanted to short sell herself and what she was capable of, but she really didn't want to be put in a situation where she would be overly challenged. Of course that wasn't how she phrased it, but definitely what her limits were. She didn't want a repeat of her first experience using portals, and she got close to that experience a couple of times now.

Also, Tomiko tried to think of the situation economically. If they rushed too quickly through finding whatever Chimon was looking for, that would most likely limit her earnings. This was also something she couldn’t bring up directly as a reason for picking a lower level area.

It didn't seem so much like she was hiding her money motive from Chimon, more so they both had an unspoken understanding that part of their motives were at odds. Not at odds to the point they couldn’t work together, they both had a goal now. But Tomiko was still only tangentially invested. Like how an employee may get paid by the hour, but work still needs to be done in order to not get replaced by a more effective employee. That was how Tomiko was viewing the current dynamic. She liked thinking of herself as a professional.

The two of them only skipped about six locations to get to the dessert area. All of them were in the starting plains area.

It took Chimon a bit of explaining to compare the world they were in to how a video game would be set up. The idea of each ‘biome’ being equivalent to a different threshold of difficulty was a strange concept for Tomiko. She figured there would be enemies more difficult than others, but not that entire areas would be sectioned into ‘levels of difficulty’.

The desert stretched farther than Tomiko could see past, even from the hill they were standing on. The sand dunes sprawled from one end of the horizon over to the other. There were some large crags far to the left, which may have been east. Tomiko never asked for direction in relation to the world, only where she needed to go.

Aside from never seeing a dessert in person before, something seemed strange about the landscape. The color was off.

“Say, why is the sand pink?” Tomiko asked.

“Not entirely sure, but everything in this world is an unusual color compared to ours.” Chomon answered.

“I mean yeah. But it’s usually just a strange tint, or glows more than normal.”

Neither of them knew what an acceptable level of glow would be in the real world, so they both moved on.

“Coral is pink. Maybe this area used to be underwater and it all eroded.” Chimon seemed to find entertainment with spitballing possible answers.

It didn't dawn on Chimon that Tomiko was more so asking in case it correlated to any unique properties that the area would have.

As Tomiko walked through the sand, she slowly adjusted to traveling on a surface that shifted underneath her. Chimon advised her not to run, as it was costing a lot more stamina to move. Tomko wanted to take that warning as a challenge in press forward, but realized that would indeed put her at a tactical disadvantage. She wasn’t worried about running out of stamina, but if she used up a lot and then needed to sprint to flee an encounter there could be a problem. ‘Hm’, she thought to herself. The term ‘encounter’ wasn't one she would normally use to describe such a situation, but she found herself using it in her thoughts. Maybe it was because she heard Chimon use the term a lot. Having Chimon’s terms rub off on her grossed Tomiko out a bit, but there was also a small sense of pride. Not from becoming more like Chimon, but because she was picking up on the lingo of those who portal dived. It contributed a bit to her sense of professionalism.

“I have an item highlighted that I think you should equip," Chimon said.

“Why?” Tomiko asked curtly.

“Um, it has a speed modifier in sand”

“No thanks. I don’t want to get used to it and then be off when we leave the area”

“Oh, sure, I guess that makes sense.” Chimon said unconvincingly.

Nothing in the area seemed to pose Tomiko that great a threat. For many enemies she just needed to run up and strike a few times before they had a chance to attack.

The cactus enemies were especially easy to take out. They didn’t move, and the projectile they shot out was very easy to dodge. The sandy surface of the ground wasn't enough of a challenge compared to what she expected. She questioned whether or not she made the right choice to go through this area. It was more annoying than anything.

“You need to drink water!”

“Okay, then give me water.”

“You need to cool off in some shade or you’ll over heat.”

“Oh, and where exactly would you recommend I do that?”

“You're veering off course!”

“Then tell me which direction to go, it all looks the same to me!”

“You need to drink more water!”

“I had some like five minutes ago!”

Because Tomiko wasn't really about to monitor her own senses the way she normally could in the real world, Chimon was constantly reminding her of all the status conditions she was experiencing.

It was another strange aspect of diving in this portal. Tomiko could tell she was hot, but incapable of determining how close she was to a heat stroke. She recognized the bright light was making it tricky to see, but was completely unaware it was causing more enemy attacks to land than normally would. She knew that moving around was more difficult, but not sure just how much energy it was taking.

That is why she was completely surprised when she found herself falling to the ground.

There were no enemies close by, nor did she feel an attack land. She was just walking in the open desert.

“So ah… we may have a problem.” Chimon said.

“May have! I can’t move! There is definitely a problem!” Tomiko retorted.

“You see… we may have… run out of water.” Chimon said.

“We what?”

Why was she not made aware of this? Tomiko was furious, but there didn't seem to be much she could do about it at the moment.

“Don’t worry, we just need to wait until your stamina builds back up. It’ll only take like five minutes” Chimon said.

“Ug, fine.” Tomiko groaned

Tomiko figured that Chimon didn't bring it up because they would need to sit around and wait anyway. And she may not have done so if he asked. Still, she didn't like the situation he put her in. But then she realized something.

“Hey, if we’re out of water, how many more times am I going to have to charge stamina like this?”

“Well, assuming we are able to make it to the oasis, probably… twice, assuming we don’t encounter more than three enemies.”

That was what Tomiko was afraid of. This would be something they would need to repeat.

“Great. Just make sure you tell me the next time I’m about to eat sand”

“S-sure.” Chimon said. He was expecting a much different response.

Tomiko was expecting to give a much different response as well. Maybe she just understood being mad at him accomplished nothing.

She waited until she was able to get up, then kept moving forward.

The option was available for Tomiko to sit and wait for her stamina to recharge, but she chose to burn it all up every time. Chimon questioned why, but never got a thoughtful response.

Before the two of them could make it to the oasis, they would need to fight a boss for the area. While inconvenient, it felt like a reasonable place for a powerful enemy to be. Water meant life, so of course a strong creature would take charge and be protective of such a valuable resource. Tomiko had a newfound appreciation for that resource. Even without the experience of feeling thirsty, the inconvenience of exhaustion annoyed her.

There was another reason an enemy at the oasis seemed appropriate, at least for Chimon. In the desert there were few landmarks or unique features. The oasis was one of the few kinds of locations one could find in a desert aside from sand. He was taking more of a game design approach to enemy placement, and it all went over Tomiko’s head as he tried to explain it.

The monster at the oasis was a large hippopotamus. Tomiko knew little about it, but thought it was a strange thing to find in the middle of the desert.

As far as battling it, the two made quick work of the enemy. It had no ranged attacks and was easy to dodge counter attacks due to how long it took to turn. Tomiko just had to move a little as she slashed to keep it from having its mouth in range of a bite. It did have an area-of-effect attack that kicked up the ground around it to do damage, but it too was easy to avoid. Tomiko did get hit by the hippo the first time it used the area-of-effect attack because Chimon referred to it as an AOE. Another gaming term Tomiko felt a little frustrated for not knowing.

Regardless, the boss was slain, and the oasis was free for them to use.

Tomiko looked at the deep blue water, a smile creeping onto her face. It felt like a reward after an annoying task. Mostly because it was.

She grabbed many empty containers from Chimon’s bubble and filled them up with water. The thought of continuing to cross the desert wasn't pleasant, but the cool water against her skin with the sun beating down on her felt pleasant. It reminded her of a beach trip she took a few years back.

Back when her mom was still around.

Tomiko paused while filling the last of the bottles with water.

“Hey Tomiko… whatcha thinking about?” Chimon said.

“Oh… just how much this oasis feels a bit like a beach.”

Tomiko stood up and looked over the pool of water. A fun idea pushed back the negative thoughts for a while longer.

“I think I’ll have myself a swim,” She said.

“W-w-what! Why?”

“Because I feel like it.” Tomiko said.

She started scrolling through her inventory to find something more suitable for swimming. It had been a while since she scrolled through it herself since Chimon usually managed it.

Chimon was still stuttering in surprise.

“I don’t think that’s a g-good idea.” He said.

“Oh, are there enemies that could appear?”

“No. But…”

“Then I’m going to enjoy myself”

Tomiko was having a difficult time finding anything conducive to swimming. She didn't have any alternate outfits, just equipment and accessories she got from drops.

“I don’t think you should while I’m around” Chimon nervously called out to Tomiko.

Tomiko turned and looked at his bubble for a head. The expression displayed was eyes closed embarrassed. But why?

“What? You don’t want me to have fun while on the job?” Tomiko asked.

“No. I think I would enjoy seeing you swim more than you would enjoy swimming, b-but that's not the way I want to see you.” Chimon said.

It took Tomiko a second to see what he was getting at, but when she looked at it from his perspective, her face grew flush from self consciousness. ‘I think I would enjoy seeing you swim’! Did he really just say that to her? Sure Tomiko had a hunch from the beginning that Chimon may have been a bit of a perv, but he hadn't really made any indication of such until now. Tomiko was starting to make the assumption that he didn't find her attractive. Sure he stuttered a bit and seemed nervous while coaching and such, but she always figured it was because he was intimidated by her imposing personality. How was she supposed to operate with this new information? Was she supposed to commit to the idea like it wasn't a problem, or awkwardly move on like nothing ever happened.

“Um. I’m sorry for making it weird. I just wanted to remind you I was here before you did something you would regret.” Chimon said, face changing to a nervous eye roll.

“What, you think I can’t swim in front of boys? It’s you saying you would enjoy it that made it weird.” Tomiko barked back.

“Ha… ha… yeah I guess that was uncool for me to say. But like, look at the situation; I’m a very lonely guy, and you're a cute girl.”

Why did he say the situation so plainly? Did he have any shame? How was she supposed to move on from that?

“Hey Chimon” Tomiko said slowly.

“Y-yes” Chimon replied.

“Did you ‘enjoy’ seeing me passed out in the sand?”

The bubble that was Chimon’s face had so many sweat marks that it almost covered the rest of his features.

“W-w-well, I would be lying if I said I d-d-didn't enjoy it.” Chimon timidly said.

“That was your que to lie to me!” Tomiko yelled back.

“I won't lie to a girl.”

“This isn’t about me being a girl!”

“I think this is exactly about you being a girl!”

“Oh, so should I just leave!”

“No! I still need you.”

“Choose your words more carefully!”

“I still need your help!” Chimon yelled.

A moment of silence passed between the two of them.

“I’m sorry I made you feel unpleasant.” Chimon said. “I wanted to bring it up before you got too comfortable around me. I’m not good with talking to girls, but I really need to find what I’m looking for. This is the farthest I’ve gotten with anyone. I really want to keep this professional but I didn’t want you to feel lied to. I’m sorry if that was the wrong call.”

Chimon then bowed his bubble head as far away from Tomiko as possible.

Tomiko had a bit to think about. She was a little shocked with how open he was with his feelings. Guys were not like that. Heck, most people were not like that. But there Chimon was, conveying his entire thought process and even apologizing for doing so.

Was that how the world was supposed to be? Was that how anyone would react in this situation, or was it just Tomiko? Was she so much of an abrasive person that she caused people to act so unnaturally? That people felt they needed to be sorry for who they were around her. Her head got very crowded.

“I… don’t think you made the wrong call.” Tomiko finally said.

How could she? Everything that Chimon said made sense when she looked at it from his perspective.

Chimon seemed to still be waiting for something. Probably for what Tomiko wanted done about the situation.

“I’m still going for a swim.” Tomiko said.

“What!?!” Said Chimon.

“You heard me. I want to go for a swim. I get that you're a boy and that it may mean something different for you, but I want to swim, and I’m not going to let your confusion on what it means stop me from doing what I want. If you read too much into it, that’s your problem. Not mine.”

Without another word she dived into the water. It was a little unpleasant knowing that Chimon was watching her, but the cool water was so nice. The situation probably wasn't too different from most public swim areas anyway.

Little did Tomiko know, Chimon was doing everything in his power to not look the entire time she was swimming.