Chapter 2: Aria

I couldn’t tell whether this girl had something wrong with her head or was just rambling, but calling herself a goddess was stupidity on a whole different level.

I should probably get away from her before I end up in trouble.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked.

“How am I supposed to? I mean, if you said you were a fairy, or at least a professional sorceress, maybe I could believe that. But a goddess?”

“It’s true! I’m a goddess! Or at least... I was until about two minutes ago.”

Aria lowered her head, looking slightly embarrassed by her own statement.

So now she wasn’t a goddess anymore?

How were you supposed to just stop being one?

This girl was giving me a headache.

“Now I really don’t understand you. First you say you’re a goddess, then you say you’re not anymore. So how exactly am I supposed to take what you’re saying?”

“Look, I don’t like long explanations, so I’ll keep it brief. I am the goddess Aria. Long ago, I protected an ancient civilization from before Christianity. But I don’t have any believers anymore, and eventually I lost my immortality and omnipresence. Right now, I’m as human as you are. Any questions?”

Well, if there was one thing I had to admire about this girl, it was her incredible ability to compress information. That explanation could have gone on for hours, but she managed to summarize it all in less than thirty seconds.

Should I believe her?

“I do have questions, but I’ll save them for later. I’m a sorcerer. Maybe I’m mediocre and not very skilled, but I still am one. You got lucky running into someone connected to the supernatural. My name’s Lucio.”

There was no point arguing with her logic. For an unemployed guy like me, running into a formerly divine being might end up being the most important anecdote of my life.

“Oh, I thought you’d doubt me more and make me explain the whole system from scratch.”

“I don’t like dragging things out either. If you say you used to be a goddess, then I’ll believe you. So... do you have any kind of plan? Because I don’t. I just got fired.”

“Like I said, I’m in trouble. I don’t have a home or a job, and I don’t have anywhere to stay. I appeared out of nowhere, so naturally I don’t have any documents that make me legal in this country. Losing my powers so suddenly is a huge pain.”

Aria had a point. Simply appearing out of nowhere had already caused her all kinds of problems. She had stopped thinking like a goddess and started putting herself in the shoes of an ordinary human.

To be honest, I had to admire the way she was handling it.

Losing her very existence and identity so abruptly, after living for thousands of years, had to be a much harder blow than any of my failures.

“If you don’t mind... do you want to come back to my place? I’m not rich, but honestly, I need to spend time with someone or I’m going to lose my mind.”

What could possibly go wrong?

I was unemployed, at odds with my family, abandoned by everyone who had once supported me.

I couldn’t sink much lower.

Even so, helping a girl in trouble brought a little comfort to this poor miserable man.

“Oh, really? Great! You don’t look like a bad person, so I’ll trust you. But don’t you have any friends? You said you need to spend time with someone.”

“I don’t. I moved to this city two years ago and left everything behind. Right now, I’m just a lonely guy living in Villa San Pedro.”

“Ouch. You sound like someone who’s never experienced the blessings of victory.”

Ouch.

That girl really knew how to read people.

“Because I never have.”

“I think maybe I should shut up before you decide to leave me out on the street,” Aria murmured, looking a little ashamed of her own lack of tact.

“Good idea,” I replied.

We left the park and headed toward the commercial district.

Aria’s dress was far too eye-catching, so much so that some pedestrians mistook her for a celebrity. And I couldn’t blame them. Her white hair stood out in the crowd, and when you added the elegant dress she was wearing, anyone would think she was some kind of star.

To avoid the attention, Aria and I stopped by a cheap clothing store. The prices were low, and the quality was nothing beyond casual wear. There, she picked out a pair of brown jeans and a white blouse. She also took a one-piece black dress, which would be useful at night.

Even though we had talked a lot during our first meeting, the rest of the afternoon passed in silence. We had nothing left to say to each other, and neither of us felt like talking.

The initial shock I’d felt when I saw her had faded.

Aria seemed to feel the same, because for almost two hours, she refrained from making jokes or terrible quips.

It was a quiet sort of calm that I came to appreciate.

“Your house isn’t bad at all.”

We got to my place around seven in the evening. The apartment had two bedrooms upstairs, separated by a hallway. Downstairs, there was a desk with a computer, and farther in, the living room. It was big enough for two people, and the only real luxury was a smart TV mounted on the wall.

“Thanks. I got lucky and found it before the rent went up. Thankfully, the landlord let me fix it up a little and get it into good shape. Make yourself at home.”

I took off my black jacket and hung it on an improvised coat rack. Then I went up to my room to strip away the elegance. I swapped the white dress shirt for a brown T-shirt and the fine trousers for a simple pair of blue sweatpants.

Honestly, formality just didn’t suit me.

“Hey, Lucio, how do I turn on the TV?” Aria asked.

I couldn’t help finding it a little funny that a goddess couldn’t handle modern devices.

“Just press the button in the middle. Don’t tell me you don’t know how current technology works.”

“It’s not that I know nothing at all. I have a decent understanding of twenty-first-century society, but I don’t know every detail. For example, I know how a television works, but I don’t know how to turn it on. I know what the internet is and what it’s for, but I don’t know which sites to use or the proper way to browse the web. My knowledge is incomplete, but it’s enough to survive.”

Oh, that actually made sense.

A goddess was technically omnipotent, but cramming millions of pieces of information into a worn-out vessel could be counterproductive. That was probably why Aria had chosen to keep only the basics, without digging too deeply into anything and overloading herself.

“I see. Looking at it more objectively, I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Being able to talk face-to-face with someone who used to be a goddess is, without a doubt, an epic moment.”

When I woke up that morning, I never could have imagined that by nightfall I’d be inviting a being like this into my home.

Life really did take unbelievable turns.

In the span of a few hours, I had gone from unemployed to acquainted with a divine being.

Fate had a twisted sense of humor.

“That’s right! You should feel grateful to have me under your roof. I am the almighty Aria! Kneel before me!” she exclaimed jokingly.

“Oh, well... maybe my place is too small for two people after all...”

“Ah! No, wait, that was a joke! Don’t throw me out yet.”

Aria fell for my teasing again. The poor thing looked at me with puppy eyes, and yes, it was genuinely adorable.

“I’m just messing with you. Relax. For an ex-goddess, you fall for my jokes way too easily. Sorry, but I love messing with people like this.”

The white-haired girl puffed out her cheeks again in that funny way of hers, then went to change in the room I had prepared for her.

She put on the brown jeans and the white blouse from earlier, then came back to the living room looking far less flashy.

“I’m hungry. You know how to cook, right?”

“I’m no expert, but I know enough not to starve to death. Want anything in particular?” I asked.

“Yes! I’ve always been curious about what you humans call pizza. What does it taste like?”

“It tastes good, but I don’t know how to make it. For that, we’d have to call a pizzeria and wait for them to bring it over. Does that bother you?”

“Oh! Orders come straight to the house? Human society has advanced so much in these last two thousand years. Incredible.”

Well, home delivery didn’t exist in Roman times, but still, she was a little too amazed.

“We do have to pay extra. Normally I don’t order food delivery, but since today is a special occasion, I’ll make an exception. Tonight, we’re having pizza!”

I felt happy.

Spending time with someone else was much better than lying on my bed all afternoon.

If Aria hadn’t appeared, I probably would have fallen into depression after everything that happened. What were the odds of running into a goddess in the middle of a park?

Tiny.

Almost nonexistent.

What I’d experienced was a miracle that happened only once in a lifetime.

Aria didn’t seem to understand the famous fifteen-minute wait for an order to arrive, so she kept asking me, “How much longer?” like an impatient child. More than annoying, I found it entertaining. Every five minutes, she would go to the window and stick her head out, looking for the delivery guy.

“It’s here.”

I took the food and immediately placed our slices on two separate plates.

Aria stared at them curiously, and that was when a strange thought crossed my mind.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never eaten before.”

“Yes. In fact, this is my first meal as a human. When I was a goddess, I had no need to eat or sleep. I know the digestive process, and I know how to consume food, b-but I’ve never actually done it before. I’m a little nervous.”

She kept surprising me more and more.

I’d been eating since the day I was born. It was such an everyday act that it had stopped meaning anything to me.

But Aria was different.

Before her sat the first food she would eat in over two thousand years of existence.

I’d made the right call ordering pizza for this moment.

“Go ahead. Eat without holding back.”

To make her feel comfortable, I picked up the first slice. Then I took a bite and slowly chewed. Aria copied me the moment she saw it. Little by little, she bit into the cheesy bread, then swallowed the whole mouthful.

“Incredible!”

Aria’s eyes went wide as saucers, and she actually spoke with her mouth full.

“Swallow before you talk, or you’ll choke.”

God, I already sounded like an older brother giving orders every five seconds. Aria nodded and forced the food down. A few seconds later, she looked back at me.

“I can’t believe I spent two thousand years without experiencing this flavor. Amazing! I knew humans were talented, but I think I underestimated what they’re capable of.”

“Hey, we humans have created great things. Not just food.”

Aria kept smiling despite her terrible situation.

It took me a while to understand her, but eventually I managed to put myself in her shoes.

Going from a goddess to an ordinary girl had to be catastrophic.

She was a being that had existed beyond life itself.

Someone special, with power enough to observe the world through the ages.

And now she was here, with me...

Eating pizza and enjoying herself like any normal young woman.

One way or another, this unexpected encounter had brightened my day.