Chapter Text
[Coff Cafe - 12:03 PM]
“Sure, a cup of coffee isn’t a must, but I always say a calm and relaxed mindset sure is!” Chirped the intelligent construct working at Sixth Street’s Coff Cafe as he served Wise and Belle’s orders for an espresso and a caramel latte with a butter croissant on the side, respectively.
“Hihihii, thank you!" Belle cheerfully accepted.
“Thank you, Tin Master, this smells great!” Wise complimented.
Tin Master was the proud owner of this establishment, or at least the Sixth Street branch. Apparently each Coff Cafe was owned by their respective Tin Master, with no real connection between the different branches or clear origin of these intelligent constructs, which was a very odd business model for whoever came up with the idea.
This particular branch of Coff Cafe had a more than ideal location. Placed exactly at the heart of Sixth Street, it was a natural funnel for customers passing by, it was quite impossible to miss the charming rustic aura that the cafe radiated, putting it as one of the area’s local hotspots.
Wise and Belle had taken a break from their little expedition of Sixth Street, but this was the perfect opportunity to take it slow and enjoy a calming cup of coffee in the spacious outdoor section of the cafe, it was perfect for taking in the fresh urban air while freely looking around the area.
“Congratulations on the opening of Random Play!” Tin Master cheerfully exclaimed, “You can have these on the house!” He added.
“Really?!” Belle excitedly asked with stars in her eyes, “In that case- can I- mmph!!” her request was abruptly cut short by her brother’s hand, stopping her from running her mouth and pushing her luck by ordering a bunch of other items.
“Thank you! You’re too kind, hahaha…” Wise said while facing Tin Master, looking away from his sister whose mouth he was covering.
“It’s nice to see that someone finally made use of the empty building in front of Coff Cafe, I think the bright yellow adds a nice lively touch to the area.” He complimented.
“Feel free to come by and borrow something! We’d love to have you,” Wise interjected, taking the opportunity (while slowly taking his hand away from Belle)
“Thank you for the offer, I’ll be sure to come by sometime.” He cordially responded, “Anyhow, I have some other orders to tend to so you’ll have to excuse me for now, Enjoy!” Tin Master said before parting with the pair
“So, what’s the plan after this?” Wise asked as he took a sip of his espresso, “Don’t forget, we have to be back this afternoon to start building the HDD…”
“Hmm…” Belle pondered,
[GodFinger - 12:57 PM]
“Haha! Yes! I knew I'd beat you someday!” Belle exclaimed as she triumphantly stood up from one side of the machine
Wise had been dragged to the flashy-looking red building adjacent to the Cafe titled “GodFinger” that had a plethora of bright banners and posters along it, which turned out to be some kind of old-school arcade, it had a variety of machines ranging from newer trendier games to restored pre New Eridu classics like Soul Hounds III for example, one that the siblings had grown quite fond of in their days in the Academy. Wise was surprised that Belle would take him to an arcade, but he figured he would entertain her today.
“Whaat?” Wise groaned, “I’m not buying this, when did you get good at this game??” Wise asked in disbelief. Belle had gotten them to play Soul Hounds again, Wise remembered there being a very noticeable skill gap between the two of them, but she’d been consistently beating his score in these recent rounds
“She’s actually been practicing for a while,” a feminine voice called out from behind them, “Yesterday, she actually spent the afternoon here practicing Soul Hounds III, she said it was to shake off some rust but I guess she was training to beat you,” She giggled.
Wise turned to see the voice belonged to a tall rabbit thiren dressed in trendy gaming merchandise, sporting glasses and long cream-colored hair.
“Wait, but you said you were still in Lumina Square!” Wise’s suspicion immediately darted back to Belle, “How much did you spend yesterday??”
“U-Uhhh,” Belle tried to respond while clearly sweating bullets, “W-well after shopping for those parts yesterday, I noticed that we had some of our budget left, s-so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to spend it to uh… sharpen my skills a little? heheh…” She said as she touched her index fingers together, “So technically, I didn’t spend anything above our budget…” she tried to reason.
Wise let out a disappointed sigh, though he really didn’t mind that much (this time at least). Though Soul Hounds wasn’t a large part of their childhood, it did bring back some nice memories between the two of them. Being able to see his sister freely laugh and cheer like this was something precious for him, especially when it was difficult to barely get her to smile in the early years following the fall of the Old Capital. Though, living this close to the arcade would definitely require Wise to have a bit more scrutiny on Belle to make sure she doesn’t burn a hole through their finances, but that was a concern for another time. Besides, the fact that she spent that much effort to beat him in a game they played as children was kind of flattering in a way.
“You didn’t have to rat me out like that!” Belle pouted to the female thiren.
The thiren girl let out a genuine laugh, “Sorry about that, I met you yesterday but I don’t think I got your name… I’m Asha by the way, GodFinger’s manager,”
“Oh, my name’s Belle, I’m one of Random Play’s managers,” She cordially responded, “Though my brother here handles most of it,”
“I’m Wise, nice to meet you,” He added.
“Oh? The new video store?” She asked with her interest piqued, “you guys got any good action flicks?”
“We do!” Wise immediately jumped in, “Raiders of the Hollow and Dimensional Musketeer are pretty hip right now if you wanna borrow those,” He added.
Asha laughed, “Sounds interesting, I just might!” She exclaimed
“It’s pretty crowded here compared to the other stores…” Belle observed
“Haha, yeah! We get a lot of kids tryna skip school here, and most of our classic games have a sizable cult following,” She explained, “Speaking of, you guys wanna try some other ones?”
“Maybe next time, we do have some things we need to get done today, but thanks!” Wise politely declined, looking at the time.
“Hey Wise, there’s actually one more place I wanted to show you,” Belle interjected.
[Box Galaxy - 01:30 PM]
Belle took Wise to the far end of Sixth Street that conveniently led to the metro station. “...If I remember correctly… Oh! There it is!” Belle directed Wise’s attention to the small gadget store nestled in the corner.
It had a futuristic look with neon lights lined along the walls and signs, and it seemed to have two gacha machines in front of the entrance, which triggered some bad memories of Wise’s bad luck with these kinds of things, causing him to shudder a little.
“I wonder if Susie’s working today…” Belle muttered.
“Susie?” Wise asked.
Before he could get an answer, Belle quickly shuffled to the entrance and slid the door, “Heyyyy, Susieee!!! What’s up??” She greeted someone enthusiastically. The person she was talking to however, wasn’t visible from Wise’s point of view before happily entering the store. Noticing that this was probably the most enthusiastic Belle had been in greeting any of the shops, his curiosity was piqued. He peeked his head through the entrance to see a young girl around Belle’s age working the counter.
She had a petite figure and short black hair, wearing a bright orange beanie, goggles, and overalls, giving her a somewhat ‘mechanic’ kind of look.
“Oh my gosh hi, Belle!!” She cordially responded before following with a quick hug. Being the full time cashier of Box Galaxy, Susie was of course, acquainted with all of the shopkeepers on Sixth Street, but it was a bit difficult for her to truly connect with them, seeing that they were mostly on the older side, so the introduction of a vibrant store manager like Belle who she could actually relate to was more than welcome, and they naturally became fast friends.
“Are you looking for anything in particular right now??” She asked,
“Not really lookin’ to spend anything right now but I wanted to take a look at the W-Engine lineup to see if you had any that might have the specs I’m looking for,” Belle explained.
“Sure!” Susie replied, “I don’t really understand these toys as much as you do though, hehehe…”
‘W-Engines? Are those even legal to sell to the general public?’ Wise thought, ‘You’d only see these on the hollow raider black market or high end industry equipment companies… It just seems a bit shady… Like some kind of money laundering scheme…’ Wise concluded.
“Oh, and I brought my brother Wise here,” Belle added while gesturing to Wise while he was still halfway through the door, “He’s actually the one who handles most of the video store, hehe…”
“Oh! Sorry, how rude of me…” Wise apologised as he fully entered the building, realising he’d been behaving like a fly on the wall this whole time, “I’m Wise, It’s nice to meet you, Susie, I hope we can help each other out from now on,” he greeted as he extended his hand.
“Nice to meet- ohmygosh..” Susie’s words suddenly halted as she looked at Wise, and her cheeks suddenly shifted to a noticeable bright red hue, “Uhhhh…” she trailed off.
“Susie?” Wise asked, trying to get her attention, confused as to why she’d been blankly staring at him.
“Huh?! Yeah! Of course! n-nice to meet you too, Wise!” She responded in a panicked and somewhat shaky voice while shaking his hand in a rigid and snappy manner and following through with awkward forced laughter. Good-looking guys were quite rare on Sixth Street, so seeing Wise came as a bit of a shock for her
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what kind of products do you have here?” Wise questioned as Belle walked away to examine and tinker the W-Engine lineup
“Oh, u-uhmm, it is a gadget store so we mainly focus on electronic devices, b-but we also have home appliances, tools, and some miscellaneous products too!” she explained, trying to maintain a good impression on Belle’s unusually hot brother, “Are you interested?”
“Uhm, I’ve been thinking of getting an air fryer actually,” Wise replied.
“Y-you do a lot of cooking?”
“You could say that… Belle has quite an appetite, which isn’t out of the ordinary since she’s still growing.” He pondered, putting his hand on his chin, striking a somewhat contemplative pose, “But that doesn’t mean I can just give her whatever food there is, I have to make sure she still gets all her nutrients and maintains a balanced diet. But having to make and cook meal plans on the daily can be a hassle.” He trailed off, “Y’know, I-”
“Hey, cut that out, Wise! I’m not ‘still growing’, I’m in my twenties already!” Belle snapped with a very clear red streak of embarrassment on her face, ‘Geez, you don’t have to embarrass me every chance you get!’ she pouted.
“Eheheh…” Wise could only force an awkward laugh while sheepishly scratching his cheek, “But yeah, it’d be nice to be able to whip up a quick meal without too much trouble… especially on busy days…”
Susie giggled at the siblings’ little interaction, “I don’t think we have something like that in stock at the moment, but I’ll let you know if we update our product lineup.”
Wise took out his phone to check the time, it was already well into the afternoon, and they really needed to start working on their proxy setup, he looked at Belle and tapped his wrist with his finger to signal the time, while mouthing the letters ‘H-D-D’ , which Belle immediately understood.
“Oh, right! Uhh… I totally forgot, we had some… restocking plans to do.” Belle bluffed, “Thanks Susie, but we really have to go, hehe, I’ll talk to you later!” Belle exclaimed.
“Thank you, Susie, sorry we can’t stay for very long,” Wise added.
“Wait! Um…” Susie interjected, “I already have Belle’s number but I-I don’t have yours yet… c-can I…?” She nervously asked Wise, “Who knows? I-I might be interested in borrowing some movies sometime?” She said with a very prominent blush on her face, while instinctively looking down and extending her phone.
“Sure! Why not?” Wise happily agreed as he put down his contact information on her mobile, who was he to turn down another potential customer.
‘Yes!’ she internally celebrated.
[141 Convenience Store - 09:32 PM]
After getting a small cheesecake from the counter, Heddy dejectedly sat at one of the tables at 141. She’d been pretty drained after working at the promotion event, especially with the amount of thick-skulled passersby who just could not grasp the very-easy-to-understand guide on 141’s event, not to mention the annoying cheapskates who kept trying to find loopholes in the stamp system. Sjal had already left for her apartment near Lumina Square, so it was just her and the bangboo at the store.
Looking down at her lonely little snack with a tiny plastic spoon, her thoughts naturally drifted to the thought of Wise, and the plans of seeing him tomorrow to talk about Nihility and maybe renting another movie, but for some reason she just wasn’t as excited as before. It somehow had to do with when she saw him today with that other blue-haired girl, Heddy didn’t know why it bothered her so much, it didn’t make sense, she just met him yesterday, it shouldn’t be that important, so why did-
“You mind if I sit here?”
You could imagine Heddy’s surprise when she looked up and saw the exact person she was thinking of, so much so that she choked on her food, “Nonono! Not at all!” She frantically tried to compose herself despite the clog in her throat causing her to cough up a storm.
“You okay? I didn’t expect to see you here so late…” Wise asked as he sat down in front of her holding a plastic bag and a wrapped popsicle.
“A-ah… y’know, I was just tired after working for 141’s promotional stamp event, so I wanted to reward myself with a cheesecake before I go back to my apartment hehe…” She replied with hint of red coloring her cheeks, “W-what about you? What are you doing here?”
Wise gritted his teeth, it probably wasn’t a good idea to say that he’s spent hours working on a totally illegal supercomputer to engage in totally illegal proxy work, and his sister sent him on a quick run to get a few litres of caffeine packed nitro fuel so they’d have enough energy to make some decent progress by midnight. That said, he needed to make up some kind of excuse.
“U-uhh… I was having a little movie marathon with my sister and we ran out of snacks so I had to make a quick run here to get some more,” was the best excuse he could come up with, “but I thought I’d take a cheeky little treat for myself here…” He added, gesturing to the popsicle in his hand before unwrapping it.
“You have a sister?” Heddy asked, this being the first time he’s mentioned any kind of family to her
“Yeah, she lives with me here… Though, she did dye her hair blue, so maybe it doesn’t look like it at first glance,” he chuckled.
The realization hit her like a truck, ‘That girl… was his sister??’ Heddy thought, letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, it felt as if a massive weight just fell from her shoulders, and a prominent grin naturally crept on her face, “O-oh…”
“So uh… how was the movie?” Wise asked,
“I really liked it! The pacing was nice and steady, the emotion was there, it really got me hooked!” The fatigue on her face almost instantly melted as she started talking about the movie with the same level of enthusiasm she had when she first visited Random Play.
“It’s personally one of my favorite works from Henry Strand, both from a storytelling and visual perspective- did you notice what they did with the color composition in that movie?-” Wise leaned in, matching her energy
“Right?? The subtle transition from yellows to the blues and pale greys-” She replied, “What do you think of the soundtrack?-”
It seemed that whenever Wise matched her wavelength, they’d have no trouble constantly ranting about their mutual love for cinema, almost like a highly competitive table tennis game where you couldn’t keep up with the ball going back and forth. Seeing his face, his grey hair, his voice was all just so refreshing. Sure, she loved talking to him about movies but there was just something else she couldn’t put her finger on, eventually she’ll have to come to terms with the fact that she maybe had the teeniest tiniest crush on this man.
[Random Play - 10:57 PM]
After that conversation, Wise seemingly had been recharged and refreshed, the quick trip to 141 had become a very well needed mood booster to get him motivated to continue working on their proxy supercomputer. Plastic bag in hand, he opened the staff room to see his sister in complete dismay
Belle stared back at him and grumbled with barely contained aggression, frazzled hair, possibly from some mild electrocution, and terrible eye bags that could rival his on a bad day,
‘Did..did she just growl at me?’ Wise nervously thought.
“Wise?! Where the hell were you?!” She scolded, “I’ve been waiting for you for like an hour!”
“W-was I gone for that long?” Wise nervously replied
“It’s 11 already!! How hard is it to get a few cans of nitro fuel from a convenience store that’s like 30 seconds away?!” She yelled.
Usually, Wise would be the one to scold his sister for staying out for too long in this household, but for whatever reason, the roles were reversed this time, putting him in kind of an awkward position, usually whenever Belle got angry, she would be akin to a cute penguin waddling around, but this time, due to the visible fatigue and stress lines along with the lack of beauty sleep, she looked more like the humpback wicked witch of the west.
“I uh…” He stumbled
“Whatever!” She snapped as she snatched away his plastic bag, “I’m sick of looking at the motherboard, you work on it!” she grumbled as she walked toward the disordered mess of components lying on the floor.
[Random Play - 09:00 AM]
Wise groaned as he got up from his awkward sleeping position, slouched on the workbench with a soldering tool still in hand, he rubbed his eyes as he looked around and saw his sister passed out face down partially buried by cables. In fact the entire staff room was absolutely trashed by wires sprawled around and a jumbled mess of components located in places they shouldn’t be in, with about the mess you would expect from two (mostly) self-taught electrical engineers.
He looked at his phone to check the time. It was already late but this time he was too tired to care. He got up and gently nudged Belle with his foot a few times until he could hear a hum from her, “mmmmmh, I’m hungry..”, and right on cue, her stomach let out a very audible grumble as if to support her argument.
Right, he hasn’t made breakfast yet, Wise sighed before giving her sister a suggestion, “You wanna go to Waterfall Soup?”
“mhmmm..”