“No? She left a while ago… we haven’t seen her since the lunch break.”

“Hmmm?”

He had come looking for Olive, but she wasn’t at her shop, and she wasn’t at her house either. She wasn’t answering her phone, which made him worry even more.

“Alright, thanks, Frank.”

“Is something wrong? She didn’t look well when she left… is everything alright?”

As the people that she had trained herself, they were worried about her too, but Elio simply gave them a reassuring smile and explained there was nothing wrong, that she was just concerned about something related to the game they were playing.

Many of the staff knew about <NO> and knew she had also started playing it, but as her employees, they didn’t know much about her personal life or what she might be going through, and they didn’t really need to know either.

“Anyway, I’ll see you around. Ah, and don’t worry. I’ll let her know to update you all if I find her.”

He bid them goodbye and walked toward the exit of the shop. He was already concerned, but now, seeing that she wasn’t here either, he realized the pressure from that coin and the meeting tomorrow that she was under might be more than he had expected.

Thankfully, he knew where to look next. He headed to the other side of the shopping area and entered a shoe shop, one of the most unassuming places in the mall.

“Hello~. How can I help you~?”

An employee greeted him cheerfully, giving him a quick once-over before flashing a bright smile.

“I’d like to see the Bloom series, please.” He didn’t need to say much. There was no need for long words this time.

“Oh? I see, this way~.”

The employee, who was unaware of the real reason for his visit, guided him to a door at the back of the shop. It was a simple looking mechanical door and yet it felt as unique as something important.

“They’ll take a moment to arrive, so please wait here.”

This wasn’t an ordinary shoe shop, that much was obvious. This backroom that he had just entered was also not a simple place.

“Hmmm?”

“I knew you’d be here…”

Not many people knew, but Olive owned this place as well. She didn’t visit often, but she used it for important meetings. Whenever she wasn’t at her shop or home, Elio usually found her here.

“Go away, El… I want to be alone right now.”

The room was small and dimly lit, just enough to fit a few chairs and a single table. There wasn’t much else, a water cooler, a door connecting to the neighboring shop (which was also hers), and an overwhelming sense of peace.

No one else was there. Olive sat alone, fiddling with a mirror cube, surrounded by a scattered mess of cooking materials on the floor.

She was sad, he could see the sadness in her eyes, but more than that, he could see the exhaustion on her face.

“Of course, you want to be alone…”

He could tell she had not slept much for a day or so. She was also not looking at him, so… this wasn’t good.

“But, well, some things aren’t meant to be handled alone. Thinking about stuff like this definitely isn’t something you should be doing by yourself.”

He sat down beside her, and took the cube from her.

“What’re you worried about in the first place?”

She tried taking the cube back from him without saying anything, but, before she could even get it from his hand, he was already done solving it.

“If you don’t know what’s going to happen, what’s the point of worrying about it?”

Anxiety was an evolutionary trait of their species, but taking it too seriously only led to a negative impact on not just them, but also on the world around them.

“You got a coin, a dangerous token of chaos. Alex and the others think it’s something important, there are many who have been searching for this thing for decades, centuries, and perhaps eons.”

He gave the cube back to her, but now that it was solved, it was useless to her so she threw it away to the other side of the room.

This little thing was the only thing keeping her distracted from all the things she was avoiding since earlier, but just like all the things that now covered the floor, that cube was useless as well.

And unlike earlier, she couldn’t pick up something else either since he was here.

“It’s not like you cannot deal with people or are afraid of taking on the challenges, Olive.”

She was hitting him with her hands now that he was doing something she didn’t want right now.

She was pushing him away, she was not speaking with him and yet, he continued speaking as if it was making some kind of impact on her.

“You played it and you found something you like about it. You know how people of that world are and how that place is nothing less Real than this world we live in.

It’s simply a little different, but, if Alex and the rest of them are right…”

He didn’t mind her hitting him, but he needed to tell him something so, he grabbed her face while enduring the slap that landed right in his cheeks, and looked into her pretty eyes.

“Something bad might happen to that place, Olive. Something that wouldn’t be good for either that world or the people of that world.”

They talked almost everyday even though he was stuck in that place for so long. Every time they were talking, she would tell him about how she went hunting with her father and brother who came to the west through a special boundary that connected the two continents.

She would talk about all the things that she had made, all the new things that she made, and all kinds of people that she met when she was selling her stuff.

He knew she liked that place as well, as well as how she considered that place as something more than a game.

“You know what you have to do better than anyone else, Olive.”

His cheeks were hurting now, and they were all red. Still, as he stood up from his place, he gave her a warm smile.

“Just do what you want. Ignore Alex, and the rest that will want you to do things that you don’t really wanna do either.”

She was smart.

And she had that golden star on her coat so she was also familiar with responsibility.

“You’re Olivia Sean Weil Regalia. Don’t let them tell you what you should do with what is, in fact, yours.”

The coin might be the explosive that had triggered everyone around the world, but it was not something that belonged to them.

She owned it.

So, she could rightfully do whatever she wanted with it,

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep