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I was on one of her fleece white sofas, both hands clutching both sides of a bubbling soda can, sitting there on my bestest, stiffest behavior waiting in line for my eight o’clock interview or something.

For the better part of five minutes I stayed that way, kept only in company by the periodic chimes and dings of some other brave guy feeling especially lucky tonight.

“I’m good, I was just…” I took a sip from the can, nudging my head somewhere, anywhere, probably everywhere. “...admiring your aesthetics. You live pretty cozy.”

“I disagree, but thanks nonetheless,” she said coolly. “No one’s ever said that about my place before.”

“Have you even brought anybody else to your place before?”

“Nope.”

Mmm, I really can’t imagine why that was then.

Irene was wearing red, I noticed at once. One of those stretchy, wooly, knee-length jumpers that just only ended in a slow hover over her thighs that almost seemed to just smolder in red. If anything, the gentle texturing of the fabric gave a more innocent, pious air about her… especially with her raven-hued locks cascading freely down her waist like the way she already had it falling.

.....

Innocent, indeed. You look at her, you’d never think about the ferocity of her bite.

A wolf in literal sheep’s clothing she was.

Irene noticed me staring at her a little longer, a little more than just an admiring glance, and when I noticed her noticing, she immediately went about pretending as if she didn’t.

My first instinct was to try and flatter her, but after seeing that reaction, I thought twice about it. I had a funny feeling that she’d actually prefer it that way.

Silence is golden, right?

“There’s a couple, um…” in a flip of switch, Irene strode in a hurry, making for her laptop still sitting beside the stove before flinging it around the countertop, where she pushed and pulled herself a seat on a stool, looking evidently exasperated. “... got some last-minute work stuff I need to sort out first. Won’t take long. Then we can finally get started on… whatever it is we can get started on.”

Last-minute work stuff, huh? My, I do wonder what those ambiguously-worded work-related issues could be.

“Such a tease, Irene,” I got up from my seat, leaving the gift sagging down a cushion, waltzing my way to another seat right across from her. “Here, I’m beginning to think you just don’t want to tell me what the hell you’ve been up to these past few days.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m the one who asked you here, didn’t I? I’ll get to it, just – ” her laptop churned out another ding, another person throwing caution to the wind, and Irene reverberated out a low groan, as her fingers began vigorously clattering out her furious scorn. ” – just let me deal with work first.”

I decided to leave her to it, with the way her messages kept piling up, it might as well have been work anyway… waited this long, what’s a dozen or so blocked contacts, huh?

That being said, I only lasted a full minute before I had to leave the stool in search of something to do… so, on a whim, I began pilfering through her shelves, her cabinets, which she seemed utterly oblivious up until I return back to my seat, sliding over a steaming cup of coffee toward her. At once, her eyes peeked up over the edge of her laptop, her nose wrinkling with rousing interest.

“Thanks,” she muttered, and whiffing, sniffing over the rims of the mug, her tense expression eased slightly into a faint smirk. “I quite honestly missed having this as well.”

“Speaking of missing,” I said. “My shifts have been feeling unusually emptier nowadays, y’know?”

“That so?” she said after a deep, relieving sip, slowly setting the cup aside and delving her hazel eyes back into the intense white glow of her screen. “You can’t have been missing me that much… I was under the impression you’ve been having quite the grand time with Amanda lately.”

I felt my eyes blink once, and for a moment, I almost wished for them to never open again.

“You browsed her feed again?”

“I’m always browsing her feed. Not exactly private, is it?” she said, and yeah, fair enough, I guess. “Anyway, it seems she’s wearing a new, fancy ring now… you got her her Christmas present? Good for you. Well, good for you and her, I suppose.”

She sounded so methodical and blunt with her words, it felt like I was talking to a retail worker on a permanent, forever shift of dealing with endless bumbling customers.

“Also, that ring you got her,” she briefly narrowed her eyes at me. “Is it really what I think it is?”

“Oh, wow, okay,” I shook my head and was unable to keep back a chuckle. “Too busy to answer my questions… but all the time in the world to talk about what I’ve been up to apparently, huh?”

“I – that’s…” Irene hunkered deeper down behind her laptop, her brows furrowed. “Just answer the question. Is that ring you gave away really – ?”

“It’s Frederika’s,” I said, and immediately the clattering ceased, and she looked up again, her hard stare demanding clarification to which I gladly obliged. “Dad had it on him this whole time, passed it down to me, and I decided Amanda should hold onto it.”

Irene responded to me back with blinks, looking right through me and processing all that I had said.

“That ring’s been lost for as long as anyone can remember. Hundreds of thousands over centuries had dedicated their whole lives trying to find this piece of ancient history, a relic worthy of undying devotion to many, many more… and to think… that ring now has over ten-thousand retweets and replies than I even care to read… honestly, I don’t even know what to say.”

Neither did I, now that she put it that way. That’s just how life works, I suppose. Y’know, one man’s trash… and all that.

“Stranger things have happened,” I said, shrugging. “Like a certain stringent succubus I know of deciding to fall in love or whatever.”

“Not that strange,” she disagreed. “Anybody else, okay, extremely strange. But you?” and once like a whiff and sip of warm coffee, she formed another small smile. “It makes sense if it’s you.”

It was then noticed I haven’t heard her laptop chime in a while, and that she wasn’t typing, she didn’t look distracted… finally, it seems, I had her full undivided attention.

“Oh, and also…”

I had only the slightest, single second to notice the wider curve on her lips before, like a shotgun to the face, Irene flipped the laptop around and flashed me with the horrific, terrifying sight of the droopy-eyed, welt-ridden sketch of Eldritch-Amanda again… smiling happily at me with enough space for an entire ocean between teeth from the glassy glint of a picture frame propped atop a desktop.

Oh, Amanda can you just stop giving updates on the status of that damned drawing for like five minutes?!

“So,” whirling away back my self-made abomination from my eyes, Irene cocked a brow, laying her arms across the counter almost in patience, in anticipation, a full-on smile only barely peeking. “Me when?”

“I hate it when you get teasy,” I sighed.

“Who’s teasing?” her eyes scrunched in confusion, just pure innocent peering back. “Why does it have to be a tease? Why can’t I just simply want a drawing that you made of me?”

Her laptop chimed up once again, and for once, I was actually grateful to hear its sound. Irene, on the other hand, without skipping a beat, folded it firmly close and slid it far off to the side where it lay there not even whirring anymore.

Now with nothing between us, seemingly free for anything, for some reason, silence won out over countless other activities we could have been doing, or that we were doing. No teasing, no small talk. This was different.

Seems we’re finally getting around to why she’s brought me here…

“I got dinner for us being delivered, should be arriving soon,” Irene spoke up, her voice unusually feeble and sparse. “Didn’t really know what you’d like, so – burgers, fries – it’s a safe bet.”

“Burgers are good, yeah,” I nodded. “Good bet.”

“Was hoping maybe I could enjoy dinner with you first,” she said, flashing a dismal smile only fleeting. “But I get it. You’re curious. You’re impatient. I would have been too. Even more so than you, probably. So I guess, I appreciate you putting up with that.”

“All’s forgiven and forgotten,” I simply said, scooting in forward and paying closer attention. “So, what is this all about?”

“Ria,” she said, shaking her head a little. “I mean, that part’s obvious. But what exactly does anything have to do with her, well… you love to think, you had weeks to think, so, you tell me first, what do you think is going on with her?”

“You ask me, that part is just as obvious… ask you before, didn’t I?” and many times, over and over again, I repeated my question, hopefully, for the final time. “You’re trying to wake Ria, aren’t you?”

“Trying,” she said with a heavy emphasis, letting out a dejected sigh. “For the better part of the week, I’ve been trying. Sera was a major help. Her abilities are… extraordinary to say the least. I’ve learned a lot from watching her these past few days.”

Had deeper, more intricate questions about those few days too, but for the time being, I held my tongue, and let her carry on, cause it seems like she was on the brink of something massive.

“So anyway,” pausing, she took another sip of coffee, resuming again to the muffled sound of its clatter. “I succeeded.”

“You…?!”

I felt every word I knew, and every emotion I felt rushed to the tip of my tongue, ready to spill, ready to overwhelm, until Irene rushed to speak again, louder, firmer, pushing back against it.

“Or I will succeed,” her eyes met mine, and she blinked, a tremble in her lips almost struggling to get the rest of the words out. “So long as you’re willing to help me.”