It’s Cal

I look up and am quite surprised at who I see standing next to our table.

“Cal?” I ask.

Cal’s face lights up, almost like he is meeting an old friend again.

“I thought it was you. The red eyes, you know. And together with Amelia like usual. Man, it’s been so long since I’ve last seen you two.”

This is odd. Cal was never this friendly with me back home. It makes me quite uncomfortable. Same for Amelia apparently, for she gets up from her seat and says, “Gosh, Cal. You show up just as I was about to go to the bathroom. Look, just take a seat and wait until I get back, ok. I’ll only take a minute.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.” Cal replies. “Don’t hurry yourself over me.”

Amelia then leaves and rather than take Amelia’s seat, Cal takes an empty chair from a nearby table and sits at ours.

“So, Darx. How have you been. How did your awakening ceremony go? What class and rank you get?” Call starts asking.

Behind Cal’s back, I see Amelia head into the kitchen instead of the bathroom. I see, she went to warn Oliver that Cal is here. Perhaps for the better. Back in the day, Cal and Fabe were good friends. They still might be. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

I start telling Cal about my rank. I don’t tell him that I can upgrade ranks unlike normal people. As for my skills, I only tell him about [Dual Strike] and [Summoner] as well as my water magic.

“Wow. B rank. You’re so lucky. I only got C.” Cal replies. “Still a good result, though. I’m quite happy with it, but imagine how my life would have been if I was a B like you. Oh, and I’m an archer too. My skills are not anything special though. [Arcing shot] is pretty neat actually, and [Perception] has helped me quite a lot as well.”

This is when time Amelia returns and takes her seat again.

“Sorry about that. What did I miss?” Amelia says.

“Oh, welcome back, Amelia.” Cal tells her. “Darx was just about to tell me which guild he joined.”

I made no such promise, but fine. I reach for the necklace hidden under my armor and flash him the medallion.

“Ooooo, Dark Dragons. Just like your mom.” Cal replies excitedly. “Man, you really have all the best luck.”

“Yeah, and Kiara here is also with the Dark dragons.” I say as I point in her direction.

I give Kiara and Cal some time to get acquainted. But after a while, I do end up asking the question that’s been burning in my head.

“It’s good seeing you again, Cal. But what about Fabe. What has he been doing around here?”

It is quite unexpected for me to see Cal’s expression sour. He even looks away from me and says, “I would prefer it if we didn’t speak about him.”

Ok, now I need to know more.

“Why? You two were always such good friends. Did something change?”

Cal rests his left elbow on the table, then grabs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. Then he sighs defeated and starts telling..

“It kindof already started at the awakening ceremony. I’m not sure if Fabe was just pissed that he got a D rank, or jealous of my C, but it left him more irritated than usual. I of course didn’t see it at first. I’m not sure if I was just too excited over my results, or if perhaps I just didn’t want to see it. But looking back on it now, it is obvious that must have been the start. Well, we stuck together back then and even joined the same guild. Radiant Dawn. It was fine for a while but …”

“But Fabe got into trouble?” Amelia asked.

“There were these guys.” Cal continues with a sigh. “I didn’t like them but Fabe got on well with them. He ended up partying with them a lot while I partied with another group. Sometimes I invited Fabe to come with us and at first he was happy to tag along. But after a couple of times though, he declared my group was nothing but amateurs. That we kept taking big risks for little profit and we would never get anywhere. Since then, Fabe and I only met in the guildhall. He then asked me what kind of quests I did and after I told him about it, he smirked and bragged about how much more money he made.”

I lean back and nod at Cal. “Yeah, that’s Fabe alright. So, after becoming an adventurer he has hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Yeah. But the next part is even worse.” Call rests both his arms on the table and then continues. “A few weeks after that, Fabe came to my room with a box. He said it was loot he got from a quest and he asked if I could store it in my room until he could find a buyer. He would even give me a 10% cut. I was saving up for a new bow at the moment, so I could use the money.”

Kiara, who at this point has remained quiet and just listened, speaks up at asks, “Did you check what was in the box?”

“I did.” Cal admits, “Some vials with a blue liquid in it. And I swear, back then I had no idea what it was. If I had, I totally would have reported Fabe.”

“Aah. Blue incense.” Kiara replies.

“You know what it is?” I ask her.

“It’s a ****.” Kiara explains. “It was originally meant as medicine for men who suffer from erectile disfunction. You open the bottle in a closed room and then the liquid starts to evaporate. The scent causes all men in the room to get an erection. It also works on men who don’t suffer from erectile disfunction, but after much use, they body becomes trained to require the incense for future erections.”

“Wait wait, hang on.” I pause Kiara. “If people without erectile disfunction use it, it causes erectile disfunction?”

“Hence why it was then declared an illegal substance.” Kiara continues. “Later a pink incense was also invented to make women horny. But that one was overwhelmingly used to facilitate ****, so it was banned as well.”

“Like I said. I had no idea what incense was or that it was even banned.” Cal continues. “Then one day, Fabe and I were called to one of the guild’s officers. We got a shouting and then got kicked from the guild. Both of us. You can imagine how pissed I was at him for tricking me into hiding his ****. But while I was shouting at him, all he could do was look at me with contempt. He even blamed me for not hiding them well enough. That if I had, we would still be in the guild and making a lot of money from the **** sale.”

Next, Cal brought his right hand to his forehead and his left hand to his left knee. “I didn’t … I never thought that … Fabe and I were friends. I never thought that he would intentionally hurt me.”

“What did he do?” Amelia asked.

“From out of nowhere, he suddenly raised his foot and kicked my left knee. He kicked it so hard that … Well, it broke.”

Holy shit. Fabe broke Cal’s knee? Fabe and I fought often, but he always just punched me. He never tried breaking any bones. I was wrong. Fabe has changed. He has gotten worse.

Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a waitress asking us what we wanted to eat.

“I will have the salad.” Kiara answers.

“I’ll take the roasted chicken.” Amelia says.

I could use a hearty meal after my dual and roasted chicken sounds amazing. “Roasted chicken for me as well.”

I then look at Cal and ask, “You want to eat with us?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Uh, roasted chicken.” Cal answers.

Cal has now told us a lot about his time with Fabe in the capital. But surely there is more than just his falling out with Fabe. His knee certainly seemed fully healed so that part must have been months ago. I’m curious what else he’s been up to.