Nem was led to a certain corner of the room, which was truly huge, and arrived at a larger cavity, which almost looked like an office. In reality, it was just a normal room separated from the rest by a not very sturdy door.
The door was currently opened, revealing two teenagers laying messily and a large bed, seemingly lazing around. One was a girl with reddish hair, clearly not originating from here, who was reading a book upside down, her head hanging from the bed.
The other was a young man with a large build for his age, with a small tan and short black hair. The boy, Leo seemed to be absorbed in his own thoughts, simply staring at the ceiling with an absent expression.
They both looked more presentable than the other orphans, but they clearly didn't have that much money either, judging from their clothes and the items in the room.
When Nem and Tio arrived by their door, the girl, Gina, lazily looked away from her book and sat up on the bed slowly before nudging at Leo with her foot, looking a bit annoyed. The young man straightened up immediately, seemingly surprised to be pulled out of his daydreaming.
The corner of Nem's lips twitched uncontrollably.
'I didn't expect to encounter such fine specimen of teenagers in this place, or even in this world at all. It seems it didn't have anything to do with cellphones or televisions after all.'
Nem politely made the greeting gesture and introduced himself.
"Hello, I'm Nem, thanks for giving us a place to sleep, it's very generous of you."
'It's very important to be polite. After all, they are quite a bit older than me currently and they really are pretty generous for doing this.'
"Ah, uh... Yes, you're very welcome... Ouch !" Leo answered awkwardly before being hit by Gina with her book.
He looked towards her with a wronged expression and she ignored him, telling the little boy with an honest smile :
"That's so sweet of you to come here ! Normally, the other children prefer to avoid us... Not that there is anything wrong with that..." She then turned to Leo and whispered loudly enough for Nem to hear it :
"You think he is your boss or something, why are you answering like that ?"
During this exchange, Nem got a good look at the book she was reading and written on the cover was "Practicing Law in the New South-West". It was quite thick, and seemed like a real professional book, not to mention how rare it was for an orphan to possess something like that.
'That's right, there are already adults in this world, so they should be looking for real jobs or already have one. Hum... they don't look like siblings and they share a bed, so I guess there are a couple, kind of like high school sweethearts, how romantic.'
Even though he said that in his mind, Nem really wasn't envious or anything like that. Not even mentioning that he was now a 10 years old child, he always believed that love required complete trust in the other party, which was obviously impossible for him. Even worse, in his opinion, a relationship could only end badly, no matter what someone would get hurt. Like any normal person, Nem didn't like getting hurt, so he avoided all relationships...
Of course, this didn't really make sense at all, but it allowed him to rationalize his behavior, so that was good enough.
He decided to ask them a few questions, since they were both very friendly. To maximize the chances of getting an honest answer, Nem put on an embarrassed expression which had a lot of success with Jane Spencer.
"How did you come to do this by the way ? I mean, finding this place and everything..." Nem realized halfway he was a little bit too blunt in his way of speaking since he didn't have many chances to practice for a while, even before his reincarnation.
Thankfully, Leo didn't seem to realize anything off about it, and answered happily.
"We knew this place since we were young kids and always kept it for ourselves as a hiding spot. But when we grew up and I got a job at the factory I met a few adults in the city who helped orphans in their own ways, and we got inspired to open this place !" The young man seemed genuinely happy to tell the story.
He was cheerful and straightforward as though he never suffered any hardships like the other orphans.
'This type of person should be quite rare here, maybe it's because he had this place and didn't need to feel as unsafe as the others... No, even then, it's quite impressive.'
It was Nem's honest thoughts. Even though the young man seemed to be just a good-natured and muscular idiot, Nem felt like he was more adult than he ever was.
'Well, maybe it's a fake persona thought, you never know.'
"So, you're not worried an adult will one day hear about this place and come here with a group of criminals ?"
Leo scratched his head a bit awkwardly.
"Well, that would really suck if it happened, but I don't think anyone would ever tell an adult that this place exists. Even when I contact some of them to help, I never tell them it exists..." He looked at Gina who didn't have any visible reaction and continued. "Plus, this place is safer than it looks, the worse that could happen for us two is that we have to find another place to live in. As for the other kids, they wouldn't really be in danger, but they would have to sleep on the streets again."
At this moment, Tio, who had kept silent until now, spoke to Nem.
"They won't tell you the details no matter how much you ask, since it's for everyone's safety."
Nem nodded understandably without insisting. In truth, he was pleasantly surprised by these people's seriousness and the number of thoughts they had put into this. Still, it was hard to compliment them since it would come out as strange from a 10 years old child.
Thankfully, he was quite used to this identity by now and made an amazed expression.
"Wow, you're so smart big brother Leo !"
The young smiled proudly and was about to say something when he was hit by Gina's heavy stare. He coughed a few times and admitted in a low voice.
"Actually she thought of almost everything..."
Choosing to ignore this particular trait of character of the couple, Nem thought of another question.
"You said some adults helped us sometimes, but what do they do in reality ?"
This time it was Gina who answered directly, listing a short number of these benefactors. From giving away food to teaching small groups simple mathematics or how to read, they were all kinds of citizens of Lunhart who supported the children in their own particular ways. However, one attracted Nem's attention.
"Mr. Murray regularly brings fresh meat and clean water despite being poor himself. His wife and him own a saloon in the north of the city and they always have problems with the local drunks. I wonder where he finds these things..." The girl seemed to be very familiar with every one of those benefactors and didn't seem to mind chatting now that she got started.
"Hold on, is his wife's name Lisa ?" Nem interrupted.
"Yes ! Do you know them ?" Gina's eyes widened slightly, and she really looked like a normal girl chatting with her friends.
"Ah, uh..." Nem hesitated a bit before telling the truth. "I was passing by the saloon this morning and heard her say that her husband had disappeared somewhere in the jungle... I guess that's where he found the things he brought here..."
"Oh..." The young woman stopped herself from talking and her gaze became somewhat filled with emotions.
Leo and Tio were also silent and seemed to hold themselves back on account of Nem being here. The jungle wasn't a place people generally came back from after getting lost. After a slight hesitation, Nem acted like he didn't notice the heavy atmosphere and asked :
"Is there anything I can do to help around here ? I want to do something for the others."
Leo was the first to recover and chuckled a bit to lighten up the mood.
"Well, the principal problem here is the criminals, right ? I think if they didn't exist, we orphans would be more united and help each other to survive and learn how to read... Since we'd feel safer, you get me ?" Leo seemed to have a pretty heavy local accent sometimes. "So, unless you can beat up all those guys by yourself, I think the best thing is to become an actually good policeman or to study law like Gina !"
'Uh, so nothing...'
Although Nem didn't really agree with Leo and that he thought that the fact that had a common enemy like these criminals should make the orphans more united, he had to agree that the things he could do were limited.
'Beating them up is clearly impossible, and even manipulating them would be way too risky considering their habits of kidnapping children... Sigh... I'll just try to think of something after spying on them for a few days.'