Thump—after closing the car door, Adam heard the sound of an engine coming to life, and then Serah, in the driver's seat, drove off the yard and onto the road.
"Listen!" Serah shouted, as she was still angry at what she saw in the bathroom. "You do not touch my daughter. You live under our roof, so you will listen to our rules!"
"Got it." Adam nodded while seated in the passenger's seat, gazing out of the window.
"I could have already thrown you out when you turned 18, but out of my good will, I let you stay!" Serah's nostrils flared in anger.
"You work in my store, listen to the rules of our household, and we'll feed you, keep the roof above your head, and not ask for rent. Many orphans of the plague would be thrilled to be in your place!"
"I know," Adam said, his voice quiet as he stared out at the streets that looked familiar but felt like distant memories. 'I moved out because I got tired of being told what to do. I wanted to be in control of my life.'
After a while of the car roaming across the streets of quaint little Navy Town, Serah parked the car in the parking lot of the small store that was owned by her.
It acted almost like a flea market, with various shelves selling mostly donated stuff, but there was also a small section dedicated to handmade crafts and artwork, and at the back of the store, there was a section for farming, fishing, and gardening supplies.
After getting out of the car, they entered the store and changed into their work uniform.
As Serah opened the store, she looked over her shoulder at Adam, standing near an aisle that sold farming tools and equipment.
"Go fill the shelves and make sure to put a price tag on them!"
"Got it..." Adam said lazily, and he went to get a shopping cart from the back of the store. It had all the stuff he had to put on shelves, and there was also the label marker, which he could use to label the items.
After pushing the shopping cart to one of the aisles, he started filling the shelves with the items while copying the price tag of the same items.
The door started showing activity as customers began to swarm in. Serah greeted them with a warm smile that looked vastly different from how she was acting just recently.
As Adam moved out of a few of the customers, he pushed the shopping cart to another aisle while thinking about Mortal Online—the game that he had been obsessed with almost his entire life.
'I need to purchase a VR Pod. I think I should have enough money, as long as I haven't already spent it on some stupid shit. Then, I need to register for the game, and when the tutorial starts, I can't leave the game for a few weeks...
'How can I let Serah let me do it? She'll never allow me, and she will definitely threaten to toss me out of the house. I don't want that to happen; I don't want to leave Alice again.'
As he was so occupied by those thoughts, he sometimes put the wrong price tag on a few items.
However, instead of fixing that, he moved onto another aisle to continue filling the shelves.
'Last time, I happened to meet Liam and Lisa in the same tutorial. So, it will be another three years before they start the game. I did reasonably well, but nothing major, and I barely got invited to any of the guilds.
'Only some second-rate guilds invited me, but I had no other choice than to join them. This time, I want to do much better, perhaps even try for an S-ranked score, which will open my path to any of the top guilds!'
Adam thought excitedly, but he dropped a bucket of cold water on himself as he had to calm down his expectations. He knew that achieving an S-ranked score was nearly impossible, and in the current timeline, only five had ever managed to do so.
Calamity being one of them.
In the future, there were a few more, but it never went above 10 players in over 20 years of the game being released!
It told about how incredibly difficult it was.
After Adam finished filling the shelves, he turned to the counter, where Serah finished restocking the candy.
'I have to convince her somehow. It will be incredibly difficult. It is possible to earn millions by playing Mortal Online at the top level, but only a few reach that level.
'If one reached a worse than D-ranked score in the tutorial, they wouldn't receive Merchant Card and would be forced to play without the interface and as an ordinary person.
'Many quit the game after that, but some continued to play despite the challenges and try to gain a job as non-mercenaries, but with that, they can only earn minimalistic sums compared to mercenaries.
'There is only one try in the tutorial. Even if the player got zeroed, aka killed, they wouldn't be able to play the tutorial and are forced to join the game with the same score as they got on their first try.
'I got a C-ranked score, which was good enough for me back then, but it's very mediocre, still it allowed me to become mercenary.'
Adam pushed the shopping cart to the back of the store and then fixed the wrinkles in his work uniform as he headed towards the counter. He wanted to try to convince Serah to let him do the tutorial.
"Serah." He knocked on the counter, trying to attract her attention.
"What is it?" Serah asked while counting the money on the cash register. "Did you finish filling the shelves?"
"I did, but there is something I want to talk to you about."
"Hmm?" Serah closed the cash register and turned to look at the black-haired young man.
She crossed her arms and impatiently asked, "Well, what is it? I don't have an entire day. A few of the customers are about to finish shopping."
Adam wryly smiled, as he was expected to get spat on, shouted at, and cursed at—maybe not necessarily in that order.
He cleared his throat and said:
"Can I get a few weeks of vacation?"
Serah looked blankly at him before smiling, her face turning shades to red.
"Are you crazy?!" She screamed hoarsely. "Few weeks of vacation?! Are you planning to go to New Paradise for a holiday, or what the hell? Is this how you repay me by going on vacation?!"
The few customers in the store looked away from the aisles towards the screaming woman and felt quite bad for the boy, as they believed his eardrums would be done after this.
"All right!" Adam threw his arms up in the air. "Forget what I said."
"Go clean the aisles!" Serah shouted and pointed towards one of the aisles. "Go!"
Adam sighed, grabbed a broom, and walked to the aisle with his head hanging low.
However, after he was out of Serah's sight, he pulled out his phone and went to check the prize for VR Pods.
'I can only afford the Bronze VR Pod...' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, it's better than nothing.'
After checking his bank account, he returned to the website and ordered the VR Pod.
'It should arrive in three days.' Adam pocketed the phone, and as he started cleaning, he had a hunch that Serah would be very mad.
'I still don't know if she will throw me out. She isn't aware of it, but we were actually somewhat close in the future. She's not as bad as she acts.'