CHAPTER 31 - Knowing The New People

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It was about three days later on the second week of the month that the time has passed by then in Z-city.

Fortunately, it looks like there are no more tensions between Eden and the new people in Safe Haven, as well as the two children Michael and Annie were delighted and happily content on having new friends to play with, including the playful puppy Archer as it frolicked and played with the little ones as they run around to play games together and such.

Eden was smiling at this as she is with Mother Ying and Ole Bessie carrying dirty and dusty clothes to do laundry chores and watched smiling at the sight of seeing their children happy before the young woman lead the way gently for the two elderly women to follow her to where the laundry room is set up in Safe Haven.

When the trio got there, Nadia and Sahara were already inside, already finished bringing in the buckets of clean water from the water units, and set them up there for all of them to wash and clean clothes for all of them in the group. Eden looked like she wanted to stay and join them in washing their clothes, but Bessie and Ying waved her off that the two of them and Nadia will be doing the house chores and Sahara gently urged Eden to leave them be since the 'mother hens' have spoken or so.

Eden relented after a few minutes and left with Sahara to go upstairs to prepare and cook lunch for the whole group but this time she didn't leave when Sahara tried to make her go and let her do all the work of cooking their food, and Eden refused to do so, insisting that they need to watch the food intake and rations, so that they won't deplete the limit of supplies they have left in storage in Safe Haven.

After they finished cooking and done preparing the luncheon meal, Eden and Sahara set up the table and Eden went to the rooftop to call for the men while Sahara went to gather the children who are playing around somewhere and also go to get Nadia and the two old women, to call that their meals are ready.

When Eden got up to the rooftop, she saw that Ryu and Daiyu are on guard watch, Mark is looking over the make-shift camping shelter that Eden made during her watch duties above the building and Homer was fiddling with something at some of the electrical or technical devices she scavenged and gathered before and brought back to Safe Haven.

Eden saw that Luna is there with the men, and noticed that the female canine is still glaring suspiciously and on guard against Ryu and Daiyu like it still doesn't trust them. She internally rolled her eyes in amusement over this before she called the men that lunch is ready and they nodded and went over to go downstairs until only Eden and Luna were left behind on the rooftop.

Luna whined at her master like it was asking Eden why she bothered to let the new people stay in Safe Haven and keep them safe here. Eden sighed and kneels to comfort and pat her dog, trying to calm it down and reason with it so that Luna won't keep up with its unfriendliness to the two specific people that the dog doesn't trust.

It didn't take long for Luna to be convinced but it stuck to Eden's side as they went down to join the others at last for their lunch, still growling at Ryu and Daiyu like it's warning them to keep their distance before Luna joined Archer to stay by the corner with their dog bowls filled with food and water, and Eden and the entire group paid their respects for their meal before eating.

After they ate their lunch, without leaving any leftovers for later, the children thanked Eden and Sahara for making a delicious meal, making Eden smile and Sahara blush a little embarrassed under their praises. Sahara and Nadia went to wash off their dishes and plates, the men returned to the rooftop to continue what they were doing up there, and the two old women went back to the laundry room to resume washing their clothes and then hanging them to dry and continue with other house-chores that they want to do in a contribution for their stay in Safe Haven.

As for Eden, she was the only one left behind with nothing to do but not make anybody suspicious, she decided to do a few house-cleaning to do like redoing the rooms she set up and made for the new guests and after doing that, she will go to her room and start writing a new entry into her journal, which the others still don't know about it yet.

Once she was done with the small house chores, she quickly moved to her room and shut the door quietly before she grabbed the journal, sat down on the bed, and started writing with Luna still staying by her side, lying down relaxed beside her feet as she wrote the new journal entry.

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JOURNAL ENTRY: DAY UNKNOWN, 10TH MONTH OCTOBER, YEAR 2XXX

Hey, it's Eden again.

It's been three days since I rescued the new group of survivors and brought them back home to Safe Haven and let them stay here.

I managed to get and obtain what I need to know about these people, knowing more about them and their stories and everything else.

Granted, only two of them, specifically Ryu and Daiyu are still a bit wary about the place that my small group and I have been living in and were very unsure whether it's truly safe and secure against enemies.

But I keep reassuring them with a warm smile that Safe Haven is completely secure and safe, and to show good faith, I showed these two men around and let them see the kind of traps I made up and created to alert us of any intruders and subdue and capture them, so it will give us the time and advantage to deal with them once we're notified of the traps being set off.

I also showed them the monitor alarms from the linked devices I fixed up and used, and Homer, who turned out to be a technical inventing geek on the inside, was impressed with what I did, despite my low basic knowledge of technology and fixing and modifying them for security and safety measures.

The only thing that appeased and made Ryu and Daiyu relax for their concern for their group, is the storage of weaponry I have collected for the entire year I've been in Z-city and stashed them well and kept them safe on the storage units for later use in the future, except the ones I've been using on my person since then.

Daiyu couldn't help but be a little impressed when he noticed the modified homemade double-bladed spears among the stash of weapons, and I admitted that I was the one who made them and stored them aside for future use when needed.

Ryu, on the other hand, had his eyes on the small collection of bows, arrows, quivers, and also crossbows. I noticed that his eyes are gazing with focus at a very big and hand-crafted wooden long bow placed neatly by the side without falling over. And when Ryu finally noticed that I was grinning a little at his attention towards it, I didn't call him out on it and gesture that he can go and take a look.

Ryu failed to hold back his reaction when I allowed him to, as his eyes beamed brightly a little with excitement and he went over to closely inspect and study the long bow like he was making sure that it was a very suitable weapon and good enough to be used for defending against enemies and so forth.

As for Homer, he asked me whether it's alright that he takes a closer look at the modified comm devices and other homemade and fixed-up technical ones that I used for security measures for Safe Haven, and asked if he could help out to do more to them to ensure our safety in our home. And I allowed him to, along with Mark who volunteered to join in as he admitted that he was studying to be an engineer but didn't get the chance to take on his first job from it because of the sudden zombie outbreak that just happened a year ago and he'd been focused on protecting his only family member, his grandmother 'Mother' Ying to safety.

Speaking of Mother Ying, she and 'Ole' Bessie decided to designate themselves as the caretakers as well as being mother-hens towards all of us in our group here in Safe Haven. And after what Ole Bessie has gone through, I decided, along with the other young women there with me that we would also help out with the house chores and other tasks that we need to maintain our living comfortably in Safe Haven as we all stay there.

Despite their protests, funnily enough, we refused to let the elderly do all the work by themselves, and I had fun chatting more with the old ladies as well as the young women who are almost about my age too, to get to know them better and anything more.

While I chatted with the other girls, I learned more about Talia, Sahara, and Nadia. For Mother Ying and Ole Bessie, I already know and learned that these two old women had just reached their retirement age when they got old, and it got to them emotionally hard when the zombie apocalypse broke out. As I had known before upon hearing her story, Ole Bessie lost her family tragically but her caregiver Talia stayed by her side and looked after her protectively, even though she isn't much of a fighter.

For Mother Ying, she has her grandson Mark protecting her as well, and even though he isn't a fighter too, he can be very creative and inventive when it comes to improvising useful tools into weapons so I was glad that he and Homer are working out into improving more and fixing up some of the devices that I made up as security measures to ensure our safety in Safe Haven.

When I chatted with Sahara and Nadia to know more about them, I learned, in a surprisingly trusting way as they do towards me, that Sahara used to serve in the Army but she got discharged from military duties due to some minimal misconduct she did with one of her superiors, in which Sahara confessed to me that the specific superior she was charged against, had tried a sexual assault attempt on her but failed to do so when she fought back. When Sahara tried to report back to her other superiors about it, that man turned against her and lied that she was the one who tried to come onto him, thus explaining the removal of her so suddenly from the military she was honored to work and serve with.

But Sahara confessed that she was very glad that she got dishonorably discharged at the time because right then and there when the zombie outbreak broke out, she instantly ran to her family to protect them, even though oldest brother Homer also helped out a lot with his geeky technical skills and no-less fighting sense at all.

Nadia was grateful that she went to Homer for a family visit with her two children Nisha and Natu to her eldest brother Homer's house when the zombie apocalypse first happened, and she and Homer hold out to protect themselves for at least a week until Sahara came home and found them and they were forced to abandon their former home when the odds were against them as the zombies grew larger in numbers at the time.

They traveled through unknown territory in hard times without stopping to stay in one place at all for the entire year because they believed that no other place is safe. Sahara, Nadia, and Homer, and their two kids had, later on, met up with Talia and Ole Bessie, and then Mark and Mother Ying. It also didn't take long for them to last meet up with Ryu, Daiyu, and their youngest brother Haru until they banded together as a group to survive.

For Talia, I was really surprised that she's been very brave and kept on being strong to look after Ole Bessie, even though she's not family to her, despite that she's been a loyal caregiver ever since she's been first appointed with the old African woman when she retired to the nursing home she worked at.

According to Talia's story, when the zombie apocalypse first happened, almost the entire wing in the nursing home she worked at, had gotten infected from the plague and had either died or turned into zombies, causing instant chaos to happen over there. It was either pure good fortune or coincidence that Talia and Ole Bessie weren't infected at all by the first wave of the zombie apocalypse and managed to escape out of there before the monsters turned on them. Talia turned out to be a good scout and scavenger as she and Ole Bessie had survived that long until the two of them bumped into and met up with the others.

For Mark, despite his lack of skills in fighting, he protected his grandmother Mother Ying very well when the outbreak happened and abandoned his chance of getting his first job, and he went through the same thing as Talia does, as he grew more skilled and gotten more good into scavenging for supplies for them and improving and fixing up materials to defend and protect themselves from any threats and dangers.

Finally, for Ryu and Daiyu's story, it was little Haru who told me about their story, and even though I know it's wrong to manipulate the little child upon asking him about it, I needed to know about them since I noticed before that Ryu and Daiyu are still wary and distrustful towards me. So Haru told me the story about him and his brothers and everything they went through the year before.

As it turns out Ryu and Daiyu were not only just skilled martial-arts fighters, they turned out to be some sort of guardians, following their tradition or culture dating back long ago from ancient China of sorts or something like that.

They were part of a clan following those specific kinds of ancient culture, ensuring that their history doesn't die out for a long time, so I guess that would explain why I noticed that these two guys have such unique interests in the primitive weapons concerning the blades, bows, arrows, spears, and others such like that.

At first, I thought that they were part of some kind of ninja-like organization, but Haru admitted to me openly that they're not like that, for he is proud to be family with them and he would have wanted to join in as the boy grows older to be an adult like his brothers, but sadly, the clan was entirely broken apart and wiped out when the unexpected calamity happened, which is the zombie apocalypse.

The clan was unprepared and all of the fighting men and women there got caught by the wave of zombies obliterating them all, and the only ones who survived and escaped the sudden massacre were Haru's two older brothers.

Ryu and Daiyu quickly ran to grab their youngest child and only brother and they left their home to travel around and find a safe secure place for them when they stumbled into and bumped with the others of the group, and they were nice to become their guardians and protectors while they travel non-stop until they gotten into Z-city and then got rescued by me and I brought them back to Safe Haven.

And that's all there is to it. I got to know about the people and what they've been through.

Now the next thing is taking care of the matters and figuring out how they can contribute to staying in Safe Haven, and ensuring the trust between them and me to solid ground and make a good alliance with one another.

To ensure that there will be no more tensions between us, as I don't want that at all, I'll have to work on gaining more of their trust and faith towards me, even though it was only Ryu and Daiyu who are still being negative towards me about it.

The next entry for this journal will be about the update or progress with our relationship and how it will turn out upon me helping them out and them helping out for me too so that we will be united into a suitably good alliance with each other.

Until then, this is Eden signing off.

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After Eden finished writing the entry, she closed the journal and swiftly hid it away before she rubbed Luna for comfort and she went off to check on the children to see what they were up to now or what games they are playing so that she can join them, with Luna following along beside her.

When Eden had found them and she stood by the side smiling upon watching them, she also looked to be in a daze like she was thinking about something very deeply, and it was like she was trying to plan or decide on what to do with Ryu and Daiyu to ensure that they can trust her and she can trust them so that there won't be any more tensions between them.

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