Chapter 33

Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 17– Times Have Changed.

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*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

I blearily open my eyes and reach out beside me, hitting the button embedded in the wall next to my bed that turns off the infernal beeping that I wish I had never implemented in the first place. Sadly, it is actually helpful and wakes me up at the break of dawn. I lay in bed for another minute, almost sinking back into blissful sleep before I control myself and sit up, dragging my comfortable duvet off of me.

I turn and step onto the smooth wooden floor, immediately turning around and sorting out my bed and making it, taking extra care with my fantastic duvet and pillows that even now beckon me back to their loving folds. Then, turning away from the temptation, I walk over to my wardrobe and grasp the double doors and fling them open. Two compartments near my feet slide out, one holding my various shoes and sandals and the other fitting socks, hats, glasses and any other sorts of accessories.

Attached to the inside of the wardrobe doors is an elastic fibre that stretches when pulled and connects to the back of the wardrobe, and hanging on the left one are all of my pants, and on the right one are all my shirts and tops. I am pretty proud of this piece of furniture, it took me quite a while to figure out how to make an expanding area for my clothes to hang upon, but I did it. So when the wardrobe opens, everything comes out easy for me to pick and choose, and when I close it, everything is tucked away nicely and neatly, compacted not to take up much space.

Reaching into my wardrobe, I pick some yellow sandals, beige cargo pants that come to my shins, a light blue tank top and some oversized black shades with a bright red frame. Taking my chosen items, I lay them out nearby and then pull off the pants I am wearing, the only thing I wore to bed, toss them into a nearby basket and enter the bathroom. It is a simple room with tiles placed on top of the wooden floors and walls so that the water won't rot any of the wood.

I made sure that the floor was not even and tilted slightly so that any water on the floor would run down to the drain in the corner of the room. Where it would then go through a series of pipes underneath the ground and exit into the sea a good few miles away from me, all the water I expend goes to the same place. It was a lot of work, but I made sure to do it. I didn't want to go swimming and fishing in my own wastewater after all, and I am going to ignore the fact that others might not be as considerate as me and continue to live in my blissful world.

After a quick use of the toilet and flushing away the contents, I wash my hands in the sink. It is a bit unnecessary since I am about to shower, but that is just how things are done, and it is ingrained in me that you go to the toilet and wash your hands afterwards. Walking over to the shower section of the room, I reach out to a jutting-out wooden outcrop in the wall and grasp the handle upon it. Dragging it out of the wall, it comes out in segmented sections that fit together as I pull it out and walls this section of the room off from the rest.

With my shower section set, I turn to the side and pull the lever and prepare myself for the water to come down. After about a second, when the clunking and metal sounds finish, the cold water sprinkles down out of the ceiling and onto my body. Hmm, it should have come out straight away. I will have to check up n that and perform some Maintenance, probably replacing some of the parts.

Ignoring that for now, I start to wash myself in the cold water as quickly as possible, not wanting to waste any time that could be spent more productively. I could have splurged and worked in some hot water for the shower, but there was no point, I was used to the cold water, and it helped wake me up in the morning and prepared me for a day full of work. I could have also had a bath, but that would have been a waste of water, and it takes quite a lot of time to collect rainwater and seawater and filter it to make it clean for use.

After finishing my morning rituals, I get changed into my already laid-out clothes and walk to my kitchen. Opening my refrigerator, which takes up quite a lot of the power, I reach in and grab some fruits and a bottle of milk which I then eat at my lovely round wooden table. I don't need anything bigger since I don't really have any visitors and having a bigger table just so it can be primarily empty seems kind of sad.

After finishing my meal, I get up and walk to the front of my house, opening the nicely designed wooden door and walking out onto the lovely green grass of my front garden. It was a pain to clear out the sand from the front of my house and replace it with good soil, but looking at my vibrant garden with beautiful flowers and a little fountain, it was well worth it. I go and take a seat on the wooden bench standing on a black metal frame in front of the fountain and try to see what I am going to be doing today.

Let's see, going by my schedule and by what day it is, I should be... doing nothing today. Today is my rest day, and I totally forgot. I didn't even have to wake up so early today. Damn you, you infernal alarm.

Sighing, I lean back on the bench and stare at my house, the product of four years of hard work. It is a big difference from the shoddy, broken-down shack that it once was. I had spent every day these last few years working on it and improving it where I could, at least when I wasn't consumed by my work or other tasks.

I have been quite the little task rabbit these past few years, doing whatever jobs I could find to the best of my ability, no matter what it was or how hard it was. It was pretty fulfilling, as well as I learned numerous trades and crafts, which helped me to build my home. And while I don't claim to be a master in any of them, I certainly get by.

I learned sewing and embroidery at the local tailors, where I helped around whenever they needed me, and I used those skills to make my heavenly pillows and duvet as well as all sorts of other stuff. My work at the carpenters, the blacksmiths, the book store and the docks also helped me, and a whole host of other jobs supplemented my skillset and aided me in making this masterpiece before me.

Not only that, but all the money that I made from my various jobs I stored up and used to buy materials and supplies. I did go and buy a lot of clothes as well. Whenever I saw something that looked good to me, I couldn't control myself, and I would buy it.

I didn't really have to purchase anything besides those things after all since I could just go fishing for any food I needed, though I did buy some when I couldn't be bothered. George was fine taking fruits from the surrounding forests, but he never came home with tangerines ever again after I reprimanded him. It took me quite a while to pay back Bellemere-san for all those tangerines we ate, and that took away from the time I could have been working on my home.

Of course, those tangerines were too tantalising and juicy to not keep having them, but I didn't have the time to go down to Cocoyasi Village to buy them, and I did not trust George to go there and come back with them. Thankfully this ended up being resolved by the weird guy that comes by to buy books every once in a while, who is actually named Genzo.

Genzo, I discovered, is surprisingly the sheriff of Cocoyasi Village, which I did not expect given his brown uniform that made him look like a UPS man and the brown hat with the spinning pinwheel in it for some reason. I learnt that he was coming here to buy books just so that a little girl from his village could steal them and learn more about her passion, navigating. Of course, he could have just tried gifting them to her, but it was not my place to intervene, so I ignored it. However, since he made a trip every month, I asked him for a favour.

And so every month, when Genzo would come up to buy more books, he would come with a sack of tangerines for me, and I would give him the money to give to Bellemere-san for me. This was an end of the month treat for both George and me since these tangerines are really just incredibly scrumptious. I don't know how Bellemere-san is actually having money troubles; these things should have been selling like hotcakes.

Anyway, those were really the only expenditures I made, and the rest of my money was either stored away for future use or used on improving my home, and it was money well spent. So, looking at my house, I take it all in and review my hard work.

The sturdy wooden building has a nice varnished finish and metal structures connecting to the roof to add support. There were multiple windows all over the building, I learned how to make these at the blacksmithing shop and designed my own windows to fit perfectly, and they let in enough natural light into the house without ridding me of my privacy.

The inside of my house was actually pretty basic since I honestly didn't really need much, and I focused more on functionality. The kitchen had a fridge, an oven, a kitchen island and a table to eat at. An open floor plan led to the living area, where I had a comfortable sofa and a table where I liked to relax and read, and there was also a desk nearby for me to do some work if I ever needed to.

Then there was my bedroom that held my bed that I made the frame for myself, though I had to purchase a new mattress, and there was a drawer next to it that contained my books. Finally, there was my wardrobe, a mirror hung on the wall nearby, and the last feature in my room was that stupid alarm. It took a bit of work to set up the mechanism, and I only managed to have it set off 8 hours after I activated it, I am not the best at electronics, and I only learned this subject from books.

There is also the attic, the ladder leading up to it in the corner of my room, and I only used it for storage. It is where I stored all the crap that I had no need for, and as for my tools and supplies, I have a little shed affixed to the side of the house where I keep them all for easy access. I look to the right, where a distance away near the forest is a big wooden pagoda sort of structure.

This is what I built for George, so he could sleep under it, and I did it far enough away so that his snores would not annoy me. I also included some easy handles on every side of the ceiling so that George can pull it down to give the structure walls in case it rained. I can see him now, sleeping in the middle of it, utterly dead to the world.