Chapter 102: The Two Weeks Begin

On one of the quieter afternoons, Reinhard sat in a small mansion office buried in paperwork when the door opened and Lily walked in.

"Lily?" he asked.

"I’m bored."

"And?"

"Let’s go to Marvello."

He glanced at the documents in front of him, then back at her. "Why?"

"Because I’m bored," she said, like that was a complete legal argument. She wasn’t carrying anything, wasn’t acting suspicious, and clearly had no intention of explaining herself any further than that.

Reinhard closed the folder. "Fine."

Lily’s eyes went wide. "Really?"

"You asked."

"I didn’t think you’d say yes that fast."

He stood and stretched, already halfway to the door. "You underestimated how bored I have been."

She laughed and grabbed his sleeve. "Then let’s go before you change your mind."

"I wasn’t going to."

"You were thinking about it."

"I was thinking about whether you were about to make me spend money."

"You are going to spend money," she said, beaming.

"At least you’re honest about robbing me."

The ride to Marvello was short, mostly because neither of them could agree on a plan long enough to fill it. "You wanted to come," Reinhard pointed out. "So what are we doing?"

"Whatever we want."

He gave her a long, suspicious look. "Anything?"

"Anything."

"Within reason."

"You said anything."

"I said it before I remembered who I was talking to."

...

Marvello sprawled out in front of them by the time they arrived.

Reinhard had walked these streets multiple times chasing something to find, buy, sell, or fix. Lily looked at the exact same streets and saw something entirely different, countless opportunities.

"Where first?" she asked, practically vibrating.

"You wanted to come. You pick."

She pointed at a street lined with expensive storefronts. "There."

"What’s there?"

"I don’t know."

He stared at her. "You pointed at it."

"Exactly. So we find out." She grabbed his arm and towed him forward before he could argue, which was, by now, her preferred form of negotiation.

The first shop had nothing to do with relics, just overpriced clothing for Awakeners with more money than reasons to spend it. Reinhard stopped the moment he crossed the threshold like he’d walked face-first into his own personality.

"You like it," Lily said.

"Obviously."

"You already own enough clothes."

He looked at her like she’d suggested the sky was a color he hadn’t heard of. "That’s not how this works."

The staff clocked him as a serious customer within seconds, and soon he was standing in front of a mirror in a dark coat, adjusting the collar, tilting his head, admiring himself from an angle no one had asked for.

"Not bad," he said.

Lily crossed her arms.

"Actually, very good."

"You’re ridiculous."

"You’re just jealous."

"Of the coat?"

"Of my taste."

She wandered off and came back holding something that looked like three outfits had lost a fight and merged into one, buckles in places buckles had no business being, a hem that disagreed with itself.

"What about this?" she asked.

"Absolutely not."

"Why?"

"It looks like it’s actively fighting you."

"I like it."

He sighed the sigh of a man who had already lost this argument before it started. "Fine."

"I knew you’d agree."

"I agreed because arguing with you costs more than the outfit."

"That still counts as a win for me."

"It does not."

They left with enough bags that Reinhard ended up carrying most of them, which Lily found hilarious given that she was perfectly capable of carrying her own things.

"Then why are you carrying them?" she asked.

"Because I bought most of them."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s enough of one."

They drifted deeper into Marvello, stopping at food stalls and shops that seemed to exist purely to give wealthy people new ways to not need things. Lily got distracted roughly every ninety seconds, and Reinhard, to his own mild surprise, didn’t mind a single one of them. She stopped hard in front of a dessert shop at one point, pointing through the glass like she’d spotted treasure.

"Those," she said.

"They’re pastries."

"I know."

"You want some?"

She looked personally offended by the question. "Obviously."

Inside, he ordered several kinds without asking how many she wanted, and she caught the detail immediately. "You remembered."

"Remembered what?"

"That I like the fruit ones."

"You’ve eaten enough of them that it stuck," he said, shrugging it off, though the corner of his mouth lifted slightly when she took the first bite and smiled like he’d handed her a small, edible victory.

It wasn’t an important thing to remember. It wasn’t anything he’d tried hard at. He’d simply noticed, the way he noticed most things about the people he cared about, and apparently that still counted for something.

The relic district hit differently. The moment they stepped into one of the larger stores, Reinhard’s whole demeanor shifted, and Lily clocked it instantly.

"Oh, no."

"What?"

"You have the look."

"What look?"

"The one you get right before you buy something you don’t need."

"That’s not a look."

"It is." She watched him walk toward the nearest display like a man answering a calling. "Now we’re shopping."

With the Merchant King’s Lens, the relic district was less a shopping trip and more a slaughter. He picked up item after item and sorted them out loud without mercy.

"This one?"

"Bad."

"This?"

"Useless."

"This?"

"Mostly useless, but the bad kind of mostly."

"Do you actually like anything in here?"

He picked up a small ornate relic shaped like a miniature cannon, turning it over like it had personally impressed him. "This."

"What does it do?"

"No idea."

"You’re buying it without knowing what it does?"

"Sometimes you have to take risks," he said, with the total confidence of a man who had never once taken a real risk in his life.

"You’re an idiot."

"I’m a rich idiot."

"That makes it worse."

"It makes it affordable."

Lily figured out quickly that he wasn’t buying anything because he needed it. He just liked the act of finding something absurd and throwing money at it without flinching, so she decided to make the game harder on purpose. She found a monster statue tall enough to need its own zip code, and he bought it without blinking.

Then she found a device that generated a miniature lightning storm trapped inside a glass container, purely decorative, entirely pointless, and extremely expensive.

He stared at it. "Why would anyone buy this?"

"Why are you asking me?" she said, grinning.

He checked the price, then looked at her like she’d personally engineered his financial ruin. "You’re trying to bankrupt me."

"Can you even be bankrupted?"

He actually thought about it. "Of course not."

"Then that’s my new goal."

"Good luck," he said, laughing, and bought the lightning storm.

In the end, he spent 10 million in the shop.

[119,930,000 Credits —> 109, 930,000 Credits]

[Current Balance : 109,930,000 Credits.]

From there it stopped being shopping and became outright war. Neither of them cared about who spent more. They cared only about who could find the next, more ridiculous thing. Lily found a stuffed monster the size of a small car.

"No," Reinhard said immediately.

"Yes."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it takes up half a room."

"That means it’s comfortable."

"That’s not how furniture works."

"It’s not furniture."

"Then what is it?"

"My friend," she said, with a straight face that should have won her an award.

He looked at the monster. He looked at her. He sighed like a man signing away a kidney.

"Fine."

"Victory."

"You’re impossible."

"You bought it."

"You’re exploiting a known weakness."

"You don’t have weaknesses."

"Exactly," he said, smiling, which was somehow both the correct answer and the most insufferable one available to him.

Hours slipped by before either of them noticed as twenty-five million was spent without care.

[$109, 930,000 Credits —> $84, 930,000]

[Current Balance : $84, 930,000 Credits.]

They finally dropped into a restaurant, bags stacked around them like siege fortifications, and for the first time all day Reinhard wasn’t looking at prices, wasn’t thinking about Eclipse, wasn’t running numbers on anything at all. He was just eating.

Lily watched him for a while. "You’re having fun."

"Obviously."

"You look different."

"Different how?"

She propped her chin on her hand. "Less like you’re planning something."

"Maybe that’s because you’re not letting me."

"Then I’ll keep doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Dragging you out here when you’re working too much."

He thought about it for exactly as long as it took to realize he already knew the answer. "You’d better."

She blinked, then grinned wide enough to rival the lightning storm back in his bags. "Deal."

He went back to his food, and the answer had come out of him before he’d even thought to stop it. Lily hadn’t needed anything from him today. She hadn’t needed training, a relic, a solved problem, or a single credit. She’d come to him bored and decided she wanted to spend the day with him, full stop, no strings attached anywhere in the transaction.

Reinhard had spent years being the one who noticed what everyone else needed and quietly fixed it before they had to ask. Today, for once, someone had simply wanted him around for no other reason than that, and he liked it more than he was prepared to admit out loud.

Lily finished eating and stood up like she’d remembered something urgent. "We’re not done."

He eyed the fortress of bags surrounding the table. "We’ve bought enough to furnish a second mansion."

"There’s one more store."

"What store?"

"You’ll see."

"That answer makes me significantly less confident."

"Good."

The last stop was one of the most expensive accessory shops in the district. Lily wandered the displays for a while before stopping at a small piece and turning it over in her hands, quiet in a way she usually wasn’t.

"You like that?" he asked.

"It’s nice."

"Then take it."

"It’s too expensive."

He raised an eyebrow. "You dragged me across half of Marvello on a bored whim and bought a monster the size of a sedan. This is where you draw the line?"

"That was for fun."

"Exactly my point." He took it from her hands and set it on the counter before she could argue further. "I’ll buy it."

She stared at him. "For me?"

"Call it payment for entertainment services rendered."

"You’re weird."

"You’re only noticing that now?"

She laughed, took it, and said thanks without needing to say anything else, because there wasn’t anything else that needed saying.

...

When they finally made it back to the mansion, the rest of the family was already gathered in the main room, and Maki clocked the number of bags before either of them had fully walked through the door.

"What did you two do?"

Lily smiled with the practiced innocence of a professional criminal. "Nothing."

Yuna looked at Reinhard. "How much did you spend?"

"That’s not important."

"That means it was a lot," Maki said, already sorting bags by crime severity.

Emily laughed quietly from the couch while Lily started dropping bags on the floor like trophies. "We had fun."

Reinhard glanced at her, and something in his expression softened without his permission. "We did."

Lily immediately started pulling purchases out to show everyone. While Maki began the grim work of separating anything remotely practical from the pile of things with no discernible reason to exist.

A pile that included, prominently, a stuffed monster roughly the size of a small sedan.

Reinhard smiled to himself, glancing once more at the lightning storm sitting innocently among the bags.

Next time, he decided, he was choosing where they went. The lightning storm had other plans.