Chapter 87: A Day Worth Keeping

Whatever heaviness had followed Jet out of the restaurant didn’t survive the next hour.

Inez made sure of that.

They had originally planned to return home after dinner, especially since Jet had already spent part of the afternoon handling his business at O.R.D.O., but those plans collapsed the moment Inez spotted the illuminated shopping district several streets away.

She stopped walking, stared toward the enormous collection of stores, entertainment centers and restaurants, then slowly turned toward Jet with an expression he recognized immediately.

Jet sighed before she even asked.

Inez clasped both hands together beneath her chin and widened her white eyes. "Big Brother, we’re already here."

"That isn’t an argument," Jet replied as Nadia began laughing beside him. "That’s just a statement about our geographical location."

Inez ignored the criticism and continued with complete confidence. "And tomorrow you might be busy. Then after your break you’re going back to fighting monsters, so we should have fun today while you’re still free."

That made Jet’s amusement fade just slightly.

She hadn’t intended anything profound by it. Inez was seven. Her reasoning probably began and ended with wanting to stay outside longer instead of going home.

But she wasn’t wrong.

Three days.

That was the break he and Frey had agreed upon before returning from the Beyond. After that came Dungeons again, because they needed Mana Crystals and higher Star Saturation.

Then eventually another expedition into the Beyond would follow. As Jet became stronger, the places he needed to go would become more dangerous, the training more demanding and the amount of time he could spend living like an ordinary older brother increasingly scarce.

He looked at Inez for another moment before smiling.

"All right," Jet agreed. "We can stay out a little longer."

Inez immediately threw both arms into the air and cheered.

Nadia looked toward him knowingly. "That resistance lasted an impressive five seconds."

"I made a calculated decision," Jet defended himself.

"You surrendered." Nadia rolled her eyes at him.

"I reconsidered based on new information."

"You surrendered," Nadia repeated.

Jet decided arguing would only encourage her.

Their first stop was the shopping district, although Jet quickly discovered that entering stores with Inez was dangerous now that she knew he had money.

She didn’t ask for everything she saw, thankfully, but she possessed an extraordinary ability to discover items specifically designed to weaken an older brother’s resolve.

A pair of shoes with tiny illuminated stars somehow ended up in their bags.

Then came a pink jacket.

After that, Inez found a hair accessory she absolutely needed because one of her classmates apparently owned something similar, although she spent nearly ten minutes deciding between two colors before asking Nadia to choose for her.

Nadia was hardly an innocent influence.

She joined Inez in trying on ridiculous sunglasses, convinced her to model an oversized hat and took enough photographs that Jet suspected some of them would eventually be used against his sister when she was older.

At one point, the two disappeared into a clothing store and emerged twenty minutes later carrying bags while refusing to tell Jet exactly what they had purchased.

Jet stared at them suspiciously. "Why am I being excluded from something I’m probably paying for?"

Nadia smiled as she walked past him. "Because some things are between girls."

Inez nodded seriously while holding Nadia’s hand. "You wouldn’t understand."

Jet watched them walk away together and wondered when he had lost control of the situation.

The answer was probably several hours ago.

From the shopping district, they found an enormous entertainment complex occupying three floors of a nearby building. Inez discovered the arcade first, and whatever tiredness she should have felt after spending the entire day outside mysteriously vanished.

She dragged Jet toward a racing game.

That proved to be a mistake.

Jet sat beside her inside one of the simulator seats, wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and immediately realized his awakened Perception and physical reactions made playing an ordinary racing game somewhat unfair.

Inez discovered the same thing thirty seconds later.

"Big Brother, you’re cheating!" she shouted as Jet’s vehicle disappeared farther ahead on the screen.

Jet looked offended. "How am I cheating?"

"You’re an Awakener!"

"That doesn’t make pressing buttons illegal."

"It does when you’re playing against me!"

Nadia stood behind them laughing so hard that she nearly dropped the collection of shopping bags she had been holding. When the race ended with Jet comfortably in first place, Inez demanded another round under the condition that he was forbidden from "using Awakener powers."

Jet agreed.

He still won.

Inez demanded a third race.

Jet deliberately crashed into a barrier during the final lap.

Inez won and celebrated like she had conquered a Dungeon.

They moved from game to game afterward. Nadia joined them for a cooperative shooting game, where Inez somehow became more aggressive than either adult.

They tried a dancing game that Jet regretted agreeing to almost immediately, especially when Nadia recorded part of his disastrous performance.

Inez played claw machines until she successfully extracted a small stuffed creature, then held it above her head with both hands and ran back toward Jet as though she had just obtained a legendary treasure.

They ate snacks despite having already finished dinner.

They took pictures inside a booth.

Inez convinced Nadia to pose with ridiculous digital crowns while Jet refused until both of them physically pulled him into the frame.

Hours slipped past without Jet paying much attention to them.

At some point, he found himself standing beside Nadia while Inez bounced between two nearby machines, her platinum hair moving behind her as she ran. Her cheeks were slightly flushed from excitement, and the smile on her face hadn’t disappeared for most of the evening.

Jet simply watched her.

Ten years.

That was what separated the future he remembered from the child standing in front of him.

In his previous life, he hadn’t understood how many ordinary moments disappeared without anyone noticing.

There had always been another day, another weekend, another opportunity to say something or spend time together.

Then the Dimensional Impact happened, and everything ended beneath collapsing concrete and the body of a monster far beyond anything he could fight.

Regression had returned those years to him.

But it hadn’t made time infinite.

If anything, Jet understood its value more clearly now.

The stronger he became, the farther his path would take him from days like this. There would be longer Dungeon expeditions, deeper journeys into the Beyond, training, O.R.D.O. responsibilities and eventually disasters he already knew were waiting somewhere in the future.

He couldn’t promise Inez that he would always be home for dinner or available whenever she wanted to play games.

So when opportunities like this appeared, Jet didn’t want to waste them.

Nadia glanced toward him and followed his gaze to Inez. She seemed to understand enough that she didn’t interrupt his thoughts with a joke.

A few seconds later, however, Inez noticed both of them watching and came running back.

"Why are you standing there?" Inez demanded as she grabbed Jet’s hand with one hand and Nadia’s with the other. "Come on. There’s another game!"

The quiet moment ended immediately.

Jet laughed and allowed himself to be dragged away.

By the time they finally left the entertainment complex, Zenith City had grown considerably quieter.

Inez lasted perhaps fifteen minutes.

Her steps became slower first. Then she stopped talking every few seconds and began rubbing one eye. When Jet asked whether she was tired, she stubbornly denied it despite yawning halfway through the answer.

Five minutes later, Jet was carrying her.

Inez rested against his chest with both arms loosely around his neck, her head tucked against his shoulder. She tried to continue listening while Nadia talked about something that had happened inside the arcade, but her responses became increasingly incoherent until they stopped completely.

Jet looked down.

She was asleep.

Her breathing had become slow and steady, and one hand remained curled loosely against the front of his shirt.

Nadia smiled when she noticed. "She fought bravely."

"She refused to admit she was tired for almost half an hour," Jet replied quietly, adjusting his hold without waking her. "Apparently falling asleep is easier than admitting I was right."

They continued toward home at a slower pace.

The streets around their residential area were nearly empty when they arrived, with most apartment windows already dark. Nadia lived close enough that they walked together until reaching her building.

She turned toward Jet near the entrance and looked once more at the sleeping girl in his arms. "Today was fun."

Jet smiled. "Yeah. It was."

Nadia stepped backward toward the entrance before pointing at him. "And don’t think I’ve forgotten about the dinner you owe me."

"I knew you wouldn’t." Jet smiled softly.

"Goodnight, fake boyfriend," Nadia replied with a grin.

Jet gave her a tired look. "Goodnight, Nadia."

He remained outside long enough to watch her enter the building before turning toward his own apartment.

Jet took a deep breath and went inside.

The apartment was silent.

He carried Inez carefully through the living room and down the short hallway until he reached her bedroom. Opening the door revealed a world that looked completely different from the rest of the apartment.

Pink dominated almost everything.

The walls were a softer shade, decorated with framed pictures, colorful drawings and posters of princesses from movies and animated shows Inez loved.

Several photographs had been pinned around a board near her desk, including pictures of her with Jet and a few with Frey making ridiculous faces behind them.

A tall shelf against one wall contained an army of dolls arranged with varying degrees of organization, from elegant princess dolls in elaborate dresses to stuffed animals that had clearly been placed wherever space remained.

Her bed occupied the center of the room beneath a pale canopy. Pink blankets covered the mattress, and an enormous teddy bear sat against the pillows.

The creature was almost as large as Inez herself, with tiny decorative horns protruding from its head because, according to Inez, ordinary teddy bears were boring.

Jet smiled when he saw it.

Getting her changed without fully waking her proved difficult, but he had done it enough times when she was younger to manage.

Inez mumbled something unintelligible when he pulled her pajama shirt over her head, then immediately leaned against him and continued sleeping as though nothing had happened.

Once she was dressed, Jet lowered her onto the bed.

He pulled the blanket over her and moved several strands of platinum hair away from her face. Inez shifted slightly beneath the covers before settling against the giant horned teddy bear.

Jet should have left.

Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed.

The room was quiet except for Inez’s breathing.

He looked at his little sister for a long time, remembering her laughter throughout the evening, the way she had dragged him between games and how proudly she had celebrated every insignificant victory.

There would be plenty of battles ahead.

Plenty of days when getting stronger had to come first.

But tonight, Jet was grateful that he had spent an entire day doing absolutely nothing important.

He reached down and gently brushed Inez’s hair away from her forehead.

For him, days like this were becoming precious.