Fresh and Shamrock sit across from each other, each on either side of the table. The two of them stare with narrowed, challenging stares, as their contest continues. Fresh had assumed that she would be a match for the man, given that she always eats a generous amount of snacks during the day. But the discomfort and nausea welling in her stomach is starting to make her realize that she may have been mistaken about that.

Still, she holds her gaze steady, not wanting to let him catch on that she’s starting to weaken. It’s important for her as the party-leader to establish a friendly level of dominance, so that they’ll listen to her if there ever comes a time when she needs them to. This of course, in her mind, resulted in an impromptu candy eating challenge against the first person she had seen, Shamrock, who had absolutely no aversion to her request of a duel of fates.

“Red,” says Shamrock. Fresh feels her shoulders twitch together for a second. This was the eighth time in a row that he had said red. He’s trying to break her spirit and it’s working. She’s really getting sick of the red ones. Reaching down, doing her best not to show weakness, she takes a red candy from the bowl and pops it into her mouth, putting in some effort to make a show out of her eating it as if she were enjoying herself. Swallowing it with a light hit of her fist against her chest, she looks back up at him.

“Purple,” says Fresh.

Shamrock, without a moment’s hesitation, reaches into the bowl and grabs a purple candy and shoves it into his helmet.

“Red,” he says again. Fresh recoils, perhaps ready to admit defeat after all.

“If you keep eating like that, you’re going to cave in the floor,” barks Jubilee from the kitchenette.

“Jubilee! Don’t be mean to Shamrock!” scolds Fresh. “He’s a big guy.”

“I was talking about you,” quips Jubilee, poking into her belly as they walk past the table, shaking their head with a cup of tea in their hand that they’re bringing over to Basil. This is a gesture that Fresh finds oddly endearing, coming from Jubilee. The tea that is, not the poking. “You basically wobble like a slime when you come down the stairs.”

Fresh can hear Basil quietly suppressing a laugh by covering her face with a pillow.

“Hey!” snaps Fresh. “That’s so rude!”

Jubilee sighs. “I guess that’s what happens when we don’t take you for regular walks in the dungeon.”

Fresh crosses her arms, turning her head away. “Hmpf!”

“Red,” repeats Shamrock, one of his large, metal-clad fingers tapping against the table.

Fresh wearily looks back at the bowl of candy on the table, sitting next to an empty bowl that they had eaten their way through. How many pieces had she had so far? They’re big candies too and the sticky dough.. ugh.. Fresh gulps, her shaking hand reaching out for another red candy.

She has to do this. She has to. Her party is counting on her. Grabbing another red candy, she gulps and then pops it into her mouth. As she bites down, she notices how slow her chewing seems to be. The idea of swallowing this next candy, as the sticky dough starts to undo itself in her mouth, feels like an impossibility. This is it. This is how she is going to die her true, final death. She can feel it. She can feel the call of the void, beckoning her to her eternal slumber.

Forgetting all decorum and intent of showing resolve, Fresh noisily swallows the red candy, sure that she is about to throw up and leans back against her chair, flopping over it like a corpse.

“G-green..” she mutters, not even looking, but listening as the next piece of candy immediately leaves the bowl and is devoured in a second flat.

“Red.”

Fresh wants to cry. She has been beaten. Defeated on an honorable field of battle.

“I surrender,” cries the girl. “You win, Shamroooock~”

Shamrock doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just hears him scooting the bowl of candy over towards himself as his prize. In all honesty, she should have known better.

Basil speaks from over in her bed. “It was a good attempt. But it’s important to know when to quit.”

Fresh just lets out a long groan that is perhaps intermingled with a bit of crying. The medicine seemed to have helped and Basil is feeling a little better, but she’ll still likely need a couple of days to fully be rid of whatever she had gotten. Fresh, listening to the crunching of the candy being eaten across from herself, is surprised that none of them have gotten sick. Apparently, they all either had fantastic immune systems, or whatever Basil had caught simply wasn’t contagious to begin with.

“Anyways, moving on to more important things,” says Jubilee, coming back past the table. “The fairy thing could work. But we need to be careful.” Shamrock nods in agreement, taking another candy. Jubilee goes on. “The last thing we need are a thousand fairies flying all around the store.”

Fresh, still flopped back over her chair, rolls her head against the back-rest as if to shake it. “I thought we could arrange something with Veli.”

“How’s that?” asks Basil, before taking a sip of her tea.

“Well, they can collect all of the herbs in the forest in one or two baskets wherever they live,” explains Fresh, listlessly lifting a finger. “Then a few of them can work together to carry the baskets here to us, we’ll just take them at the counter, give them some money and everyone’s happy!” she exclaims, finding the energy to smile, but not to lift her head.

“How much do you want to pay them?” asks Jubilee.

Fresh blinks. “Uh..”

“How often

“Uh..”

“What if they bring more herbs than we can use?”

“Uh..” Fresh doesn’t have a response for any of these questions. Instead, she looks over to Basil for guidance. “Basil, when you feel better, can you help me with that stuff, please?”

Basil nods, before flopping back down onto her bed. Ever since the ‘ghost incident’, she had started wearing pajamas to bed. Fresh, seeing her in them now, decides that she should probably get some too. What if there was a house-fire and they had to run outside? It would be pretty bad in the current state of her sleep attire. They hadn’t ever figured out what that whole ghost-situation was all about. If the city had reduced the price of the house by so much, then surely they knew about the ghost, which means..

Wait..

Fresh sits upright. The tired-man. She stares around the room, looking at her friends. That means that the tired-man knew about the ghost, right? That’s why they got the house so cheaply.

But..

The gears in her head are turning too fast for her to keep up with. This train of thought is going somewhere, but she’s already lost control of it and it’s entirely off-track now. Fresh shakes her head, regretting doing so a second later. There’s some connection of her ideas here, some mental bridge that was just about to be crossed.

She sighs, maybe she needs to sleep on it. Though, maybe she could just ask the tired-man directly? Who knows if he would even see her though, if she went to the city-hall, let alone talk to her honestly about whatever chicanery was going on here in the shadows of this city.

Rising to her feet, scooting the chair back, Fresh balances herself with her hands on the table. “I’m going to go into the city,” she says.

“Okay,” says Jubilee. “Some exercise will do you good.”

“Rude,” sighs Fresh, not having the strength to yell, despite having eaten so much. Though, that is perhaps exactly the reason.

“What are you going to do?” asks Basil, curiously.

“Uh..” Fresh blinks, looking around the room before focusing back on Basil. “I’m going to buy some pajamas.”

“About time,” says Jubilee. “You creep.”

“I am not a creep!” states Fresh, crossing her arms.

“Would you like me to go with you?” asks Basil, sitting upright.

Fresh shakes her head. “Stay in bed, Basil. I’m only going to run to the tailor and back.” Sparing a glance down at the table, she sees that Shamrock has emptied the second bowl of candy.

“Make sure to buy them a size bigger,” says Jubilee.

“RUDE!” snaps Fresh, grabbing her bag and going.

Razmatazz

Fun fact! There's a cursed drawing that belongs to chapter 177. But you aren't going to see it here. Maybe for a dollar on Patreon, you can check it out and be disappointed, because you expected more out of me and also out of yourself. ????

But then, it will be too late.

No refunds.

*Vanishes into the darkness*

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