Chapter 0281

“I was a catastrophe of a person,” Jackson groans, laughing softly as he presses his eyes shut and remembers his first few days in the city. “I was…so shocked by the noise, Ariel, and the pavement – god, stone and metal everywhere – and the people. God, I didn’t think that there were that many people in the world, let alone one city.”

I stay quiet, letting Jackson tell at his own pace. He moves pretty quickly through the story of how he was chosen from the ranks of the young men in his community to attend the Alpha Academy, to gain what new military knowledge he could and bring it back to his own world.

Jacks leaves out a lot as he tells me about how they barely prepared him and then dropped him at a boarding house in the city three months ahead of time, I think not wanting to remember all of it. But he tells me how he showed up basically with a spare set of clothing, a handful of cash, and the order to acclimate himself.

“I stayed inside for a whole week,” he murmurs, shaking his head with an embarrassed smile on his lips. “Like, inside my room. I had this little window? And I sat at it all day, just watching people walk by, trying to…to figure out who they were, what their lives were like. I felt like a complete alien – like I was from another planet, Ariel. There were just – men and women, walking together, holding hands, in these weird clothes – and just like, kids everywhere…” he shakes his head at what must have felt so bizarre.

“Well, what changed?” I ask, desperately curious.

“The landlady came,” he murmurs, looking down at me with a smirk. “Demanding the next week’s rent. And that’s when I realized that…I was going to run out of money very, very soon.”