Chapter 3: the brief reprieve at home

Zy and Vivi both step in through the front door. Zy's eyes quickly readjust to the indoor environment that he is so used to. It wasn't until he stepped back inside that he felt a wave of relief as the strain of bright sunlight was no longer there. Vivi's eyes on the other hand, remained the same. Through thousands of years of adaptation, her ancestry was of course already well used to large doses of sunlight, hence the smaller eyes of the Chinese. But for Zy, not only was the lesser sunlight a relief, but also stepping into an air conditioned home after a sweat inducing car-chase was also a point of relaxation.
	"Wow, this is your home?" Vivi says, sounding impressed
	"Yeah, it is. I mean, I guess it's my parents' more than mine, but for the most part this where I did my growing up."
	"I didn't expect it to be this big!" Vivi says as she takes out her cell phone to take snaps
	"That's not the only thing you're going to be expecting to be big" chuckled Zyrelia
	"Sorry, what did you say? I didn't catch that" Vivi said as she looked up from from her cell phone
	"uh, Nothing, don't worry about it." If she didn't hear it the first time, it might go from funny to awkward if I explain it out of context. Better just move on. "Hey, I need to go take a shower. First I'll show you around and show you our--"
	Oh crap. Wait, do I suggest we stay in the same room or not? I don't want to be over-imposing or too fast, and I'm not exactly sure what she wants either. I mean, phone sex and ERPing is one thing, but actually doing it?? That's a whole other ball park. Damn it, this all happened so fast I don't know what to do now that I'm here...think quick and play it cool...I'll play it safe and suggest that she can sleep in the room next to me and play it off as it being my parents' decision.
	We walk upstairs to the open hall giving access to the bedrooms.
	"This is your room. Which is right next to mine here." Okay, perfect. Now I'll try and gauge her response to see what she wants.
Vivi absent mindedly responds while looking at her phone, "oh okay, great"
	GOD DAMN IT I shout in my head. I was just about ready to take her huawei cell phone and stick it up her ass. For now though, I'll avoid any confrontation or loss of temper...
	Vivi puts her phone away. Finally. Let's hope she doesn't take it out again. Actually, a better idea came up in my head.
	"Your phone must be low on battery right? I'll charge it for you."
	"Oh, yeah it is! Here, thanks!" as she hands her his cell phone
	Thank goodness. I quickly walk into my room and pop it into the charger. As I walk back out to the hallway to meet her, she asks me
    "wait so this is my room right?"
	"Oh yeah, that's your room." Great! She must be paying more attention now, this is a good second chance to gauge her reaction.
	"Oh okay, great." She said with a small twinge of disappointment.
	Disappointment? That was definitely disappointment. Does this mean that she could possibly want the dark strike on her cat? No, let's not jump to possibly dangerous conclusions. I'll ask her first.
	"You sound a bit disappointed, i think? Is there something wrong with the room I can fix?"
	"No! It's fine, I'm grateful thank you!"
	A swift purported recovery. Damn. Well, that's fine, there's still a lot of room and chances to gauge whether or not she wants the Zy-D. The true soul burst. The doom and bloom. The rumble(birds-and-the)bees. The stage 6 ascendant effect. The 9 month server transfer of a character.
	"You can set up here. I'll show you the rest of the house after I'm done taking a shower, for now just make yourself at home!" I said as I walked off towards the shower located in my room's attached bathroom.
	"Okay great, see you soon!" She said as she rolled her luggage into the room. At that point, Zy felt a twinge of guilt for not having carried her luggage for her. His mind being on other things, he had forgotten the common courtesy of taking a lady's luggage. Oh well, once again, he'll have plenty of chances to prove himself. First impressions aren't everything.

	Mid shower, Zy hears a sound coming from somewhere in the house. Perhaps it's his parents coming home? No, it's too early for that, it can't possibly be 5:30pm yet.

	"Zyrelia! Are you home?"
	Crap it really is them. Well, I guess it's not a big deal, it's not like this changes anything.
	"Even his parents call him Zyrelia!" He hears Vivi exclaim with a sense of hilarity from her room.
	Zy quickly dries himself off and quickly trims his budding beard, ever wary of a threat of it growing into a full blown neckbeard.
Quickly jumping into a fresh pair of boxer shorts and track pants and putting on his suave green striped turtlenck sweater in a frenzy, he nearly stumbles out of the room to greet his parents.
	"Mom, dad! Why are you guys home so early?"
	"Oh" His dad responds from downstairs, "C'mon Zyrelia, you know that in this family we have a tradition of coming early. We wanted to make sure you weren't up to any mischief! After all, you said there was a girl arriving today? we saw the limo with the sleeping asian lady in it, what's up with that?"
	Gah that'll be tricky to explain...well, at least they Vivi and my parents didn't meet each other before I got out of the shower. Zyrelia dashes down the stairs, arms swinging behind him. his electric-blue socks reading "gotta go fast" across the sides
	"Oh yeah, the uhh asian lady sleeping outside, it's Vivi's au-"
	"it's my chauffer" Vivi explains from upstairs, her head peeking above the handrail.
	"Chauffer eh?" says Zyrelia's dad, sounding impressed with a scheming expression on his face. "Our son is becoming quite the male gold-digger."
	"哈哈哈" Vivi chuckled. Good, she found it amusing, a good first impressions all around with her and my family, even if it is a strange conversation. And a good lie by Vivi, my parents would be asking a lot of difficult-to-answer questions if they knew that "chauffer" was really VIvi's aunt...
	"Vivi did you want to head out? I can show you around town."
	"Oh, yes! I'd love that. One moment, I'll just grab my phone from your room and be right down my little bamboo shoot."
Zyrelia's father places his hand over his mouth as he tries to cover his choked laughter. He looks over at Zyrelia with a facial expression that reads "are you serious?" On the other hand, Zyrelia's had her face buried in her hands, just silent. Was she embarassed? Or just doing a good job of hiding her amusement? I couldn't really tell. Well either way I had better get used to having this nickname calling happen in public.
	Vivi quickly made her way down the stairs, and we stepped out of the door.
	"Have fun you two!" Zyrelia's mother said encouragingly, before she closed the door behind them.
In an attempt to compensate for not taking her luggage for her, I opened my car door for her.  On the outside it didn't look much, but in reality it was an astounding car, with all the features that Zyrelia could ever ask for. He had used animal tracking tags on the shirt pocket pen holders of every bns playing chink in the state, tracking what their playtime hours were throughout the day, and whether or not they were at SSP. The display was an overlay shown on the special prototype google glass that was installed into the front windshield. The glove compartments were mountain dew and Doritos dispensers, and a can of Zyklon-B gas under the seat in case he came across any rat players. I"ll keep the google glass turned off for now though, to not freak her out.
	"You ready? Zyrelia said as he looked over at Vivi.
	"Yup! le'ts go." She excitedly responded.
	Zyrelia revs up the engine, "RUNNNNNNnnnigganigganigganigga" it putters