Broken

Chapter 49

Tying my hair into a braid over my shoulder after a long shower, I sighed and made my way over to the kitchen table. Yejun and I didn't use it too often, given the guild had a cafeteria and neither he nor I were particularly stellar cooks. Currently the small four person table was mostly used as a dumping ground for what ever might have been in our pockets when we entered the apartment.

Amongst all the nick-knacks, I dug out my cellphone. I never used the damn thing for much before becoming a member of the Chaos guild, and even less since. Mostly it was just a way to keep in touch with Yejun between trips into instances. So when I lit the phone up, I wasn't surprised to see several notifications.

Most were just incidental updates for rarely used apps, or from the raider's association that still blasted me with low level instance updates and the like. I shot off a vague message to Yejun, telling him I was home safe and not much else. It had become a little easier to share raider work with him since becoming a Depraved, and a part of the guild, but it was still habit to keep the worst of things away from him.

Besides, he did have school work to focus on right now.

I was surprised to see another message waiting for me, however. It came in a couple days ago, while I was still in the maze. The name of the contact was 'Winter' and I had to think for a moment to remember who that was. Eventually the face of a pretty, young brunette, came to mind. Right, she was the young girl from both the sealed instance, and the meadow where Misfortune first abducted me.

Now that I thought about it... maybe it was Winter who was my bad luck omen? It seemed that every time I was with the high-spirited girl, I got into some kind of trouble. Then again, I got into trouble no matter who I was with, so maybe it was just a coincidence.

{Heeeeeey!!! Aoife, It's me, Winter! You remember me right?} Read the first message, then another followed about an hour later. {I guess you must be busy, right? I hear you joined the Chaos Guild. Congrats!! Anyway, I was just looking to catch up, and thought I'd see if you wanted to got some coffee or something? Just shoot me a message back when you see this and we can set a time!}

Even the girls text messages were filled with far too much energy for me. Though I was building up a tolerance since I started spending so much time with the twins.

Well, I had been looking for something to do during my forced time off. I guess it was about time I stopped hiding out in the guild and started taking my life back. I did have a couple of useful skills now that could help me out of a pinch, and had leveled up enough to have earned my nearly four-star rating.

{Hello Winter. Sorry it took so long to answer. I was up to my eyeballs in orcs for the last couple days. Still down for that coffee?}

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"-wait, so your new guild merged with another?" I asked, half a cup of cappuccino held between my hands as the busy coffee shop buzzed around us.

Winter had answered back my text almost immediately, and before I knew it I had been agreeing to meet up in less then an hour. Now I sat across from the bright girl as she sipped some kind of sugary, frozen monstrosity and gossiped about her life.

I had to admit that I had feared that she only reached out to me because she wanted the inside information from the media's 'hot topic', the Chaos guild's newest Depraved. The vultures had mostly backed off by now, but if she could get some dirt out of me, I was sure she could sell it for a little cash.

Of course, that was mostly just my paranoid mind at work. I was sure that any other person would have known instantly that Winter was simply too pure hearted to be up to something so underhanded. Indeed, she had barely asked me anything overly personal, and hadn't mentioned the Chaos guild at all, except to congratulate me once again after we found one another in the busy street outside the shop.