Volume 10 Bugs Chapter 61: Dwelling in a Small House (Part 2)
I opened my magic notebook and saw the latest message in the message column:
"You have been assigned to Guild Apartment No. 3 by Guild President: Feiyin. Please click 'Yes' to accept or 'No' to refuse." Below this message, the red words "Yes" and "No" were emitting a bright red light.
I looked up and found that Yan Zhen, Xiange Yayi and Chang Sanjiao were looking at each other in surprise, and finally looked at Fei Yin with confusion and surprise.
"I promised you..." Feiyin looked at us, smiled and shrugged, "...if we can complete the guild mission, I will give each of you a reward."
"Originally I thought there would be some money left after building the headquarters, but..." She probably remembered the nine copper coins lying in the guild's warehouse, smiled bitterly, and continued, "...But fortunately, the guild still has the last four rooms left, so..." She pointed to the four empty rooms, "...Congratulations, this is your reward."
"But there aren't enough rooms?" Yan Zhen obviously found a problem with the allocation. She asked, "We have all been allocated. What are you going to do?"
"I don't need it..." Fei Yin shook , "...The president can freely enter and exit any room in the guild headquarters, and I can freely enter and exit your room, so it's the same for you and for myself. What's more, I learned cooking skills, so even if the level is raised, it won't be of much use. It's better to leave the room to you, and you can transform it into a more suitable purpose..."
Although her expression and tone were relaxed, the curious and somewhat envious look on the face of our young president as she looked around the room could not fool anyone.
"Then..." Xian Ge Ya Yi pondered for a moment, and suddenly made up his mind and said, "...I don't want it. I learned the skill of skinning, and it's useless to have a room. Besides..." He grinned mischievously at Yan Zhen, "...one room is enough for the two of us."
After hearing what Xiange Yayi said, the long-haired elf tamer Yan Zhen rolled his eyes at him in reproach and put on a distant expression as if to say "who is talking to you about 'the two of us'?" But he couldn't help but blushing slightly on his cheeks and a shy smile hung on the corners of his eyes.
"I don't need it either..." Chang Sanjiao also declined, "...My life and career don't have much future, and I don't have the patience to decorate the room. Besides..." He held his belt with both hands, shook the plump and round fat on his belly, and said self-deprecatingly without any shame, "...This house is really a little too small for me..."
"I don't care about this..." Feiyin waved her hands at the two of them and refused firmly, "...I have already divided the rooms anyway. If you don't want them, you can give them to someone else. It can be given to anyone except me. Anyway, I won't accept it." With that, our president slipped downstairs without looking back, and simply ignored how we dealt with the rooms.
Feiyin refused so firmly that she didn't even give us any chance to persuade her, which made the modesty of Xiange Yayi and Chang Sanjiao completely go to waste. However, they were both very determined to refuse the reward. In the end, Xiange Yayi gave the room to Niu Baiwan and asked him to transform it into a potion laboratory, while Chang Sanjiao's room was given to the dwarf priest Changgong Sheri as his weapon manufacturing studio.
Yan Zhen hesitated for a moment, but finally accepted the reward reluctantly, and transformed the room into a pet training room for animal trainers. Here, animal trainers can train their pets to upgrade without fighting, and only need to spend a small fee to upgrade them to the same level as their masters. In this way, she can make up for the defect that her pets upgrade slowly because of their fragile life and poor combat skills.
And I also accepted this precious reward.
It's not that I didn't hesitate. When Feiyin, Xiange Yayi and Changsanjiao each gave up the reward that should have belonged to them for each other, I also wanted to do the same as them - this was not a pretense of hypocrisy, nor was it a hypocritical posturing, but a sincere feeling from the heart: when a group of people, after going through hardships and dangers hand in hand, going through life and death situations side by side, supporting each other to overcome difficulties, until finally working together to win the final victory, but find that they cannot share the reward and reward after the victory, then this reward becomes an embarrassing shortcoming, which makes people feel uneasy.
This feeling of uneasiness is felt by Feiyin, Changjiang Delta, Xian Ge Ya Yi and Yan Zhen, and so is I.
Honestly, what surprised me the most was that the always mean and stingy president was the first to voluntarily give up the reward. You know, in our opinion, for this woman who is greedier than a dragon, not being able to take advantage of others every day is a loss, and now she is giving away the prize she deserves, which even makes me feel a little absurd.
It was a touch of warm absurdity, which made me feel that this greedy woman who always had a savage and aggressive face was, after all, a living person with flesh and blood, and not just a never-ending money-making machine.
Sometimes when I am alone, I can't help but daydream. I once thought seriously, who are those "skywalkers"? Why are they willing to come to our war-torn and barren world so frequently? This world does not seem to have any necessary meaning to them, and it will not really affect their lives and souls, so why do they come here so enthusiastically? What are they fighting for? What are they looking for in their exploration?
I even speculated unrealistically that these so-called "space dwellers" may not actually exist. They may just be a group of ghosts wandering in the cracks of time and space, interspersed in various time and space planes, performing non-stop dramas all year round. They themselves are both the audience of these dramas and the actors in heavy makeup. They choose another unfamiliar face, another unfamiliar identity - even choose several, dozens of more faces and identities, so that even fathers and sons can hardly recognize each other - come to such a world, play different roles, and write different stories.
However, what is the point of them doing this?
But when I really stood with them, adventuring together, fighting together, living together, and exploring together, I deeply felt that these boring speculations were meaningless. Yes, they are all strange and flawed guys. They are greedy, rude, obese, cowardly, stupid, neurotic, and have all kinds of speechless quirks, just like the facial makeup of characters from legendary stories. But so what? Maybe, even if their faces are fake, their identities are fake, their experiences, their encounters, their temperaments and habits are all fake, but at least I am sure of one thing:
Their feelings are real.
Their souls are real!
So, when you see them fighting together, playing together, singing together, and laughing together, you feel that no matter what they are looking for in this world, they have actually found it.
And I also hope to be a free life like them, unrestrained and sincere, casual and persistent, sometimes I can argue with others over a penny, and sometimes I can give away an extremely valuable item, all just for ease and happiness - for my own happiness and for the happiness of others.
So, I really want to reject this apartment. Although it is valuable, it makes me feel uneasy.
However, I felt a little ashamed that I didn't refuse in the end. A strong desire took control of me, making me reluctant to leave the small apartment. I don't know why, but the empty little house brought me a fatal temptation at this moment. I have never wanted to get something as much as I did now.
I swallowed hard and with difficulty selected "yes" in the magical information bar for allocating apartments.
Then I walked into this room...
This is a south-facing room with a small window on the south wall. The window is slightly open, and breezes occasionally blow in through the window, bringing a fresh smell into the room.
Outside the window, the setting sun emitted a warm red glow, shining through the spires of the attics of the two houses across the alley, coating half of the room with an alluring red glow. One could not help but use the word "cute" to describe this small, old, shabby house, whose floor even had several holes in it.
I found the method of using the guild apartment in the magic notebook. Here I can set up the room for various purposes, add some furniture to it, and design and arrange it according to my wishes - of course, all this costs money.
I didn't rush to set the purpose of the room like others did. Instead, I bought a small bed with seven silver coins and put it against the wall. Although my intuition told me that this kind of wooden furniture called "bed" is used to lie on and sleep, I have never slept on it since I was born, and I haven't even dozed off. Before this, I only saw this kind of thing in the bedrooms of some officials and residents when I received a mission, and I never saw them use it. To be honest, I don't know why I put such a useless thing here first, but I still did it.
I don’t know why, but when I put this little square thing here, I felt an inexplicable warmth and comfort in my heart.
After setting up a small bed, I spent two and a half silver coins to buy a small chair, placed it in front of the window, and set the room to "no entry" mode - I must be possessed, to shut out all my friends at such a beautiful moment - then sat on the chair, quietly looking at the setting sun outside the window.
This is a space that belongs to me alone, and I love this peaceful feeling.
However, there is one annoying thing about this world: whenever you feel peaceful and comfortable, there always seem to be some people who spoil the mood...
"Aha, you actually bought a bed!" A clear female voice suddenly sounded from behind me. I couldn't tell whether there was more surprise or ridicule in her voice.
Of course, the only one who can enter and exit the room at will when it is in the "no entry" state is our president - the female magician Miss Feiyin.
"I can't believe it..." She jumped onto my bed, rolled over twice with a look of satisfaction on her face, then stretched herself, put her hands on the back of her head, half-closed her eyes, and lay on it leisurely, "...you actually put a bed in the room. As soon as those guys came in, they filled the room with all kinds of tools. There is no romance at all. I thought only a cute girl like me would waste space to put such a big useless thing here."
"For a lovely girl like you..." I glanced at her with deep suspicion, "...I think it's more likely to throw away all the useless things and leave an empty room to be filled with gold coins."
My words made Feiyin slightly stunned, and then she stretched out her two hands in front of her in confusion, looked at her left hand, and then looked at her right hand, as if one of them was a warehouse full of gold coins, and the other was a lovely boudoir with a small bed. She hesitated for a long time with a painful look on her face, and finally nodded solemnly:
"That's annoying! It would be better to set it up as a warehouse to store gold ..."
I couldn't help but laugh: "I don't know whether we are lucky or unlucky to have a greedy president like you."
After hearing my evaluation of her, Feiyin immediately cried out in grievance:
"What do you mean by 'greedy'? Do you think it's easy for me to be the guild leader..." She complained softly while counting on her fingers, "...Every time I log in, a string of numbers pops up in my mind: 25 gold for property management fees, 20 gold for weapons dealers, 20 gold for auctioneers, 100 gold for replacing everyone's equipment, 10 gold for buying potions, 20 gold for training skills, 100 gold for gold group salaries, and 100 gold for guild public deposits. In other words, from the first breath I take when I log in, I have to earn at least 13 gold every day, at least... this is the cost of our guild's survival. These numbers force me to not slack off for a single day, and I don't have time to think about the future of the guild..."
A large string of numbers came flooding towards me, and I was speechless and could only raise my hands in surrender.
"Actually, it's not bad like you..." After scolding me in a harsh tone, Feiyin squinted her eyes with an intoxicated look on her face, "...having a comfortable little bed, quiet, just like..." She hesitated to speak.
"What?" I asked casually.
"…It's like a home…" She let out a quiet breath and said lazily.
I suddenly felt as if my heart was hit by something.
Yes, home. It is this feeling that makes me unable to give up my greed for this little house. It makes me want to shut out all other people and things and just want to stay in there quietly alone, even if it is only for a short while.
Home is a place where people can "return to".
Ever since I could remember being independent, I have always been wandering in this world, constantly traveling from one village to another, from one city to another. No matter where I am, it is a foreign land to me, and no matter where I am, it seems to be a strange road to me. I wander aimlessly on the journey of life, not knowing when to return or how to return, as if I am just a passer-by in my life.
It turns out that I want a place I can "return to" - each of us needs such a place we can "return to", and each of us needs a "home" where we can feel at ease.
"You're right..." I looked out the window again and saw half of the setting sun gradually sinking into the roof opposite. The last red glow in the sunset slowly moved on the wall, and the red shadow made people feel warm in their hearts.
Oh, here it is, this is my...
Home……
