Page 29 of The Naga

Silas's eyes widened, and he threw the bottle at me. I caught it before it could smack me in the face and stuck my tongue out at him.

Instead of returning the favor, Silas smirked. "You know, once Dustin moves here, you won't be able to get away with all your shit too."

"What are you talking about? I'm a perfect gentleman," I said in a lofty tone, and Silas gave an utterly sarcastic laugh, the type where you pronounce each individual 'ha.'

"Oh, we're almost done with the roof. Wanna come and see it before we start on the walls?" Silas offered, and I nodded quickly. I'd stayed out of the way so I wouldn't cause any trouble, but I was itching to see how it was coming along.

I followed Silas to my cabin, and gasped softly when I saw how much it'd changed in a matter of days. The previously sloping roof was gone, the red roof tiles perfectly stacked on the ground to one side. They'd be put in storage until they were needed elsewhere, since they were still undamaged.

In place of the sloping roof was now a flat one that somehow made my cabin look bigger. I couldn't explain why, but it certainly looked that way to me.

It'd only been four days since they started building—the first day had involved Draven and the headmaster making a plan that would allow the headmaster to weave his magic through the walls—and they'd already come along so far.

"Haruto was especially helpful for the de-roofing part," Silas said, making claw shapes with his hands as he explained. "He used his spider-legs to remove each tile perfectly without damaging any of them. It was flawless."

"Where is he now?" I asked when I only saw Zamir around. Keoni had chores at the dining room today—almost all of the supes who lived at the Sanctuary contributed to its smooth running in some way, whether it was shopping for supplies, cooking, doing laundry, patching up the injured, or something else—while Draven was more of a planner in building projects, so his work was already done.

"I sent him back to his cabin to get some rest. He practically did the whole thing himself," Silas said, shaking his head, and I smiled. If Silas lived in the human world, I could very well imagine him running a construction crew where each member was like family to him, and where they all respected the heck out of him for it.

"I'll have to personally thank him later," I murmured, and Silas rolled his eyes at me, smacking me in the back with his tail.

"You say that as if you wouldn't have done the same for him," he reprimanded, then made a face. "Well, maybe not exactly the same thing."

The image of me on a tiled, sloping roof made me shudder, and I lengthened my tail simply so I could rise up and smack the back of Silas's head. Before Silas had taken off into the human world for a brief period, we'd practically grown up together. Silas was like a younger brother to me, which meant I reserved the right to smack him whenever he annoyed me, which was more often than not.

"Silas! I could use some help here!" Zamir called from the roof, and Silas waved at him before turning to me.

"Gotta go."

"Don't overwork yourselves, either of you," I warned, and he gave me a salute before bounding toward the cabin and leaping directly onto the roof because the stairs would apparently be too slow for him.

Shaking my head, I turned around and made my way back to my tree. It was where I'd set up my snack station, and I climbed onto the tree before pulling my phone out of the little fanny-pack thingy I'd started tying around my waist so I wouldn't lose track of it.

Pulling up our text chain, I shot Dustin a text. He'd said I could text him even when he was working because sometimes there was a lull between customers and he could reply.

Me: Hey, Dustin. How's your day going? I had a lot of fun at the arcade yesterday. We should do it again sometime.

When he didn't reply instantly, I figured he was busy talking to a client, and so I switched over to the streaming app, noticing my favorite gamer—who was apparently Dustin's best friend. Talk about a small world!—had just finished a livestream. The replay hadn't been uploaded yet, so I switched over to the fan group to see what he'd streamed about.

Reading through the comments, I figured out he'd played more of the fantasy game, and also mentioned that he might do another video with his friend, which reminded me that Dustin had told me he'd made a few videos with Quest too.

I went back to the video app and started scrolling through QuestBoy69's older videos, searching for the right ones. I knew exactly what I'd be doing for the rest of the day.

Dustin

Khush had sent me a text around an hour ago, and I still hadn'tchecked it except to peek at the notification preview. No, I wasn't busy with a customer, and yes, I felt awful about ignoring him.

I wasn't ignoring him because I didn't want to talk to him. It was actually just the opposite.

I'd been on a bullet train since day one with Khush, and my fear had finally caught up with me.

What if I was making a huge mistake by moving in with him so soon?

Sure, Fate had brought us together and we were supposed to be soulmates, but that didn't mean we didn't have to work on our relationship just like anyone else, right?

Hitting the milestones without growing closer emotionally wouldn't help at all, and it might destroy our relationship before it ever had a chance to flourish.

I knew that for once we were both rushing instead of just me, but did that make things better? Or was it a "blind leading the blind" situation? I wasn't sure.

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