Interspecies Trader-Chapter 161 – Food Distribution

“Thanks a lot for helping relieve myself, even though you didn’t have to.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s normal to help each other. I was curious about you too.”

I heard some movement on the other side.

“I’ll get going now. See you around.”

Right after she finished her sentence, I heard the door opening on her side as she left. Bunnies sure didn’t waste their time when going around. It was like how they moved around as if they had a spring in their legs.

I cleaned myself a little and left the now-empty building. Outside, everyone acted normally, and the vacation day went on. I visited more bunnies’ houses, who all fed me with more food, and enjoyed myself plenty. I sometimes came across Suuru or the Muyal family members, but Kuini was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the day.

She couldn’t avoid me anymore the next morning, when I made my way to the village to fetch more crops, even though her eyes sure did try to do so. I took the opportunity to be together in the warehouse to tease her a bit. I moved closer to her, whispering into her long ears. She tried to retreat but there wasn’t much space in the building and her back was soon against a wooden box.

“Yesterday sure was amazing, cute Kuini.”

“Huhh…”

She blushed hard but I wasn’t done yet.

“Will there be a next time?”

“I… I don’t know…”

“So, there will. You know what, if you’re feeling timid, we can try something special.”

She looked at me with a mixture of shame and curiosity.

“W-What is it?”

I murmured the next few sentences, luring words into her ears, and she trembled hard while imagining what the next time could be made of.

A few minutes later, I finished my business in the village and returned to my new routine. A couple of days later, I heard that Geola’s government finally implemented a system to link traders quarantined inside the city to farmers. The flow of goods slowly resumed in the region.

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Geola, in the open distribution center close to the slums. After queuing for around three hours, Aren managed to get his portion of food from the volunteers. He wanted to get three portions but that was impossible. With food being so scarce, the controls were very strict. One person could only get one portion per day. Erin would need to come later with their baby brother and wait in the queue to get their share. The food given by the “mister” was long gone now, so that was all they could do. They were used to going around with an empty stomach anyway.

He heard there was a black market for goods somewhere in the city but it wasn’t a place someone like him could access, not that he had money to buy anything there. Tension has been high in the city since the pandemic began, and any small dispute could easily turn into a mass brawl.

He carefully pocketed the food and looked around, checking if anyone was aiming for his portion. There was one time he wasn’t paying enough attention and was stalked by an adult. As soon as they were out of sight, the adult pounded on him and beat him to steal the food. With the difference of strength and rank, there was nothing he could do. After that, he became more cautious than ever, not leaving crowded places without being certain no one was following him.

All over the city, some houses had been transformed into separate quarantined areas, which no one except the army or herbalists could enter. Any sick person would be thrown there and their fate would become extremely uncertain. As he passed by one such house, he heard continuous coughing coming from the inside, the numerous contaminated people suffering through the disease. It was truly a dreadful sight.

So far, and maybe due to the advice they received, none of them contracted the sickness. For two weeks after the man gave them a large quantity of food, they hadn’t left their home. They only had to do so when the army came to check on them, finally allowing them to understand everything.

Even though Erin dismissed the advice's effectiveness, Aren was grateful to the man. The number of sick people in the slums was very high, and they could have become one of the many people locked into the quarantined houses by now.

The government and the army tried to give hope to the people, talking about a potential cure, prevention method, or whatever, but the folks weren’t so easily fooled. So far, nothing concrete has been done and people continued to die every day.

He safely reached their shelter and saw his sister was in the middle of magic training. She opened her eyes as he entered and he took charge of watching over the currently sleeping Orun. She left their place soon after with him. There wasn’t much time to waste considering she would probably need to wait in the queue for several hours too.

She had long shared with Aren the secrets she heard about becoming a rank 1 sorcerer. Since there wasn’t much else to do these days, he also spent most of his time focusing on the flow of sel inside his body.

The goal was to attune their body to sel. This was done by flowing sel inside their body in a precise manner, with a perfect ratio and timing. It wasn’t easy since they had no one to correct them if they did anything wrong. They had no choice but to go with trial and error, sharing anything they realized with one another.

A few hours later, Erin came back with their portions of food. With Orun now awake, they had a short meal and resumed their usual activities. One of them played with the extremely bored Orun while the other focused on magic training.

They had no choice but to hope for the situation to get better, just like all the other inhabitants of the city.

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