God Of Crafting

Chapter 63: Shop'nt

"Your father's men are moving fast..." I admitted in a defeated, exasperated voice as I watched Claire's shop being practically dismantled on the spot.

Not the building itself, obviously, given how she rented or owned merely a single business location over the entire thing, but everything that made this place into Claire's shop was now either fully disassembled or outright gone.

'There goes my source of inspiration,' I thought, struggling to believe how quick some things could happen.

It wasn't even a day since when I started to live with Claire. In fact, with the plan now safe in my head, we ventured out to get some fresh air so that I could work out the finer details of my ideas.

As one could expect, Claire's shop was the first place I wanted to visit, given the variety of various parts and tools that could give me the inspiration necessary to give my plans a solid form of a proper concept.

But now, Claire's shop has become nothing more but an empty husk of what it used to be, with the workers already moving to completely remodel it from the inside and out.

"It's really hard to believe, even when I'm looking at it with my own eyes," I admitted, a strange sense of heaviness poking through the vibe of my voice.

That shop... It was the place where I first met Claire. It was the place where I first got an idea of what to craft. A place...

It was a place that, for the last few days, served as an anchor, a center point for all my adventures. But now?

"I'm definitely going to ask what this shop was all for. Even if not now and not today... someday, I hope you will be happy to share it with me."

It didn't take a genius to figure this connection out, nor was I a genius to realize it wasn't the right time to have this conversation. Only once the memory of this shop becomes just that, a distant memory rather than a picture right before her eyes, could we talk about it again.

"What do we do now, then?" Claire asked, perking her head up after thoroughly washing her expression out of anything that could get me worried.

And as I scrambled my thoughts to figure out what would be the next best place for us to go to...

"Now that I think about it, did you know that when it comes to the cultivation district... I've never gone anywhere beyond this shop of yours?" I asked as I turned my eyes to the girl strapped on my arm.

"Wait, seriously?" Claire opened up her eyes wide, taken aback by my statement.

"Yeah," I nodded my head. "When I first came here, I just wanted to take a stroll through this place and see the world I wasn't allowed to before. But then I ended up at your place and well, became too preoccupied with other things to ever waste an evening on just sightseeing," I explained. "So, how about we put all the duties for later and just... go on a sight-seeing date for now?"

I allowed my inviting smile to grow a little bigger.

"And it won't be a waste of time, since I need to find inspiration for my next project anyway!" I added, just in case Claire wanted to argue the job was more important than just a...

"So you are telling me I get to be the one to show you all around?" Claire asked with a look of uncertainty in her eyes that vanished before she could even finish her sentence, replaced by excitement bursting out of her eyes. "Then, what are we still waiting for, standing around like that? Let's go!"