"I have to avoid being alone."
"But first... I need to find a place to rest my legs."
"Can't deal with them freaks anymore."
"If another one shows up, I might even have a full blown panic attack."
Neal slowly got up, massaged his forehead, thoroughly inspected his clothes and then walked towards the nearest building which was a pristine bookstore tucked between an internet cafe and a coffee-shop.
Through the the glass he saw her.
A young woman sat behind the counter, her chin resting on her palm, her gazed fixed on nothing but air, the employee was zoning out like an expert.
Maybe she was in her early twenties, maybe younger—it was hard to tell, she still had that radiance. The left side of her face caught the light from the hanging lamp above, brightness traced the curve of her cheekbone, beautified the delicate slope of her nose.
Her uncombed blond hair, spilled down her shoulder in soft disarray. Neal mused, if her left profile looks like that, surely her right one must be more than perfection.
He found himself stepping closer to the store, his feet moved on their own. The automatic door sighed open, and the small chime above it broke the silence with a gentle note.
She blinked, her eyelashes jumped up and down five or six times, she hastily stood up, knocking down a few books lying on the counter, her sudden panic proved that she had indeed woken up from a reverie.
"Welcome." She said. Her voice was calm — not warm, but not cold either. Her natural beauty hit him like a hurricane. It's wasn't the polished kind that belonged in the magazines. It was the kind that a seeker accidentally discovers — tired eyes rimmed with faint shadows, lips that looked like they hadn't broke into a grin all day long, and glimmering skin that caught the store's yellow light in all the right places.
Neal realized he was being rude, he stared at her face for far too long like a dumbstruck fool.
"Do you need any help, sir?" She was the one who broke the iceberg of awakardnes in a sing-song voice.
"Uh—no, I'm fine." He stammered, shaking himself out of stupor. "Just looking around.
The faintest flicker of interest that had appeared on her face faded. She nodded once, returned to her chair and stared again at nothing but air. She retreated back into her shell, and moved her mind away from the outside world.
Neal turned towards the shelves. The air smell of dust, glue and the faint perfume of ink that never fully leaves old paper. The fantasy section was up first—a row of thick paperbacks with glossy dragons, robed magicians, masked lunatics, bony necromancers wielding staffs, and old castles, perched on top of mountain, surrounded by a thick fog.
The titles displayed in the fantasy section screamed to attract reader's attention—'The Kingdom Beneath the Sky', 'The Doctor that Saved Time', 'Young Phoneix Rebels Against the World', 'The Final Spell Eradicates All Evil' and the last one was even more cringey, 'After Dying An Unjust Death, I become the boss of the Entire Universe.' Gold embossed reviews from famous literary magazines, and popular authors raised the value of these books in the eyes of regular readers who were quite familiar with the scene. Some writers had gone overboard with their praise — 'Tolkien is the thing of the Past, Blake has beaten him in every way possible.', 'After you read this book, all the other writers' will appear as amateurs', and 'These words will change your life for the better.'
He smirked. He'd seen those same blurbs on half the books in the row. Every story was advertised as the next big thing, yet none seemed to survive past the season they were published.
The time went by fast, Neal had read the cover and the jacket of every single book in the store. Finally his mind was at ease. He moved towards the counter.