As Alfred was heading home, he put on his mask, courtesy of the previous pandemics and kept on walking between the crowd.
Passing through the sunny street, the beautiful sun shining in the blue sky, and the white clouds in the background, Alfred contently listens to the sounds of life originating in the morning.
"Cities in the morning are sometimes as beautiful as in the countryside" thought Alfred, enjoying the scenery. "That was something gramps sure loved."
Finally, while keeping a certain distance between him and the crowd, he boards the bus, and gets back home. To a nice cozy 2 storey house.
The house was surrounded by a beautiful fence, with various flowers planted in the courtyard, "Gramps sure loved his flowers, always telling me how they reminded him of my grandmother, his wife" lamented Alfred.
He unlocks the door, gets inside the house, and goes on to start cooking.
"Damn it, I forgot to buy the groceries" he murmured, "Should I drive gramps' car… damn, I still can't bring myself to use it."
So, he simply cleaned his hands, brought a few ecological bags, and went out the door.
"Al, hey man! How're you buddy?" called out a close friend of Alfred, Jiemes. He was about to ring the bell, but coincidently ran into him opening the door. "How did you know I'd be here?" asked Jiemes.
"I was just going to buy some groceries, forgot to do so"
"Then come to my house, my sister would love to feed you, and you know how much she adores you, whenever you come, we get a feast."
Jiemes was a childhood friend of Alfred, they were of the same age, and lived in the same neighbourhood and his sister, Helia, was their eldest by 4 years.
Helia always treated Alfred as her younger brother, which made Jiemies always complain that he was getting better treatment from her than her blood related one.
"Are you sure? Isn't Helia busy with her work and stuff? After all she got into a pretty demanding company" said Alfred hesitantly.
"It's fine" assured Jiemes, "she was always asking for you to come visit us, you were the one who kept rejecting us"
"Okay, thank you" said Alfred smilingly, "I'll impose on you."
"Come, get into my car, I'll take you there"
Then he opened his door and invited Alfred into the car. He then went to the driver's seat and sat down. Alfred joined him soon.
Then he started the car and started driving. "Hey… soo… how've you been?" asked Jiemes hesitantly.
"I'm fine" said Alfred curtly.
"O..Okay… so what are you planning to do now?"
"I don't know, I don't think I'll be going back to my apartment, maybe I'll just move back to my granddads' house and commute to the university via a car"
"Nice, I'll be visiting you a lot alright?" said Jiemes in jest.
"Fine, I'll be looking forward to this." Said Alfred thankfully. He knows that his friend was doing this so as to not keep him alone in the house following his grandfathers' passing.
Then they arrived at the house and Jiemes opened the door while yelling "Helia! Alfred's here!"