Walking the streets of Tokyo was a man dressed in a gaudy white dress. With a light breeze(created from a treasure in his vault) that accompanied him wherever he went and making his clothes flutter like he was the main character of a movie, Gilgamesh made for quite the show as he strolled.
And he enjoyed every glance thrown his way.
'Now what should I do? I concentrated too much on getting some time away from the tiny mongrel that I have no plans now that I did…'
"Excuse me, sir." Suddenly pulling him out of his thoughts Gilgamesh looked at the person who called out to him. It was a well groomed middle aged man in a suit with slicked back black hairs with white sides.
"Mh? What do you want?"
"Are you perhaps a model? Even if you aren't, it's fine. You see, we are taking a photo shoot around this area for a magazine and are taking volunteers for the pictures."
"Oh, are you suggesting that you would like me to take part in it?" Gilgamesh said as he raised a brow in amusement.
"Yes, we would appreciate it if someone like you could take part in a few of our shoots, sir. I'm sure a charming foreign face like yours would make for a wonderful cover."
"That…
…would indeed be the case. Fine, I was in search of some ways to spend time anyway. Also, why only take a few pictures? If you want to portray me then we should take as many as we can, photographer. Lead the way."
"Yes, thank you for your time. Right this way sir." The middle aged man, delighted by his choice to participate, led the way for him.
And like that Gilgamesh found a way to pass the time.
***
When the second circuit connected I felt like something else appeared inside the structure of the knife, it was like a hazy mist that covered its entire form.
At certain points the mist seemed to take the shape of certain pictures but I couldn't clearly see what they were depicting because the mist was just too hazy and the sceneries switched too fast.
As I tried to make out the misty scenery my head started aching and the more I tried to peer inside the more the pain gradually grew.
Despite the pain I decided to continue trying to look at them, the hazes continued changing like the roll of a camera but I couldn't focus on a single one of them, they were just too indecipherable.
"Hey hey hey kid! It's enough, STOP! You succeeded already, don't overdo it, you will hurt yourself."
DRIP DRIP
Snapping me out of my state with his shouts the boy told me to stop and l noticed my nose bleeding a bit. It seemed like today my nose had some problems as it was the second time I bled from it today.
And most importantly looking at my hands I could see the wooden butter knife that I had destroyed multiple times in my attempts of reinforcing.
However this time it was perfectly fine and on top of it I could feel something like a string connecting the two of us.
"Did I… do it right?"
"Yup, nice work kiddo." The boy gave a thumb up with his only hand.
"I see, thank you for the help ehh mmm..." I wanted to thank him but I found myself realizing I had no idea what to call him when talking with him. "...Sensei?"
"Now now, that's a bit too much, I'm not that good." He blushed a bit at being called sensei apparently as he was scratching the back of his head.
But then how should I even call him? "...mister?"
"...t-that…I'm not that old now." He stuttered, he probably found it "unpleasant" to be called mister.
"...Senpai?"
"..."
"..."
The boy looked at me intently after I called him "Senpai", somehow his gaze seemed really distant for a second, like what was reflected in it was a different scene than the one in front of him.
"Yes…I guess that should do it."
"I see, also I'm sorry to say this now but I have nothing on me to pay for the lessons." I bowed my head slightly as I realized that I was so concerned with the commands I was given that I forgot that people needed to pay for favors like lessons.
"Mm? Oh don't worry about it, I would be a thief if I made you pay for a lesson from a third rate magus like me." The Senpai waved his hand, seemingly uninterested in receiving a payment. "Also all I could teach was how I do it, so it's no big deal."
"How you do it? Are there other methods?" Gilgamesh did mention something about many ways to reach the same solution now that I thought about it.
"Well, I'm pretty sure Toh–mmm my friend didn't quite do it like I did for that step about structural analysis, it's better if you ask your teacher or your parents later to be sure though." Senpai also seemed quite unsure about as he put on a "dubious" expression.
'I don't get it though…didn't he just teach me a method that was only used by him then? Shouldn't that be more precious then?' I could only tilt my head as I had trouble trying to understand him. 'Wait why did he even help me?'
"But…if you didn't want anything then why did you offer to help me?" Why would he even help me if he didn't want anything?
"Why? Well… I don't know." The young man took a pause and pondered for a while with a dubious expression on his face. "Let's say I just felt like it but if I had to guess it must have been for your eyes then maybe."
"My eyes?"
"Yes, I'm not sure how to explain it using words alone but when I saw the look on your eyes it felt like seeing something familiar and I guess it just made me want to help you out a little." He explained with a smile on his face and yet the smile didn't seem to quite reach into his eyes. "So don't worry about things like that."
Eyes like that of a person who was about to cry.
I just nodded in answer as I wasn't quite sure how else to respond to his words. For a while, silence settled between the two of us until the reinforcement I cast on the knife disappeared because I ran out of fuel for the spell.
"Well, I guess you did really well kid, you must be tired now so just rest for a while, ok?"
"Yes, thank you for your help, Senpai."
"Also if you don't mind…"
"What is it?"
"I'm kind of lost here, so could you be so kind as to give me some direction if you don't mind? I have a really bad sense of direction these days for some reason."
***
After an hour of continuous work on the photoset Gilgamesh somehow ended up half taking charge of it and actively advised or refuted propositions from the directors.
However, his suggestions were always so much better that at some point they started following his every advice without question and asked for his input before every shot as they were taken in by his natural charisma.
He quite enjoyed being continuously portrayed in various pictures so he even showed particularly high levels of leniency to everyone on set.
The women on set also appreciated his presence a lot.
Things were going quite well but he didn't want to spend all day there so he wrapped up the whole thing in a little less than an hour somehow. He was then invited to have some drinks by a few of the models but refused them.
He might have considered spending some time with the ladies on different conditions but now he wasn't really keen on doing that.
So he didn't really have any interest in any of them anymore after all the shoots were taken and even refused the money they offered him. For all it mattered to him they could keep it as compensation for spreading his immaculate visage around the world during this dark age with those pictures.
He decided it was instead time to check on his little mongrel.
The box he gave him before was stuffed with a lot of protective measures and warning measures to protect him and keep people away from him.
On top of that his scarf was actually a sash, which was the alternative form of Hades's cap of invisibility, a bona fide noble phantasm; it made the boy effectively invisible to any optical and mystical means of observation.
It didn't hide sounds, smell and heat however that's what the box was there for as well. Also if the box detected a servant it would immediately cover the boy in a barrier and alert Gilgamesh.
The boy was effectively undetectable unless he spoke first but he warned him not to and from what he knew of him he would surely obey the command.
"Should I take a look at what he's doing now? Though he's probably just going to exercise until he finishes his Od."
The box could also transmit images to another twin box of course. He brought out the other box that was meant to receive the footage.
"Well, it doesn't hurt to check."
As he said that the box started to project an image like a movie projector, which of course it was only visible to him.
"Hm? He actually succeeded? Wait…what is he doing?"
***
"Are you lost, Senpai?" I asked the Senpai whose name I didn't know.
"Well…you could definitely say that…so I would really appreciate some help." He admitted maybe somewhat "embarrassedly".
"I see…well…I don't know either." I answered him honestly, after all I have never been in this part of Tokyo before.
"..."
"..."
For some reason his eyes deadpanned and he looked at me for a while as if unsure of what to say.
"I-I see, well, I guess we are both lost then." He just scratched his head as he said with a little laugh and a stutter. I had to correct him on one thing though.
"But I'm not lost though."
"Didn't you just say you had no idea where you were though?" He asked as he tilted in doubt.
"Yes, but someone will come to pick me up so it doesn't matter."
"...you sure make a whole lot of sense, you know?" At that he gave me a weak smile.
"Well, I guess I should take my leave then, but before I go let me ask you one last thing." His smile died down as we looked each other straight in the eyes, somehow I felt like I already knew what he was gonna ask next. "Those on your hands are command spells, right?"
And I was right, while I spent most of my life memorizing people's behavior, predicting their actions was not something I could say I was capable of doing. But with this person before me…I felt like I could understand most of his actions right away, he also acted in a way I could somehow easily predict.
"Yes, they are command spells."
I roughly knew what revealing them meant, not that I cared as I wasn't given any warning against it, but as I said before I felt like I could predict his actions to a good extent.
So the next words he would say are certainly going to be–
"I see, then you better be careful from now on, also don't talk with strangers so readily, they might have bad intentions, you know?"
–words of worry, comfort and advice. At that the right answer I should give would obviously be:
"Thank you, I'll make sure to keep this in mind, Senpai."
"Yeah…" His expression twisted in a strange smile at that. That was most likely the normal reaction in a situation like this, after all–
"Well, stay safe kid, I gotta go now, someone's probably waiting for me as well, so I gotta find my way back as soon as I can."
"Goodbye Senpai."
"Goodbye kid."
–it was almost like the two of us were reading our lines from the same script.
Neither of us even mentioned or tried to ask for the other's name, at no point in our conversation it ever felt like there was a particular need for it on both out sides, we both just needed a simple title to refer to each other because more than that would be like "going out of the script".
STEP STEP
As Senpai made his way out the sound of his foot…
....
...…..
........
?? What sound?
His footsteps?
But I couldn't hear any sound like that though.
"?"
I turned around to check… but Senpai was already nowhere in sight.
Almost like he had never been there in the first place.
***
Hope you enjoyed. Pls leave comments and reviews. Maybe even a powerstone...I heard it increases the drop rate in fgo.