“Do you even go out to stretch your legs for a bit?” Jessica asked as she walked around the shop to browse the multitude of items on dispy.

  “I mean, you are always behind that stuffy counter every time I come here.” She said as she closed a box of glowing red chess pieces. “You look like you could stay there all day, ion kno’. That’s the vibe you give off every time I come around.”

  “Um, not really.” Isaac’s words drifted over to where she was without him needing to shout or strain his voice like she did. “I can go out when I want, but I don’t generally see any reason why.” ‘Definitely some weird magic mojo shit,’ she thought.

  “You know, weird shit happens everyday all over New York. You are almost guaranteed to see some truly weird shit, like aliens and superheroes throwing their powers around, at least once a week. You are telling me you haven’t seen any of those stuffs with your own eyes?”

  “I hear about it well enough.” She could hear his shrug along with his reply. “And besides, you’ll find that it quickly loses its appeal when you’ve seen it a thousand times.”

  “Riggggght.” She took off a beautiful cloak from a posing mannequin and threw it over her shoulders. “And where do you come from exactly?”

  She heard him scoff, making her chuckle herself because she wasn’t exactly being subtle.

  “Somewhere far from here. It’s not on any map you know, and it’s not any pce you’ve heard of. I won’t say more than that.”

  “Fair.” She shrugged and turned around to look at a mirror only to see her ck of reflection. She took off the cloak, put it on, took it off, put it on, and watched with interest as she disappeared and reappeared. She shrugged and put it back on the mannequin. “So back to the former question, when was the st time you went out to get some fresh air?”

  “Quite a while back.” Came the cryptic reply. It was vague as hell but she did not needle it any further, only asking him surface questions as she browsed his wares. “And besides, the air in here is fresher than the one outside.”

  Now that he said that… she took in a deep breath and exhaled while nodding. Yeah, this was fresh air.

  “Hey, Isaac, how long have you been a ‘Merchant’?” She came in front of gss that had a huge pair of human-sized bck wings that looked like a craftsmanship of feathers, ropes around the bone, and probably pstic or wax.

  It looked like a genuine prop item if not for the blood stains at the head of the wings. There was a little pque in the box with the name of the prop wing.

  —Icarus Wings (God of War)

  ‘Should never have flown too high, my man.’ She looked at the blood sptter and confirmed that it was real blood. ‘From the looks of it, you never even made it that high. Tough.’

  “And why do you want to know, Jessica?”

  She shrugged. “Just curious.”

  “Quite a while.” He said tersely which made her snicker.

  Isaac was a whole different vibe once you got him to drop the polite bit, and she was quickly realizing that he didn’t care for much outside of his shop.

  “Wait, how old are you even?”

  “Quite.”

  “Alright grandpa, I’ll tone it down.” His response to that was a tired groan. ‘Interesting.’ She thought.

  He never gave her a clear answer but he also made sure to refute any false statement or misunderstanding even when it was clear that she was just teasing him. He didn’t do that when she called him a grandpa.

  Isaac was weird, oh she knew that. She’s known that for quite a long while now. All she was currently doing was trying to find how deep the weird hole went.

  “Real shit tho,” she picked up a ‘probably’ broken compass that kept spinning around, “is this like an NDA thing or something semi-official? Or you just can’t be bothered?”

  “I’ll say I’m pretty bothered right now.” She heard his dry mutter around her ears and it satisfied her funny bone.

  “C'mon, humor me.”

  He exhaled a long breath. “It’s a bit of everything. It’s not as strict as you think, and it’s not as loose as you’d expect it to be.”

  This time it was her turn to groan as she admired a collection of beautiful signet rings that were apparently called ‘Daylight Rings’. Who would need rings for daylig….. Oh, that makes sense.

  “Mind telling me what’s with the sudden interest?” She heard him ask as she perused the weird collection of eyepatches.

  “Just simple curiosity.” She replied easily. “We’re friends. It’s kind of weird that I don’t know anything about you… and I still don’t, mind you.”

  “Right.”

  She frowned in mock outrage at his dry and sarcastic reply to her response. “Watch it, buster. You don’t trash decrations of friendship like that.”

  She could hear the fleeting echoes of the silent fed up whine he let out. She completely ignored the jar of preserved red-patterned eyes, and quickly moved on from the uninteresting white gloves with some red drawings on their backs.

  “So yeah, I’m just curious about ya.” She let out absentmindedly as she admired a finely crafted red dress. “And you’re not making it any easier for me.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but your curiosities are not going away anytime soon. Just let it go.” Isaac said pinly.

  “And on the subject of letting things go, did you come all the way here to window shop? I don’t mind either way, but I guess I’m just curious.”

  She saw a pair of identical katana that were heavily chipped to the point that it looked like a pair of jagged teeth along the sword’s edge.

  “I’m using it to get away from my sister. She’s been pestering me all week to go for a date she’d set up for me with this guy.” She sighed as if trying to drown the effect of the memory. “I finally agreed and I went st night, but ugh…”

  “Yikes, that bad?” Isaac asked with a performative wince.

  She scratched her head as the memory of the previous night was successfully putting her in an awkward state.

  “Eh, not really. He was kinda nice, I guess? He was really happy about the date but I just couldn't get into it. I’m not arrogant enough to not admit that I singlehandedly ruined the date. I’ve got my own issues and if anything, st night showed me that I’m not quite ready for the dating thing. I’m also not ready to expin to my sister about how I singlehandedly ruined a date she had been so excited to help me set up, or rather set up for me.”

  She stretched out her head to take a look at Isaac’s confused-amused expression.

  “See? That’s how you answer a question.”

  “Wow. Just wow.” Isaac said as his tape resumed pying.

  “Crazy huh?” She cracked a self-satisfied smirk his way.

  Isaac however shook his head as he looked at her in a new light. “I’m just surprised you were that self-aware. I’m trying to find it and I still can’t see it.”

  “Ass.” She flipped him off and retreated behind the row of shelves and continued her idle perusal.

  The silent lull did not st long and surprisingly it was Isaac who broke it.

  “Does your sister know?”

  “What?”

  “About your ‘issues’. Maybe try telling her you’re not ready to date instead of just brushing her off.”

  She huffed in a small ugh. “What are you, some kind of shrink?”

  “Hell no.” Isaac replied instantly. “Even if I was, I would have charged you before telling you anything.”

  She didn’t touch the little flute thing that was somehow an ‘Ocarina of Time’ and instead let her attention be taken by a lightsaber and a real hoverboard.

  “She doesn’t know, not fully. Maybe she suspects, maybe. I don’t know.” She paused in studying the lightsaber and asked in a joking tone. “Why so suddenly interested? Do you have some magical pill in there that’ll help me with my problems?”

  She’d forgotten for an instant that Isaac was a Merchant and had just thrown out a teasing comment.

  Isaac gave a simple reply. “Most likely. But you’ll still have to buy it.”

  “How nice.” She shook her head ruefully. “But I’m afraid I’ll be declining it for now.”

  The bell tinkled and an old woman came in with slow and steady steps. Isaac walked around his counter and approached her.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am. Can I help you with anything?’

  “Ah, good boy.” She said pleased as she patted his shoulders. “I was looking for old cookbooks and a friend said you might have one.”

  “How old?”

  “Anything from ’91 down.” She said and had on a hopeful smile when she saw Isaac nod and walk into the store.

  “Here.” Jessica called out and handed him a bunch of cookbooks that she grabbed from the aisle she just left.

  “Thanks.” He returned to the old woman whose smile bloomed into a happy stretch as she saw him coming with the books.

  “This is from ’91, this is from ’85, this is from ’77, and this is from ’49.” He slowly expined and showed her the books and watched her smile grow with every one.

  She instantly picked up the one from 1949 and went through the index for a few seconds before letting out a joyful ‘hurray’ as she must’ve found the recipes she was looking for.

  “How much, my dear?” She asked with the intensity of every grandma when their grandchild’s dinner was at stake.

  “32.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Isaac held a patient smile as she rustled through her bag and brought out her card to pay.

  He could’ve sworn that she had a happy skip on her legs as she left his shop with her legendary cookbook in tow.

  “For a second there, I was afraid you were going to call out a ridiculous amount.” She said as she came from behind to watch the woman leave.

  Isaac frowned at her words. “Why would I do that? It’s an old cookbook and I believe that it is my most perfect sale in a long time. If it were a magical cookbook then the price would have been completely different.”

  “How different are we talking?”

  “The cheapest mundane-adjacent cookbook I have is 7,260.” Isaac remarked and then added as an afterthought. “It can go from anywhere between there and 22 million. I also have more expensive ones that contain food guides for Sages, Celestials, Immortal Venerables and even Primordials.”

  She looked at him as if trying to use this st statement as a measurement for the kind of person he was, or what kind of being he was, in the end she just gave up. That was a rabbit hole that she was too hungry and occupied to dig in.

  She was completely sure that he was not a human, maybe human-adjacent but there was no way he was completely human.

  Another thing she couldn’t wrap her head around was his business-focused mind which let him not care about almost anything if it had nothing to do with his trade.

  She once jokingly asked him what would happen if a thief or a bad guy came in and bought some of his most dangerous weapons and his instant response was how ecstatic he would be if someone really came to buy his more expensive stuff.

  He was fair in his trade and neutral to everything else.

  ‘Everyone is solely responsible for what they buy from my store.’ That statement alone showed just how inexistent he cared about who his customers were.

  Not to mention the weirder things she would usually see on his shelves, like those jar of fresh eyes and a skull that was wordlessly crying blood.

  She really didn’t know what to think about them so she just did the most semi-effective thing that she could do about it; she simply asked Isaac.

  “90% of the goods in my storage were bought or acquired in some sort of trade. You’ll be surprised at the number of things people will be willing to sell for a chance to achieve their dreams. Those red eyes for example belonged to the deceased members of some ninja magical cn. The people who sold it to me were looking for strength and any sort of pseudo-immortality so they used those eyes to barter for what they could get.”

  Her face crinkled up in disgust. She was gd that she didn’t touch them in any way. “Magic eyes?”

  “Super magic ninja eyes.” Isaac corrected as if doing so would make it more patable.

  “You’re making me seriously reconsider touching anything from your shop.” She eyed everything around her with newfound validated distrust.

  Her next words were cut off as her ringtone went off. She excused herself to a corner of the shop and answered her phone and had a short conversation with the caller, her sister, before returning to Isaac who had taken his favorite spot behind the counter.

  “It’s time to bounce.” She said, “My sister just called. She’s coming over to spend the night, again, and I have to get home before she does.”

  She held her hand over the counter and Isaac shook it with a grip that always reaffirmed her suspicions.

  “Catch you ter, bud.” She grinned as she turned to leave.

  “Not any time soon, I hope.” Isaac groaned but his smirk matched hers.

  “Lies don’t fit you, Isaac!” she yelled as the door closed behind her, leaving the shop once more in its peaceful silence.

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