To Live Again, For the First Time!

In the following two weeks, many things happened.

Emilin had already taken Xander in as her disciple, grooming him to be her successor and carrier of her burdens which included 15 new files of documents every three weeks.

On the other hand, she had also taken this time to accept Grace's offer, accepting her as her teacher in the art of... conning?

The job description was flexible.

In Emilin's mind, Grace was really teaching her how to be a normal person.

Though Emilin knew that Grace may not be the exact definition of a normal person, she might be quite taken aback by how far off the mark she really was.

Either way, though they said it was a teacher-student relationship, Grace and Emilin really acting much more like friends, just one of them had more experience in certain areas than the other.

After that, they determined that whenever Emilin went to Mason's workspace, she could see the makeup process first before moving on to watch the shooting process afterward.

It was somewhat (not really though) systematic.

In this time Emilin had also realized that though Lisa, Mason's assistant, always said that Mason's schedule was full to the brim, a lot of this time was filled with "looking for inspiration."

Thus, Emilin didn't really have that much to do.

After a week, Emilin had developed somewhat of a schedule, one that she also followed for the following week.

It went something like this...

Wake up around 6-7 to then clean up etc.

Exercising with taichi after a jog from 7-9

Taking a shower before going across the street to the cat café where Xander would have already been since around 7 to answer his questions and doubts and giving short lessons while also playing around with the cats from 9-12

Going to the studio/ office after lunch at the cat café at 13 if there is something going on there and staying at the cat cafe if there isn't.

Leaving around 19 depending on her mood and the circumstances.

Then Emilin would call her family while eating dinner if there was nothing else and surf the internet before going to sleep.

On Mondays, that was also the time she allocated herself to deal with everything she had to deal with in the outside world with those messy businesses of hers.

As for the office, the people there had already gotten used to Emilin's presence and they got more familiar with her after a few days, even though she wasn't particularly talkative when they weren't working.

At least she was enthusiastic.

Everyone there greeted her when she came and left, and to Emilin, that was already quite satisfying.

If there was no photo shoot going on, Emilin would normally leave earlier after talking with Grace for a few hours with Noah occasionally joining in.

Well, the other two were the ones doing most of the talking at first, but Emilin was learning a whole lot in the process.

Every once in a while, when they were talking about things she knew and understood, she would also join in with some of her own insight.

It was also because of that that both Noah and Grace realized that Emilin was really no normal character.

After all, who the heck just randomly knows specific details of dozens of countries, can talk about cosmetic and medical products in-depth as well as mention a few side effects every once in a while, off the top of their head!

That was accompanied by some random terms that they had to search up mid-conversation.

I mean seriously…

Those terms just rolled off the tongue one after the other.

And after learning a little more about Emilin's rather inconspicuously shy character, the two were rather certain that Emilin wasn't there just to put on a show, after all, if she were, she would probably be talking like that with every topic of conversation.

Why else would she be silent, simply nodding her head and perking her ears when they were talking about what they had been doing.

It was really nice to have a good listener who wanted to hear your life story okay?!

Emilin only ever really spoke when she was certain of something or if it was just an opinion.

Mostly the factual parts that really made Grace and Noah question what they had been doing with their whole lives.

One day last week, Noah was working on the homework he had been assigned by his tutor and Emilin just pointed out some mistakes in passing.

A habit from back when she was still in school as it was also the only thing she had the confidence to say back then.

It was also after that that Emilin promised to help these two with their homework and school stuff.

Apparently, it wasn't that Grace and Noah did not go to school, but rather that they brought the school to work due to their strong conviction to follow their own paths as well as their possession of parents who could barely control their own kids.

There was a tacit agreement there.

Either way, Grace and Noah had both proved themselves over the years.

They weren't doing poorly for themselves at work, and their school ranks weren't too bad either.

It's just that it wasn't as good as they could have been, which is where Emilin came in for the rescue.

The real tacit agreement came in where the parents had to ignore all the times their child skipped school, which they were enrolled in, just to slouch around at Mason's place these days.

It was okay if they had work that specific day, but really, sometimes they didn't.

So that was that.

Slowly, Emilin was getting more and more familiar with the two, as well as a whole lot less nervous around them.

All three of them talked freely and spoke about things that the others didn't understand quite well while the others listened.

That was why, though they didn't have a whole lot of similar hobbies, they still had great chemistry.

Because the other parties were very much willing to talk about and learn from the other, though there were some small quarrels and disputes here and there. 

After a while, even Emilin's icy poker face naturally warmed up a few degrees when entering a room with any of the two inside.

The progress she made was not due to sudden enlightenment or anything of the sort, but rather because Emilin had long been trying her best to open her heart, little by little, to the outsiders.

Making them insiders like her family.

But due to her environment where most people believed themselves to know the other, she really had no opportunity to communicate with other people because they had all determined Emilin to be someone who didn't like to speak to others.

That was why she had no one to start from, no one to talk to around her age, despite being at a school.

It didn't matter if Grace and Noah were both 0-2 years older than her, Emilin had been spending years around people 3 years older than her anyways.

As for the times where there were photoshoots, Emilin had been standing next to Mason absorbing information like a sponge.

When it came to learning what she didn't know, apparently she had no qualms about embarrassing herself by asking stupid questions at all.

Her eyes sparkled.

This was a new and novel experience for Emilin.

After all, never had she known so little about something.

Unable to even determine the ups and downs of photography.

At some point though, she had to restrain herself a little as she was delaying the photoshoot.

Thankfully Mason didn't pay too much mind, saying that it was helping him get some inspiration.

As a Master, someone with great talent, Mason felt like he was learning from the ground up by teaching Emilin.

He found that it wasn't a bad idea to have allowed Emilin to stay, and he would find out in the future, that this choice may have been a whole lot more beneficial than he could have ever imagined.

But that was later, now is now.

Emilin was also providing some free labor so that she wouldn't be too much of a burden on the others.

There were still quite a lot of things that she could do, that others couldn't, so she did her best to assist everyone while she was imposing on their welcome.

That was also why everyone got familiar with Emilin so quickly.

They all found themselves thinking of her to be a good child.

In this time, Emilin had learned more than she had in all 4 years of her high school (from 9th to 12th grade, for some school's high school is from 10th to 12th, but that is not the case in the Hé Continent, more specifically not in Polo.)

Though of course, what she was learning was very different from what she was learning back in school.

If we are going to be real here, to be fair, Emilin didn't actually learn much of anything new back in high school, but that wasn't the reason why she was going there anyway.

Like her two other siblings, they had all tacitly agreed back then that they would rather live a normal life on the surface and spend their time properly with their normal family so that they wouldn't become a screwed family.

And that worked out fine.

Kind of.

Either way, even though Emilin was doing more menial and scattered work here and there, she found it a whole lot more enjoyable than sitting in class at school back then.

At least now she was learning, she was learning about every step it took to make a perfect photo shoot down to the smallest component.

Learning more about how she could better do what she wanted to do.

But more importantly, she was also learning more about herself.