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Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 30 – Super Awkward Dinner Time
🕑 Added 2024-07-05 05:46:02 +0000 UTCAfter everyone had sat down and some food was brought out, Terry finally had a chance to get his bearings. That process took a while during which he pretended to eat, but mostly just shuffled food around his plate. He didn’t get evil poisoner vibes from the baronet and his wife, but wasn’t that how it always was with creepy serial killers? They looked normal right up until the moment you were knocked unconscious and woke up strapped to a table. Then, they whipped out a meat tenderizer and a bottle of steak sauce. Besides, who the hell knew what that daughter of theirs would do? Talk about not being able to take no for an answer. He’d told a complete stranger who approached him on the street to shove off, as one does, and she’d had mommy and daddy’s armed employees come to get him. He would absolutely believe that she told the kitchen staff to drug his food. She hid it well, but he was certain he’d seen crazy eyes during their little dust-up.
It was not lost on him that he was much more confident and comfortable staring down rampaging monsters in the forest. He didn’t like doing that because his sanity was still attached to him if only by a very thin thread, but he understood the monsters. They had very simple motives. They wanted to kill things, protect territory, or both. He didn’t need to overthink those situations because there was nothing ambiguous about terrifying beasts trying to bite out your throat or turn your insides into your outsides. People, though, were largely opaque to him. Put them in the right context or give him a couple months of observation and he could make some plausible deductions. Drop him into unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar people? He might as well be looking at space aliens for all he understood them.
He knew that was a big part of the reason why his knock down all opposition stance had faltered. When he was dealing with hostile guards or violent Church people, he was on familiar ground. It was pure them vs him. When he’d been confronted with civility, he hadn’t known what to do. It had caught him off guard. Things had snowballed from there. He’d already been wound up from his little chat with the Church asshole, and then he’d seen her. She’s polished herself up from when she’d been bothering him outside the Adventurer’s Guild, but he’d recognized her. She’d become the lightning rod for most of his unchanneled frustrations, which she had mostly deserved. Looking back, he realized that had been his real opportunity to escape. No one would have blinked if he had. That’s what smart people did after making a scene. They left or, more properly, fled the scene of their shame.
So, why didn’t I? He pretended for a little while that he didn’t know, but he knew. That kind of transparent lie didn’t hold up long when someone was telling it to themselves. It had been Heletina. No, Terry thought, not Heletina the person. He didn’t know her. It had been Heletina the angst-ridden mother. Terry had very little use for male authority figures. As often as not, they became the receptacles of all his misplaced resentment for his father. Terry had been raised by a single mother. That upbringing had conditioned him, as it had conditioned so many sons from similar homes, to react very respectfully to an out-of-sorts maternal figure. Fathers were distant, unreliable, and flaky non-entities as often as not. Mothers were immediate presences, absolute lawgivers, and very nearly minor deities for the young men who grew to manhood beneath their care.
When Heletina had started using that voice of displeasure, he had stopped being Terry the world-hopping, reluctant monster slayer. He had become Terry the fourteen-year-old who had gotten caught smoking the one and only time he tried it. His teenage instincts had come rushing back. Those instincts had told him to obey because obedience was the only way to solve that kind of problem. Unfortunately, because it took his brain the entire appetizers and some of the first course to work that out, he was now stuck. He supposed that knowing how he got into the situation was a comfort, but it was a tiny comfort. After all, that knowledge did nothing to change the hugely fucking annoying fact that he was still stuck in the situation. So, Terry did the only things he could think of that that didn’t involve actions that would get him labeled a murderhobo. He did his best not to make eye contact and to provide non-answers to every question that was posed to him.
“It’s not poisoned,” whispered Kelima while giving him a one-eyed glare.
Her one eye was still a little swollen and bruised, but it was healing. Not quite as fast as he had healed, but it was still pretty fast. His lip felt mostly normal to him now. He supposed that explained most of the laughter that had been going on while he’d been fighting the aggravating young woman. Throwing around spells or techniques or whatever the regional code word was for supernatural power was obviously dangerous. Terry could see now that throwing punches was probably the province of childhood violence in this place. It was what you did when you didn’t have power, or you didn’t really mean it, or you were dealing with an annoying sibling you couldn’t kill. To see two theoretical adults throwing jabs and, in Kelima’s case, handing out what amounted to cat scratches, probably was funny to these people. Low-brow humor, no doubt, but humor all the same.
“According to you,” Terry whispered back in a voice he prayed wasn’t carrying to Heletina.
Kelima rolled her eyes, winced, and went back to her food. Terry went back to pushing food around on his plate and trying very hard not to talk to anyone. By the time the desserts were brought out, he thought he might escape without offending anyone else. He stared longingly at what looked and smelled like a berry turnover. It even had a dollop of what had to be freshly whipped cream on it. He was still staring at the dessert, his mouth watering, when someone said his name. He glanced up and looked around the table, trying to figure out who had been speaking to him. Then he saw that Dallan “I’m god’s special, special boy” Syndar was looking at him expectantly. Immediately not caring, Terry shrugged.
“No opinion?” asked Syndar.
“About?” replied Terry in a tired voice.
A few people pretended to hide their smirks. Syndar’s eyes hardened. Even Terry could figure that out. Syndar expected everyone else to take him as seriously as he took himself. And here I am, so unimpressed with him that I didn’t even bother to listen. I’m sure that’s going to go just great.
“One should listen when one’s betters speak,” said Syndar.
“I listened when Lady Silventar told me to sit,” answered Terry.
There hadn’t been any real calculation to the comment. He just thought it would piss the guy off, which it did. It also seemed to put the man in some kind of a bind. Syndar’s face went almost purple in rage, but he didn’t speak. Terry shot a cautious glance at Heletina. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were sparkling with delight. Well, at least I’m out of trouble with her. Terry tried to figure out what it was in what he said that shut Syndar down so effectively, but it escaped him. He’d stumbled backward into a temporary solution, and that was just going to have to be enough. At least no one else asked him anything after that, which did reduce the whole event from supremely awkward to just intensely awkward.
There was some mingling after the meal, but Terry was allowed to retreat back to his corner. Syndar tried to get to him but was repeatedly intercepted by the baronet, Heletina, and a few other guests who seemed to think it was an amusing game to subvert the furious Church official’s efforts to reach his goal. Terry didn’t think for one second that they did it for his benefit. Well, maybe it was a tiny bit for his benefit, but it wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts. He’d taken the man down a peg, however inadvertently, and they’d all been entertained. This was his reward for their amusement. Terry was a little surprised that they managed to usher everyone, including Syndar, out of the house without him needing to talk to anyone. When the front doors were firmly closed, Heletina gave him a serious look.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to get you beyond the walls as soon as possible. Otherwise, the bishop will have you murdered for sure.”
“Shocking,” said Terry in a bland voice before he started rubbing his temples in little circular motions.
