Greg couldn't help but feel like an asshole for putting his sister through such a hard time for something he didn't even care about. Unfortunately, this was the last act in the second part of his plan. For the past two days, after the healer failed to rid him of his scars, Greg had been pretending to be depressed over the issue. He'd been playing the part of the brave son and big brother putting on a strong front for his family whenever either his mother or his younger sister came along. But immediately after they left, he'd withdraw into a depressed, barely talking, and self-pitying version of himself. Her evening visits when she came to wipe him down had been particularly hard for Greg to pull off as he'd have to summon every ounce of will to keep himself from getting hard at her almost sinfully sexy body. Greg had probably thought of every disgusting thing he could twice over just to get through the sessions. On the second day, Greg had even suggested that he could wipe himself down, but the healer would have none of it. All of it was building up to this moment.
"Hey," Greg spoke up with a smile that looked a little forced even as he placed a finger under his sister's chin and turned her face back up to face him. "Keep your chin up," He encouraged, not sure if the expression would translate over to this world. "I may look like this right now, but it won't be permanent," He declared with what, to his sister, would have sounded like complete confidence. But to someone more experienced with the world, it would have sounded like Greg was trying to convince himself just as much as he was his little sister.
"Y... you won't?" his sister asked with a slightly hopeful tone of voice.
Rather than answer her, Greg turned to the healer, this time, with a slightly nervous look on his face. "Y... You said that there were potions out there that could heal me," He stated. "I know that I can't ask you to go find them for me," He continued. "But can you at least teach me?" He asked. "Teach me what I'd need to know to find that potion, or if I can't find it, how to find its ingredients so I can make it myself," He went on. Olivia had already mentioned to Greg that knowledge of potion-making is a lot more valuable than being given a potion. Greg, however, pretended to not know this and acted like the potion was much more important to him.
Greg didn't consider himself a genius by any stretch of the imagination. But by the same measure, he wasn't an idiot either. Even without Olivia hinting at the fact that the healer had some secrets, Greg had picked up on some clues himself. The earliest clue that Greg had picked up on, was the fact that the healer seemed to be struggling with her magic. The pain that she carefully hid whenever she pushed her magic use past a certain point, didn't strike Greg as normal. Next, the system came along and told him that the woman posed the highest danger grading it could assign which was the suicidal danger grading. Essentially, the system declared that, despite whatever struggles with magic the woman had, Greg was no more than a lamb awaiting slaughter if she ever desired to harm him. Olivia next came along and reinforced this assessment from the system by revealing that the healer was a seventh-tier mage. A tier that, according to Olivia, could kill just by their aura alone if they weren't careful to rein it in. The final piece to the puzzle that brought the whole picture together was the fact that the healer had been in the town for the past six years. In other words, a seventh-tier mage, who seemed hurt bad enough to struggle with magic hadn't tried to go to places where she could get magical help but instead chose to stay in a town with no magic for six years.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that she was probably hiding from something.
Given her injuries and the fact that she seemed to have enemies powerful enough that even she was hiding from, Greg had been afraid that if he came out and directly asked her to teach him magic, she wouldn't be willing to accept him as her student. This was the reason Greg had chosen to take the indirect route. The first step had been to pretend that he really cared about being disfigured. Enough so that he became depressed when she failed to heal the damage to his face. The second part was to leverage this to get her to take him as another healing apprentice. He needed her to believe that he was obsessed with finding a remedy for his disfigurement. And that, this was the reason he was interested in learning about healing and potion-making. This would be his way of getting his foot in the door. Once they were in a master and apprentice relationship, Greg could slowly earn her trust and slowly shift from just learning about healing and potion making from her to actually learning magic. After all, Greg had at least two years of setting up his foundation by reinforcing his core and mana pathways before he could actually start to learn magic. Greg believed that this would be enough time for him to win enough of the healer's trust for her to take him as her student of magic.
Looking at the healer, Greg couldn't help the slight surprise he felt at the smile that had crossed her face. It was almost as if, rather than making a request of her, he had done her a favor. Was this what Olivia had meant when she said that the healer would probably agree to take him as a student of magic if he asked her? Greg found himself wondering. The healer was currently looking at him as if he'd offered up on a silver platter the solution to a problem she'd been trying to solve. "Go home," The healer said, catching Greg off guard. "Rest, recover, and spend some time with your family," She advised. "You have lost your father and almost died yourself. You need to grieve with your family. Allow them and yourself to adjust to the new reality you find yourself in," She said. "You are their new support. You need to make sure that you are in the right headspace before you take up that responsibility. Take a week or two if you need to," She offered. "When you feel you are ready, come to me and we'll begin your apprenticeship," She instructed. Greg couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief when she got to this point. At the start, he'd almost thought that she would reject him with a smile. Turns out she was just worried about his mental state.
Greg offered a bow to the healer, a smile now on his lips. In this town, this was how an apprentice showed respect to their master...
***
When Greg stepped out of the infirmary, the wooden mask his sister had brought him was on his face. Greg had to give it to the carpenter that made it. He was good at his craft. The mask was smooth to the touch and wouldn't chafe at his skin. The eyeholes were just right, not big enough to show the damage around his eyes, and not small enough to obstruct his vision. The air holes were positioned just right to allow him to breathe with ease and even the strap that ran around his head to hold the mask in place wasn't too tight. The only shortcoming, as far as Greg could tell, was the fact that it only covered his face. The sides of Greg's head remained visible to anyone who took the time to look at him closely. But then again, in its own way, this was also a good thing as it would make him way less suspicious than if he was completely covered. Now, anyone that looked at him would easily understand why he was covering up. This would spare him having to repeatedly explain himself.
It was an odd feeling for Greg to look at the town around him. Greg was seeing the houses and streets all around him for the first time ever. At the same time, however, Roka had moved through these same streets and seen these houses for his whole life. As such, Greg simultaneously felt like he'd known these same streets and houses for his whole life. Back on earth, these houses would be called log cabins, seeing as they were made entirely of cleverly interlocked logs. A fact that came as no surprise to Greg seeing as they were a town in the middle of the forest in the mountains. The roofs on the houses, however, curved inwards, with corners that jutted upwards much like the traditional Japanese architecture back on earth.
There wasn't even the slightest hesitation in Greg's steps as he moved towards his home. Given the abundance of trees all around them, even the poorest members of the town had good houses. As such, rather than the quality of the house, it was usually the positioning of their house in the town that spoke to how well off those living inside were. At the center of the town, was the town head's home. The largest residential building in the whole town and the only one that had a first floor to it. Every other house in the town only had the ground floor. Around the town head's home were the homes of the three most powerful families in the town. These three families represented the upper class in the town. Around these three families, are the homes that represented the middle class of the town, and right at the edge of the town were the poorest members of the town. This arrangement is crucial as, on the mountain that the town was on, there were annual beast migrations. The whole town usually came together to try and repel the beasts when they came too close to the town. However, the first ones to suffer losses whenever a beast managed to breach their defenses, were the unfortunate individuals that lived right at the edge of the town.
