179 Waiting

<Author's note: The things (racism, sexism, political views, etc.) depicted or mentioned in this story do not reflect the real world and are purely coincidences. If they do, please keep in mind that they are simply for world-building and are only work of fiction. Thank you for your understanding.

Pitter-patter!

The sky continued raining.

Zita was sitting at one of the sofas and peeking through the window, waiting for Nathan to come back.

'Mister…'

'What's taking you so long?'

'You said you'd return within 1 hour…'

'It's been 2 hours already…'

'Did you perhaps…?'

She thought about everything that has happened so far with her journey with Nathan.

She thought about how she struggled to keep up.

She thought about how she collapsed.

She also thought about Nathan's murderous glare at her last night when he abandoned her.

'If only I didn't collapse this wouldn't happen…'

She then thought about her parents and also about her friends and relatives back at Iskaldia.

'Smommyk and smamak… I'm scared…'

And just when she was about to lose hope…

Thud!

Thanks to the rain, a silhouette of a 2.2m-tall being landing inside the compounds of the house was visible.

Her eyes brightened.

She quickly rushed to the front door and pushed the sofa that was blocking it.

Brrr…

"Kid, it's me. Open up," Nathan said behind the door.

"Coming!"

When she finally pushed the sofa away, she quickly opened the door.

Ka-cha!

"Sorry, I was late. How are you? Anything happened?" Nathan said all wet as he entered.

He closed the door behind him and blocked it with a sofa.

"I'm fine, mister. Nothing happened. I was all quiet."

After blocking the door with the sofa, he looked at her, studying her expression.

'Hmm… Looks like she's fine.'

He also noticed that she wasn't wearing her System shoes.

'Heh~ I wasn't expecting this. What a considerate kid.'

One of the culture shocks he experienced in Womania was the practice of entering a house with your shoes or slippers on.

During his time in Womania living with Vincent, since he spends most of his time at the apartment due to the nature of his job, he took it upon himself to always keep the house clean.

However, one day, when Vincent invited his friends over and he saw them with their shoes on, although he didn't say anything because he believes in the saying when in Rome do as the Romans do and he was sharing the apartment with Vincent who is not only older than him but has been living in Womania way longer than him and has embraced the culture there, he chose not to say anything.

Nevertheless, their action at that time still left a bad taste in his mouth.

'But still, although I appreciate the effort, in her case, given her clumsiness and all, it's not really safe to remove her items…'

'However… Ugh… I still really appreciate it and I can't bring myself to chastise her for it…'

He smiled and patted her head.

Pat.

"Good girl. I'm going to dry myself for a sec. And then after that I'm going to cook dinner."

"Okay."

Unfortunately, what Nathan didn't know was that not all Caucasian countries wear shoes and slippers inside the house.

And Iskaldia was one of those Caucasian countries.

Nathan removed his [Grade D] Black Leather Boots and then absorbed it inside his [Artifact] Gold Spatial Ring before heading to the bathroom.

As he was already headed to the bathroom, Zita called him.

"Mister."

He stopped and turned to her.

"Hmm?"

"Can I help with the cooking?"

"Yeah, sure."

Zita smiled and said, "Yay~! Thanks~!"

Nathan smiled and resumed heading to the bathroom.

***

A few minutes later…

4:13 pm.

The sky was cloudy and it was still raining outside.

And given that there was no electricity, it was a bit dark inside the house.

With that, Nathan brought out two emergency lights.

He and Zita were at the kitchen preparing dinner.

There were 3 pots on the gas stove.

The first one was for the rice, the second one was for the soup, and the third one was for the main dish, canned ground pork with vegetables.

He found some canned goods inside one of the cupboards as well as some spices and vegetables.

And fortunately, there was still running water.

Nathan was chopping the garlic and other vegetables.

Zita, on the other hand, was chopping one onion.

Chop…

Nathan just finished chopping the garlic and other vegetables and was waiting for Zita to finish chopping the onion.

Chop…

She rubbed the tears off her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Be careful not to touch your eyes. It's going to sting. Also, be sure to control your strength. You might chop off --"

Crack…

She was gripping the kitchen knife's handle too hard that the plastic surrounding its handle cracked.

"-- your fingers."

"..."

Nathan chuckled and gave her his kitchen knife.

"Here. Try not to break it this time."

"Yes, mister. And I'm sorry…" she said and as she received the knife.

"Don't be. It's just a knife. What's more important is that you learn something," he said and smiled.

"Okay," she said and smiled as well.

Chop…

Thanks to the System which gives humanity to break away from their limitation, one of the drawbacks is having to control their strength.

In the case of Nathan, although the [Artifact] Divine Blood boosted his STR by 30 points, he was already increasing his level since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and did some experiments so he already had some experience on what it felt like to have stat boosts.

Meanwhile for Zita, less than 24 hours ago she was only Level 1 so she still has a lot of practicing to do.

Nathan stared at the pots at the gas stove.

'I can finally eat more or less authentic Muwinian dishes…'

'And also… This gas stove… I miss it…'

Nathan couldn't help but remember one of the culture shocks in Womania.

Stoves.

In Womania, he was surprised that the houses there didn't have gas tanks. It was either gas pipes or electric cooking appliances. The only time people there would use gas tanks is when they're out camping or something similar to that.

Meanwhile, in Muwin, there were no gas pipes. People here use gas tanks.

And as for the electric cooking appliances, although there are water heaters, electric stoves and microwaves here in Muwin, only rich people would use them because it would jack up the electricity bill.

The only electric cooking appliance that all Muwinians don't mind using is the rice cooker.

Because of that, while he was in Womania during the zombie apocalypse, he had to search for gas stoves that were specifically designed to be used for camping or outdoor cooking.

"Mister, I'm done."

Nathan looked at the onions Zita chopped.

'It looks… messy,' he thought. "Wonderful. Now add them on the third pot."

Zita went over to the third pot.

She grabbed a chair, stood on top of it and then placed the onions.

Psssh!

Nathan stood next to her and said, "Now add some soy sauce and vinegar."

She grabbed the bottle of soy sauce and vinegar using [Lift] and poured them on the pot.

"That's enough. Don't forget to stir it."

"Okay," she said and looked for a spatula.

She saw one and used [Lift] to bring it to her.

She started stirring.

"Put these as well," he said and gave her the other spices and the canned ground pork.

"Okay."

Psssh!

Zita had a smile on her face as she was cooking.

She used to bake cake and cookies with her "smamak" so this moment brought her some joy.

"Mister, what is this dish called?"

"Uh…"

Unfortunately, there were no proper ingredients so he was just trying his best to make a proper Muwinian dish of what was available.

"... well, let's just call it ground pork with vegetables."

"What about this soup over here?"

"That one? That's just a normal vegetable soup."

"And this one is called rice, right?"

"Yeah. Have you tried eating rice before?"

"No."

"Well, you're going to try it today."

"Okay."

*********************************************

Author's thoughts:

Hello, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Thank you for reading!

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