Like Etsu earlier, Eld's brain froze, ensuring he didn't have the sense to react until the gesture was done. Sure, she was reciprocating what he did earlier, but she was the past person he'd expected to display any form of affection in public.

But that fact that she did--and to him--made him unbelievably happy. "S-See you later," he replied, staring at her with a warm smile for several seconds.

Which was about when he felt the eyes of the others burning holes into his side. He looked up, before getting very bashful, though he couldn't quite keep the smile off his face. "Bye girls. Have fun," he said with a wave before beating a hasty retreat towards the store so he could finish is errands.

It was for the best he left; he wasn't sure he could count on Mayako's help again after that display if Sarah and Emma got a hold of him.

They watched Eld leave; Mayako was still hanging on Sarah, and the three of them managed a slight, yet still dubiously shocked, wave. Etsu, on the other hand, simply watched Eld go, a smile still upon her face.

"E-Ets, ya slut!" Sarah proclaimed with . . . well, a laugh.

Instantly, Etsu became defensive. She furrowed her brow and pouted, responding quickly, "N-nani desu ka?! I-- I am not a--"

But she was stopped as Emma patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry, she's not seriously insulting you or anything."

"Oh . . ."

Etsu was definitely due for much more cajoling than that, as Sarah drew away from Mayako to wrap her arm around Etsu's shoulders. The conversation was bound to quickly escalate into an interrogation regarding the nature of their relationship. It was no mystery that the two had officially been boyfriend and girlfriend during the last week before Etsu's pre-Probation return to the Reapers. Had they rekindled their past feelings? Were there hot and steamy nights of passion between them? Inquisitive minds needed to know, and damnit, they were going to know. Eld was luckily absent for that conversation.

Just as he was leaving, he'd find the crowd was a little thick. It was almost evening; about four o'clock, give or take a few minutes. That was about the time that another influx of people were coming in, and unfortunately due to mass reconstruction that was still going on, there was only a couple of main entrances, and, well . . . it was inevitable, Eld was going to have to go through one of them, while all of them were packed.

And it was just as he'd get through the crowd, in a brief moment where he wouldn't be able to see at all, he'd bump into someone--again! Of course, it was bound to be an accident, but this person was unlike Sarah . . .

"A-aahh!" a woman's surprised was muffled by the crowd.

But the young woman falling back onto her rear, however, would not be. She was a young woman, definitely; she was older than Eld, probably about as old as Mai Uematsu (though, Eld knew her by a different name anymore). Her hair almost looked silver in the light, and she seemed to be wearing a form fitting dress, oriental, but not from Cizok. She sat upon her rear, eyes closed, and lips pursed as she grimaced at the pain in her tail bone.

Eld was a little sorry, leaving Etsu behind to deal with the girls (whom he imagined would be pretty much unbearable after that display), but for once he was not willing to dive into certain doom to prevent someone else from being a bit bothered.

Unfortunately, all the entrances were crowded, and as he was leaving he ran right into someone. Again. For better or worse, it wasn't someone he knew, though. He teetered back slightly, but kept his balance. "S-Sorry," he apologized.

Setting some of his bags down for a moment, he offered her his arm to help her up. "Are you alright?"

"Nhhh . . . I-I think so . . ." she whispered. She had a very soft voice, very laid back, even despite the fact that she seemed to be in a little bit of discomfort. One might even describe her voice as flighty.

In Eld's life, he had known approximately three people before that had scarlet colored eyes. Two of which were far from human. The other was perfectly human, but the trait was still an uncommon phenomenon, specifically because it was a trace of deep seeded albinism, something Eld may or may not have been aware of. Now, he had met four.

She looked up to him with scarlet eyes, but ones unlike Etsu's. Etsu's eye color, albeit shocking at first, was somewhat light. It blended in. This young woman, though . . . her eyes stood out more than anything else about her. Of course, she had very pale skin, and platinum hair, all three of which were signs of albinism just as well, but her eyes were much brighter. She looked up to him a little nervously at first, before glancing back to the people all around her. She looked even more nervous, like she was overwhelmed a little.

"A-ah, um, th-thanks," she replied with a hesitant and nervous laugh.

Indeed, she had to be overwhelmed. The young woman reached up and took Eld's arm, accepting his assistance, but at that point, didn't really let go, and looked over her shoulder with the same nervousness as before. So many people, and they could have trampled her if she stayed down long enough . . .

Eld was a bit taken aback by the eyes; they were red, and unlike Etsu's rather pale shade these were very bright. He'd never seen anyone with eyes that bright...well, no humans, anyway.

That thought made him more nervous than he cared to admit; he had a one in three initial success rate with red eyes, and was only half and half with albinos. Still, he brushed it off as being paranoid.

"It's nothing." He was the one who knocked over, after all; it was the least he could do.

While her exotic appearance had suggested as much, her clear hesitation at seeing the crowd was what really made it clear that she wasn't from around here. Given that she wasn't letting go of him, he figured it was best to get her some breathing room.

"Why don't we get out of the crowd?" he suggested, doing a bit of shuffling so he could carry all his things, before leading her through the masses to the mouth of a small alley--it led to a dead end, so it wasn't even being used as a shortcut.

A dead end behind them--any normal woman being lead here by a total stranger might have been a little put off by it! Even just standing in the mouth of the alley, knowing that there was a dead end behind her, a woman might consider the possibility that this would be a dead end for her life in general. But this woman didn't seem paranoid by it at all. She held onto Eld's arm the entire time, and when they got to the mouth of the alleyway, she looked back curiously, and then back into the crowd as if the alley wasn't a problem in the slightest.

"Ah . . . thankyouthankyou," she sighed with relief.

There was a little bit of sweat upon her brow, particularly from nervousness. She was visibly relieved. Now that they were out of the crowd, Eld would be able to see her a little better. Her platinum hair seemed to be pulled back into two long pig tails, but they were perky; it wasn't until about four or five centimeters that her hair was taken down by gravity.

She was about as tall as Eld, just an inch shy of his height, and since she was wearing sandals that were a little low to the ground, it made her seem a little bit shorter than that, too.

"There were so many people . . . it was kind of hard to think!" She exclaimed softly, with a smile of cheeky admittance.

"It can be pretty overwhelming if you're not used to it," Eld agreed. As a city that relied primarily on trade for income, Galaens could have an absolutely crazy amount of people shuffling around on a daily basis. During any kind of holiday or special event it got so bad his family outright refused to go there unless it was absolutely necessary.

"The traffic kind of ebbs and flows, so if you wait here for a few minutes it should lighten up a bit." Under other circumstances he might have stayed with her, and helped her get to her destination--or at least set her in the right direction--but if coming to Galaens for a justifiable reason had been a huge risk today, walking around with a strange girl who would potentially cling to him if startled would be downright suicidal.

So he stepped back out into the street, intending to merge with traffic and make his way towards his horse.

"Mmm!" she hummed as she nodded in acknowledgment--with quite a bit of enthusiasm, for that matter, "Thanks!"

When she wasn't overwhelmed by the crowd, she seemed to drop her nervousness and retain a very cheerful enthusiasm, with subtle raises in the pitch of her voice, but not quite the same as another's; her tone didn't really seem to betray her prior example of a flighty voice. Nonetheless, it was something Eld probably wouldn't pick up on, as he left shortly after giving her much appreciated advice.

However, just as he neared the pharmacy, where he could tie up a horse for free (Davis wasn't going to turn Eld in or anything; if any of the girls asked, he was just going to say it was another customer. It was a gentleman's agreement between them--Davis knew just how bad it could get if Sarah AND Emma had plans with mal-intent.), Eld would notice that he wasn't quite alone.

In fact, were he to look behind him, he'd again see the platinum haired young woman trailing behind. She wasn't looking at him, though. She seemed to be blankly gazing at the pharmacy, as if she were simply staring into space as she walked, and not really watching where she was going, but without a doubt she was following in Eld's footsteps, albeit slower and a little . . . "spacier."

For as long as he could remember, Eld had always gotten along far better with girls than he did with guys. Growing up, he was close with Sarah, Mayako, and Emma, but didn't possess any male friends close to his own age. He considered Remmy a friend, but it wasn't until he starting fighting the bandits that he was really on equal ground with him.

Davis was perhaps his first real male friend; he clashed with him occasionally, mostly due to the fact that he was dating the girl Eld thought of like a little sister (and was significantly older than her), but overall he was a good guy, one of the few guys he could relate to.

And he also understood just how scary and unreasonable girls could be at times, so he let Eld tie up his horse at the pharmacy and promised not to tell the girls he was around.

But as he was securing his bags to the horse, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he wasn't alone. And, in fact, hadn't been for some time. He turned around to address the girl, who seemed to be following him--perhaps without even realizing it.

"...Is everything alright?" he asked politely. He wasn't put off or anything, but he was a bit afraid that if he climbed on the horse she'd try and climb on behind him or something.

The young woman still walked, watching the pharmacy as she did, until Eld finally said something to her.

"A-ah!" she cried as she jumped back.

Eld was probably right. The woman more than likely hadn't even realized that she was following Eld, until he said something to her--and nearly scared her out of her skin. She relaxed rather quickly, though, and simply laughed an embarrassed laugh.

Well, at least she was cheerful about it. "U-uh--u-um, yeah! Y-yeah, everything's . . . okay . . . . . I . . . . . . . . think . . ."

The woman had trailed off with her last words very, very slowly, as she focused more and more upon the pharmacy at which Eld had tied his horse. For a moment, she stared at it with a furrowed brow, as if she were thinking very, very hard about the building and its existence in general. Seconds passed in the meantime, before finally . . .

"Hey, what's this place?" she asked rather suddenly as she pointed to the pharmacy.

Eld was far used to dealing with the type of strangeness that warranted fighting for his life or solving mysteries about odd events. He had forgotten about the normal, everyday strangeness that could just come from otherwise normal, everyday people.

It was, he realized, a kind of telling sign that this girl was relatively normal as far as he was concerned.

"This is the pharmacy," he said slowly. He considered having her go inside and talk to Davis for help, letting him leave, but Davis was nice enough to cover for him so he decided not to push some strange girl on him. Not that he thought it was really trouble, but Emma might do something rash if she saw Davis talking to an exotic looking girl for any reason other than business.

Or maybe not; Emma was more level-headed than Sarah, but it was always a bit tougher guessing how she'd react because of it.

"...Where are you trying to go?" he asked at last; he supposed he could at least point her in the right direction.

"A pharmacy?" she asked as if she had never even heard of a pharmacy before.

Which might have been a little weird, were it not for the fact that she had already proven herself to be a bit spacey already.

"I . . . think I'm where I'm supposed to be," the young woman replied, but it was pretty clear that she wasn't too sure about that.

With her left arm over her diaphragm, she held her right elbow in her left hand, an anchor of sorts, as she leaned her chin upon her right hand, all with her index tugging upon her lower lip. Her eyes were to the sky as she thought, and thought aloud.

"But it's . . . a lot bigger than I thought," she thought aloud; really, it was thinking aloud. She wasn't intentionally addressing Eld at all. "With a ton more people. I thought Chillrest was supposed to just be a small mining town or . . ."

She tugged on her lower lip in thought again, though her eyes leveled to the ground. She looked up when trying to come up with something, perhaps, and looked down when she gave up.

". . . something like that."

There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. "There aren't any mining towns around here," Eld replied. "And I've never heard of a Chillrest."

Somehow, he knew he was going to regret this. He chided himself for thinking that; okay, she was strange, but she didn't seem like a bad person or anything. Maybe she had a relative. Or maybe she was really looking for a place called Chillrest.

"There's a Hillcrest, but...there isn't much there worth seeing," he said hesitantly.

"Oh! Hillcrest, that's it!" The young woman proclaimed . . . almost as if she were proud of herself for recalling the name of the town.

Even though Eld kind of recalled it for her. Indeed, it was not Chillrest, and it wasn't a mining town. Close, though. It was Hillcrest, and it was a farming town. The woman was a little off, but not too terribly. A letter was misplaced, and she hadn't perfectly recalled the means in which the village sustained itself, but she was close enough. Mining could be a pretty rural thing, too, a lot like farming.

"Wait . . ." she paused to drop her hands to her sides and look around, "You mean . . . I'm not in Hillcrest right now?"

She seemed surprised by this, too . . .

"Ummm...no. This is Galaens."

Part of him continued to doubt if it was a good idea to correct her. He wasn't in any suspicion of her being dangerous or anything--she was pretty clearly harmless--but he was a little worried that she'd arrive there, probably reveal she had no money, and he would be forced to offer her a roof over her head for the night...

Even if it was just for one night, and even if it was a separate room, he imagined there was no way that would go over well with any of the girls. Well, Emma might just find it funny, he supposed.

But as much as he didn't want something like that to happen, he didn't want her to get lost somewhere and end up dead on the side of the road, either.

"What do you want in Hillcrest?" he asked.