Chapter 5: Rejection
Hestia groaned, her eyes heavy with exhaustion. It was always like this on busy days. "The Jagamarukuns are way too popular…" she trailed off, ready to close the stand.
"Good work today as well, Hestia!" called out her boss from inside the building.
"Huh?" Hestia perked up, feeling a bit satisfied by a day of work being done. "T-Thank you," she said.
"Once you've wrapped things up on your end, we'll end the day."
"Sure!"
Hestia sighed when she heard her boss leave to the back of the store. In Heaven, she never imagined working at a stand could be so tiring. I guess it's a good thing the shop is popular, she thought, trying to massage her cramped shoulders. The body of a mortal differed from a Goddess' in many ways, and getting used to it took a bit of time for her.
When she was in her good friend Hephaestus' care, she didn't have to do anything, so she couldn't have expected what kind of pain would come with working. A newfound respect for the Blacksmith Goddess appeared in her heart, and she flushed with shame at how long she took advantage of her kindness.
"There you go." She picked up the two remaining Jagamarukuns, ready to take them home. The shop couldn't afford to sell stale goods, so any leftovers would be thrown away or eaten by the staff. With her meager pay, Hestia couldn't afford to be picky about what she ate for dinner.
"Oh? A food stand that's still open?" She heard a man say from her right. She turned around and saw a tall and green-eyed man walking towards her. She froze, the image of her fluffy potatoes fleeing from her appeared in her mind. Beyond her disappointment, what jumped to her eyes was the length attached to his neck. The baby blue scales, the round appearance—like sausages stacked on each other… Is that a snake?
Despite her internal confusion, her chirpy tone never left her and her best smile was used to greet the potential customer, "Hello, and welcome to the Jagamarukun Stand. What can I do for you?"
She ignored the way his scarf twitched at her words. What she didn't, however, was how he reacted to her. The man stopped in his steps, his forward foot sliding across the pavement due to the sudden pause. His eyes widened before narrowing into slits, an almost guarded expression taking over him. She was the target of this gaze.
Her breath hitched. Would her reputation finally spell her doom? Was he a customer who was left unsatisfied by the products she sold? She panicked, her mind going to a thousand places at the same time.
"Are you a goddess?" He asked. She could tell his voice was higher than usual, and he uttered each word as if he couldn't believe them—slow, and self-doubting.
"...uh, yes?" She wasn't sure how to respond to that. She expected something more… dramatic.
Multiple hypotheses popped up in her mind, but her desperate mind zeroed on only one. She gulped as she took a stronger look at the man. He had broad shoulders and a really impressive physique—the tight T-shirt he wore hid nothing. He smelled of… He smelled of coal and metal. A scent she had to endure for weeks when she first arrived in the lower world. A blacksmith, maybe? She looked down at his hands.
A black coloration stuck to his clothes and his hands like a slip from a brush submerged in black paint. She had seen it on every member of her friend's Familia. It was coal.
She slumped on the ground. He was a blacksmith. And a blacksmith wouldn't want to join her Familia...
The man frowned and blinked once at the sight of her body collapsing on the ground. "Are you okay?" She heard him say, the slightest hint of concern in his voice—but she remarked he made no move to help her.
"Yeah, yeah — that was embarrassing, I'm sorry," she said, picking herself up. "I was just…" She looked at him from head to toes once more. "…too expectant."
The man's eyebrow raised, crossing his arms, and his gaze lost any concern he had for her previously. She overlooked that detail, pursed her lips before letting out a long and weighty sigh, coming from the back of her throat. Her unwinding process ended up with an acute clap rippling, and her cheeks adorning the general shape of her palm—a striking red.
"Are you done?" She flushed at his flat tone, but with no outwards signs to show it. She nodded twice and cleared her throat. "Good. Now, do you have any food left? I know it's quite late, but you don't seem to have closed yet."
"W-We do. Two left. Would you like to purchase them?" Her awkward smile, pushing her crimson cheeks forward, couldn't compare to the one she displayed before. But it was better than nothing.
The man was looking at her with a contemplative look, still incredulous. Hestia didn't know if her lips twitched because of the strain on the facial muscles needed to keep her smile, or because of his expression. Whether it was linked to his initial reaction to her divinity, or the pathetic show she just put out, she felt embarrassed. Time stretched with his inspection, the scrutiny she was put under infusing her with a bead of annoyance.
He ambled across the road, closing the distance between the two of them. "Are you sure you're a goddess?" He asked for the second time, igniting a small spark of indignation in her mind. Sure, nobody wanted to join her Familia, and she was alone, but who was he to act like this in front of her?!
Her big blue eyes snapped to his green ones. A pout was threatening to break out on her face, because of her inability to express her feelings otherwise. She gripped the edge of her stand a bit harder. "Yes, I am. What of it?!"
His eyes dropped for a second, an action that didn't escape her notice. "My bad, I-I thought you were a kid for a second." He laughed.
He laughed! Hestia was fuming, and she mumbled bad words under her breath. Her eyes were laser-focused on his face. "You know what, I will not sell you these!" She said with a 'hmph', retracting the food held inside her outstretched hand.
"Ah, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said, his chuckling fading in the wind at the prospect of his dinner disappearing.
She watched him for a moment, waiting for any signs of laughter, before slowly putting the basket with the two Jagamarukuns back into his hands. Even the pout left her face.
She was too tired to be angry at someone.
"You know it just makes you cuter, right?"
"Don't think you can buy me with cheap compliments, mister."
"Not even enough for a discount on these?" His fingers were pointing towards the food.
"Even less. You stole my dinner, and you expect me to accept less payment for it as well?"
"Your dinner?" He tilted his head, before looking at the two Jagamarukuns in his hands. After a second, he presented one to Hestia. "Here. We can split. These are expensive to begin with."
Hestia blinked and paused before taking the meal back. "Expensive?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, tucking the barely-warm potato inside another basket. "You won't find another stand with better value for your money, mister."
He looked at the price written above her, on the wooden sign, and snorted at her words. "Sure, sure…"
"I'm not lying, though… Are you new to the city?" She asked, gesturing at his clothes with her eyes, cleaning the counter of the stand at the same time.
She waited for his answer, the swipes of her wet cloth on the counter squeaking resembling the ticks of a clock. She caught a glance of the sun disappearing into the horizon and realized she was late. Her mind still stirred with the exotic garments in front of her, because she had never seen anyone dress quite like this, adventurers or blacksmiths alike.
"I really need to update my wardrobe," he blurted out, his shoulders exaggeratedly slumping before admitting, "Yeah, yeah, I just arrived today. I come from far away, so you'll excuse the… cultural differences."
Truth, her divine instinct pointed out when asked.
"But then… How did you know I was a goddess?" The more she talked to him, the weirder he revealed himself to be.
The flinch of his body was subtle enough she only noticed it because she was paying close attention to his body language. Divine senses didn't work on other deities, and so Hestia had been stuck to classic inspection to wiggle through the lies in Heaven. She would have liked to claim it as a personal skill, but nearly every deity were better at this than her. "I… I was told a goddess was working around here," he said. Lie.
Her brows furrowed. "Who told you that?" She pressed on, taking a cruel glee in interrogating the one who doubted her divinity earlier.
"...Tsubaki Collbrande." Lie. She was puzzled as to why he was so insistent on lying more and more, but Hestia paused for a moment. Tsubaki was the captain of her friend's Familia. How did he know her? She went back to her first assumption. A blacksmith. Despite having lied about the source of his information, he could be a member of her friend's Familia.
"I know Tsubaki very well," she said, taking a small amount of joy in the way his body froze for a second while his face remained impassive. "Are you part of the Hephaestus Familia, by any chance?"
"No." Truth. She continued to wash the stand, more confused than ever. "I don't have a Familia right now."
Her cloth dropped to the ground, as her previous expectations did. "I just work for Tsubaki as an assistant… which is just a pretty word for an errand boy, really." He laughed at his own words.
Hestia didn't laugh at all. Her eyes widened and slowly met his face. Her lower lip quivered and her clammy palms stuck to the wooden counter. He… He looks strong, and — and if he's not in a Familia right now…
No! Her mind came back to reality. She didn't want to get her hopes up again—she couldn't afford to. Not just for them to be squashed to the ground. Her eyes trembled a little as the various memories of the rejections, each an aching wound in her psyche, came back. She bit her lip.
Don't get your hopes up, she repeated in her head like a mantra.
"You're the first goddess I met, and I wasn't expecting one to be working in a stand so far-"
Don't get your hopes up.
"Are you interested in joining my Familia?!" She interrupted, half-screaming, her head facing the ground and her body bending at a right angle.
The sudden change was enough to take the words out of his mouth. He paused for a long time. The following silence was agonizing—she could hear the loud sound of her heart in her ribcage, beating faster and faster. Her eyes, closed shut, trembled under the pressure as she kept her head low, waiting for the man's judgment.
Here she was, asking a random man she just met to join her Familia, out of desperation.
Each second felt like hours to Hestia. But finally, she heard his voice.
"Uh… I'm honored…" he started to say, but Hestia already knew the end. Her eyes lost their light, another rejection piling up on the mountain. Tears threatened to spill out of her eyes.
"But I'll have to refuse," he finished, sentencing her to yet another failure. Her lips quivered; she refused to lift her head because of the shame. She was frozen. She tried to not get her hopes up this time! She knew he'd refuse…
But it didn't make the wound hurt any less.
"I-I understand." She couldn't even stop the hurt from spewing out in her words. "I-I understand," she repeated, quieter this time.
"...Better luck next time?"
The slight hiss she could hear from what she guessed was his pet made it worse, for some reason.
#####
This world is problematic.
As I walked towards one of the inns Tsubaki recommended to me with the money she lent me, I thought back to my first encounter with a goddess. The one who shattered every expectation I had of this world.
The moment I could observe her with my qi sense, I froze, ready to run at a moment's notice, knowing if she truly wanted to chase me, there was no way I could escape.
Sealed? Are you kidding me? The minuscule chain they wear on the literal sun inside of them—on their power—would do nothing.
But contrary to what I thought, this goddess seemed… normal. She was quirky, sure, and I didn't know why she was so desperate for me to join her Familia, but otherwise, she was far from what I was readying myself for.
Also, from what this miniature goddess told me, Tsubaki was in a Familia called the Hephaestus Familia. Hephaestus. As in the Greek God.
The possibility this world wasn't a xianxia world… just increased. I started to feel like I was gaslighted into believing something with very few pieces of evidence backing it, but the only person I could blame was me.
And if—if—I ended up learning it's a normal fantasy world, and gods and goddesses did not represent a threat to my well-being…
The image of the goddess bowing in front of me, her tears falling to the ground, appeared in my mind.
…maybe an apology would be enough?
#####
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A/N: Obviously this isn't the last time we see Bestia, but this is a good set-up for what is about to come in the future chapters.
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