Chapter 17 – Hunter

Benjamin woke up later than for a school day. He was still bad in the morning and it felt good to sleep more after waking up so early for several days, even if it was for a noble cause. He washed up as usual and started picking his clothes for the day. He decided to go with something proper but still showing a bit of skin on the arms and legs. He went down to the first floor and announced that he would go out for the day. His family always had a very lax policy about monitoring the kids' activities and he found out that was still the case now that he was the precious only son, probably due to his previous records of good conduct. The family credo was around the lines of "you can do whatever you want as long as it is not illegal and you keep your grades up at school". It had been like this since his father died when he was young and he had always attributed it to his mother and grandmother's liberal mindsets.

Benjamin had thought about how he could try to have sex in this world and the conclusion remained very close to his previous one. He has picked a town located several towns away from his own but still directly accessible by train. The trip would take around one hour. He was confident no one would ever recognize him there and no one from his surroundings would ever have a reason to go there. In other words, it was the perfect hunting ground for him.

Luckily today was a sunny day, perfect for what he was planning. He walked to the station, bought a round-trip ticket to his destination, waited for the train to come, and boarded it. After an uneventful one hour of waiting, he arrived at his destination. He had already investigated the map of the place and knew where to go. After a ten minutes walk, he arrived at a park. He checked the place and there were a certain number of people around, families, couples on a date, and groups of boys or girls walking around or enjoying the fresh air and the sun. Benjamin chose an empty bench in a visible place in the park and sat there, took his phone out, and started surfing the Internet on it.

Today was his first day of hunting and he wanted to start slowly. His plan was divided into plans A, B, and C. Plan A was an open option in case something happened on his way to the park, just like when he got hit on by the woman in her car on his way home the other day. If anything like that happened before he reached the park, he would assess the situation and potentially go along with it.

Plan B was the one currently in action, since nothing happened that triggered plan A. Because he wanted to start easy, he decided to act as the lonely boy playing on his phone in the park and see if anyone would hit on him. He would go at it for a while and if really nothing happened after a long time, he would try to go with plan C, where he would try a more direct approach to the problem.

For the moment, he just continued what he was doing, looking at his phone and waiting. Whenever he felt a gaze on him, he would look up and if the person was from the opposite sex, he would smile charmingly at them. He did that for some time, waiting patiently for anything to happen. He started reading an interesting article on the net and got a bit absorbed in it when he heard a voice near him which took him out of his focus.

"H-hey. What are you doing on your phone alone like that?"

He looked up and saw a girl around his age standing in front of him. She had shoulder-length black hair and black eyes, a slim body, and a healthy appearance. She wore a white T-shirt and a short green skirt, a fitting outfit for the warm weather. She was looking at him with an uncertain smile on her face as if she expected him to rebuke her or something. He sent her his most brilliant grin, perfectioned by days of training smiling at all the girls at school.

"Oh, hi, I was just surfing the Internet, nothing big. What can I do for you?"

The girl's eyes widened a bit at the apparently unexpected warm response that she got from him. She looked behind him for a split second before answering.

"A-ah, nothing much, I just saw you alone like that and I thought, perhaps, um, you would like to chat together?"

At that point, she couldn't help ogling his chest for an instant before looking back into his eyes. Benjamin on the other hand turned his head a bit and, from the corner of his eyes, managed to see two other girls his age watching over them from a distance. It seemed the girl in front of him was being cheered on by her friends over there.

"That's very nice of you, I was getting a bit bored by myself. Come sit here. What is your name?"

The girl beamed at her success and sat next to him, neither far nor close.

"I am Karen. What about you?"

"I am Benjamin, you can just call me Ben, everyone calls me like that."

"Ben, great. I think we are around the same age, I am a freshman in high school."

"I am also a high school freshman, what a nice coincidence. So, tell me more about you, Karen."

After his question, they started chatting about their interests and the like. She was quite the standard girl in this world, she liked sports, going out with her friends, and meeting new people - which Benjamin automatically translated to picking up boys. He jokingly asked how much success she had with meeting new people and she sheepishly answered he was her only success so far.

They chattered for some time before she came up with her next proposal.

"Say, do you have time today? We can go somewhere and have some fun. If that's ok with you?"

"Sure, sounds nice, what do you want to do?"

She once more smiled happily at how her luck was so amazing today.

"It's almost lunchtime, what about eating somewhere and then, um, watching a movie?"

"Perfect plan. Let's do that."