A Day with Lili VIII

Nox immediately figured out that was why Lili liked the stalls, haggling. The rest were just secondary reasons.

'She just loves to drive a hard bargain. Scam people of of their coin through smarts and deception.' He thought to himself.

'Well, she is quite good at it. When I needed money at the start of my career I just stole it so I never bothered to learn the art of haggling.' He pondered while amusedly watching Lili work her magic on the stall keepers.

It honestly surpassed impressive and went into downright scary territory . . .

'I mean really, how can cut something's price to half get a freebie or two in the process and still leave like you're being cheated? Putting on an act so convincing the stall keepers even feel bad.' Nox though with disbelief.

He even had to distance himself from the scene and watch from a bit further away because his "rich enough to buy this entire market and not even feel it" aura was messing up her game. The quote was from Lili herself by the way.

In the end, Lili bough a lot of crap she didn't want simply for the pleasure of buying things cheap. In one way, it was really trashy of her to squeeze the poor stall keepers from every vallis she possibly could.

On the other hand though, she was still spending money on stuff she didn't even want that much or cared about so said stall keepers could be said to have taken advantage of her buyer's habits, even if their profit ended up being quite a bit lower than usual due to the extreme haggling skills.

The most awesome part was that they spent the entire afternoon doing that. Lili got super into giving Nox a sort of crash course into smart buying on the stall based market.

She talked him through her stall selecting process, what to look for, how to avoid getting scammed by skilled forgers, when and how to approach said stalls, the actual haggling process, when to push, when to loosen up and when to completely get away . . .

By the time the sun was beginning to set and Orario's sky was dyed orange, Nox had managed to reign in his "rich aura" and he even got some fair deals. He could not scam the scammers like Lili could but he could at least stop others from scamming him.

Lili even said "You have real potential. With some work, you can become a real pro at this.", like she was a wise old mentor talking to a young hotshot who just got into the game.

If Nox was forced to tell tell truth, it was not something he enjoyed. The whole haggling thing was not only pointless it was also complete out of character for him, utterly not his style.

When it came to acquiring goods, Nox only had two modes which were extremes and completely opposite to one another.

The first was to smash people with his money. Willfully spend his vallis to drown out competition and buy out everything he very well damn pleased. The second, was to not pay at all and just steal everything away in the night.

It was truly all or nothing. He either overpaid to satisfy his vanity or took everything without letting the owner see a single vallis to satisfy his greed.

Still, Lili enjoyed herself and Nox was happy with that. Maybe he would move things along in a way they could both enjoy for future dates but the first, he did not mind letting it play out the way his diminutive energetic lover wanted to.

Whatever the case, dinner time was approaching and Lili looked a bit sheepish since she realized she had gotten way into their first activity and probably ruined everything Nox had planned for the day but he was quick to allay her concerns.

"Sorry, Nox-sama probably had awesome stuff line up for us right?" She said, even using the Nox-sama she had endeavoured not to use during the date to draw them closer together as sort of equals, even if just for the day.

"Hey. The important things is you being happy. SInce you enjoyed yourself, I see it as win, no matter if I got to make use of my plans or not. It just means I can reuse those ideas for our next date." Nox joked, drawing a cute giggle out of the even cuter pallum.

"But what about you? Did you enjoy yourself?" Lili asked, once again dropping her Nox-sama appellation after getting some comfort back.

"Yeah I did. It was a fun new experience." Nox responded. He was definitely exaggerating a bit but his girlfriend did not need to know that.

"That's great." Lili gave a hidden little sigh of relief and reacquired her happy, somewhat bubbly state from before.

"So shall we dine my lady?" Nox joked with a very posh tone.

"Hehehe! You almost look like a proper gentleman." Lili joked back.

"I am insulted!" Nox responded with a fake "I'm offended" look.

"Come one. You'd be the first to deny being a gentleman." Lili rolled her eyes at her beloved.

"Fair enough." Nox replied with his usual tone and a smile on his face.

"The suggestion still stands though." He added.

"Well, all the mental gymnastics did make me hungry." Lili responded.

"So where to?" She then then asked.

"Wait and see~" Nox said with a teasing tone, holding out his hand for Lili to take.

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

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You'll get to read up to FOUR weeks ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

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