There’s a small moment of confusion on her face before it is replaced with the same recognition. Kira smiles a bit, impressed that he remembered her at all.
Even if incorrectly, it was close enough.
“Kira, but yeah.” She nods happily, “It’s been awhile, I honestly didn’t expect to see you ever again!” A small giggle escapes her, “I’m afraid I cannot recall your name, I’m horrible with names. But I remember, from Concord right?”
Carlos just watched and listened to her.
He tried to be discrete with how much sugar he put in his coffee – he really liked sugar, but he didn’t want
to seem like some kind of pig with it. He realized he probably should cut back
anyway – it wasn’t exactly easy for him to get dental care anymore.However, Carlos found himself shocked by Kira’s offer. Twenty
caps? That was two nights at the Dugout Inn, or a noodle bowl from that
malfunctioning robot in the market. If Carlos were to bring even a couple of
those books, along with his usual salvage he could take a load off and spend a
few days in Diamond City. He might not… but he could! And if he found a pre-war book tucked away in a suitcase or
something? It’d be even better!“I… uh, are you sure? That’s – er, I mean, that’s pretty
generous of you,” he told her truthfully. He might be shooting himself in the
foot asking that, but he’d rather there not be a falling out or anything later
if she regretted the price.Kira took no notice of how much of anything he used. And even if she had, she’d say nothing about it. After all, if she didn’t want him to use it, she wouldn’t have offered.
“Yes. I understand that may sound a bit generous and perhaps easy. However, I will tell you that I’m likely not paying that much for the books themselves. More like I’m paying you for your effort. Finding a damaged book that’s suitable for my work would take time. You will come across a great many books that cannot even hope to qualify for what I seek. You will have to examine them and make sure they’re in decent shape. That, and I’m sure getting here with all the supermutants isn’t easy. It’s likely that you will have your work cut out for you.” She nods seriously, taking another sip of her tea.
“If you have the patience for it, it may prove fairly beneficial to you.”
“With the value put on other salvage out here – which is usually just purely material, by the way – it is very generous,” Carlos pointed out. “It’s just… usually nobody considers what effort I go through looking for salvage.” Like the time he’d found a bunch of telephones, but was unable to disassemble them on the spot. There were Gunners in the area and he’d locked himself in a Pulowski Preservation Shelter for a couple hours while he waited.
Carlos smelled the coffee he had, just to see if it was anything like he remembered with the sugar and milk in it. Oh yeah… it smelled so much more like he was used to. He said a quiet prayer of thanks to God before taking a small sip. He couldn’t help the small happy groan he made.
“Mm… God, that’s good,” he murmured. “Um… Thank you. So much for this.”
The Perfect Scientist 