Chapter 2: Aunt Nina
When Eren regained his conciousness after what seemed like a long time and short span at the same time, he found himself inside in a small room. He felt like he had seen this place before.
Eren got up and sat upright on the bed. Oddly enough, he didn’t feel like his joints were giving him trouble like they would at the start of every morning.
The pitch-black darkness had made its presence dominant in the room. But it couldn’t spread its dominion in one corner of the room where a slightly closed window was letting some light in. It looked like the first light of the morning was soon going to break.
Eren rubbed his eyes a little and tried to remember what had happened to him last night. He remembered being attacked by that dumb beast.
That rage-evoking beast had first reaped off his arm. But that wasn’t enough. It had the mood to have a sausage fest. And only after chewing on his Lil bro, the beast had an epiphany of killing its prey. It killed him off.
‘It killed me, right?’
Eren asked the question to no one in particular while checking up on his neck.
His neck was intact. That was strange. He also felt something weird when he touched his neck.
That’s right!
The lack of beard. Eren had an overgrown beard. Not because he wanted to keep it. But because he simply found it troublesome to trim it.
Eren then noticed his skin is more smooth and suppler than he remembered. Eren felt confused. Then he realized he was using the same right arm that had been reaped off by the beast.
‘What’s going on in here? Am I in a dream or something? A few nice moments before I die for good?’
Eren felt like this was the most logical conclusion. He didn’t feel like he was in a dream but that itself won’t be enough as a piece of evidence.
Eren then checked his groins. The thing he was worried about the most had accompanied him in his last dream.
Now if he could just live this last dream to its fullest, that’d be a great way to call it quits.
Eren got up from his bed and decided to head out of the room. When he did, he noticed another familiar setting.
‘That’s right. This is Aunt Nina’s house. Wait a minute, why are things looking so much bigger in height?’
Only then Eren realized that things hadn’t gotten big like he thought they did. Instead, he was in a smaller body.
More correctly, it looked like he was in his younger days when he was just a teenager.
This last dream sure is convenient, Eren thought. It had brought him to his most comfortable days in life. Aunt Nina was one of his father’s party members when they were adventurers.
Eren’s father had gone MIA a few years back when Eren was just 10 years old. And his mother had left him soon after to Aunt Nina to search for him.
Later on, it was known that searching for his father was just a ruse his mother had made up to run away with her new lover. She had established a new family with him in a distant city. And had two more kids by now.
But aunt Nina had never mistreated him. She looked after him the way she always did even after knowing his mother was never coming back. She homeschooled him and trained him to be a good elementary potioneer.
Nina remained single all her life and died shortly after Eren turned 40 years old in his previous timeline. He just didn’t know the cause of her death because, by then, he had lost contact with her.
Eren’s life when he was a teenager was pretty laid-back, living with Nina. She had opened her apothecary and was used to working there from morning to late evening. She ran her business downstairs in her home while the only upper floor housed two bedrooms for both of them. Eren was used to helping her in her work by handling the manufacturing of all the elementary potions.
Aunt Nina’s house/apothecary was located at the far ends of the city of Osan, near the southern city wall. It was a typical one-story suburban abode of medium size. Although the population wasn’t that dense in this part of the city, aunt Nina’s business ran just fine.
That’s because she had contracts deals with the city’s various adventurer and mercenary guilds. There were also a few adventurers who’d come looking for her apothecary when they found out about her reasonable medicine and treatment prices.
Currently, Eren found himself in the same setting he had experienced long back. When he finally connected his memories from the past with his ‘current dream’, Eren self-explained to himself that this was to be expected.
His life after he left aunt Nina’s place would keep on getting more turbulent than before. His life in the academy wasn’t something he was fond of remembering. Eren was considered as the academy’s worst lot. And life after that only got tougher for him.
Eren didn’t blame anybody for that. He knew he was at fault for not taking hold of his life. He spent the days as easily and leisurely as he could without worrying about the future. And that had spiralled into something he couldn’t easily get out of.
So it was only natural that Eren was dreaming about his life with aunt Nina in his last moments. At least that’s what Eren had concluded.
He stepped downstairs. He didn’t feel like freshening up was a good idea when the dream could end anytime after he dies. He wanted to see aunt Nina before that happened.
To be honest, Eren had a crush on his Aunt Nina. She was a stunning beauty in his eyes. She had just crossed the 40s milestone but didn’t look her age at all. After all, she was a C Class healer. Aunt Nina looked like someone in her early 30s, with a mature look and curves at the right places. She was a tall, slim, yet buxom mademoiselle, with dark grey hair and violet eyes.
She could steal the hearts of men in mere seconds if she just interacted with them a little. But for some reason, she kept herself away from the company of men.
It was a self-imposed limitation that Nina couldn’t overcome all her life. Eren remembers she had a few flings when he was just dropped at the place by his mom. But that also had entirely stopped after a few years.
Eren felt like that was such a huge loss for the entire menfolk not to have a chance anymore to care about and treat this lady right like she deserved to be treated. She acted all friendly and cordial with her customers, but her blank face would soon resurface after they had left her establishment.
Eren finally laid eyes on a beautiful lady’s back he knew to be his aunt Nina’s. She too heard him stepping down and turned towards him. He saw her flash her signature faint smile at him that was saying ‘good morning’ to him.
Eren was left aghast!
Aunt Nina was even more beautiful in his dreams than he remembered.
No… that was not it.
All those years messing around with cheap w**res had made him drop his standards in women so much that aunt Nina was starting to almost look like a fairy-like existence to him. His skewed standards had been finally set straight after looking at aunt Nina.
‘This is exactly the kind of dream I need before I die. I couldn’t do it by then, but in this dream, nobody can stop me.’
Eren thought and launched himself towards Nina.