Chapter 72: A Family
With Alex giving the team a day off, everyone decided to go do their own thing. Scarlett decided to go home and spend the day with her family. Ashley was keen to go back to her father and show him the things she had learned from George and Novis was heading to his grandfather's dojo to grab the two spirit weapons.
Scarlett was currently at home just staring blankly out the window. Whenever she wanted to think, she would sit in her front room and look outside the window and watch the outside world. She was currently thinking about how she would be able to be more helpful to the team.
Ashley and Dan were already strong fighters before playing the game and that helped them out greatly. Novis had learnt to fight from a coach and had improved quickly. When she saw him fight Mac that one time he felt like a completely new person. And Alex.
Scarlett had the most respect for Alex she knew how hard he worked more than anyone. She also understood how much of an impact his information had made in the game.
Scarlett had thought about learning archery to improve her skills but when she went to the archery club to practice, it was nearly impossible for her to hit the target. Even if she put the time into learning archery it wouldn't have made her a good enough archer compared to what the skills gave her in the game. So, she quickly gave up on that idea.
All these things were on Scarlett's mind and that's why she was currently staring outside her window. As she was, she noticed a tall blonde boy walking outside. It was Dan. After learning that Dan wasn't coming to the club today, she went to check with his homeroom teacher about Dan's whereabouts.
His homeroom teacher had told her that he was sick today but Scarlett was looking at Dan and he looked completely fine. Then Scarlett started to notice something. While Dan was walking, he seemed to keep looking at his hand as if he was checking something.
Scarlett's curiosity got the better of her and she decided to leave her out her front door and go check up with Dan.
"Hey Dan, Is everything okay?" Scarlett asked.
Dan turned around and was surprised to see Scarlett on the pathway behind him.
"Oh, it's you, Scarlett, what are you doing here?" Dan said as he quickly put his right hand behind his back.
"I live in this neighbourhood dummy; my house is just there." Scarlett pointed at the house nearby. "Are you trying to hide something from me?"
Scarlett was even more curious now, as the hand Dan had been looking at while he was walking, was suddenly hidden behind his back.
"Hey, is that Novis behind you!?" Scarlett shouted.
As Dan turned around to check behind him Scarlett went to grab his hand to see what he was hiding. As soon as she did, Dan let out a big groan.
"Ouch, please be gentle," Dan said with puppy dog eyes.
Although Scarlett wasn't a part of Dan's fan club, looking at him now she couldn't help but think Dan was good looking. Scarlett then went to look at Dan's hand and could see big red marks around the knuckles. The hand was slightly swollen and had a few blood splotches underneath the skin.
"Did you get into another fight? Was it Mac and his gang again because if it was, we need to do something about them." Scarlett said looking at his hand.
"I just got into a fight with my brother, nothing serious don't worry."
Dan's hand was injured from fighting bare knuckled against the green frog. Although his hands were wrapped up, that still didn't stop him from hurting his knuckles, only from not damaging his wrist.
"Come here," Scarlett said as she led Dan by the arm to her house.
Dan was currently sitting in the living room sofa in Scarlett's house. While Scarlett went to look for a first aid kit. Dan couldn't help but snoop around as it was the first time he had been in someone else's house.
Dan's eyes were then drawn to a picture frame. It was a family picture with Scarlett as a child and her mother and father smiling while they were both holding her up.
"Family huh, must be nice." Dan thought.
Scarlett then came back from the kitchen with an ice pack and some medication. She then placed the icepack on the swollen part of Dan's knuckles.
"You need to keep it on for about twenty minutes, then take it off and get another one later. Also, try to keep your hand up as well. It will stop the blood from going to your hand and take two of these to reduce the swelling."
Scarlett was then looking very closely at Dan's hand checking to see if there were any serious injuries or not.
Dan couldn't help but feel amazed by Scarlett right now. Dan was practically a stranger but two times now she had come to help him as soon as she saw he was hurt. He had never had someone treat him this nicely before.
There were many girls and men who would approach Dan with fake smiles but Dan knew that every one of them wanted something out of him. Either a date so they could show him off to their friends or wanting him to join the sports team. Dan thought Scarlett was different.
As Scarlett was busy checking Dan's hand she started speaking.
"My mum is a nurse so I naturally learnt these things. Novis used to get hurt all the time as a kid. He was so adventures climbing trees, rooftops and always managed to get hurt. Our family is close to each other so my mother would often go and treat him for small things like this."
As Dan sat there listening to Scarlett speak, he noticed that she seemed to sound happier whenever she talked about Novis. He realised that Novis was a really special person to her.
"You really like Novis don't you?"
"What makes you say that?" Scarlett said with a bright red face.
"Thanks for all this." Dan then got up from the seat and was ready to leave Scarlett's house.
As Dan left through the front door Scarlett called out to him.
"Dan if you need anything, we can always help. Me, Novis, Alex, we can do something about it."
Dan smiled and continued to walk off, he realised that the people at the VSW club were all really nice and he had grown to like them a lot over the past few weeks. Whatever he did, he promised himself he wouldn't let them get involved with his business.