Arlen was slowly adjusting to the idea of being a senshi.

Was he good at it? Hell, no. Was he saving anyone? Probably not. At least not yet.

But he was trying. And he definitely wasn’t losing. At least not yet. And he could live with “passing”, at least for the meantime.

Eventually he would like to move up to “succeeding”, but that was going to take time, and he wasn’t going to push it for now. Passing was good enough. Passing was definitely not dying, and he could live with that just fine.

He was having a rather decent streak of days, which was… well, it was quite wonderful.

But decent only went so far, really. And it didn’t take very much at all to go from a “decent” day to a wretched one.

For Arlen, it usually began with a fear of the unknown and a dislike of change.

He had been given the wrong order on a rare walk out to a cafe down the street, and he hadn’t the confidence to ask them to change it.

He hadn’t wanted his coffee so woefully sweet, so he didn’t try it, just held it in his hand as he traversed the busy streets, fretting about bumping into someone every step of the way.

But even though he didn’t think he’d like it, it was still a waste in his mind to throw it out, so he ended up deciding to take it with him back to the library, and figured he would drink it there.

Then came the text.

See, a real estate agent had been rather dead set on Arlen’s property for a decent chunk of time now. It had begun with what had seemed like an innocent stop into his library, and over time had devolved into frequent messages and letters and emails and texts—making offers on land that Arlen did not want to sell.

He did not care about the money; Ye Bochord was his home. He wouldn’t give her away, couldn’t, not when she had so quickly become his entire life---

This text had been a touch more aggressive than the past several, unfortunately, and it put Arlen in an off mood as he passed through Ye Bochord’s threshold.

Thankfully it had not ruined his mood entirely, though, and he committed himself to contacting those comic artists that Leiko had suggested he find.

He was going to save this place. No matter what.

It didn’t take much, most days, for Arlen’s days to go from decent to bad.

But he was resolved to not let his fear of the unknown sour his day.

So he dialed the number that Leiko had given him, and took a generous sip of his coffee as he got to work, pulling out his new crafts supplies to create some pretty signage.

“Hi, this is Arlen Halibert, I’m a librarian in the area and heard you made comics…”

The coffee really wasn’t so bad. Perhaps he didn’t have to be so frightened, after all.

He just had to take it one step at a time.