Time went by, and Lily finally finished her meal, so she stood up for a potty break, and Hallie guided her to the bathroom.
On the other hand, Aster had also finished eating, but since Vivian hadn't finished, he had no other choice but to wait for her so the two of them could finally discuss everything that had happened so far.
However, he couldn't just sit around doing nothing, so Aster decided to go on a quick trip down memory lane about how his life was before he got shot.
Growing up, he was raised in a small city-run orphanage.
'Despite being a small orphanage, the children in it were many and only a few people ever showed up to adopt a child.'
'As an orphan, I attended public elementary school like everyone else, but after classes, I would always return to the orphanage.'
'I wasn't the smartest student in my class but I was always interested in reading any book I could find around me.'
'By the time I was in middle school, I began to take on small jobs like delivery, cleaning, and any other work to help the orphanage in return for everything they had done for me.'
'And by the time I turned 17, the orphanage couldn't keep me anymore.'
'In other words, I had to leave because I was legally an adult and I had aged out of the orphanage.'
'Luckily for me, I was given a little amount of money to rent a tiny one-room apartment, but since I had no stable source of income, I had to drop out of high school.'
'Therefore, I began to work in a cafe and a small bar, cleaning glasses and doing other small chores.'
'I worked there for years before a friendly customer finally offered to give me a new job.'
'He offered me a job to work at a host bar but I refused.'
Despite being 20 years old at the time, Aster was tall, good-looking, and had an attitude that made both male and female customers happy.
So, the friendly customer had assumed that the job would appeal to him, especially since he was skilled at interacting with both new and existing customers.
Aster hadn't been interested in the job because it was a sleazy job, however when his rent was increased and his part-time jobs were no longer enough for him anymore, he had to accept the offer, and by the time he was 25 years old, Aster had become one of the bar's most requested hosts.
A host bar was an underground drinking club known only to the elites in the big cities.
Aster's role as a host was to attend to the beautiful and wealthy women.
He had been responsible for providing comfort to the wealthy and single businesswomen who always had one or two complaints about how boring and lonely their lives were.
The men around these ladies were not brave enough to ask them out on a date, so the women always wondered if they just weren't attractive enough to entice the opposite gender; therefore, they decided to seek out people like Aster for comfort.
Of course, Aster's job had been limited to just drinking and comforting his clients with sweet words like telling them how beautiful and amazing he thought they were, and somehow, it always made the ladies happy, because to them, it felt amazing to have a young and handsome man in his mid to late twenties, treat them like a queen.
Meanwhile, since the pay had been really good, Aster had no reason to complain about his job.
After all, it had been difficult to earn thousands of dollars in the current economy, so Aster had really appreciated the opportunity to live the kind of life he had been living.
However, there had been times when his clients would want more than just flirty words and sweet compliments.
The women would demand something more intimate, and since they were always willing to triple or quadruple the pay, who was he to say no to such generous offers?
Moreover, most of his clients had either been in their early or late thirties, so every one of them had still been in their prime but they had just been a bit insecure about their beauty.
And so, Aster continued to live his life like this, but unlike other male hosts in the same line of work as him, Aster always drew a line between himself and clients who were already married.
He never accepted offers to comfort ladies within this category because of reasons known only to him, but unfortunately for him, a client had lied to him about being married and by the time her husband had discovered where and who she always spent her spare time with, he tracked and ordered thugs to dispose of Aster, which resulted in him being shot three times at his chest, thigh, and stomach.
*Sighs*
Aster sighed softly as he tried not to recall his past any longer.
Then he lifted his gaze and noticed that Vivian had finally finished her meal.
Sara and Cara then came to clear the table before taking the plates back to the kitchen.
Seeing that they were now alone in the room, Vivian smiled and asked. "Shall we begin?"
Hearing this, Aster straightened up in his chair, but before he could open his mouth to ask the questions he had in mind, Vivian suddenly called out to him.
"Astaroth?"
"Yes?"
"Before we begin, can I ask you a question?"
"What is it?"
"Tell me, do you know who Lily is?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think she resembles someone you previously knew?" Vivian asked and Aster furrowed his brows.
He couldn't understand why the Dragon Queen was asking him such a question.
After all, if he knew who Lily and Vivian were, would he be worried about why he had suddenly woken up in the body of a fifteen-year-old?
Clearly, he knew nothing about the two of them and unlike the novels and manga he had read in the past, he clearly didn't inherit any memory of his new body and this further made him convinced of the possibility that his new body might still be his previous body, just that it had somehow turned younger. That shouldn't be possible, and Aster had been even more puzzled by this thought ever since.
In fact, he had been troubled by this thought ever since he opened his eyes to see Lily and Vivian.