Chapter Text
You muttered a couple curse words to yourself as you zipped up your coat some more, the cool wind that spring brought along was more bone chilling than you expected. But then again, you are now in the mountains of Romania, so in hind sight, this shouldn't be surprising in the slightest. Hell, there were even still some small patches of snow here and there, tucked away in spots where shadow loomed longer than sunlight.
Nonetheless, you trekked onward, wind whipping around and all, but you were nearing your destination as the small village came into view.
A year ago you made it a fun little life mission to work at small bookstores across Europe as you recently became totally independent. Your family disowned you for your sexuality when you officially came out to them, so they were basically dead to you for all you cared, you weren't going to change who you were. You at least had the idea to come out when you had enough funds for yourself for a little bit so you wouldn't be thrown out with nothing.
A handful more minutes went by before you really arrived at the village. There were people mulling about, pushing carts of goods and having conversations in both Romanian and English. You let out a small breath of relief because even though the man you spoke with on the phone about working at his bookstore for a couple months said some people spoke English, you didn't want to fully get your hopes up.
You of course wanted to learn some Romanian while you were here, so being in a bookstore would be absolutely perfect for that.
Your eyes looked around you as you walked along the dirt roads, seeing livestock eating hay and barren fields for the time being. There were quite a few fields, so you wondered how lively everything would look come summer.
No one in the village spared you a glance, which was a bit of a surprise to you. You stuck out like a sore thumb in all honesty, but then again, you weren't familiar with the culture here, so maybe people simply mind their own business here more than the other places you've been.
As your eyes scanned around, they eventually fell onto a wooden sign that had books carved into it. A smile graced your lips as you had your sights set on the bookstore.
"Hello?" Your voice rang through the small building as the little ding of a bell hanging from the door also alerted anyone inside of your presence.
There wasn't anyone in the main area of the building, though your ears picked up the sound of a man grunting in what sounded like annoyance before an older gentleman walked into the area from a doorway in the back.
He had a scraggly grey beard and glasses that looked to be about as old as him. He was in a worn button up shirt and jeans, his brown eyes giving you a look over before settling on your own eyes.
"I'm assuming you're the one that'll be working here for a bit? The one I spoke to on the phone?" He grumbled with a strong accent, already giving the vibe that he didn't want to have this conversation in the first place. You still gave him a smile and nodded your head,
"Yes sir, I'm here to work for you at this bookstore," you politely stated, shifting a little on your feet as he continued to stare at you, "I uh, is there a place I can put my things for the time being?"
"Yeah, go through this doorway and up the stairs. The room up there is just storage, but there's an old cot there, so that can be where you stay while working here." He explained, pointing to the doorway he had previously emerged from. There was a slight shift in his own demeanor, and you noted it seemed like it was a positive shift and not a negative one.
"Perfect, thank you, sir."
The man just waved you off and retreated back through the doorway, disappearing from your sight.
Since it was just you now and you made your presence known to the man, you took your time to take in your surroundings more.
The bookstore itself was definitely on the smaller side, but that makes sense as the village wasn't super large anyway. There were 6 floor to ceiling shelves filled with books, though they were haphazardly put on each shelf in seemingly no particular sorting scheme. Throughout the middle of the room were shorter bookshelves so anyone could easily see over them. Dust covered the tops of those ones, so you could only imagine what the tops of the taller shelves looked like.
A couple windows were dotted around the outer walls as well, but they were still closed because of the cooler weather. You couldn't wait to open those up once the warmer weather hits.
After deciding that you had spent enough time admiring the space and already coming up with numerous ways it could be improved upon, you did as the older gentleman said and headed up the stairs in the back, walking into the storage room.
"Oh jesus christ." You murmured quietly to yourself as you opened the door, revealing a room with one window and enough dust to kill a damn elephant. Spiderwebs were visible in a few corners and you knew you were going to have to get rid of those before you had any peace of mind.
True to the old man's words though, there was an old cot pushed up to the side of one of the walls, with two large boxes of old boxes stacked onto it. You finally took off your backpack and let out a content sigh, rolling your shoulders a bit and stretching your arms.
The first thing you decided to do was carefully walk over to the one window and open it despite the cool weather. It would at least air out the room as it had an old and funky smell to it. You had to step over some more boxes of books and other miscellaneous things before you got to the window, which took quite a bit of effort to open.
Clearly it hadn't been opened in years.
And of course, because you are just so incredibly lucky, a strong wind immediately gusted through the window and blew dust all around, making you screw your eyes shut and cough for a few seconds. You swatted your hand around to try and clear the air around you before you went about moving some boxes around to be able to walk freely and sit on the cot.
It took some time as the boxes on the floor were much more heavy than you anticipated, but you got it done eventually. As you had been moving boxes around, you heard the old man downstairs, walking around a bit and you thought you heard him clanking a few pots or pans around. So whatever is down the hallway below must lead to a small kitchen of some sort.
An hour creeped by as you spent it cleaning off the dust from well...everywhere. All the dust flying around in the air as you cleaned got so bad that at one point you moved your shirt up over your mouth and nose so you wouldn't breathe in anymore damn dust.
“Death by dust” didn't seem like it would be that fun to have on your tombstone.
Slowly the storage room that now doubled as your bedroom became livable, especially with the spiderwebs now gone. There weren't any live spiders in them thank god, so you assumed they probably succumbed to their death from, of course, the dust.
A small sense of pride washed over you as you felt like you accomplished a good amount for your first half day here. You arrived around midday and the sun was already starting to creep towards the horizon. The one thing about the window up here was that it faced west, so you could easily see the sun begin to set. It also allowed the room to be bathed in a warm glow of light.
"Did you want something to eat?" You heard the man call out to you. You snapped your head around and replied,
"I would love that, I'll be down in a second, sir."
You closed the window so the room wouldn't get too cold as the day bled into the night before going down the steps and walking down the narrow hallway, arriving at a small kitchen. You smiled to yourself slightly as you mentally patted yourself on the back for guessing right before.
The kitchen wasn't anything to write home about, but it had the essential things like a sink (that you weren't positive had running water with the pretty bad shape it was in), a wood burning stove, and counter space with cabinets for storage.
There was a door over to your right that was slightly jarred open, and you noticed that was where the bathroom was.
Your eyes drifted to the older man as he lit a few tall candles before giving you his attention,
"I got some meatloaf in the fire right now, and there's still some bread leftover from when I made some last night. Help yourself to whatever else, though there isn't much." He said simply, taking a seat at a small wooden table that had only 2 chairs anyway. You thanked him before joining him at the table, just soaking everything in some more.
The man picked up a book that was resting on the table and cracked it open, leaning back in his chair and quietly reading it. He did glance over the top of it to look at you a few times, but you were too in your head about all the things you were going to do to the place to notice. You didn't see a phone anywhere, so you were a bit intrigued as to how you were able to call here.
"Why'd you come here?" He questioned after about 10 minutes of silence between the two of you. Your eyes flickered over to him as he had his eyebrows furrowed slightly, book lowered in his grasp.
"Well I haven't been to Romania before and the train wasn't expensive at all. I called around to a few bookstores in other towns and whatnot, but they didn't need any assistance. You were the only one that agreed to have me, so here I am." You stated with a shrug of your shoulders because it was just a simple reason. He hummed quietly,
"Mm, makes sense. I only wanted someone here so I could not be tied to this place," he began as he let out a breath, "I've worked at this bookstore for years and I want to do some other things with my life, but I don't want to give up the place, so getting a worker was the next best thing. I only have this bookstore open maybe two days out of the week now because that's all the free time I can get to be here, but now it'll be able to be open more often with you working here."
"I understand that and I'm happy to have the bookstore open as much as you'd like," you reassured him, hoping he would let you run the whole thing most of the time since it sounds like he isn't here most days, "what's it like living here?"
A chuckle that sounded like you just asked the stupidest question fell from his lips.
"Well, not the most fun. Up until about a couple years ago, I would say it was the worst place anyone could be."
A shiver ran down your spine and you gulped slightly because everything in the way he said that made you truly believe him.
"But now that there have been some changes put in place, it isn't like we are walking on eggshells all the time. I'd still watch your back though, things are nowhere near perfect." He said, saying the last bit quieter than the rest, making you slightly more on edge than you already were.
"Lovely." You whispered to yourself, though the man heard you and chuckled a bit, standing up to check on the meatloaf in the stove.
He deemed it done, so he got it out and served you a plate, the two of you staying silent during the meal as the candles burned and the sun eventually set beyond the horizon. You swear you could hear some wolves howling in the far distance. As you were eating, your brain had been coming up with a million horrible things that could happen to you.
"You look like you're going to give yourself a headache over there." The man voiced as he finished his last bite.
His voice snapped you out of your head and you blinked a few times, unfurling your eyebrows and giving an awkward smile to him.
"You'll be fine, just stay here and it'll be good. You still have probably a couple weeks before they're able to come to the village." The man offhandedly stated, making your heart rate spike because what the hell was he talking about?
The fear of hearing the answer though kept your mouth shut from asking the question. Before long, the man was bidding you farewell as his house was down the road a bit. He showed you how to lock everything up and he said that he'd be back in a couple days to check up on how things were going. He also mentioned that everything you needed to run the place and how things operate are written on a couple pages behind the front counter, which you were thankful for.
The rush of excitement that coursed through your veins hearing that you'd be alone was incredible. You were going to make this place look great by the time he lays eyes on it again.
After blowing out all the candles on the bottom floor, you retired upstairs to your room, grabbing your backpack off the floor and finally deciding to unpack your things.
The first thing you did was put sheets onto the cot so you had a barrier between you and the old material of it. Thankfully the springs inside of it weren't too shabby, so it wasn't the most uncomfortable thing to lie on. Next you got out your handful of clothes that you had, put them just on top of one of the closed boxes for the time being before you truly rearranged things.
After that, it was simply you just taking out little trinkets you've gathered from your previous stops across Europe, displaying them happily and smiling at them, remembering the fond experiences from each place. A part of you wondered what you would take from here when everything was said and done. You'd have to figure out what was something that represented this place so that you'd always remember this stop in your bookstore journey.
As you went unpacking, you hummed quietly to yourself before freezing as you picked up a charging cord for your phone.
And that's when it hit you like a ton of bricks that this place and probably the whole village didn't have any electricity.
Shit.
Then it hit you though that you had a small solar panel charger that you could prop up right by your little window to get some good evening sunlight to charge a portable charger that was also currently dead.
"Thank god I wasn't an idiot before and bought this in Switzerland. Oh past self how I love you so much." You said to yourself, letting out a huge sigh of relief as you spent a couple minutes on setting up the solar panel charger just right.
You wouldn't be using your phone much, but it would be easy to take pictures and simple things like that. You were fairly confident that there wasn't a lick of wifi or cell towers nearby, so anything that needed those to operate were off the table.
Before you knew it, a yawn or two had escaped your lips and you decided to call it a night. You climbed onto the cot and pulled an old blanket over your body, scrunching your face up slightly at the old musty smell it carried.
You were going to need to wash it sooner rather than later.
But, the only thing that was truly on your mind was to get some sleep so you could have a productive day of cleaning and organizing the bookstore to your heart's content.
Hopefully the older man wouldn't hate how you did things...