Past Life Hero, ch 5

The next morning, Max's alarm clock woke him up, and he rolled out of bed the same way he usually did, ungracefully. Max was not a morning person, but a lifetime of hard living had taught him how to use the barest grains of mana to help jumpstart his system whenever he needed to wake up.

Back on Albion when he had more mana to work with, he could have more complicated sleep systems in place, even auto rise. But, living in the modern world as he was, on Earth, he couldn't afford much and just used a regular alarm clock to wake himself up.

He got ready for work and looked at his bleary eyes in the mirror, mentally preparing himself for another day of selling cell phones. It was not exactly his dream job. Jake didn't even like cell phones. He was one of the most technologically backward people of his entire peer group because of his previous life. He could still use them just fine, he just didn't enjoy it.

Some people on Earth used their phone constantly, almost seem to need to have their face buried in it every moment of every day. Max only used his for emergencies or necessities. Although he had to admit phones and technology had been very helpful when he'd been gobbling up information about anything and everything in this world in his later teens and in college.

Max got to work, and it was a Tuesday like any other, functionally his Monday, but the rest of the world had already gotten through their first day of the work week. Max had decided a long time ago that his first career goal was to finally not only have the same hours as the rest of the world but also work on the same days of the week. It felt like his whole life he'd always either been working on weekends, or working nights, or working odd hours. It seemed like with better money came a better schedule. At least at this point, that was his perspective.

Work went by slowly, but it wasn't too bad. There weren't any crazy customers. And the little old lady he helped get a new smartphone was very appreciative and even came back in the store to give him some candy. Max was a little touched at that. Yeah, it wasnt much, but he wasn't too proud to take some candy from a nice old lady.

Whether he was the Hero of Albion or a cell carrier clerk, it felt nice to be appreciated.

When his lunch break started, he tossed the candy in his mouth and remembered his ill-fated quest for an odd job the day before.

Ah, what the hell, he thought. As he sat in his car during his break and ate the burritos he'd gotten from the fast food place across the street, he called up the very first place he'd gone to, the Jujitsu place. He figured it was a long shot, but at least worth following up. When he called, he heard "Hello" and recognized the voice.

"Hi, Ethan," said Max. "I came in yesterday. I was the person who asked if I could teach in your dojo and give you a cut of the profit."

The man's tone was definitely friendlier than yesterday. He said, "Aha, I remember you. Yeah, I talked to my brother, Chad, and Chad thinks that he can actually find a loophole in our insurance to let you work there as a contractor. So right now, tentatively, we're saying that yeah, we can let you teach people here as long as it doesn't interfere with our schedule.  We can talk about it more maybe in person."

"Oh, really?" said Max. He was absolutely flabbergasted. He had not expected this answer at all. "So, do you want to maybe hammer out a contract or something with brass tacks after I get there?"

"Sure, sounds good," said Ethan. "Don't forget though, you said you were going to bring in clients. So we're going to view our dojo sort of like a gym, and you're a personal trainer, so you can have your clients in there when we don't have other students, and you can kind of pay rent for your time in the dojo."

Max smiled. "That's pretty much exactly what I was hoping," he said. "All right, I get off work at six o'clock today. You guys are open till seven, right? It's going to take me about twenty minutes to get there from work. I'll come straight away. So, is it okay if I show up at six-twenty?"

"Yeah, sounds fine," said Ethan. "See you then."

Max hung up, and his cheap burrito tasted better almost by magic. Wow, something finally went right, he thought. Max finished up eating and went inside to finish the rest of his day. Normally, if he had something that he wanted to get off work to do, work seemed to drag by. But today wasn't that way. Instead, he was in such a good mood that it felt like no time at all before it was time to punch out. It also helped that he'd had really nice people that he'd helped that day.