The Alchemists

"Thank you for coming to our restaurant. I hope you have a great time. See you later."

As Nicolae looked at the servant with a frown, he saw a number of women around them who were staring at him with l.u.s.tful faces, and one or two were winking flirtatiously at him.

Then his mind worked, and finally, he understood what was happening. Subconsciously, he pushed Louisa's hand off of his arm. This woman had latched on him like glue... and seeing the attitude of the other women in the restaurant who suddenly looked flirtatious toward him, Nicolae could guess that they thought he was out with Louisa because he was paid. What the...!

Looks like I'm still not out of bad luck yet, he thought irritably. He opened his palm and found several small folds of paper with various phone numbers and women's names there.

"What are those?" Louisa asked in surprise.

"I don't know," Nicolae answered. At first, he didn't understand what the notes meant, but after around 5 seconds had passed, he realized what had happened. It turned out that the women in the restaurant left their telephone numbers with the waiter to give him.

Why are women nowadays so bold? He thought in astonishment. He hadn't dated anyone in a long time, but he didn't expect that the times had changed so dramatically. Were women now so daring and shameless for them to give their phone numbers to a waiter to give to a man who was on a date with another woman?

With that thought in mind, Nicolae could only shake his head. He realized that he wasn't meant for dating women in modern times like now. This was the third and final blind date for him. After this, he wouldn't try again. He learned his lessons already!

Nicolae decided that after he arrived back at home, he would invite Altair and Vega to talk about this. He had to make them believe and aware that what they were doing was bad for him.

Nicolae didn't mind his current situation of being single. He didn't need a woman to make his life complete. He had been single for almost a hundred years before he met Aleksis, the only girl who could make him think of a future together and wanted to marry her.

But without Aleksis, he felt not at all compelled to find another girl to build a family together. The two children had to understand that not everyone must have a partner to be happy. Happiness didn't come only from having a girlfriend or a wife.

They should be able to see for themselves how their uncle, Terry, felt happy and productive in his busy schedule. Terry could live his life happily.

If the twins were really worried about the men in their family who were still single, why don't they spend their energy on finding a partner for their uncles, Terry and Rune, or even their grandfather Aldebar instead???

Just think about it. Aldebar was almost 250 years old. But he had never had a woman in his life. Isn't Aldebar's condition even more pathetic than Nicolae, who had only been single for the past year after breaking up with Aleksis?

Having thought that, Nicolae finally threw away all the notes he got from the restaurant waiter earlier. He didn't need the women's phone numbers and, as a gentleman, he didn't want to make his date feel bad because he kept other women's numbers.

Louisa, who paid attention to what was happening, looked very grateful. Her face was beaming and her smile seemed to be widening. Ah, Nicolae was flattering her by throwing away those other women's telephone numbers. Even though there were so many women openly showed their interest, he didn't care at the slightest.

"You will love the movie!" Louisa squeaked excitedly as she grabbed Nicolae's arm again and half-dragged him into the elevator to go down to the ground floor and walk to the next mall.

Ten minutes later, both of them had entered the 4D cinema studio and were preparing to watch the movie that Altair had chosen for their date. Nicolae bought drinks and snacks for them to enjoy while watching the movie, and within half an hour, almost all the popcorn in both of their buckets had already gone into Louisa's stomach.

'I also want the popcorn,' Nicolae complained inwardly. He was actually sad when he saw that Louisa ate all the popcorn. He didn't think that Louisa was really the worst type of date, and he was unlucky to meet her on his last blind date.

Fortunately, what Altair chose to watch was a science fiction movie set in 2300. In that year, a time machine was discovered, and the main character traveled to the past to change history so that the Earth wouldn't be destroyed by human greed.

Throughout the movie, Nicolae nodded a lot and thought that most likely, in the year 2300, he would still be alive in this world, and he would be able to see whether the world in the future was what the director imagined. It would be fascinating to be able to compare this movie with real-life in the future.

The movie they watched was quite interesting for the 2 hours, so Nicolae's heart was a little relieved. The darkened studio room gave him freedom since he didn't need to see Louisa.

The rules also stated that the audience shouldn't speak during the movie screening, so he also didn't need to talk to her at all. Finally, Nicolae felt that good luck was starting to side with him.

Nicolae was completely unaware that Louisa had repeatedly glanced at him and placed her hand on Nicolae's armchair, hoping that he would hold her hand or do something to her instead of just watching the movie.

The couple sitting in front of them didn't seem to notice the movie being played. The faces of the two latch on each other in hot kisses and each other's hands had been groping under their partner's clothes. The sound of gunfire and screams from the movie shown were only used to disguise the woman's m.o.a.ns as the couple was making out passionately.

Damn, thought Nicolae when he finally realized that some people in the cinema hadn't actually come to watch the movie. At that time, he really felt old. He didn't think that the way humans date in modern times had become this bad. They really don't appreciate works of art, he grumbled inwardly.