Reborn as an Evolving Space Monster: Harem Of Otherworldly Beauties-Chapter 374: Rea, I

Before Rea could speak a word to Lith,

"Could you give my daughter and I some time?"

Lith puffed her cheeks, but ended up standing up with a shrug and walking away.

"That’s a strange friend you got yourself." Rea’s mother muttered as she watched Lith walk away. "Is she mute? She seems perfectly capable of understanding our language."

"She’s not mute." Rea answered, not bothering to stand. "She can’t understand language, but she can understand us."

"How does that work exactly?" She asked, standing over her daughter.

"She can understand us through our tone and facial expressions." Unbothered, Rea lay back down on the grass. "At first, I thought it might be lip-reading, but she couldn’t understand me blindfolded. Then I tried to noise-canceling headphones, and that didn’t work either. The words we utter don’t matter much. She understands through tones and physical cues."

"I see. An interesting friend then."

Rea frowned as her mother took a seat on the grass.

It was way too casual an action for Sina who’s usually too worried about wrinkling her clothes.

"Stargazing?" Sina muttered, following Rea’s gaze. "That’s new."

"I could say the same to you."

"How so?"

"Keeping up with whatever your daughter is doing, that’s new."

"Well," Sina shrugged. "For once she isn’t locked in her room wasting away on some virtual game so,"

"Ugh," Rea sighed. "I did spend two years away."

"Yes, and I was worried that those two years wouldn’t have changed anything. Right away, you had locked yourself in your room after all."

"Why do you care anyway? I’m free to do that if I want to. As a matter of fact, I think I might lock myself in for a month straight. There are a couple of games I could clear." The irritation in Rea’s voice was clear.

"Be my guest," Sina muttered with a shrug before lying down by her daughter’s side, hands crossed behind her head.

Rea grumbled, but didn’t stand.

"How was working with Kira’s boy?"

"Kira?" Rea raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you mean the Red Dragon." She sighed. "It was whatever. To consider that work is a bit funny, though."

"It was a meeting, of sorts." Sina scratched her chin. "Most of my work these days is meetings."

"Of course, of course," Rea nodded sarcastically. "The actual work is for the poor folk, of course."

"Is that who you relate to?" The mother asked. "The poor folk?"

It was a difficult question to answer. Ultimately, Rea felt she related to neither the rich nor the poor.

"The poor folk wish they had more money, your money. But even you wish you had more money, still working to get more. Ultimately, your lives are the same."

"An opinion truly worthy of a privileged asshole," Sina sighed. "All the comfort and privilege of the world, yet you argue that there’s not much of a difference."

"I’m not saying that there isn’t a difference, just that the pursuit is the same."

"The endless pursuit of money?"

"Yeah." Rea nodded. "Even to those who have it, it’s never enough."

"Well, of course."

"Of course?" The daughter frowned.

"Why would I want the pursuit to end?" Sina chuckled. "There’s always more money to get, more money to be made, more wealth to be created. That’s a good thing."

"Is it?" Rea sighed.

"Aren’t your favorite games then unending ones? The ones where you keep trying to beat your previous highest score over and over again?"

The daughter’s gaze moved away from the night sky above. "How do you know that?"

"I just do," The mother shrugged. "We’re similar in that regard, just like my mother was before me, and her mother."

"Oh, you’re going to make this a family thing."

"It is a family thing," Sina smirked. "It’s the way our family has built its wealth."

"I know how we got rich, how you got rich."

"What I did isn’t the important part. It’s my mother that did the work."

"Grandma? How so?"

"Heh." Sina chuckled smugly. "She made me a real competitive bitch. From a young age, I knew that the only way to gain her respect and wipe the arrogant smile on her face was to make more money than her, to surpass her. My grandmother had done the same thing to her, and so on and so forth for who knows how many generations. My grandmother was rich, and so was my mother, but I rose in a completely different field, with my own money from the start. We push each other, compete against one another. That’s how it goes, and how it has gone for a long time."

Rea stared at her mother, listening silently.

She thought that, if anything, she should have heard about these things a long time ago.

"Not interested." Rea sighed.

It was too late now.

"I knew you might say that, but it’s not something you can help," Sina smiled. "You’ll come around to it. The allure of money and of wiping the smug smile off my face will get to you. In fact, it might already have, since you’re no longer stuck to your screens and consoles."

"That’s not it at all. Money is the last thing on my mind. It’s not on my mind at all."

"You did spend practically 2 years in places where money meant nothing, where money wasn’t a thing." Sina held her chin.

"Goes to show that money is a social construct. It’s not a real thing. It’s not an inherent part of our world."

"True, money is real because we want it to be. But so what?"

"Hm," Rea scratched her head. "Why would I go around chasing something that isn’t real? Why would I spend the years that I have chasing something like that?"

Rea found herself waiting for her mother’s answer.

It was the first time in a while that they were having a real conversation. Perhaps, the first time ever.

"Remember the quiz nights we used to have when you were a kid?"