Chapter 34

The following three months taught Nikola that he had the memories of doing similar things, but not the muscles or the muscle memory. Which made all the exercises harder.

What was more, Dimitri was teaching him wrestling and karate, along with knife wielding. He was better in the knife wielding than he was at the other two. Dimitri left no opportunity to see him flat on his butt as often as possible.

Ivan had also joined up in the training, Matthew having long since come back from Canada for the summer break before university. The two blondes spend all their time together, and Dimitri ended up teaching them all in a group session in an apartment not far from Malkav’s.

Nikola had used the money from his apartment to buy Vanya a place to stay, and the Russian had told him he would repay him. Nikola had taken to teaching him how to program in the evenings, so he could land a job as a programmer. So far, he taught him C# and Java since they were among the most mainstream languages.

When Nikola was not training, he was working on an app he was developing. He would spend his late afternoon tweaking the weight loss app that had recipes inside and exercises along with little motivations and a step counter. 

Basic, true, but he had done it before in a past life, and it had been a hit. Mostly because people actually lost weight with the carnivore diet he had ingrained in the app.

It was strange for Nikola to suddenly be able to do all those things, knowledge accumulated through lifetimes. His app was on the beta stage, and he sent it, for frees, to be tested by Juan Pedro Franco. The most overweight person in the world.

So far, Juan had lost 10 kg, which were like a drop in the sea for him, but both Nikola, and he were happy about the result. This could improve Juan’s quality of life, and it will be a good marketing tactic to aim to the people most endangered by death by overeating, Nikola figured.

According to Nikola’s estimates, it would take Juan about three years, for sometimes he showed moments of weakness and ate sweets and vegetables. To lose all the unneeded weight.

Nikola didn’t need three years of testing, he needed 50 kg lost. He had been reaching out to other famous obese people around the world, and he had even gotten some emails asking him for the app.

In one of Nikola’s lives, he had fallen in depression and gotten obese after killing Dimitri. He had not been able to save his family from the vampire and had searched for solace in food.

He had managed to lose all the weight following the carnivore diet, hence, by eating meat and drinking only water. The only thing that had been left until the end of his life as a consequence of him overeating had been loose skin. Never again did Nikola reach out for food for comfort after remembering.

The Bulgarian had patented the app and had done a preorder campaign for it and a Kickstarter. Now, he only needed to release it once Juan lost another 40 kg. So, another four months should do the trick.

Meanwhile, he was thrifty with his money. Apart from the apartment and the furniture for it, he had only bought a powerful laptop with the latest intel processor, so he could work. That, and another one for Vanya.

Ivan was making a simple taxi service app where people could find people going in the same direction and catch a taxi with them. To the Russian, it simply didn’t make sense to waste all that fuel for a single passenger.

As Nikola was checking up his code for the last time before preparing to place the app as something to be delivered to the people, all ten thousand of them, who had preordered, Dimitri went behind him. He stared at the wall of multicolored code and groaned.

“You’ve done that already. About twice,” Nikola attempted to remember when, apart from the life where he had been 150 kg, he had made such an app, but came up blank.

“There was this time you created this app because you got cancer. I might have given it to you,” Nikola turned to glare at Dimitri and the blonde smiled apologetically.

“We were openly hostile towards one another. One can even say at war,” Nikola swatted Dimitri’s arm, which was attempting to snake around him.

“Did I bother you during that life?” Asked Nikola, more than a little annoyed. Already knowing the answered.

“You got together with Sadik, of all people, in that life. Man, was he a worry wart when he stood by you during the nights at the hospitals. You didn’t know he was a vampire. Occasionally, I came during the days wearing his face. I ended up curing your cancer, you know. I nearly called a truce. Then, you chopped my head off after I set out to get Sadik out of the picture and have you for myself. And the war was back on,” Nikola hummed. He hadn’t known that Dimitri had pretended to be Sadik.

“Do I always end up with vampires?” Nikola endeavored to think of one life where he ended up with a human, but couldn’t remember one.

“You have taste, even though you attempted to deny it, morsel. Your lovers during your lifetimes were almost always vampires. There was the occasional demon or lupine too,” Dimitri said the last part with thinly veiled disgust.

“And you, so how good could my taste be?” Teased Nikola as Dimitri leaned in to kiss him.

“Ok, finish here and come to bed. You didn’t manage to beat me today, as always, and so I demand some payment for the lessons,” Dimitri winked and went to undo Nikola’s shirt color.

“You want blood or sex?” Deadpanned Nikola, unamused. Dimitri chuckled.

“Both, morsel, both,” and Nikola’s laptop remained forgotten as Dimitri scooped him up and carried him to the bedroom.