Author: Lurina

231: Love and Inventing Hell (𒐀) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Kamrusepa looked to Nahmi with an outheld hand, and she shook her head and passed her the device - sorta a remote control with a magic wand stuck on the end - to her. Kam then pointed it towards the ceiling and clicked something.

First, the roof of the carriage disappeared. She clicked it again.

Then, the balloon holding it up disappeared too.

Finally, she did something more fiddly and specific, and the roof the game area - what looked right now like a black sky - began to unfold. It's a hard process to describe - sort of like the entire thing was made up of cubes that began to compress into tiles, then fold in on themselves, but at such a scale that the entire process almost looked liquid.

Layers peeled back until, surprisingly quickly (though I guess it shouldn't have been surprising, obviously this whole place had to have been built with a mind towards space economy) the characteristic golden sky of Dilmun became visible. Finally, the room we were in, sans ceiling, began to ascend upwards, finally coming to a stop just a little less than level with the roof of the compound.

Hildris, Tuthal and Bahram all regarded the sight in various states of absolute perplexment, more fearful and panicked for the former, more confused for the latter.

"This..." Hildris stumbled over her words. "W-What sort of power is this? Is this real?"

"It is," Kamrusepa said, stepping forward and commandeering the conversation. "Hildris Wulkasduttar, Tuthal Tuthaliyasun, Bahram Hasallsun, I regret to inform you that are all deceased."

"What?" Tuthal's mouth hung open.

Hildris let out an incredulous scoff. "Fuck off, 'deceased'? You're saying you're bloody angels or something? What kind of morons do you take us for!"

I wasn't sure myself. Obviously this was some kind of tactic, but I couldn't discern where she was going with it.

"I'm afraid it's the truth," Kam insisted confidently. "As of - from your perspective and understanding - about twenty minutes ago, your mortal lives came to an end."

"Bollocks!" The other woman exclaimed.

Tuthal, though, seemed closer to convinced. "What are you saying happened?"

"Your airship experienced a gas fault and the gondola was immolated."

Maybe the stress was getting to him, but he let out an unexpected laugh. "Oh, of course! Naturally I'd go through all this only to die at the hands of that wanker's half-assed engineering. Atar, how could it go any other way?"

"Tuth, you can't possibly--" Hildris cut herself off, exhaling anxiously, before turning back to Kam. "I'm not going to let you into my head, no matter what ridiculous illusions you conjure up!"

"Very well," Kam said, then pointed the remote at Hildris. "Let's get the proof in the pudding, then. I'd suggest not wandering off if you know what's good for you."

Kam flicked her finger upwards, and Hildris' head popped, in a fashion that'd probably be funny if it weren't so disturbing, right off her shoulders. Tuthal's eyes went wide like he was about to scream or puke, but before he had to a chance to, her body flickered and it grew right back, leaving him looking like he'd just tried to swallow a peeled lemon.

Hildris, for her part, was now wearing a more haunted expression. "What just happened?"

"I decapitated you," she said matter-of-factly. "And then you returned to your body."

(Later, when this was all over, Kam would explain that she'd had to use the remote to deactivate a mechanism they used in these games to prevent Tertiaries, even when murdered, from actually having their consciousness interrupted in a way that'd force them out on to the Stage. Apparently this method was avoided for characters who were likely to be killed in a scenario, and if it did happen, they had a mechanism where they'd seamlessly be replaced by a mindless copy of themselves in the game area, where the automated systems would generate some kind of minimum-plausible-narrative for their escape and subsequent isolation.

When I asked why Nahmi had bothered to physically intervene at all when they apparently had all these sophisticated systems for keeping the situation controlled, she'd explained that neither of them really knew exactly how it all worked in specific, meaning it was difficult to do complex, manual interventions quickly when things went off the rails. These artificial environments seemed to be advanced technology even by Dilmun standards. (Well, what she actually said was that Nahmi was an 'idiot', but I'm reading between the lines.))

Hildris was looking down at herself in abject disbelief. Of course it wasn't just head that'd been restored; her entire appearance had returned to how it was when the day had begun, her dress unblemished and her hair neat and tidy. Bahram stepped forward, looking over the bed to see for himself.

"My god," Tuthal muttered, running a hand over his mouth.

"As I was saying," Kam proceeded. "You are dead. All of us here are dead. Ergo, it's impossible to die through any sort of mundane means. You also saw that when you shot my friend a few minutes ago." She gestured in my direction.

"It can't... It can't be," she muttered, her fear and anger giving way to disbelief.

Bahram turned away from Hildris, then, with a muddled expression, slowly walked towards the open door, unimpeded by a watching Kam and Nahmi. He put his arm against the frame - trying to lean out and take a look - but the architecture was clearly not designed for what had been done to it. The entire wall wobbled, then slowly fell backwards, hitting the stone surface of the cube was a satisfying thunk.

The other walls fell shortly afterwards, possibly helped along by Kamrusepa. The desert landscape of the Island and its interspersed surreal structures was spread out before us, a gentle wind blowing through the air.

Tuthal let out another strained, disbelieving chuckle, then rose to his feet. He turned to the left, walking over some of the fallen artwork, and wandered a few meters into what would have been open air if this really were all some kind of illusion. Finally, he turned back.

"I can't believe it," he said, breathless. "Either you've done something to my mind which shouldn't even be possible, or you're actually telling the truth."

"Indeed," Kam said.

He was silent for a few moments, and then, Slowly, he broke fully into dark, deep laughter, looking out into the middle distance.

"So this is the afterworld, then," Bahram said quietly, not turning back to face the group.

"It looks bloody depressing!" Tuthal exclaimed. "Where are the rolling green hills, the fields of wheat? Don't tell me the bloody Asharomi are right about how it all works."

Hildris looked at him anxiously. "Tuthal..."

"Then again," he continued. "I suppose we haven't exactly covered ourselves in glory in the past few hours. Is that the heart of it? Have we all been cast down to hell?" There was a mania in his eyes. "Tell me I'll at least get a chance to argue my case."

As Nahmi watched in resigned silence, Kamrusepa cleared her throat. "While it's not entirely wrong to say this is the afterlife, I'm afraid the situation is a little different than you might be expecting," she said. "To begin with, it's not merely that you're dead. The world as you know it has ceased to exist."

Tuthal blinked. "What, on the same day? That's a hell of a fucking coincidence--"

"No, I mean some time later," she interjected. "Specifically, it happened in the year 1612, just under nine centuries following your deaths."

This rendered him speechless once more.

"Please permit me to explain," Kam continued with a smooth, professional grace, putting her hands behind her back. (I was still down on my knees like an idiot at this point, for the record.) "I am sure you all know your history. At the climax of the Imperial Era, the surviving remnants of mankind fled to the Remaining World through the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. You were all born in the relative aftermath of that event, during what was later considered a dark age." She began to pace methodically around the remnants of the room. "In the centuries following, humanity once more attained - and even exceeded - those bygone heights, and before the apocalypse, a similar plan was once more put into motion for a small number of survivors to be transferred to a new type of plane. This one was of far greater ambition; rather than simply creating a simulacrum of humanity's home world, the goal was instead to transcend all limitations of earthly life; all aspects of weakness and want. It is in that world which we now stand, uncountable years hence."

While listening to all this was kind of cringe, I felt like I was starting to understand Kamrusepa's strategy. She was taking a bottom-up approach to framing the situation, beginning with something anyone would understand and using reference to slowly layer in more detail, meaning no individual premise was too difficult to accept. It was kinda condescending - I wouldn't have wanted it done to me - but effective.

Well, assuming I wasn't reading too much into it, and she wasn't just lying through her teeth through pure instinct.

Either way, this seemed like the best chance of getting them to accept the prop, so I felt grateful. Even Hildris looked like she was about to be swayed. But I didn't know exactly how much time we had left.

Tuthal frowned. "What? Then why did you say we were dead?" In the background, I heard Hildris say 'what do you mean, uncountable'? But he talked over her in a fashion that left this barely discernible.

"Because unlike the Remaining World, this is a realm that exists altogether outside of normal space and time," she explained. "So instead of traveling here physically, we were instead copied, while our original selves expired."

"So, you mean--"

"I implore you to let me finish before asking any questions," she interrupted. "Now, in this world, we remain capable of copying things from the outside to here. This is done for many reasons, ranging from humanitarian concerns to historical research." Omitting the more pressing ones there. "Your group is one such example of this. The circumstances you found yourselves in on this day were considered of cultural interest, so it was reconstructed here. To that end, you were resurrected."

"Cultural interest," Hildris seethed.

Kam raised an eyebrow. "You're denying it's interesting?"

"That's not what I'm talking about!" She yelled. "You just... plucked us out of the world for your entertainment? Out of our lives? We're human beings!"

"As I said, this was the day you died. Would you prefer I hadn't?"

She didn't respond, but nevertheless looked furious again, gritting her teeth as she herself rose to her feet. I finally followed.

"In any event," Kam said. "The exercise is now complete, and there is no longer any purpose in further deception. That brings us to the crux of my matter. My friend here," she once again gestured in my direction, "is inviting you to remain in this world permanently. Under normal circumstances, those brought from across time are only reconstructed on a short-term basis, but as you said, you are human beings, and it only ethical to give you agency over your own existence."

"W-Wait," Tuthal stammered. "'Short-term basis? You're saying that by default, we're just going to, what, disappear?"

"Well, you're not," she told him. "You've already accepted."

"That's insane! When is it going to happen?"

Kamrusepa withdrew her resonator from her pocket. "As of right now, slightly over five minutes," she declared.

"Five minutes?!"

I took a gulp of the air myself.

"You say that there's no longer any point in further deception," Hildris said darkly, "but if any of this is true, if this all isn't some awful trick, what exactly were you trying to do a few minutes ago? When the two of you--" She pointed to Kamrusepa and Nhami, "--were both pretending to be from the bloody government?!"

"We were attempting to deescalate the situation so we could explain all this in a less dramatic fashion," Kam lied.

"Poppycock! You were trying to kill us since you were done with your little voyeuristic romp! Is this even legal, wherever this is?!"

Tuthal looked towards me, his tone urgent. "You, give it to the both of them. Now."

I blinked, then looked towards Hildris. When I tried to reach out to her, however, she backed away sharply, stepping on a priceless expressionist rendition of the highlands of Knoron.

"Hildris, what are you doing?" Tuthal shouted.

"We still don't know if any of this is true! It could all be a complete fabrication in a thousand different ways!" She cast a hand out. "I mean, isn't this all a bit convenient? That we just happen to be in a fantastical situation where we have to agree to exactly what they say, right now, without even knowing the truth of what they're asking? We have no idea! We could all be drugged out of our minds in some dungeon across the border!"

"If you want proof that the time limit hanging over you is real, I can quite easily give it to you," Kamrusepa said. She fiddled with some of the controls on the remote, then tossed/levitated it over to Hildris. "Use point this at yourself and flick the switch at the bottom. I've configured it with an arcana that'll show the status of your prop loans."

She looked at it suspiciously as it approached her. "How do I know this isn't going to blow up in my face? Or worse?"

"Then I should think I would have cut out the middleman," Kam replied flatly.

Hildris looked suspicious for a moment, but nevertheless flicked the button. Her eyes widened. "I-I can see the number. 4 mintues and... And 24 seconds."

Tuthal was striding over to her quickly. "You have to let her do it," he urged.

She looked up at him sharply. "It could still be some kind of trick--"

He grabbed her wrist. "Look at me, Hild! I'm fine!" He gritted his teeth, his eyes frantically desperate. "Just trust me!"

"Trust you? You're the one who almo-- Who got us bloody killed trying to steal this stupid painting!" She slammed a first into the Last Winter, causing the paint to flake.

"Please," he hissed. "You can't leave me here."

Her face flickered between anger, fear, and doubt. She exhaled sharply, look at the ground, then looked towards me. "What is this... place, like? Will we be able to live a normal life here?"

I had no idea, in their case, but Kam seemed to imply it would, and I sensed an absence of confidence would not help in this moment. "Y-Yeah," I assured her. "I mean, it's a little weird. I was brought here myself not too long ago, and I'm still not really used to it, but... Well, there are people doing a lot of really inscrutable things, but a lot who are also just trying to live normal lives." I hesitated. "I mean. Still quite different from what you know, but three meals a day, sleep at night, most of the same hobbies."

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She still looked hesitant. "And-- Can we bring other people here, too? From any time?"

I hesitated. I could very easily see how this could get completely out of hand in the exact way Kam had warned of, but I didn't know what else to say. "Theoretically."

"Theoretically?"

"Uh, well, the way it all works is complicated. There's a of regulations, and some costs, but it can definitely happen."

She bit her lip, her brow furrowed. "I don't know. This is all so much. I can't even wrap my mind around it, that my whole life, it's just..."

"Hildris," Tuthal said, moving his grip to hold her hand instead, and at least affecting a more calming demeanor. "I'm frightened too, and disappointed we won't have the lives we were hoping for at the end of all this. But whatever we'll face here, we'll face it together. Or at the very least have a little longer to understand what we're dealing with." He nodded urgingly. "Alright?"

She stared at him in silence for a moment, but then succumbed to peer pressure, nodding back stiffly. "F-Fine. Fine." She looked towards me, holding out her hand. "Just do it."

I took her hand, nodded, and began the incantation.

Is this really okay? I asked myself. She's being convinced on false, at the least extremely strained, pretenses regarding what kind of existence she is at a fundamental level. Do Tertiaries even have a choice to die before their contract is up? Would she want that existence forced upon her, if she knew the truth?

I hated that I started to feel sympathy for Kamrusepa's sociopathic accounting of how things worked here, that maybe it really would have been simpler if they'd just vanished without ever knowing it was coming. I pushed those thoughts aside and committed the prop.

Even after it was done, Hildris still didn't accept instantly, her face riddled with anxiety. Finally, though, it went through, and her features quickly shifted towards puzzlement, then relief.

"Oh. Oh, you were right," she said, almost embarrassed. "I feel fine."

As soon as she'd said this, Tuthal embraced her, taking her in a tight hug. "Oh, thank God. Thank God." He let out a heavy sigh as he pulled back, smiling for the first time since the whole fiasco had started. "See? I told you. You should damn well listen to me."

The words were delivered kindly, but I still found my lips flattening. Seeing it in the open, their relationship had some an uncomfortable undertones.

But then, they were literally murderers. What had I been expecting?

"We're not done," Hildris said, then looked towards me. "You need to bring Bahram in too, and-- The others, can any of them be saved?" She glanced downward. "We tied up Gaizarik in the front, and left Wiliya down below... the others-- Can anything be done with them, if you have such ludicrous power here? Are they even really dead?"

These were questions I was not prepared to answer. Fortunately, Kamrusepa intervened on my behalf. "The others that were killed have been taken care of already. The rest have been accounted for as well."

"Taken care of?" Hildris honed in on suspiciously.

What had happened to the others? Phaidime, Eirene, Summiri and of course Kasua had all been confirmed to have been played by humans, while Wiliya, Gaizarik, and the two Noah's had been relatively minor characters with either nothing or gimmicky roles in the plot. Based on what I'd heard earlier, I had to assume they'd been either played by golems, or maybe in Noah's case also controlled by Nahmi. He was too fantastical in a way that was closer to Summiri than these two.

...that was what I was hoping was true, at the very least. Of course, I'd killed Noah myself in the game. I wanted to believe that Kam knew me well enough to understand that I'd never forgive her if he was also a real person that I never got the chance to save.

"One problem at a time," Tuthal said, stepping towards his old friend. "Bahram, you been listening? You need to let her touch you. Then you'll feel a-- Well, I can't really explain it, but you just need to let it happen. It's easy."

Bahram, who for this whole time had just been away from the rest of us and out into the desert, offered no response.

"Bahram!" Tuthal yelled. "This isn't the time for one of your episodes, you senile old fuck! Your life is at stake if you don't do this in the next couple minutes!"

He physically accosted the other man, turning him around and forcing him to face him, hands on his shoulders. Bahram's eyes, filled with fatigue, were cast towards the ground, but he wore a peaceful smile on his lips.

"It's alright, Tuth," he said gently. "It's all alright."

"Hurry up, then!"

But it didn't seem as though they were on the same page. Bahram looked past him, instead looking to regard Kamrusepa. "Hand picked, you said." His voice was so gentle it was almost a whisper. "None of this has been real, has it? Not a thing."

Kam looked a little surprised, her eyebrows raising.

Tuthal didn't seem to pick up on the implication, speaking dryly and quickly. "Yes, congratulations, you're following the conversation as of five minutes ago. You can have a personal crisis about it later." He jerked his head towards me. "Go on, give him permission."

Wow, I feel like he could be a little more appreciative, I thought, and then realized this was kind of conceited. He didn't even know how this worked, and to us, we were all people holding unnatural power over their lives.

I stepped over to Bahram, offered my hand, and when he failed to respond in any way reached out and poked it, muttering the incantation. But the offer simply hung, neither accepted nor rejected.

"He's not taking it," I said.

Tuthal balked. "Why not?"

"I-I don't know. Why are you asking me?"

He narrowed his eyes, then turned back to the other man. "Don't be a fool, this isn't the time for one of your--"

"My whole life," he interjected, speaking up slightly compared to a moment ago, "all I've done is make mistakes. They were the only person who ever showed me true kindness. That made me believe there was something exceptional in me, and beautiful in this world. I thought I would have done anything for her." His gaze drifted to the middle distance. "There was so much blood on my hands. To conquer this world when you don't fit the shape it demands of you is almost impossible, but I justified the cost in the belief that victory would be all the more beautiful. That was what she told me. And even now, at the end, when it was too much to bear, when I felt like I couldn't go any further... that I had to make it right, it still ended like this."

"Bahram, we already told you," Hildris said, approaching herself. "We were just as taken by surprise with Summiri as you were, and what happened with Kasua isn't your fault. We had no idea she was going to act so rashly, and you-- You did everything you could."

"That's right," Tuthal said, and then scrunched up his face. "I'm the one who shot her. It's my sin to bear, and-- And they'll just be able to bring her back anyway! Even if she did die, they can just pluck her right out of time." He looked towards me. "Right?"

"U-Um." I didn't know how to answer. Kamrusepa had said that they were made, at least to some degree, from the memories of real people, but Kasua had been intended to be played by a person from almost the start, and none of the other characters had even really known her. There was probably no analogue in any regard.

"You still don't understand, Tuth," Bahram said. "None of it mattered."

"What are you even talking about?" he snapped back at him.

"All of those mistakes... It's all been just a passing dream. There's nothing for me to regret. Nothing for any of us to." His smile widened slightly. "It's a mad thing, a cruel thing. And yet, I feel glad."

Tuthal looked back at Hildris. "How much time?"

"Just over a minute," she said quickly, her face paling.

The older man's eyes focused on Tuthal. "Tuth, I'm sorry," he said. "I promised your father that I would watch over you in return for how he helped me, but in the end, I let myself be derailed by my own foolish obsessions. You were led down the wrong path, and didn't grow into the man you could have become. Even if I never really had a choice, I still wish I'd told you the full truth on that summer night so long ago."

"The man I could-- Ugh, I don't want your bullshit apology, for fuck's sake!" He looked in all directions. "Someone do something! Force him to accept it! You must have the ability to do that much!"

No one said anything. Kam looked on with a somber, serious expression, while Nahmi was nowhere to be found-- At some point she must have gone back indoors. Finally, Hildris just stood at Tuthal's side, seeming to be searching for the right words.

As for me, I felt helpless. I wasn't sure how much Bahram understood, and what I could possibly say to shift his mind from wherever this resolution was coming from in such a ridiculously short time. I couldn't say we'd be able to bring back Phaidime because she'd been another player. I couldn't extol the virtues of the kind of wonderful life he'd be able to have in Dilmun because I had no idea. And I couldn't tell him his life had been real because I didn't know how much of it was-- And even if I had, how could I possibly convey that in any depth?

So would it be better to just lie even more? To keep pulling things out of my ass until he gave his completely uninformed consent? This felt terrible, even if it couldn't really be called my fault. Why did I just let him linger at the periphery this whole time, barely even in the conversation, instead of seeing what he was thinking?

I looked to Kam. She shrugged hopelessly.

Hildris swallowed, finally speaking. "Please, Bahram," she said. "You're our friend. Stay with us."

He smiled at her for a moment. "Hildy, I'm sorry about Mariya and her daughter. You aren't to blame, either." He looked back to Tuthal. "Tuth, take care of her. I hope you're both able to find happiness here, whatever that means."

Tuthal's face was flushed heavily now, almost like he was in physical pain. "Accept it, you lunatic! You decide whether you want to die later!"

He still hadn't responded to the prop offer. I wanted to look away. I couldn't stand this.

Bahram ignored him, closing his eyes. "Thank you for this time. Please continue to show kindness to the others, including if there are any who aren't present." A slight wrinkle appeared on his brow. "It's strange. I know that there will be nothing. And yet I still feel as if I'm about to meet her ag--"

There was absolutely no ceremony when it happened. He simply vanished into nothingness in an instant. Tuthal, who had still been holding him, stumbled forward, falling on his knees.

He looked at his hands, shaking, while Hildris held her head to her sleeve. Kamrusepa let out a long sigh, then strolled over to my position.

"Well," she said softly. "I dare say we all did the best we could."

"Y-Yeah," I muttered. "Thanks for... helping. Even though you thought it was a bad idea."

She offered no direct response to this, glancing at the two of them, her visage impassive.

"How are we going to tell them the truth?"

"Let me worry about that," she reassured me.

Tuthal seemed unable to cry, but clearly wanted to, pushing his fists - not punching, just pushing - into the ground so hard they looked like they might bleed, his face contorted. Hildris stepped forward if to put a hand on his shoulder, but just stopped, staring listlessly.

"You'll want to remember this feeling, Su," she remarked.

I snorted. "Why? So I can feel guilty and depressed on command? I have that down already."

She smiled crookedly. "Because I suspect," she said, "that you're going to have to get rather used to it."

After that, Kamrusepa told me that I needed to leave before the Waywatch showed up, who would inevitably ask where these permanent Tertiaries came from and try to remove them from the Domain. She assured me she'd find them a place to stay where I could check on them once things had 'settled down', then gave me her resonator ID, encouraging me to call her whenever I wished. Then she shooed me off before I had a chance to ask for any more details about their situation.

It was a little after 9 when I finally returned to Ptolema's house. It felt like I'd aged a year, but the entire exercise hadn't even taken 12 hours. When I arrived, I noticed that a second, smaller cabin had appeared at a 90 degree angle from the first, with its own front door but connected to the original by a little wooden walkway and a new side entrance that looked like it opened out into Ptolema's living room. The pig pen was nestled in the cavity of the L-shape they formed.

I went through the usual door. Ptolema was on the sofa, probably watching something via her resonator.

"Oh, Su!" she said, mildly surprised. "I was starting to think you wouldn't be comin' back tonight."

"Yeah, things got a little out of hand," I said, taking off my shoes. "You set up the new room for me?"

"Yep!" She smiled happily. "I made a couple lil' doors for you, so you can get back in here easily if you wanna hang out."

She pointed to the one in the living room, awkwardly hedged between two shelves. I noticed it had a lock.

"Uh, thanks," I said.

"No problem! It's just got the basics for now, but you can put anythin' you want in there from your old place. You know how to do it."

"Yeah," I said with a nod. "You already ate, right?"

"Mmm-hm. There's a little kitchen in there for you too, though. And an assembler, obviously."

"Yeah, alright." I glanced towards the door. "Well, I guess I'll check it out."

"Cool!" She nodded with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. "Oh, who was it, by the way?"

"What? Oh." I blinked. "It actually was Kamrusepa."

Her eyes boggled. "Wait, seriously?"

"That's crazy!" she exclaimed. "You're sure they weren't pretending to be her or somethin'?"

"No, I made sure. We did the Spectating test in several different ways."

"Wow." She shook her head. "I haven't seen her in so long. I dunno how she could have been in the Domain without me knowing about it."

That was an odd level of confidence. It was still nearly a million people, all of whom could shapeshift.

"Uh, sorry, you look worn out. We can talk about this later." She wrinkled her brow. "If you talk to her, though, let her know I'd like to see her too! I know we were jokin' about murdering her but. I uh. It'd be nice."

"Y-Yeah," I said. "Of course."

I went out the new door and crossed the brief gap to my new living space. Ptolema wasn't kidding when she described it as only having the basics. Other than the assembler, there were two mattresses at either end (one foam and one traditional, obviously) lying directly on the ground with some rudimentary sheets, an oven, a cold locker, one (1) armchair, and a small heater in the corner. That was it. It felt like a stereotype of a bachelor's lodgings.

I sighed. Since I'd died less than an hour ago, I wasn't as physically tired as I was mentally, but I still felt like I could eat something, if only for its own sake. I had the assembler whip me up some sashimi and noodles, then settled into the armchair, intending to watch dramas for a few hours or something.

It wasn't even five minutes into my meal that my resonator started going off. I looked at it.

Do you think you know who it was? I'll give you one guess.

It wasn't even a message this time, either, but a proper call. I don't know why I didn't reject it on the spot; maybe I had some sense of twisted nostalgia after talking to Kam for so long, or maybe I was just frustrated and wanted someone to yell at. Either way, I set my noodles to the side and accepted the summons.

"Hello again, Utsushikome," Neferuaten said.

"You have some real nerve to keep doing this," I replied, sounding less aloof and cool than I'd hoped. "You need to take a hint."

"Goodness," she said, sounding slightly surprised. "I didn't realize our spat made things that grave between us."

"'Spat'? I--" I scoffed. "It's not about the argument, Grandmaster! You know why I don't want to talk to you."

"I know why you're angry at me. And as I said before, I understand your feelings," she said a little sadly. "I'm not expecting your forgiveness."

'Not expecting my forgiveness'! 'Not expecting my forgiveness'!

"But you were the one to contact me initially despite that, Utsushikome," she continued. "And our conversation did end with a number of outstanding questions, mostly on my account rather than yours. So I hadn't really got the impression this was a never-speak-with-me-again sort of situation." She paused. "Is it?"

I grimaced. In the drama I had on in the background, somebody killed a ghost with a magic butterfly sword.

"What do you want?" I asked, annoyed.

"I was just wondering if you went to the event I recommended you attend," she answered. "I saw that you read my messages."

"How do you know I read them?"

"You don't know? It's a built-in feature. There's a change to the hue. It's very ergonomic!" She made a noise that might've been a chuckle.

I sighed through my nose. "Yeah. I went."

"Ah, so you met with Miss Tuon."

I frowned. "You knew she was there from the start?"

"Obviously. I told you that you'd encounter someone else from your class, remember? It would have been more contrived for the knowledge I had to be unspecific."

"You could have just told me it was her," I said, shoving some more noodles into my mouth so it wouldn't seem like she was commanding 100% of my attention. "Then I could have skipped the whole weird roleplay and just reached out to her directly. I almost didn't go."

"Well, that would have been a little dull," she said. "So, will you join her organization?"

"That's none of your business," I said, then clicked my tongue. What was even the point in keeping that a secret? I felt like a child.

Again, I really had no intellectual convictions backing my feelings about my relationship with Neferuaten. I'd never thought of myself as hating her until a few days ago. But now that this had happened, it just felt like the most organic emotion to affect. That I needed to commit to feeling something. But wasn't that tremendously infantile? Obviously she'd done something objectively wrong, but was I really taking the high ground in any meaningful way if I was just doing it for narrativistic reasons?

"If you do, there's something you ought to know," Neferuaten said. "When we last spoke, you asked me how the Discretionary Council faked their deaths, and then became frustrated with me when I called it a delicate matter."

"Do you still want to know?"

"Obviously I still want to know."

"It's genuinely a little tricky," she said. "You won't get a straight answer from any of the others. And if I explain it to you directly, it will damage my reputation with the others."

I snorted. "Why would it even matter? Or, gods-- Why do you care? Don't you have other friends?"

"You're not the only one trying to change this world, Utsushikome. Even if you're being perhaps the hastiest I've ever seen to do so."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. So this is some secret they still want to keep, even now, here in slavery nirvana."

"'Slavery nirvana'?"

"It doesn't matter."

She chuckled to herself. "There is a way you can easily get the truth, though. You remember Yantho'Ic'Thal, I assume?"

"Of course I do. Kamrusepa already told me he's part of her group."

"Wonderful. He'll be the only one you'll be able to get the full truth from relatively smoothly, so long as you approach it properly." There was a sound that sounded like shifting cloth. Was she making this call from her fucking bed? "At the store we visited a few days ago, there's a brand of specialty tobacco they sell. It's just labelled by a date: L41300. Buy a little, get into a relatively private conversation, and smoke it in front of him."

I slowly frowned. "Why? What will that accomplish?"

"You'll see. If that's not enough, well, did he ever tell you about his taste in books?"

"...there was one conversation," I said, sitting up a little as I began to feel vaguely intrigued. "He was talking with Ran, and I just overheard it. He mentioned the names of some fantasy titles."

"Mm." She was silent for a moment. "You've always been a smart girl, Utsushikome. I'm certain you'll be able to understand."

"I'm not a girl," I told her. "I'm more than 200 years old."

"Of course. Pardon me." There was a sadness in her tone. "You've grown into an upstanding academic and adult woman. I know you won't appreciate me saying so, but your grandfather would be very proud."

I almost spat on the ground.

"Have you been wondering if he's here, too?"

"Never even crossed my mind," I said, though that wasn't true. The idea chilled my bones to think about.

"He's not, if it's any comfort," she said, and for just those words that sadness gave way to genuine heartbreak. She let out a long, heavy sigh. "I realized since we last talked, I suppose... or rather remembered, that if there is one sense in which I accept I did something unforgivable, it was in letting my feelings for him carry to you," she said. "While at the same time refusing to admit to myself what he'd done to you, and how that'd make an injustice of anything between us."

My spine stiffened. "Done to me?"

"Forgive me, Utsushikome," she said softly. "Am I wrong?"

My guts ached. "You don't understand anything," I said. "Nothing at all."

We were both silent for a few moments.

"...If that's everything, I'm going to bed," I said bitterly.

"I understand," she said. "Goodnight, then."

I hung up. I looked up at the dull, wooden ceiling, and wanted the most I had in all my time in Dilmun to go home.