CHAPTER 40: TO HIM, WHOM I MET

Dinner at the Sonder estate was... well, a lot.

Not bad, not awkward... Just a lot.

Eirlys had taken the head of the table like a queen in an antique painting; back straight, chin tilted, her wine glass moving like she was born rehearsing for a royal court.

Hailie, in her soft voice, kept asking me about the food and telling me about the little differences between each dish. I spent half the meal wondering if the forks were numbered for a reason and if I’d get scolded for picking the wrong one.

By the time dessert was cleared, I was already fighting a slow, creeping drowsiness.

Eirlys called it "an early night" and let everyone scatter to their rooms, I can sense that she was really disappointed in me.

I figured I’d just crash instantly the moment I touched the pillow. But... no.

The bed in my guest room was way too soft.

I know that sounds like the most entitled complaint in the world, but it’s true, I felt like I was sinking into a marshmallow, swallowed whole by something that smelled faintly of lavender and linen starch. I turned over for the eighth time, staring at the elaborate crown molding on the ceiling. The clock by the window ticked so softly it almost mocked me.

First night in the Sonders estate, and I couldn’t sleep to save my life. Maybe it was the aftertaste of dinner, maybe it was the weird tension still clinging to me from earlier, or maybe... yeah, maybe it was just the bed, as mentioned. I was used to my cramped apartment mattress with a dent in the middle where my body naturally fit.

I gave up at around midnight. My body was tired, but my mind was wide awake, buzzing with that restless gamer itch that only one thing could scratch.

Blood of the motherland’s enemies!

So, I slid into the pod.

The inside smelled faintly like plastic and that "new electronics" scent that kinda give me the tingies, the pod door hissing shut before the hum of the login sequence surrounded me. My body relaxed instantly, though not from comfort, more or less from habit. The world blurred, dissolved, and then the familiar home-sweet-home cabin textures began loading in.

Except... it wasn’t exactly familiar

Ann’s cabin was dark. Not "cozy and warm" dark, it was dim in a way that made the light from the moon outside cut hard lines across the wooden floor. The clock of the game world is intuned with the clock of the outside world in our country, so players aboard gotta adapt, even if it was high noon over at theirs.

But that was not something I should focused on, because the moment I walked out of the bedroom where I got fingered silly by Ann Murphray, right here, right now, sitting on Ann’s front porch, was a man.

A man I had never seen before.

He was leaning back in a chair like he’d been there for hours, a cigarette (exists in this setting, yes) glowing faintly between two fingers. The smoke curled up lazily, dissolving into the pixelated air. He wore the default male avatar, with brown hair, average build, but the gear on him wasn’t newbie trash, it was ~level 30 stuff, so he sure got something going on, better than I do.

The longsword rested next to him, the armor padding on his legs, the half-torn leather jacket, all of it screamed of uh long-time player.

I opened the door and stood there, behind him, stopping on the porch steps. "...Uh. Hi?"

He didn’t turn immediately, just exhaled a stream of smoke into the cold night air, eyes fixed on the treeline like he didn’t just hear a strange woman approach him, which was rare, by the way, this game was male-dominated, so he should be thankful.

Then, after a long breath of air, his gaze shifted to me, slow, as if I’d only mildly interrupted his thoughts.

"You’re not Ann," he said, his voice was low, unhurried, each word drawn out just enough to sound deliberate.

"Nope." I shifted awkwardly. "Friend of hers, old friend visiting, owe her something, sort of."

"Mhm." Another slow drag from his cigarette. "She’s not around right now."

"I figured."

Silence stretched for a bit. Not really the awkward kind, per se, but the kind where someone just doesn’t feel the need to fill space. He leaned back further, the old chair creaking beneath him, before speaking up:

"You sound familiar, have we met?"

"I don’t think so?" I tilted my head.

"What are you doing here, then?" I asked.

He gave a slight shrug with a smile. "Same as always, wasting time I guess."

"Wasting time doing what?" I tilted my head like a stray animal, hands gripping tight on my shield.

I felt that something was off about this guy, but the Pacifistic Curse was still on me, so I didn’t like the idea of provoking him.

He gave me the faintest smirk, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes as he answered, "Star gazing, you don’t see much of that in real life these days, it is a shame that we must hide behind these screens to see those."

The answer that he gave piqued something in me. There was this stillness about him, like the whole game could collapse into code dust and he wouldn’t move from that chair.

"You seems like you’ve played before?" I asked.

"I’ve been around," he said simply. "Longer than most, longer than I probably should’ve, but again, I’m not known for making life choices." He tapped ash off the edge of the porch, gaze still fixed on the dark horizon.

With that, I walked back into Ann’s cabin and picked up a chair, carrying it out to sit with the guy. "So... you’re just here. Watching fake stars, that’s your thing?"

He gave the smallest of nods. "It’s quiet in the digital realm, though that does make me sound like someone who’s avoiding reality. But there’s not many places left in the world where it’s just... nothing, but still lively, do you hear the crickets?" His tone sharpened slightly on the last part. "Especially a place where there’s no people trying to outspend each other."

"Outspend... Money?" I raised a brow, curious about the sudden subject, "Not a fan of... capitalism?"

He let out a low, humorless chuckle. "Too obvious? No, not really, we all have seen too much of it, I think you know what I mean. Everything funnels upward to the fat controllers. Excess goes into their pockets, scraps for everyone else, the middle class suffers, yet they don’t know that they do, and they have no sympathy for the lower class who’s... Contrary to popular belief, doesn’t suffer as much."

I tilted my head, weighing that. "I mean... sure. But what else is there? Look at the scoreboard, every country that isn’t capitalist in some way isn’t exactly winning. If it’s the best bad option we’ve got... Even red countries have a capitalistic market and or structure" I shrugged.

His eyes finally flicked toward me again, still cold and unamused, not offended or anything, as if he expected that answer "You’re a fan of surviving?"

That was vague.

"I think... stability is worth something," I countered, "You’re a communist or something?"

He shook his head once. "No, more of an anarchist, I’ve been told."

That threw me. I looked at him like he’d just said he lived in a cave with a pet bear. "...Anarchist. As in, no system at all? Bro, that sounds so dumb, people are just going to rape and murder whoever they want without consequences, like a mafia gang where the toughest punches their way out of trouble."

"That, I do not necessary think is true," he said, leaning forward slightly now. "People are going to ultimately know that everyone’s dangerous, which means no one is. But it’s not foolproof, of course, every system are exploitable, doesn’t matter if it’s red, blue, or some shade in between, give it time, someone’s going to find a way to turn it into a machine that eats people."

I let that hang for a moment. Not because I didn’t have a counter-argument, but because... yeah, he sounded so sure of it, like he’d already seen the ending of the story.

Changing the subject felt safer. "Alright, so politics is depressing and might get us canceled if the chatlogs get out, what else do you like?"

A puff of smoke drifted upward before he answered.

"Romance."

That caught me off guard. "Romance? Like... love? Movies? Mangas?"

"Not the kind you find in books." His eyes flicked toward me again, unreadable.

"Then what kind?" I pressed.

He didn’t elaborate, just stared at the night sky like maybe the answer was up there somewhere, and leaned back again. "Probably... Self-incrimination."

The way he said it made the porch feel quieter, like the air had shifted. I didn’t push further, partly because I didn’t really want to know, and partly because I knew he wouldn’t give it to me if I asked again.

We talked about other things after that, little things that never really mattered. Places in-game we liked the scenary of, how grinding wasn’t really grinding if you didn’t care about levels, how he thought most people were pretending to enjoy the game just because they’d invested too much time in it to quit.

We didn’t agree on everything, but the flow was... easy, too easy, as if we both were playing devil’s syndicate as . I didn’t even notice how long we’d been sitting there until the moon in the game’s sky had moved, shadows shifting across the porch.

"You’re wise," at some point, he glanced over at me and said, "You’re not bad company, you know that?"

I smirked. "Neither are you, for a nihilistic anarchist."

That earned me a quiet snort.

Before he left, he asked, "You want to trade contacts?"

I hesitated, I’d never really just... added someone out of nowhere. But something about him, the way he spoke, the way he didn’t rush to fill silences, made me find him interesting, not in a romantic way, of course, I’m still violently lesbian.

"Yeah, sure. My user’s name CJS69Real." I said.

He paused for a second, staring at me. But then just smiled widely and typed it in.

The game’s UI flickered as the request came through.

"Let’s see..."

His username blinked onto my screen.

Friend Request: CJS69

...

What?