Thirdday morning. Things were starting to get a little more routine. Elica did a little spying on Princess Lachel next door to figure out what kind of rumors to spread about her. Not what would be most emotionally devastating for the princess, but what would make people isolate from her the most. We had breakfast and we chatted like friends in between spreading misery and injustice through the poisoned words of our peers. In homeroom, I checked the status window for Josse, Nathan's friend, who was not listed as an active love interest yet, but had the tag grayed out until later. Skeici the yandere stalker was an antagonist but not a love interest. And Quarl Billiams, who is probably an assassin-in-training, was listed as being both a love interest and an antagonist, which means he's one of my love interests. A resource I can call upon, and a plotline of quests I can explore and level up with.

  If the pattern held true from the original game, all I had to do was engage him in conversation a few times and he'd eventually mention some sort of problem he's having that I might be able to help him solve. And progressing his story would help me level a lot faster than slaughtering monsters in the dark. Though, if I wanted to make a clean segue I could probably take Tiviti out on a few more raids, and find out what it is she's hiding. She was so intent on finding monsters to kill, and as soon as she had a few dead she relaxed like she'd gotten a fix of her favorite drug. Definitely something up with that.

  And if Healer Licard was a romance option, the way to advance it was definitely not to keep getting hurt and needing his help. I dunno, maybe he just needs a spotter for his workout sesh. Oh, and Professor Ryichsur.. his plotline is probably something about his weird former-child-prodigy neurosis, or his parting from the Developing Theories squad. Trazom the musician? Thumper the fencing captain - Sorry, she's "The Access". Whatever that means. That's.. six or so? Some male, some female. That checks out.

  "You're thinking awfully hard," Quarl said from beside me.

  "Polyamory," I said vaguely.

  "What?"

  "Nothing. Hey Quarl, you mentioned yesterday that you feel that your family owes me a bit of a favor. And it got me thinking, because in my mind that's just not the same. In your opinion, what does it mean if two people disagree about what is owed or not?"

  He tapped a pencil against his desk while he thought. Pencils here don't have graphite or lead inside, they're made of thin wooden slats wrapped around a pressed filament of charcoal and cinched in place with a metal strip. When the tip runs down, you loosen the strip, let out some more of the "lead", and cinch it tight again. It's a terrible system except that the alternative is inkwells and quills which are not feasible if you're moving desks every hour. Why are there not graphite pencils like on Earth?

  "Most of the time when there's a disagreement about that," he said, staring off into the middle distance, "it's because one person feels they are owed much and another person feels they owe only little. And I have strong thoughts about that situation, based on some family experience and internal arguments. The reverse, however, leaves me with more questions. And I find that I'm interested in my own answers here, they seem revealing. If hypothetically, person A asked me a favor and I did it, and they said they owed me little but I felt they owed me much, I'd be inclined to default to the larger debt because surely the person who is owed would know best. But if person B had done me a favor and they said I owed them little but I felt I owed them much, I would again be inclined to consider that debt to be large, because surely the person who owes that would know best. I find that my mind occupies an easy double-standard in this regard, and I never realized it until you pointed that out to me."

  "And yet," I said, "in both cases you've chosen the option where the debt owed is great. I think that's the most revealing part of all."

  He tapped his pencil gently. "Not to get... too deep into it," he said carefully, "my family and their business associates all tend to look at the world through a certain frame, and that is a framework largely of obligation, debts, debits, and account balances. It is very serious business for them, obviously."

  The Duskare family. Assassins, murderers-for-hire, dirty deeds done for dear prices.

  "Obviously," I replied.

  "So I think that is my influence there," he said. "Not about the owing or the owed, but simply to never underestimate the value of a favor or a debt, mine or another's. It is not necessarily the value itself, but the emphasis placed on it."

  Cool cool. Deeply personally-revealing conversations of an existential nature with a teen-aged assassin-in-training. It'd be easier to focus on the discussion if I could ignore the fact that we're talking about grieving widows, crying orphans, screams in the night and a butcher's bill paid in cash.

  I am not at all surprised that Kurumi Lautan has a status display. I already knew that, she's one of Nathan's love interests in the main game, after all. From his geography class, she's got a whole plotline about how hard it is to maintain discipline among her classmates as the student president and how it only takes one thuggish troublemaker, Giunco Fiutan, to make her whole life very difficult. I know all that already. But I still managed to be surprised.

  [ Kurumi Lautan ][ Love Interest ][ Class President ]

  [ Kurumi Lautan ][ Love Interest ][ Antagonist ][ The Wealthy ]

  Both of them. Both active and available. She is romanceable by either of us, but I am presuming not both of us. Ahem.

  This is one of those real pinch-points as a [ Rival ], I guess. This artificial structure that is forcing me arbitrarily into positions I would normally never find myself in, has now staked one particular young woman as a specific battle ground between my brother and I. She's either on his side in her role as Class President, or on my side as ... The Wealthy?

  I didn't even think her family had that much money. They were doing okay, sure, but my father owns a duchy. It's kind of hard to impress me with how much money someone has. My barometer of normal is way off from most people.

  "You're staring," Kurumi said to me.

  "Sorry," I said. I looked back down at the page in between us, the calculations that the ancient mathematicians would have used to position their copies of the workbooks. They were both wrapped up in their own interpretation of the arcane mysticism of mathematical constants, and they would use that to divine the best position for their private thoughts.

  Kurumi didn't look away for a few more moments. Maybe she didn't mind me staring.

  Which... would recontextualize some moments from the main game. Some of those "Ugh. Men." dialogue responses felt a little different to me now. If I ever escaped this video-game world trap, and returned to my own world again, alive and healthy, and had the chance to play Harigold Glitter again, I'd always remember that Class Prez Lautan is kinda bi.

  That's a lot of 'if' in one statement. Maybe I should focus on the fact that she's fifteen and this is not okay just like it's not okay for Ryichsur to be after me either.

  Wait. Do I have the same weird double-standard for age gaps that Quarl Billiams has for debts owed? Like, it doesn't matter if I perceive myself to be older or younger, I still perceive the age gap to be icky and insurmountable? I use my mental age or physical age, whichever one is unacceptable, much like he mentally exaggerates obligation and debts overdue?

  "You're still staring," she said, and this time she did sound annoyed.

  "Right, sorry," I said. "Hard time concentrating. Things have been weird lately."

  She put the page aside. "I'll say. Can I ask you about that? At lunch yesterday?"

  "Lunch?" I blinked in surprise. "Oh, right. Those guys."

  The Byeview Boys.

  "Yes, them," she said.

  I blew out a harsh breath, as I thought about exactly what to say. "All right, I'll keep this easy. So, a few years ago my whole family almost died-"

  "WHAT?!"

  "Voice down, everyone's staring," I said, muttering quietly without moving my lips. She blushed and looked down, waiting until everyone looked away again.

  "what?!" she said again, quietly but intensely.

  I kept my voice low. "So some of my family's enemies got tired of fighting my family's businesses with their businesses, and instead thought they could gain an advantage by coming after us directly. Asymmetrical warfare, applying pressure where it's not expected. They burned down our house-"

  "what?!" she said, still quiet but more intense.

  "Easy," I muttered. "Anyway, several people died. And, uh, it's the reason that my twin brother and I don't look alike anymore." I reached up and touched my hair, lifting a lock of it up in front of my face. White strands falling from my fingers.

  "Twi- Nathan? I thought you two were just in the same year. Twins? Him? And- wait, you're not just leukistic?"

  "Thanks for not saying 'albino'. No, I'm not naturally leukistic, but the magic I used at the time did take away most of my coloration," I said. "I was able to save some of us. The ones that did make it... it was still close. My brother, my parents, our steward, maids... it was very close. Especially for me. I don't remember much. I woke up later, after almost a full week in a healer's care."

  "A week? Impossible, nothing takes that-" she paused, and thought carefully about what she had been about to say. "A week? My father told me that if it takes more than an hour it's necromancy."

  I winced. "My understanding is that it missed that mark by the smallest margin. Nobody will tell me exactly what it- what I looked like. But they look a bit ill when they think about it. Anyway, as soon as I was awake again I ran off to find the people that did this to us-"

  "How did you find them?" she said, horrified.

  "You're going to be class president," I said with flat finality.

  Calculations danced in her head like visions of sugar plums. "Oh," she said. "You knew."

  "Knowing things doesn't mean I can stop them," I said bitterly. "Anyway, I'm going to speed this story up. I killed people, Kurumi. And I went to jail and went on trial. And the courts ruled that I was justified. It's called the Vendetta defense."

  "Oh. And that boy in the lunchroom-"

  "His father."

  "Oh." There was a long, busy silence. "That's a lot."

  "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that if Nathan had been the one with sorcery and I had been the one with the social skills, things would have been different. He never would have gone off like I did," I did, resting my chin on my hands. "And I'd be wishing that I had that power so I could get revenge. Which doesn't speak well of my character."

  She snorted. "You put his social skills and your unique magical powers on such a similar footing? Seems he's got the short end of the stick, in a big way."

  I felt my smile turn sad. "I'm great at interacting with natural elements and forces. I can understand them and get them to do whatever. And I won't downplay it, sometimes it's pretty awesome. But that's natural elements and forces. At the end of the day, people are what is important in the world. If I could read people the way I read air currents, I'd have no problems in this world."

  There was more silence. I picked up my pencil and started working the next step of the derivation. Five minutes went by, and I thought we were done with that conversation.

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "Believe what?"

  "That people are that much more important?" I couldn't answer right away, I just stared at the numbers on the page. She pressed further. "More important than steel and stone, explosions and flying and fire and control and power? More important than that?"

  "Lose a few," I said. "You'll figure out how valuable they are. How important."

  Her hand covered my shoulder. I put my hand over hers. I stared at the numbers, and willed myself to breathe calmly, to hold steady. Her hand helped.

  In my science class, I watched the professor. Love interest. Antagonist. The Professor.

  I wanted to bail on his plotline immediately. He was weird and off-putting, and a twenty-year-old man being listed as a "love interest" for a fifteen-year-old girl is just making me cringe myself to death inside. And gods know he made a damn bad first impression. He seemed to think that was okay but he was still a long way from apologizing well enough to suit me. And besides, I don't really need anything from him do I? He's a teacher at my school, that's not that big a deal....

  I think. I'm not sure. Because I don't have any superior insight into this. This isn't part of the game. There is no Professor Ryichsur in the game. His story and quests and plot don't exist. For all I know he's going to be a major organizer of the Rapier Revolt. Or he's going to leave the school and start some new college of advanced sciences. Or he winds up being a gross pedophile and the sooner I implode him the better. Or he just winds up being unremarkable and adopts a cat.

  But also he's one out of a dozen. Nathan has a dozen different women he can pick from, and depending on which choices he makes, he can pursue several of their plotlines for a long way before he has to choose between them. Some of them are pretty exclusive, like Kiri Sizomaji, but I've already kicked her out of the running so she won't distract him from more important stories.

  I can do that for him because I know. But I don't know about the professor, or about Thumper, or Tiviti, or Quarl Billiams and Rabert Frantlin. All I have is my instincts and my ability to read people. So, you know, just my instincts.

  Who's going to shut out the others? Who's going to be useful to me? Who's going to give me a lot of chances to advance early, who's going to have relevant plot advancement during the difficult parts of the future?...

  And who do I like? Because that's a consideration too. I stared at the teacher, and I reached for my necklace. A pendant. A grapefruit. Gedes wanted me to wear a reminder, that my understanding of the world should not alienate me from it. I shouldn't let my view of the game, and the people, and the plotlines and the future... I shouldn't let them alienate me from being a person, and seeing other people. I should remember that now is more than just "before later".

  Can I move forward with this if I'm treating all this like it's a school full of people in a kingdom with a future? And not a game with plotlines and characters and scripted events?

  I've never fully committed to one or the other. I've never really let go of the idea that this is not real, never really committed to treating the world like its rules are sensible and self-contained. But also... I'm sure not acting like I'm the only real person surrounded by NPCs. I act like this is a game when I'm picking plotlines, but when someone looks in my eyes they are always a real person.

  But... none of us really hold consistent beliefs, do we? We all choose which paradoxes we will let ourselves embrace. Beliefs about debts, beliefs about age discrepancies. The need to believe in a stable future, the need to connect to real people. When the ideas we need to believe in collide with the person we need to be, we cannot give up one or the other, right?

  One of the students near me tapped on my desk. "Hey, are you falling asleep?"

  "Probably," I said. "Whatcha need?"

  "So, does soap, like, make the water molecules smaller so they can fit into smaller cracks or-"

  Man, I gotta get out of this place. I get bored and I start acting like I'm some kind of deep thinker or philosopher.

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  There in my history class. Rabert Frantlin, antagonist love interest. The Ruthless. From the Dimnitas Frantlins, associated with the Nhullit House. "Those bastards" in common reference. But, he was the one that offered me a handshake as an equal, which the 21st-century side of me really appreciated.

  I was not sure what "the Ruthless" could do to help me, or what kind of plotline it was likely to get me caught up in. Honestly one of the less enticing labels for a romance option I've seen. Everyone else seems to have a pitch for what they can do for me. Wealthy, Famous, Assassin, Huntress, Access. But "the Ruthless"? His main draw is that he's more vicious and immoral than the others? Willing to go farther and flinch less?

  I think more than a couple of the love interests so far are already more ruthless than me. I don't think that Tiviti has more restraints than I do, and Quarl probably has already done stuff far beyond my worst. As for what would happen pursuing that storyline? What kind of trouble does The Ruthless get into that he'd need my help getting him out of? Disposing of bodies? Covering up a theft? Intimidating witnesses?

  .. probably not. Rabert here is shady, but he seems like the hands-off type. Probably something like "take this package to this address and don't ask questions".

  And he's staring at me. "Are you going to sit down?" he asked.

  "Right yes," I said. "Sorry, I was just wondering what you do when you're not in classes, and I just got caught up in that."

  "Nothing exciting of course," he said smoothly. "Catching up correspondence, keeping up with family business. I do attend a lot of social gatherings. Regrettably I did not make it to your event a couple weeks ago, I've heard it was quite the do."

  I grinned despite myself. "I wanted something nobody had seen before. It would be such a waste if I came out of such unique conditions and immediately threw exactly the party that everyone was expecting."

  His smile was tight. "I think that it told people a lot about what to expect from you, a string of intriguing surprises. It certainly helped a lot of ... interested parties to understand that you are very much your own woman and not to be judged on past associations. It was a well-needed wake-up call for the community. It has been a while since they've found a person of your stature that was willing to defy convention."

  Something about the way he was saying all this made me feel like he was saying twice as many things as I was hearing.

  "I think I'm just doing what anyone else would do, just finding my own path and following it as far as it can take me," I said carefully. "Doing what has always been done will only take me as far as others have already been."

  He smiled, the kind where his cheeks pull up and his eyes half-shut, a devilish sort of grin. "That is extraordinarily well-put, Lady Harigold," he said. "I do enjoy hearing that my belief in you is so well-founded. I think that an over-reliance on tradition can hold back many exciting new opportunities."

  I hastily parsed his words for hidden meanings but... I mean, everything he said seemed almost self-evidently obvious? He's just kind of pushing some tautological proverbs around until they sound deep, right?

  "I was raised deeply rooted in tradition," I said, trying to match his tone. "But I've always been most interested in the future."

  There. That feels like a natural sort of response to his vagaries and vagueries. I'm basically just repeating his own words back in a different order.

  Rabert nodded. "You've given me a lot to think about, Lady Harigold. And now I have a lot to discuss with my colleagues and associates."

  Cool. I wonder what the hell he's on about. Doesn't make a lick of goddamned sense to me.