Tabby invited me to a corner of the room where two wooden chairs were tucked away. I took my seat across from her. Val huffed, indignant about not having a seat for herself. She took her place next to Tabby, hand resting on the back of the chair.

  I had spent some time considering what story to tell Tabby. I thought about telling her about the wolf I had killed, or the story of how I met Kitz. I could tell her about how I teamed up with a Kurskin to bring down a colossal human and his gang of thugs, or how that same Kurskin and I rescued Ersabet and another friend from the bad guys. But after much consideration, I decided to try something else. I was going to tell her a different kind of story, one about a girl whom Tabby didn't know, at least not anymore.

  "So, where's my story?" Tabby asked with a mischievous grin.

  I smiled back gently. "I have one for you, but it's not a story in the traditional sense. You might even find it strange."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Now I must hear it."

  I leaned forward, preparing to mix lies and truths from across two different realities. "I grew up on a farm most of my life," I began. "But when I was eighteen, my parents sent me off to Antata to receive a proper education. In one of my classes, I met a girl, one you remind me of. We had a couple of classes together, but I was shy, so I didn't talk to her right away.

  "A few weeks into the semester, we were paired up on an assignment. She and I were to go count a 100-square-foot section in a forest and then return to class the next day with our estimates of how many trees were in the entire forest.

  "I got to know her then for the first time. She was smart, funny, and easy to be around. In time, we became friends. Not close friends, like the sort who can confide in each other. Our friendship was more circumstantial, but that didn’t make it any less real to me. We saw each other in class, ate meals together, and even hung out occasionally outside of university. It didn’t take me long to develop a crush on her. Any man would, given the opportunity to know her."

  “What are you doing, Ethan?” Val asked. “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  I ignored Val. I knew what I was doing. I wasn't telling Tabby a story. I was sharing a memory with Candace.

  "One day,” I continued, “another boy from our class approached this girl and asked her out on a date. I was so relieved when she rejected him, thinking that she should be mine, but then I overheard what else she had to say. She had told him how flattered she was, and that in normal circumstances, she would have said yes. However, she was deeply immersed in her studies, all while working to support herself. She told him she was already taken. Until she graduated, she only had time for herself.

  "In that moment, it was like I had truly seen her for the first time. I understood her. I knew who she was. She was a girl determined to achieve her goals and become the woman she aspired to be. She was one of the few people who went beyond dreaming about what they wanted. She did what it took to make her dreams a reality, and for her, that meant making sacrifices.

  “I knew then that we weren’t meant to be together, even though knowing her in this way only made me like her more. But I respected her far too much to act on my feelings. Our time at the university eventually came to an end, and we went our separate ways. I thought of her often for a few years, but then more time passed, and eventually, I never thought of her at all. I'm sure there are people in your past that touched you in some way, yet you never think of them.”

  Tabby nodded. Her eyes were locked on mine.

  "Well," I continued, moving on from the truth and into something else entirely. "I hadn't thought of this girl for a decade, until one fateful day, I ran into her again. She had become a woman, and I, a man, but we both immediately recognized the other. A considerable time had passed since we had last seen each other, and by this point, I was married. She wasn't. To my shock, her life hadn't gone according to her plan. Her parents had passed soon after she graduated. Then, she married the wrong man. He was manipulative and a liar. The world she thought was meant for them was a fabrication. Everything she had known about him was a falsehood. That man suppressed her dreams until she eventually found the courage to leave him. But a single, middle-aged woman in this world had few options available to her, so she did what she had to in order to stay alive. At the time of my meeting her, she was a maid for a moderately wealthy family. It was a decent job, and she'd told me she had done far worse jobs to get to where she was now. Her life had been ripped out from under her by a malevolent force, yet she persisted.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Anyway, she and I said our goodbyes, and I’ll likely never see her again. After talking to her, I couldn't get this shameful thought out of my head. I had completely forgotten her. For years, she had never once entered my thoughts, and I felt like I had done something wrong by forgetting her. Like all the bad things that had happened to her wouldn't have happened if I had stayed in touch. Maybe if I had kept the memory of her life and dreams alive in my memory, then, through some cosmic magic, her life would have been different, like none of the bad things that had happened to her would have happened.

  "Ever since that day, I try to remember everyone, just in case my remembrance helps them in some metaphysical way. I didn't remember Candace, and I won’t make that mistake again. It’s important to remember those who touched your life in some way, because even if their life falls apart, at least someone will remember who they were when they were happy and free."

  My eyes had fallen to the floor as I told the last part of my story, and when I looked up, Tabby's eyes were wet with tears. I fought my own emotions and maintained a neutral expression. There was nothing inherently sad about what I had told her. But Tabby had found some profound meaning within it.

  She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. "You weren't kidding about that being a different kind of story." She shook her head. "Gosh, I don't even know why it got me all worked up."

  I shrugged. "I guess I'm just a natural."

  She eyed me suspiciously. "I felt strange when you told it. I don't know how to describe it. It was like I knew part of the story already, even though I was hearing it for the first time."

  "Probably just some deja vu," I said.

  "What's that?"

  "It's as you described. A sense that you've experienced a moment before, even though it's happening for the first time."

  Tabby shivered. "It's weird."

  I laughed. "Yeah, it's a strange sensation."

  We sat there for a moment in awkward silence until I broke the tension. "Thank you for everything, Tabby. My new gear is amazing. I'll look like a real warrior now." I winked at her.

  She blushed. "You already did. I can see the fight in your eyes."

  Now it was my turn to blush. It was probably time I got out of there, and I didn't want this to go on longer than it needed to. I stood from my chair, and so did Tabby.

  "I'd better go," I said. "My friends are waiting."

  "I hope you come back here again sometime. I'd love to hear another of your strange stories."

  "I hope so, too."

  Tabby stepped close and embraced me. I returned it, heartbroken at the loss she didn’t even know she had suffered. I wanted to cry for her, for what had been taken from her, but I needed to be strong. It would be very odd if a hug made John McClane cry.

  Yet, I could feel the tremble of Tabby's body pressed against mine. She was crying. Maybe Val was right. Perhaps I shouldn't have told that story.

  We released, and Tabby wiped tears away from her eyes and laughed at herself. "Gosh, I don't know what's gotten into me today.”

  I gave her a warm smile. "Must be something in the air."

  "Goodbye, John." She paused after saying my name and blinked whatever thoughts were going through her mind away. "Safe travels."

  "Goodbye, Tabby. I hope life treats you the way you deserve."

  And with that, we parted ways, and I would never see her again. I wished that Val could somehow unlock her memories as she had done for me, but that would involve Val crawling into Tabby's brain, and no one wanted that. It hurt to see a familiar face yet be utterly unrecognizable to them. This was what it would be like when I found Elena. I would see my wife, and she would see a deranged stranger. If that was the reality of things, then was there even a point to my quest to find her?

  I gritted my teeth and refused to allow those sorts of thoughts to creep in. They would bring with them nothing but anxiety and sadness.

  I focused on the task at hand, which was to go back to my room and try on my new armor. I finally had some legitimate gear, and I wondered how the system would handle all my new weapon slots.

  Val and I made the trip quickly. Neither of us said anything, and she made no more comments about my story. She had said her piece. I had ignored it, and that was that.

  I waved to Kitz and Delen outside the inn and told them I'd be ready to go in thirty minutes. Delen said they'd be waiting.

  I went up to my room and began equipping my gear directly from my inventory. My leather shoulder piece could be worn directly over my doublet as a stylish and somewhat practical piece of armor. I equipped it on my right shoulder, and it appeared in place, already strapped and secured across my body. The hard leather extended up to my collarbone and down to about three inches above my elbow. It was light and flexible, yet hard enough to be difficult to pierce.

  With a thought, I equipped a standard throwing dagger into one of the sheaths built into the armor. It appeared instantly. I equipped another, and it appeared in the other slot along my bicep.

  I smiled. I wasn’t exactly sure how the system worked, specifically how many weapons I could equip at once or whether where I equipped them mattered.

  Next, I equipped my newly enhanced leather jerkin and filled it with two more sets of throwing daggers and two small punch daggers. I left the back slot free for now.

  After that, I put on my thigh sheath and mentally equipped my Elkhorn dagger there.

  Lastly, there was my belt and sheath for my sword. With a thought, it appeared around my waist, clasped perfectly. I imagined equipping my sword, and it popped into existence already secured in the sheath. The leather sheath bobbed from the change in mass and appeared to have shrunken slightly as the Sword of the Razor Knight was thinner than most swords of its length.

  There wasn't a mirror in this room, but I felt pretty damn badass. I had spent my early time in this game clueless and moping about when I should have been min-maxing. I was starting to play this game the right way. Finally.