“It'll be okay, Ren, I feel like myself. I'm real, you were the one who built my mind on top of that other woman's body. I was never her, you know this, she's gone now, it's just you and me.” Aurin insisted, then, lifting my head to meet her eyes, she wiped my tears off my face. “And that's how it's going to be forever.”

  Pulling me into a kiss, she held me against her. I had long since gone limp, unsure how to even process any of this.

  Why did I bother with living? What was the point of anything?

  If someone asked me that question a week ago, my answer would have been ‘to live in a way that brings you the most happiness before your wretched existence unceremoniously ends’. But I wasn't sure anymore what even my priorities were right now.

  The others would probably be upset if I were missing for too long. They had been nice to me, and I didn't want to worry them. So that’s one of my priorities now, I guess.

  Maybe they would be more accepting of Aurin knowing she is now… a part of me.

  I shivered at the implication, and Aurin hushed me while running her fingers down my back.

  I tried to open my System to message my teammates, but received no response. That made sense; we were currently nowhere. In between planes of reality where nothing belonged. The light of my existence was the only thing that anchored me here.

  Looking past Aurin out into the endless void, I felt like there was some sort of pattern to it all, but I couldn't comprehend it. It was as if my mind simply couldn't contain the knowledge without breaking, so it let it go. Because I knew for certain I could see something, but the processing step where that something would be committed to memory was halted before it could begin.

  That stupid thing that dream Aurin said suddenly came to mind. I didn't know how to suddenly make everything okay. Hell, I didn't even know if it was okay or not. But I did know how to make Aurin happy.

  Aurin, being happy was something worth living for, I supposed. You might even say it was an ontological good for me to make her happy.

  So I decided to do that in the simplest way I knew how.

  “You know this already, but I feel like you probably want to actually hear it from me,” I began, placing my hands over Aurin's that were still wrapped around my face. “I love you, and there's nothing that will change that. Even if you sold your soul away and want to live in my head… god, that sounds fucking weird when I say it like that. But even still, I love you.”

  “Mmm,” Aurin hummed and wrapped herself around my face in such a way that she absolutely knew she was suffocating me. “Love you too.”

  “Mrm mmm mhm mh mhmh,” I attempted to vocalize into her chest.

  “What?” she asked, letting me take a breather.

  “We should get out of here,” I said. I could feel the way to let myself be pulled back into reality. Like a muscle I could flex that would yank me back. Aurin was already a part of me, so she would obviously come too.

  “You sure? We could spend a little bit of time alone here together, seeing how my new form works,” Aurin whispered in my ear.

  I shook my head, “I don't want to worry the others. I can't get in contact with them right now. They have no idea what happened to me.”

  “Tsk, later then,” Aurin said, letting me go.

  I pulled myself back to reality and was met with the world going from dead silent to incredibly loud.

  It wasn't that anything was happening; we had arrived in the middle of the night, after all. Instead, it was more like I had forgotten all the normal sensations that existing came with, and was now rediscovering all of them at once. Even just the air against my skin felt like I was stuck in a wind tunnel.

  Turning towards where I knew the transport to be, I headed off, Aurin following along beside me. On the stage, she was miming her movements in reality despite not moving anywhere.

  Opening my System, I had dozens of messages from the others. I ignored all that and just sent a reply to the group chat.

  Ren: Hey! Sorry, I just got back into reality. Did I miss anything important?

  Vivi: No, not really. Makesi still doesn't want me to flatten the village. The others are asleep, and I've been so bored. Where did you go?

  Ren: Oh, I went nowhere.

  Vivi: … I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.

  Ren: No, I mean, I literally went to nowhere. Weird anomaly, I think I skipped over some time as well. I'm back and heading over now.

  Vivi: Cool, I'm up if you want to chill. Can't sleep.

  Did she just? I mean, I didn't not want to hang out. When was the last time I got to do that without there being some kind of purpose to it or there being stakes involved?

  …

  I actually couldn't remember. Was my life really that depressing that I’d never just spent time hanging out with someone without pretence? I didn't think it was that bad. Kind of normal as lives go.

  Ren: Sure, where you at?

  Vivi's location sensor blinked on once in the System, and by accessing her last known location, I could feel where she was spatially, like an odd extra sense tacked on to all my others.

  “We're gonna hang out with Vivi for a bit. That cool with you?” I asked Aurin.

  “Yeah, I can see your System windows, so you don't have to narrate everything that happens in them. I'm fine with waiting a little longer,” she said as she took my hand and pulled me forward.

  Arriving at the vessel, I entered and followed the hallways to Vivi's location. Standing outside the room, where she was supposed to be. I hesitated, collecting myself for a moment.

  Social interaction was something that I enjoyed, but at the same time found myself attempting to find any possible reason to get out of it. In any form, but especially when there were no stakes like right now, apparently.

  Aurin knocked before I could psyche myself out and message Vivi that I was going to bed.

  I glared at her while listening to someone scrambling around in the room, knocking things over, and a glass shattered at some point. Eventually, Vivi opened the door, revealing a far larger bedroom than the one provided to me. It was also filled with proper furniture instead of just being a flat bed surface to sleep on. Her suit of power armour was mounted on a rack, including a helmet that looked like it had never been used.

  The room was completely spotless, which didn't make any sense based on the sounds I just heard. But this was Vivi, so why should I expect anything about her to make sense?

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  “Come on in!” Vivi said, gesturing to what appeared to be some kind of cloud shaped into a seat.

  “Damn, Vivi, whose dick do I have to suck to get a room like yours?” I asked as I walked inside.

  “Ah, your room was made out of space pulled out of everyone’s rooms. We didn’t really expect to get another person, and it would cost a shitload to increase the capacity of the Habitat,” she replied as she hopped onto what appeared to be a cloud in the shape of a couch. “Want a drink?”

  There were shot glasses on the table and what appeared to be a bottle of some kind of liquor bought in the town. I looked at Vivi, in her twelve-year-old body, then back at the drinks and shrugged. She would be fine. Her Aspect made her immune to being fucked up for life, or at least that’s what she claimed.

  “Yeah, sure, why not… wait, can you even drink anymore?” I asked Aurin.

  Aurin shrugged, “We can find out now, can’t we? I should be able to. Your idea of me encompasses a person who can drink, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Vivi asked at the same time Aurin was speaking.

  I looked between them. That was weird.

  “Hey, Aurin, can you poke Vivi?” I asked.

  “What?” Vivi asked in confusion, while Aurin waved her hand through Vivi’s head as if she were completely non-corporeal. But she touched me?

  With a thought, I suggested she try and move something else, so she picked up a cup on the table and put it down. She could touch inanimate objects. Was it just people who couldn’t interact with her?

  Wait, since when could I send thoughts to her?

  Ignoring that, I looked at Aurin’s construct. She was just an idea right now. But that idea could be altered in any way I wanted it to be. And I wanted her to be corporeal and visible to people right now.

  Shifting her form around, I could intuitively feel what was wrong and how to fix it. Actually, I shouldn’t think about it like that, because ‘wrong’ wasn’t the right word to use. She wasn’t wrong at the moment. She was just the way she was, and there was no moral judgment that could be made on that state.

  But I wanted her to be real, and so she was.

  “What the fuck?!” Vivi exclaimed when Aurin’s hand was ejected from her head the moment she became corporeal.

  “So, uh, sorry, I thought you could see her. I found Aurin… sort of.” I said, unsure how to say it. I didn’t want Vivi to think I was weird for having my… best friend in my head.

  “I… okay, we’re gonna need something before we talk, apparently. Shots?” Vivi asked, turning to pick up the plastic bottle of what I could now read was something called baijiu. I’d never heard of it before, but the man from whom I stole the language had a fond association with it.

  The cups on the table resized themselves down to shot glasses as Vivi poured the liquor.

  “Sure!” Aurin said, and I accepted as well, because why not?

  An hour later, I was snuggled up in Aurin's arms on the cloud couch, sitting across from Vivi, dumping my problems onto her. It turned out Aurin could get drunk because she had fallen asleep incredibly fast while squeezing me like I was a stuffed animal. This was the first time she had ever drunk anything, given that Atlas wasn’t really interested in providing liquor, so it apparently hit her really hard. Which was interesting, either the woman she used to be was a lightweight or rebuilding her mind reset her tolerance.

  Also, the fact that she could fall asleep as a mental construct in my mind was neat in and of itself. It was basically like she was real…

  I let out a long breath and tried to ignore my existential dread while listening to Vivi.

  “Look, if she’s taking up Weight, you can delete her to free space. That’s just a function of the System. But that would kill her, so… probably don’t. I don’t even know what to tell you here. Your life’s turning into some kind of ethics experiment. You can break people’s minds, and now you’ve got a whole person living in your… whatever that mental space thing you described is. You’re gonna have to define what she is to you yourself. But she’s part of your Aspect now, you can’t deny that fact.” Vivi said after I explained what had happened.

  I let out a sigh and took another shot of the paint thinner that Vivi called alcohol.

  “So what. Just accept that I have absolute control over her and accept her romantic advances without worrying about it? I have no idea how to handle this, and every time I think about it, I get an urge to throw myself off a tall building. Half the time I feel like I'm the worst person in the world, and I'm stealing her agency, while the other half it's like if I don't give her what she wants then I'm taking advantage of her,” I shakily replied, nuzzling myself against Aurin's arms. She stirred slightly and kissed my head before returning to unconsciousness.

  I could see her mind's state at all times since she was literally part of the play happening on my stage. I wasn't sure why, but that felt like the right way to think of it.

  “I don't know what the right answer is. I don't know if there even is a right answer. So, given that fact, why don't you just do what feels right? What's the first thing that comes to mind?” Vivi asked, while she was staring right at me, and I could feel her attention.

  I almost looked up into her eyes before stopping myself. That wasn't the right response anymore unless I needed to use it as a tool. It wouldn’t be right to affect Vivi in any way.

  “My first response is to kill Aurin now to protect her from me hurting her. But I recognize that's ridiculous and born from a moral framework I built within myself to attempt to protect the agency of those I care about. I don’t like unequal power dynamics, and I don’t think there’s a greater one than this.” Aurin could literally only exist when I wanted her to. That was… a lot of power.

  “But she was the one who chose this. Without any influence from you?”

  “That’s true as well, which is the problem!” I yelled and frustratingly waved my hands in the air. Aurin pulled me in tighter against her, and I relaxed. “I also… love her, and I think that’s influencing my decision-making. So I don’t trust myself to make the right choice.”

  “So just let her be her. She’s sticking around, so it isn’t even a temporary one-life romance. Those can be fun, but it’s always sad when they end… You don’t have to deal with that,” Vivi drawled as she lay back on the cloud and kicked her legs onto the backrest. “Why worry about anything? You have the power to do whatever you want, just use it, dummy.”

  “Just cut my restrictions loose and do whatever I want because I happen to have the power to do so? That sounds like the justification of a tyrant.” That was exactly what I wanted to avoid. I hated the idea of people being forced to do things they didn’t actually want to do by those above them.

  Those in power should at least make the things they want people to do enjoyable enough that people actively enjoy doing them. Like with my Aspect, if I needed to keep someone under long-term control, the idea wasn’t to force them through fear. It was both easier and felt right to make complying feel good, like the right thing to do and satisfying at the same time.

  Then I wasn’t a tyrant, I would be like a benevolent ruler dictating to their people while attempting to maximize utility within them. This would be the perfect scenario in a utilitarian ethics system. I can program people’s brains to be perfectly happy obeying me, and they’ll be far happier than they would be without it. Thereby, my actions would increase the average happiness in the world.

  “Are you scared of your power?” Vivi asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. She was staring at the ceiling and floating a few inches off the cloud.

  “N—mmm, I don’t know. I’m scared of what it can do, but I’m not scared of the consequences. What I fear is who I’ll become because I don’t fear the consequences.” I leaned over and poked her foot. She immediately toppled back down onto the cloud and bent up to frown at me, locking eyes with me for an instant before I closed them and threw my hands over my face.

  In that moment that I saw her eyes, her spider web of a mind suddenly resolved itself incredibly clearly. It felt like I intuitively understood how I could work it to my advantage. The right strings to pull to get her to move the way I wanted.

  But I didn’t want to control Vivi, I liked her as she was. Even when she got angry.

  Vivi let out a long breath, “I see why she wants to be with you. You are a beautiful person when your Stats come into effect. I’ve made up my mind, taking that away from her would be unfair.”

  She was speaking nonsense because I glamoured her, fuck me.

  “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to, I just—you moved when I didn’t expect… I drank too much of your drain cleaner.” Tears were forming in my eyes, but I restrained myself. I would not let myself cry in front of Vivi right now.

  “Shh, it’s okay. Your Stats are a part of who you are. You can’t change those, just like you can’t change your appearance. You wouldn’t turn someone away just because you are somehow beyond human beauty, would you? Beauty Stats aren’t unheard of in magical worlds, though they are rare and generally highly prized by those with high status. You’re definitely going to get kidnapped at some point due to them, by the way, just want to warn you ahead of time. It’s like that with your eyes, you literally cannot change who you are, so you need to learn to accept how pretty they are… sorry that last thing just slipped out, but you get what I’m saying, right?” Vivi said, and she wasn’t wrong.

  I was incredibly cute from a single point in Venust, when I added more, it was going to turn into a kind of charm of its own.

  “Mhmm,” I hummed, my thoughts felt like they had finally settled.

  “Great, now get the fuck out. I’m going to bed.”

  Rousing Aurin, I brought her back to our room, where she picked me up and threw me on the bed.

  “But I’m sleepy…” I whined and buried my face into the pillow.

  “You sure you can’t stay awake just a little longer? I’ve been waiting for you,” Aurin asked.

  It turned out that I could, in fact, wait a little longer before falling asleep.

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