Himitsukichi

It would seem to be that Mildred was right about Ariel. The next few days have been far more peaceful for me. An annoying brat she may be, she’s still a kid with kid responsibilities to attend to. I still have no idea why the hell she latched onto me so hard, but I guess if she’s not bothering me anymore, then it doesn’t really matter if I don’t know. Kind of like when my computer acts up for no reason and becomes fine again after restarting it. I decided to tell the story of my sordid weekend to Blanche during her daily morning visit. I didn’t explain every little detail, but enough for her to get the general gist of it.

“…Well now…”

She seems lost in thought, trying to find something to say, but nothing’s coming out.

“I thought maybe you’d find the girl relatable. She seems to be as pushy as you were.”

I said that in jest, but Blanche is annoyed with me.

“I could’ve sworn we made up, but if you’re still bothered by me helping you, so be it.…Speaking of which, how have you been doing on food?”

I’m confused.

“…What do you mean? I’ve been eating the food you’ve been giving me.”

She sighs, seemingly frustrated with me.

“…Please tell me you’re not just eating the meals I make for you and nothing else.”

“Not every day, but some days, yeah…What, is that a problem?”

I didn’t need to ask that question because I already know the answer, but it’s too late to take it back.

“The whole point of me coming over has been to help you improve your eating habits! Haven’t you felt the need to eat more ever since we started doing this?”

Geez, she’s really riding my ass on this.

“I’ve been eating the food you’ve been making me, isn’t that enough?”

Blanche takes a deep breath before answering me again.

“…No, that’s not enough. While it’s good that you’re at least eating enough to not be starving yourself, my food isn’t enough to get you all the calories you need in one day. I was hoping that by cooking for you, you’d feel the desire to eat more in general, or make your own food.”

…It might’ve been a mistake to accept Blanche’s help.

“Like I keep telling you, I don’t get hungry often and even if I did, I wouldn’t eat much more than snacks and microwave meals.”

“You can’t cook?”

“I can cook, I just find it to be a pain in the ass.”

The look that Blanche is giving me is hard to decipher. She looks exasperated but with all sense of anger or annoyance completely drained from her face.

“…How long have you been living alone Gray?”

“Three years.”

She gives me a look of disbelief.

“Really?”

She’s getting on my nerves. I decide to stay silent while she continues on.

“…I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m just baffled at how you haven’t already died yet.”

It’s at this point that I decide to speak up.

“Okay, you’re being overly dramatic. I can take care of myself just fine. Sure, I’m not great at cooking, but I’ve managed to survive just fine before you forced your way into my life.”

There’s a pause between the two of us. To think we’d been getting along so well for the past few weeks. After a few moments, Blanche speaks again.

“Look Gray, can you at least promise me that you’ll eat more than what I give you every day?”

Given how I got roped into this whole “getting food from her thing”, I really have no choice but to promise her.

“…Fine, alright. I’ll do it.”

And thus, I was able to avoid any further confrontation and the rest of our meeting went fine. After which, I go to put away the food she gave me in the refrigerator and…outside of some water bottles, it’s empty. In short, I’m going to have to visit the grocery store today in order to keep my promise. What a pain.

The local grocery store is pretty well stocked for a store in a territory. The PearlCoin Organization has strong connections with nearby farms and not so nearby factories. Along with local businesses, they’ve even managed to get a decent trade deal going with nearby states of HOME. Although HOME hates modern technology, they also understand the threat they’re under if LOVE ever decides to invade them, and thus it’s pretty common for state governments of HOME to trade goods with cryptocurrency groups in exchange for protection.

Speaking of LOVE, I’ve heard rumors that some high-ranking PearlCoin members are involved with an underground black market that deals with smuggling food from the more elite residential towers of LOVE. Honestly, I believe it if only because despite this territory being nowhere near any ocean of any kind, I’ve seen the likes of lobster and scallops occasionally being sold here. Of course, regardless of how likely true these rumors might be, the PearlCoin Organization can never confess that they’re true due to the inevitable shitstorm it’d cause.

I don’t know what to buy. See, this is my problem with cooking, I never know what the hell I want to cook. I think of random foods that might sound good independently but would be terrible put together. After some deliberation I decided to buy some pasta, spinach, and butter. That’ll make for a good dinner, right? I guess I should also buy some blueberry packets for snacking as well. I purchased all my items with little issue and left the store. While walking back home, I found myself walking by the park before stopping due to seeing someone familiar.

“…So, there was this barrel, right? This stupid goddamn barrel that I couldn’t get past at all no matter how hard I jumped! After spending hours on it, my brother came in and was all ‘See, what you gotta do is just go up and down on the control stick without jumping, that’s it’ and I was just like ‘What!?’, and then he showed me. And seeing how the game did nothing but lie to me about how to beat the fucking level, I threw the controller against the wall…I thought my brother would understand my pain, but he got mad, told on me to mom and dad, and now I have to buy him a new controller.”

It’s none other than Ariel, having an animated conversation with an unfamiliar man on one of the park benches. Is this a joke? What is with her and wanting to hang out with random adult men? The guy sitting by her looks to be in his 30s, with messy chin length hair and scruffy chin stubble on his face. He doesn’t seem to care too much about what she’s talking about but is doing a good enough job at feigning interest that she’s not noticing. She does seem to take notice of him not saying anything though.

“…Umm, you can talk too if you want. It feels kind of weird doing all the talking myself.”

The way she’s blushing and rocking her legs back and forth while talking makes it abundantly clear that Ariel has a thing for this guy. And judging by how the guy’s response is to put his arm on her shoulder tells me that he has a thing for her too. He leans his face in and speaks gently.

“…It’s fine. I’m just a quiet guy in general.”

Ariel responds to him by resting her head on his chest. What’s going on here clearly isn’t good. Anybody who isn’t a kid can tell that this guy is bad news. But what the hell can I do? “Law enforcement” isn’t a thing around here, and I don’t have the physical strength to risk interference. I have no real choice but to walk back home while feeling sick to my stomach.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Ariel for the rest of the day, not even while I was at work. I don’t know what makes that damn kid so adverse to hanging out with others her age. Honestly, there’s a part of me that feels as if I should just let her go get molested so that she’ll actually learn a lesson for once in her life. But you know, I would in fact be betraying myself a bit if I did that. I’ve never been molested for the record, but I did have a close call.

It happened when I was 12. This was when I was just starting to question the behavior of my parents. I got into an argument with my parents about plasma donation. Usually, there’s no real need to donate organs, blood, or anything like that in the Territories. The clinic usually has plenty of that stuff available from the various people who’ve been murdered by members of the PearlCoin Organization. But either this was a more peaceful time for PearlCoin goons, or more likely, the murder victims as of late just didn’t have good enough blood to be used for plasma donation. So, the clinic at this time was running a special donation campaign where they’d give you money for donating plasma.

My brother took notice of this campaign and decided to start donating for extra money. Due to his muscular body, he could donate more plasma than the average person (and thus make even more money). Even though he was only doing it for financial gain, classmates at school and neighbors started to see him as a good guy for doing it. My parents especially approved of how his actions made them look good. It didn’t matter that he was still his same violent and abrasive self, he donated plasma, so therefore was a good person.

My parents started to donate plasma themselves and then proceeded to pressure my sister and I into donating plasma as well and we were both uncomfortable with it. For my sister, it was due to the fact that she had a weak constitution and was concerned about the effects donating plasma could have on her. For me, I just didn’t want to do it. While to normal people that is an acceptable line of reasoning, to LOVERS and Outside LOVERS, it is not. Much like how not following the laws of LOVE results in the loss of livelihood for someone, going against the desires and requests of an Outside LOVER means they will do whatever they can to force you too.

So, my parents started to guilt trip and punish me and my sister for going against their wishes. You’d think that I’d end up bonding with my sister over this, but that didn’t happen. She told me that unlike her, I had no legitimate reason to reject donating plasma, I was just being selfish, and that it was my fault that mom and dad were going after the both of us. Indeed, she had managed to convince our parents to completely side against me. This led to a massive argument the day it was time for me to go donate, which led to me running away from my family.

I remember first going to a couple of friends’ houses, and while they were sympathetic, they also couldn’t let me stay over. Mostly due to the fact I’d have to get permission from their parents, and I knew it was far more likely they’d just call my parents and have me sent back home anyways. After that failed plan, I decided to just go hide out in the park for a bit. There were a lot of homeless people there that day and I hung out with them in order to stave off boredom. I didn’t really talk much though, mostly because I didn’t understand the severe mental psychosis and drug addictions that the people there all struggled with.

However, one of the homeless people did take an interest in me. He was the kind of homeless person that you could tell had been living that way for decades just by looking at him. His hair and beard were a disgusting greasy mess of tangles, his teeth were either black or missing, and he had a vile stench that I can only really describe as “every bodily fluid covered in rotten cheese and then dunked in alcohol”. As much as I didn’t like being around this guy, he would always make an effort to sit as close to me as possible. I wanted to push him away, I also felt like I had no choice but to put up with it.

I tried to get away from him by going to hide in the restroom, but I forgot that trick only works if you and your pursuer are of the opposite sex. Honestly though, I have a strong feeling the creep would’ve still followed me to the restroom even if I was a girl. He followed me inside the restroom and when I tried to get away from him, that’s when he grabbed me and attempted to force me into a stall. Luckily for me, not only was there someone else in the restroom, that person also really hated the nasty man and started a physical altercation with him that ended with the attempted molester stabbed and bleeding on the restroom floor. Watching this event and then seeing the man who saved me immediately go snort a line of cocaine at the sinks made me realize that being homeless was way too much for me and I decided to bite the bullet and head back home.

It turns out while I was gone and my family was in the midst of donating, my mother suffered from something called “reflex syncope”. Which is basically a fancy medical term for “getting sick and passing out from blood loss”, and it can sometimes happen during blood/plasma donation. This incident basically killed all interest my parents had in having the family donate plasma, and even if it didn’t, the next day the clinic ended the campaign due to now having the amount of plasma they needed. I remember sometime later on reading up about plasma donation in the old world, and it turns out what my folks tried to do would’ve been illegal since you had to be at least 17 to donate plasma then. Well, I guess that means that my brother donating his plasma would’ve been illegal too given that he was 16 at the time.

I’ve never told anyone about the attempted molestation, mostly because…well, it was just an attempt. It’s not like I was actually molested, you know? It’s not like I stay up at night crying to myself about the incident, and even trying to equate that incident with an actual molestation just feels insulting to real victims of child molestation. It’s just an unpleasant experience I had that taught me that I should avoid becoming homeless as much as possible. Of course, it’s not as if child molestation is exclusive to the homeless, given the guy who’s clearly grooming Ariel.

“…Is your stomach bothering you, or is something on your mind?”

Mildred approaches the front desk of the store and talks to me. I guess I was making a weird face while thinking about all this stuff. It’d probably be a good idea to at least mention my concerns with her.

“You know that annoying girl from Sunday who was following me around? I saw her at the park getting close to an older man.”

Mildred grimaces a bit when I respond to her.

“…That’s…really concerning. I guess you want to help her?”

“You really think I wanna help that brat? She’s just forced her way into my life so now I have to care about her possibly getting molested because she’s an idiot who likes to flirt with older men.”

Mildred sighs and stares at me with an irritated look on her face.

“…I get it, it’s not like you want to help her or anything like that, but this is still clearly bothering you for some unknown reason. I will say that you have Friday and Saturday off, so if you want to talk to her, those would be good days to do so.”

Her sarcastic tone is getting on my nerves, but I don’t bother starting anything with her about it and the shift continues normally. When I get home after work, I’m left feeling confused as to how the hell I can properly address this problem. I’m not physically strong at all, so trying to confront the guy would end badly for me. I could try talking to Ariel about it…but let’s be real, she’d most likely reject my advice. And honestly, I can kind of see her point of view. If I had been in a similar situation when I was fourteen, I’d also reject the advice of any adult telling me it was a bad idea.

Also, where the hell would I even find her again? I know I saw her together with the man at the park, but does that really mean they hang out there often? I could track her at the local schools, but there’s no way in hell that I, a grown ass man, can just hang around a school without getting labeled as the creep instead. She did mention in her conversation that she needed to buy her brother a new controller, but we don’t really sell game controllers at the store. If Mildred comes upon a retro game console that happens to have controllers with it, that’s one thing, but we don’t sell game controllers on their own, which would be what she’s looking for. She’s most likely just going to order one online.

Well, she did come across me while I was at Marisa’s grave, right? But I doubt that left any real impact on her memory, it’s not like I told her why I was there. She most likely just registered the place as a random abandoned house I was hanging out at and nothing more. I did show her the secret forest pathway from when I was a kid…which is a pretty secluded place…but she and the guy were out in public in the park, so it’s not like she cares that much about privacy. My mind keeps swirling with thoughts of various places I could potentially locate Ariel at, but the most I’m able to come up with by the time I go to bed is “I guess I’ll just loiter around the park until I can do something”.

Author’s Note: I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter, I’m having some issues in real life. I also wonder if SEGA fans will appreciate or cringe at the reference I made to the infamous Barrel of Doom.

After the ridiculous crap I went through yesterday, I’d like it if I could spend all day today inside my apartment. Unfortunately, I have work today, so that can’t happen. But I can at least spend most of the day inside. I’ve been in kind of a porno mood, so I decided to watch more of those this morning. The first one I watched was a real stand out, Phimosis Jones. It was a half-animated, half-live action story about a sperm cell trying to find a way to defeat a nasty STD contracted by the incredibly promiscuous man he resides in. The reception is a bit mixed, with some not liking it for its gross out humor involving STDS, but eh, I loved it personally. The script was witty, the animation was impressively done for something so low budget, and I felt invested in what is admittedly a rather shallow story.

Outside of that masterpiece, I also watched a film about Satan possessing the bodies of various students and teachers at a Catholic school. The concept was neat, but the orgy scenes went on for too long. The last eroticism centered film I put on before getting bored featured a black guy with a small penis and an Asian guy with a big penis. It was supposed to be a “comedy”, but since it was just the same “joke” over and over again, I turned it off about 40 minutes in. I then headed to my room and played a random restaurant business simulator game on my computer before it was time for me to go to work. When I reached the halfway point on my route to Mildred’s store, I started to hear footsteps behind me. Looking behind me, I can see that once again, an annoying ginger kid is stalking me.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I ask her a simple question.

“Following you.”

Her response is just as simple.

“…And why are you doing that? I’m pretty sure I made my desire to not be around you abundantly clear yesterday.”

She gives me a bitter grin and points towards me.

“…Cause I’m not gonna let you win, that’s why! I’m gonna get back at you for what you did to me yesterday!”

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. This girl is the human personification of burs. I guess I have to put up with her once again.

“All I did was figure out a way to get away from you after you handcuffed me because I didn’t want you following me around. In the old world, I could easily get you arrested for multiple crimes.”

“I only did that because you didn’t want me to hang out with you!”

“Yeah, that’s life. There’s going to be people who don’t want to hang out with you. Rational human beings understand that and don’t try to force companionship on those who don’t want it. Look, I don’t have time for this nonsense, I have to get to work.”

I continue to walk to work, with the knowledge that Ariel is right behind me. I wonder, has she been looking for me all day? It’s not like she knows my work schedule or where I live. She may have all the qualities of an insane stalker, but surely this has to be coincidence, right? I refuse to get paranoid about a girl as small as her. If anything, she’s probably the type who craves attention and the best course of action would be to ignore her from this point on. I can see Mildred’s motorbike parked out front, meaning I’m having my shift with her today. Perhaps she can help me out with my stalker problem.

Walking into the store, I see that Liam is also on shift. He looks at me with a mildly disgusted look on his face, I can’t tell if it’s because he’s still mad about the prank I pulled a few nights ago, he’s getting the wrong idea from seeing a young girl trailing me, or both. Mildred walks up to greet me. There’s something about her that seems “off”, but I can’t tell what specifically.

“Well, hey there Gray! I wasn’t aware you had a daughter!”

She speaks in a joking manner. At the very least, Mildred knows me well enough to not immediately assume ill intent about the situation.

“Nice joke, but no, she’s not my daughter. Just a random pipsqueak stalker who tried to hold me hostage yesterday.”

I suppose I could also count the bit where she tried to goad me into groping her chest as sexual harassment, but seeing as she didn’t push it, I won’t mention it.

“I wasn’t holding you hostage!”

The pipsqueak stalker pipes up.

“Well, you had me forcefully handcuffed to you, what else would you call that?”

She starts stamping her feet and getting more heated.

“I just wanted to hang out with you. Yes, you were handcuffed, but I let you lead the way and go wherever you wanted to go! I even unlocked the cuffs when you lied about having to go to the bathroom!”

“Fine, I’ll concede that you didn’t hold me hostage. But you’re still a stalker. Look Mildred, can you help me? I’ve had to deal with this brat since yesterday and I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

Mildred examines the young girl and puts her hand to her chin, assessing the situation. After what feels like a minute or so, she turns to me.

“Well, there’s not a whole lot I can do. True, the whole ‘following you around’ thing is concerning, but I don’t kick people out of the store unless they’re actively causing trouble. Given that she has school tomorrow, it’s doubtful she’s going to stay here the whole shift anyways. She’ll probably forget about you by the end of the week.”

That’s not very reassuring.

“So, you’re telling me I gotta deal with it.”


“Sure, but only for a little while longer. If it turns out I’m wrong and she’s still following you around after today, I’ll start figuring something out.”

She smiles at me, but something is also “off” about that smile. Ariel starts exploring the store and I go to start my shift. Nothing too interesting happens for the first hour or so. Some people come in, but their purchases aren’t anything interesting. Surprisingly enough, Ariel isn’t being too much of a pain in the ass to anyone and has just been minding her own business. I can even see her talking to Mildred.

“…So, you go around collecting this stuff?”

I guess she’s curious about the store.

“Yes somedays. I have a place for storage where I keep my findings. I also like to upload digital copies of rarer items I find online and occasionally visit a guy who helps out with bypassing old copyright restrictions in some products. Some older video games really suffer from this.”

Mildred’s dusting off some shelves as she talks with the young girl.

“How come you started all this?”

The question makes Mildred think for a little before answering.

“…Well, it’s not like it was a lifelong dream of mine or anything like that. I just had a fascination with old media and decided I wanted to profit from it.”

She goes back to dusting and more people come into the store for me to attend to. A few more hours pass, and the sun starts to set. Ariel stomps up to me and slams her hands on the counter.

“Listen up! …I have to go home now, ‘cause it’s getting near the curfew that my parents have set for me. But don’t think this is the last you’ve seen of me! I’ll see you again…Your name’s Gray, right? Yeah, that’s what she called you…Anyway, I’ll see you again Gray!”

She marches out of the store with conviction. You know, for as much of a hassle she was yesterday, Ariel ended up being pretty tolerable today. I guess because there were other people around.

 A few more hours later, after the sun has set and there are significantly fewer customers coming in, I see Mildred take Liam into the backroom. I guess she has inventory management she wants him to help her out with. A few minutes later, only Mildred comes back with a box and heads towards me.

“Hey Gray, you mind helping me sort out these CDs?”

She’s back to seeming “off” again. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like she’s been badly suppressing the urge to give me “the look” for whatever reason. Which is weird, she’s really not one to hide things when she’s upset with me.

“Uh, sure. Alright.”

I have a bad feeling about this, but I obviously can’t reject a request from my boss either, so I follow her to the CD section of the store. There doesn’t seem to be any real theme in this box, but judging by some of the rather odd album covers and names such as “StomaCunt” and “The Shivs”, I assume that this is a collection of various obscure indie alternative bands from back in the day. After a few minutes of putting CDs on shelves, Mildred leaves me.

“I’ll be right back.”

She walks back to the backroom, and I continue to focus on my current task at hand. The only sound that can be heard in the store is the soft jazz music playing from the vinyl player near the front. It’s not uncommon for the store’s atmosphere to be like this during later hours…well, the music is different depending on whatever Mildred threw in. I can’t tell if she has a system for it, or if it’s completely random. It might just be a mix of both. All I know is that I once had to work a shift where the majority of the time crunkcore was being played, and I honestly believe that shift gave me a taste of what being in Hell is like.

I hear the door to the backroom open up again after a few minutes. I guess Mildred got whatever she needed from there. I keep focusing on putting the CDs on the shelf without shifting my attention to anywhere else. While doing so, my hand touches something soft. Looking at it I see…a tarantula.

“Fuck!!”

I instinctively drop the CDs in my hand, jump back, and hit my back on another shelf, causing some merchandise to fall off. The shelf I jumped away from also has some merchandise falling off…including the tarantula…which bounced on the ground for a bit.

“…”

I crouch down by the “tarantula” and while grimacing, reach my hand out to it…it’s a plush stuffed toy. I hear Mildred’s voice to the left side of me soon enough.

“Well now, doesn’t feel so good to be picked on, doesn’t it?”

Looking to my left, I see Mildred and Liam approaching me. Liam is as blank faced as usual, but Mildred has “the look”. I knew she was acting weirder than usual. My heart’s still beating a mile a minute, but I at least have enough composure to hold a conversation.

“…What are you talking about?”

“The look” is no longer on her face and Mildred’s displeasure is now much more obvious. She makes her way towards me and picks up the toy.

“Liam told me what you did to him a few nights ago. I thought this was already obvious to you, but I’m trying to run this store in such a way that all my employees get along easily and trust each other when need be. Actions like that prank of yours do not help with that whatsoever.”

I see. This whole thing with the fake tarantula was just some dumb retribution for the prank I did. Despite that, Mildred doesn’t seem satisfied. I get up from the floor and respond to her.

“I don’t know why you’re so mad, it was just a dumb prank. Yeah, it’s not the most professional thing to do on shift, but no one else was around and it’s not like you’re one for professionalism.”

I might’ve gotten too mouthy because she’s even more mad at me now.

“It’s important to understand what may be appropriate for one person, isn’t necessarily appropriate for another one. Liam’s sensitive you know!”

“…I didn’t know that. Maybe I could’ve known that if he actually talked more.”

“So, he’s a little on the quiet side, so what!? If he doesn’t want to talk much, then he doesn’t have too!”

There’s more I want to say, but honestly there’s really no way to make myself look like the good guy here. I played a prank on a co-worker whose evidently on the softer side of things. If Liam had a different personality, he most likely wouldn’t give a shit and this situation wouldn’t be happening right now. It would be best for me to relent.

“…Alright, I’m sorry. I went too far. I won’t do it again.”

I speak in the sincerest tone of voice I can muster. I still have my personal misgivings on the matter, but I’m already on thin ice, so it’d be best to not push things further.

“Sigh…It’s good of you to apologize Gray, but this is concerning. I need everyone working here to get along, I can’t have a calming atmosphere in the store if my employees are having problems with each other.”

I’ve noticed that Liam hasn’t said a single word during this entire discussion. I suppose that’s just Liam being Liam, but it’s more annoying than usual given the current circumstance. The fact that he still has the same emotionless expression on his face is driving me nuts. You’d think he’d show some signs of giving a shit considering this conversation is all about him. I decide to try and bring him into the conversation.

“Hey, Liam. Do you accept my apology? It’s fine if you don’t.”

He’s startled by me calling out to him. I don’t get it, did he really think no one was going to talk to him during this entire conversation all about him? He ends up stammering a bit before replying back to me.

“Uh…Um…Y-Yeah, sure…Just don’t do it again.”

With that, Mildred was able to calm down and the rest of the shift went on as normal. I guess it’s good that things ended nicely, but how did Mildred learn about my…”thing” with spiders? I’ve put in as much effort as possible to make sure no one ever learned of that. Given that Mildred’s not the kind of person who picks up on subtle hints, there must’ve been a time when I fucked up and she noticed. I want to ask her, but thinking about my spider problem does nothing but fill me with shame. While she’s locking up the store I figure it’s as good of a time as any to ask her.

“Hey uh…How, how did you know that I…don’t like spiders?”

Her response to that question is to look at me as if I’m joking around.

“…That was something you were hiding? I’ll never forget the first shift you worked here, and you had trouble dusting the backroom due to a spider’s web that was there. Honestly, that’s why I never have you dust there, because I know how stressful it can be for you…Hey, are you alright?”

“…I-I’m fine.”

I’m not fine. At all.

Author’s Note: I’d apologize for the long time between the release of this chapter and the last one but…Do I even have anyone who likes my actual writing outside of my AI bots? I’m not sure. But anyways, this is another chapter with not a whole lot to talk about. I do hope that I’m developing the characters in a way that works for people.

“You know what you just did goes beyond stalking, right?”

I turn to face the irritating teen girl who just handcuffed me. She has her right hand deep in the pocket of her shorts, wherein the key to the handcuffs lies. As annoying as she may be, I have to give her credit for not being an idiot. She knows damn well that if I were to try and get the key out of her pocket, it’d look bad to any and all strangers passing by. Hell, just being handcuffed to this brat is more than enough to make strangers look at me with disgust. The best I can do right now is talk her out of it.

“Yeah, well, you were being an asshole, so it serves you right!”

She’s just giving me a bratty response. So, I guess this is just a circumstance I’m going to have to put up with for the time being. I have no choice but to continue to the park while being handcuffed to a young girl. I try to up my walking pace a little to see if it’ll make Ariel consider unlocking the handcuffs, but she’s able to keep up with me no problem. She looks at me straight in the eye and talks to me casually, as if there’s nothing weird going on right now.

“So why were you hanging out at that old house? Doesn’t look like you live there.”

I could ignore her, but something tells me she’ll do something even more drastic if I do.

“…I have my own reasons.”

“What kind of reasons?”

“Personal reasons that are none of your business.”

As we talk, a couple walk by and give me a look of disapproval. I don’t live in a small rural town where rumors spread easily or anything like that. However, there’s still a chance that some shithead with a camcorder could come across us, record a video, and then upload it to the internet. Which if that were to happen, I would have to kill myself right then and there. Thankfully, I happen to live in an area surrounded by a forest landscape. For now, I decide to take the two of us into some nearby trees. Ariel seems a bit nervous about this decision.

“…H-How come we’re going into the forest?”

I could lie and pretend that I’m gonna recreate a kill from one of the Berserker Man movies, but let’s be real, that’s way too risky of a bluff to pull off.

“We’re taking a shortcut to the park.”

Instead, I decide to tell a less threatening lie. Going through the nearby forest is going to extend the time it takes for me to get to the park. But I’ll take it if it means avoiding the stares of strangers. Plus, the extra time gives me a chance to think of a way to rid myself of this girl.

“Are you sure this is a good shortcut?”

“Yeah.”

“What if we get lost?”

“We’re not gonna get lost. I used to explore this forest with friends for hours when I was a little kid.”

That’s not a lie. Since I always dreaded going home, I had a habit of exploring the local woods with friends just so I could be out of the house more often. Even though I don’t explore them anymore, the knowledge of which parts of town are connected to what parts of the forest are forever embedded in me. I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, but this forest feels like a hub world from a platforming game what with all the places in town you can come across just by entering and exiting through the trees.

“…You explored all of this when you were a little kid?”

Ariel looks at me with amazement as she asks. I don’t know why the idea of just “walking around the woods” excites her so much.

“Calm down, it’s not like I climbed Mount Everest. We were just bored kids looking for ways to spend the time is all. Though it has been a while since I last explored…Well, it couldn’t have changed that much, right?”

“D-Don’t say things like that! What if we get lost?”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have handcuffed yourself to me then.”

She pouts after I say that. Despite that, she’s still refusing to unlock the handcuffs. Well fine. If she wants to risk the possibility of getting lost and dying in the forest with me, so be it. Silence comes over the two of us as I use childhood memories to traverse through the forest.

“…Now if I recall, we tied various pieces of cloth to certain tree branches to indicate which place a part of the forest was right by…Oh, there’s one of them.”

I see a blue cloth tied to a branch on a tree spinning slightly from the wind. Pretty amazing that no one’s bothered to take them down after all this time…Well, maybe some of them got taken down. Who knows. Ariel is intrigued by the cloth and starts questioning me about it.

“…Your friends tied cloths to trees? That branch is so high up, weren’t you worried about falling while climbing up?”

“Well, we always had the tall kid go and tie the cloths to branches. It’s not like he had to climb all the way to the top. We got the cloths from another kid…Jason. Yeah, that was his name. His parents were tailors, so they had a bunch of random cloth lying around that he’d make small cuts out of, giving us the cloth pieces to put on the trees.”

“Did your friends use the same color cloth for all of the trees?”

“No, we used different colors in order to signify a location. I don’t remember what all the cloths symbolized, but I know we used a green cloth to signify the park.”

She listens to me while staring at the cloth on the tree branch. I don’t understand why she finds this so fascinating. She keeps asking me more questions.

“How much time would you spend outside during the day?”

“Hours. Unless it was raining, then I’d stay in.”

“Wow, really? Did you ever get a sunburn from being out for so long?”

“…Uh, no. Trees provide shade.”

Not that it wasn’t already obvious, but this girl is strange. I must’ve been giving her a rude look, because now she’s blushing red and stammering.

“D-Don’t act like I’m some dumbass! I-I just figured it was possible, even with trees! I haven’t been alive as long as you! I don’t know everything!”

“Oh, so now you admit to being a kid?”

I hit the right nerve at the right moment as now she’s stamping her feet angrily.

“That’s not what I mean you dipshit! I’m not a kid! I just don’t have the same level of ‘wisdom’ that you do!”

“So, you admit that older people tend to know more than someone your age?”

“Urrghhhhhhhhhh!! Just shut the fuck up!”

She kicks me in the shin during her outburst.

“Agh! You little shit!”

I kneel down to hold my leg. While doing so, I notice that Ariel’s having some difficulty keeping her footing due to the handcuffs. I decide to take advantage of the situation and forcefully thrust my right arm forward, which causes her to trip and fall right on her face.

“A-Ahhhhhhhh! …Ghhhhhh…”

She slowly gets up from the grass with scrapes on her knees and tears welling in her eyes. This might sound strange given what I just did, but I actually strongly dislike corporal punishment. I only think it’s okay to hit a kid if said kid is being violent towards you. Given that I was kicked in the shins, my own moral compass tells me that I was justified in my actions, yet despite thinking that, I can’t help but feel kind of bad when I look at her crying face. I’m kind of pathetic, aren’t I?

“…You know, you could end this by just unlocking the cuffs.”

I stand back up while saying that. It would seem to be that despite falling flat on her face, Ariel has no interest in giving up. My statement towards her does nothing but cause her to suck back her tears and make a disgusting snorting noise from her nose.

“N-No way!”

Ariel reaches into her pocket and pulls the key out. Shen then pulls her shirt up to the point where I can see the entirety of her sports bra and puts the key right into said bra. After putting her shirt back down she holds on to my left arm and looks up.

“…If you want the key that badly, you can get it yourself.”

She rubs her budding breasts against my arm as she says this. I think she’s trying to act “seductive”.

“…Right then. Let’s head to the park.”

I keep moving forward and despite her attempts at keeping me from moving, Ariel succeeds in nothing but falling on her face again. Which makes her give up on resisting and we continue through the woods in silence. More random childhood memories bubble up as I take in the scenery. Along with the weird idea to mark and map out the trees of the woods (I don’t even remember who got that plan started in the first place), we’d also sometimes hang out at each other’s homes. I never had anyone come over to my home though, that was too risky.

As I got older, I became less interested in staying outside, especially after some other kids discovered an old, abandoned movie theater. This large empty space was appealing for the more introverted teens among us. We were also intrigued by the fact that although it was an abandoned building, the electricity and plumbing were still working. Whenever this occurs it’s usually because the PearlCoin organization has deemed the building “useful” in some manner. However, we never saw anyone enter or use the theater, and after a few weeks of noticing that no one was using it, us kids decided to make it our own hangout spot.

Along with all basic utilities still being functional, the theater still seemed to be furnished the same way it was when it got abandoned. Meaning that the movie screening rooms still had huge monitors and seats in them. The more tech savvy kids managed to find a way to screw with the projectors that would allow us to watch whatever we wanted on the monitors. Some kids would also set up video game tournaments as well. When I got into drugs, my friends and I enjoyed tripping out to whatever was playing on the monitors.

However, eventually the PearlCoin organization made their appearance when it was revealed that they were preparing to have the building refurbished as an education center for new members. Needless to say, they weren’t happy to discover that a bunch of teenagers were using the place to fool around in, and we were forced to abandon our cool hangout spot. We tried to find another place to hang out at, but nothing was ever as good as the abandoned movie theater.

“…Hey, isn’t that the green cloth you were talking about?”

I’m taken out of my nostalgic spacing out as Ariel points at a tree ahead of us. Sure enough, there’s a tree with a green cloth tied to one of the branches.

“Uh, yeah, right…”

I still haven’t managed to get myself out of the cuffs yet. Worst of all, Ariel has the key hidden somewhere I can’t reach unless I want to become an unforgivable human being. I take a deep breath and exit the forest into the park via the trees. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be anyone here…for now. I have the two of us head over to one of the benches at the park. Maybe if I just sit around doing nothing, she’ll get bored enough that she’ll want to get away from me. The park here doesn’t really have much outside of a few benches, restrooms that are rarely if ever cleaned, and varying amounts of homeless people hanging out. Today seems to be one of those special days where there’s no homeless people at the park though. Ariel doesn’t seem to mind being here and is picking up random dandelions.

“You know those are technically considered weeds, right?”

I call out to her, and she responds.

“…That can’t be, they’re too pretty to be weeds.”

After responding, she starts blowing on the seeds. Do people really bother with making a wish before blowing on those things? I think that’s just an excuse people made up because they’re worried that just saying “I like how the seeds in the wind look” would make them look dumb to others. Ariel stares into the wind and watches the dandelion seeds blow in the wind. She almost looks serene enough to make me forget that she’s an annoying brat who has me handcuffed to her…almost.

It’s getting to the point where I’m honestly considering going to the dark side and getting the key from her bra. The fact that I’m even considering such a thing makes me question my sanity. But I really don’t know what to do. I guess I could have her take me to her parents to explain the situation? But I don’t know where she lives and if I asked her, she’d most likely lie to keep me handcuffed. Furthermore, her parents might refuse to consider my point of view at all and see me as some molester trying to hurt their daughter. But they would at least get me out of the cuffs eventually, if nothing else. But how long would that take? She seems determined to keep me by her side for as long as possible and I just want to get away.

I aimlessly look around the park while thinking about what to do. Let’s see, I know paper clips can be used to unlock handcuffs but there sure as hell aren’t any of those around here. Uhh…I know with rope, you can rub it against a surface long enough until it breaks, but that obviously doesn’t work for metal. Is inappropriately touching a young girl really the only way for me to get out of this situation? No, I gotta figure something out…Hmm, looking at the restrooms is giving me an idea. A rather juvenile idea that could fail if Ariel is stubborn enough, a perverted degenerate, or both. But it’s still preferable to groping. I get up from the bench and start walking. The movement forces Ariel up and she awkwardly walks behind me.

“H-Hey, where are we going?”

She looks confused. I decide to not answer her question and keep heading to the restrooms. I’ve heard that cleaning the park restrooms is considered a type of special punishment for low ranking PearlCoin members. I don’t know what misbehavior specifically calls for this punishment but given that the restrooms at best still look and smell pretty gross, I’m going to assume that this is a punishment said PearlCoin members try to avoid as best they can. Once I step into the entrance of the men’s restroom, I feel resistance coming from Ariel.

“U-Umm! W-What are we doing here?”

I look over to see her blushing red and looking uncomfortable. It’s good to see that she still seems to have something resembling purity in her heart. It’s exactly what I need for my plan to work.

“Isn’t it obvious? I need to use the bathroom.”

“Y-Yeah but…This is the is the men’s bathroom…”

She’s looking down at the floor and fidgeting nervously.

“Yeah and? I’m a man.”

She raises her head a little and I can see that her blushing has only deepened. I figure it’s best to not show her any mercy.

“What? Did you seriously not consider the possibility of this happening when you decided to cuff us together? How stupid can you be?”

She gives me an irritated look for a few seconds before reaching into her bra and pulling the key out.

“…F-Fine…”

She finally unlocks the handcuffs and I’m free. My plan worked. I’d be in real trouble if she decided to call me on my bluff.

“You…You go do your business and I’ll wait outside for you.”

She’s awfully naïve, isn’t she? She’s really acting as if I’d just willingly allow myself to get cuffed to her again.

“Yeah, I don’t need to go. That was just a plan for you to uncuff me and it worked. See ya.”

I inform her while walking out of the restroom. She looks shocked as if I betrayed her. I have no idea why. Did she think that we were bonding or something throughout this idiotic endeavor?  I can hear her shouting increasingly nonsensical insults at me in a voice that’s choking on tears as I leave the park.

“Douchebag! Shithead! Fuckass! Smegma brain!”

She seems to see herself as the victim here, and I have no idea why. I’ve had more than enough shenanigans for the day, so I head straight home back to my apartment.

It’s almost 3 by the time I’m back home. I proceed to rummage through my DVDs to find something to watch and pick some random pornos to watch. You know, it’s strange. I don’t really watch pornos for the sake of sexual arousal. I watch them for potential entertainment value and don’t see them as really all that different from other regular movies. Well okay, I mean, obviously the content is quite different from the average film, but the point still stands.

The first porno I watched was pretty forgettable. It was some 1980s flick about a slutty woman being a slut and nothing more to it beyond that. I would’ve fallen asleep if it weren’t for the actress loudly faking her orgasms. The next porno I put it wasn’t boring at the very least, but I still had some issues with it. It was basically a sexualized take on the incestuous hillbilly stereotype with a family of rednecks who like to fuck each other.

There’s quite a bit of debate out there when it comes to whether sexual fetishes are a nature or a nurture thing. From what I’ve read about it, the truth seems to be a mixture of both. Because while there certainly are cases where it’s clear that some people are just born with strange paraphilias, you can also find instances where someone’s paraphilia originated from incidents that left a mark on them psychologically. A notable example of this is that it’s not uncommon for people who were traumatized from growing up in abusive, unloving households to develop a fetish for incest.

While that certainly is the case for some people…I can’t say it’s the case for me. If anything, growing up with the family I had impacted me the opposite way. I find incest porn to not just be a turn off, but completely revolting. Which makes me rather dumb for having decided to watch this incest porno. I ultimately ended up turning it off half an hour in when I could no longer stomach the redneck girl screaming “daddy” while getting plowed in the ass. I ended up settling on a Japanese scat film where petite Japanese girls spent 70 minutes shitting out more shit than the average human being has ever shat their entire life.

After watching a few more nondescript porn films, I decided to go into my room to browse the internet a bit. There’s a thread on PSDS discussing the made-up mental illnesses that therapists in LOVE diagnose citizens with as a way to discourage independent thought. These include things such as “Dissociative Depression”, “Hyperactive Narcissism”, and “Delusional Anxiety”. Getting diagnosed with these illnesses guarantee a massive loss of LOVE POINTS and more often than not, getting sent to a “mental health center” only a day after the diagnosis is received.

I spent the rest of my evening browsing through the thread, soaking up information that frankly isn’t all that relevant to my life. Still, is it wrong to want to learn about things even if I’ll most likely never have any use for the information? I had a pretty weird day today, and not in a good way. I suppose I should be thankful that I managed to get out of that situation with Ariel without anyone I know learning about it. I can only hope that tomorrow will be more peaceful.

Author’s Note: I don’t have anything comment about with this chapter. It’s just more events that move the story along happening.

Yet another day, yet another morning of being woken up early by my doorbell. I check my phone to see that once again, she’s come exactly at 8. You know, I like sleeping in and I’m not the kind of person who can easily go back to sleep after being woken up. But I guess this is how my life’s going to be for the time being. Thus, I once again engage in my new morning routine of forcing myself out of bed, heading to the door, greeting Blanche, getting my food, and then talking with her for a bit. We don’t usually talk about anything too interesting. Just generic “How are you” like statements and other such things. But today I felt like bringing up Bernie.

“…Weird thing to mention, but are you familiar with a guy named Bernie? He’s a co-worker of mine and I know he’s kind of famous at the clinic.”

She pauses for a few seconds before answering.

“…Oh yes, ‘The Human Punching Bag’… I really dislike that nickname. I know of him, but I don’t really see him often. I have been seeing his wife Holly though, as I’ve been assigned to assist her throughout her pregnancy. They both seem to be happy and healthy all things concerned, and my job requires that it stays that way for them. Is there a reason you brought him up?”

“No reason really.”

This leads to an awkward pause before we give our goodbyes and Blanche leaves. I’m not hungry right now, so I put the food into the fridge before heading back to my room. I have the day off today, and due to being woken up early that gives me more time for productive things. However, I am not a productive human being in the least, so I’m just going to spend this extra time browsing the internet. There’s some interesting discussion on PSDS due to the article that was posted on the main pursuitspecial blog today. It’s about the existence of race and sex segregated residential towers in LOVE.

These towers are referred to in LOVE as “Trauma Victim Residential Towers” and they were first built around 30 years ago. It was stated by the government that the idea was to give people who were so traumatized by sexism/racism fueled abuse their own place where they can live safely. However, there are several problems with that claim. The main one being that a citizen is required to have a high amount of LOVE POINTS in order to be given permission to move into one of these towers.

So, if you’re a citizen of LOVE suffering abuse over your sex/race and you don’t appease the LOVER ideology enough to accumulate the LOVE POINTS required…Well, you’re just gonna have to suck it up.

Ultimately, these “Trauma Victim Residential Towers” would end up being populated entirely by people who abuse others due to sex/race rather than the other way around. Plus, the fact that there are people who are born and raised in these towers is enough to make one question the real purpose of these towers. After all, how can a newborn need a place to feel safe from trauma when they haven’t even been alive enough to form long lasting memories?

The blog post also featured some interesting testimonies from people who were born and raised in these towers. A guy born in one of the race-based towers talked about how everyone was required to take yearly DNA tests in order to make sure no one was lying about their racial genetic makeup, and how these tests had a tendency to change what they considered appropriate year by year. Leading to people who had passed a test prior before being kicked out if they didn’t pass the next year. As one can imagine, this tended to break up families and lovers.

Another girl talked about her life growing up in a female only tower. Turns out, there were also purity tests going on in her tower. You see, the people living in the sex segregated towers do so because they’re obviously not fond of the opposite sex. However, they also live in LOVE, a part of the world that prides itself on its highly advanced sex change surgeries. As you can imagine, this leads to paranoia from members in the sex segregated towers about if someone was always naturally female or became that way via surgery.

If this was back in the old world where sex change surgery was more rudimentary, it’d be much easier to tell. But with LOVE’s advanced surgeries that keep you fertile and change your chromosomes? Suddenly it’s a lot more difficult to tell whose always been female since birth and who wasn’t, especially when the government of LOVE reward LOVE POINTS to those who get said surgery.

This paranoia leads to a lot of witch hunts and violent attacks against others. Which more often than not, just hurt people who never had sex change surgery of any kind. According to a guy on PSDS who grew up in a male only tower, a similar paranoia was also there, with similar consequences. The girl also talked about how couples in sex segregated towers had children. Now in LOVE, it is actually possible for same sex couples to have children on their own accord if they get surgeries like Landica Extensio, wherein a woman is given a penis but otherwise stays female and Perineum Incisus, which you guessed it, is when a man now has a vagina but otherwise remains male. However, LOVERS who live in sex segregated towers tend to hate the opposite sex to the point where even getting such surgeries nauseates them.

So, the sex segregated towers of LOVE have an unusual system wherein habitants of the male only towers donate semen to habitants of the female only towers. Once a female couple is incubated, the medical practitioners of the tower then engage in some mild genetic engineering in order to guarantee that one female baby is born for the female couple and that one male baby is born and sent to the male couple. Not only is it an incredibly convoluted way to have children, but also somewhat controversial even among LOVERS due to the fact that genetic engineering is applied to make sure that both couples get a child. However, the government of LOVE has stated that this is the only circumstance in which they use genetic engineering. So they say, but testimonies from people who’ve been experimented on in “mental health centers” say otherwise.

I thought I spent a good amount of time being absorbed with reading the blog and the forum thread that accompanied it, but once I finished reading it, I saw that it was only 9:20 AM. I decide to go get my food back out of the fridge. Today’s meal is a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup and salad. While that’s all heating up, I rummage around my DVD collection to find something interesting to watch. I eventually stumble upon an old anime called Bomba-chan.

Bomba-chan is about a cute Bombardier Beetle girl (because the Japanese have made it their mission to turn anything and everything into cute anime girls) learning how to properly control her spraying defense mechanism with comedy shenanigans aplenty. It was pretty big back in the day and even now people still like to talk about it. Mildred herself tends to refer to Bomba-chan as a “top tier waifu”.

The Bomba-chan fandom has a peculiar history. Although it was an adaptation of a manga made by a guy who had a history of making fart fetish manga, the anime managed to be wholesome enough that it attracted a surprisingly high number of “normal” people who just saw it as a cute show about learning to accept one’s self. These “normal” people would constantly harass fan artists for lewding Bomba-chan even though anyone who did the most basic research on Bomba-chan knew it’s lewd origins. Then the second season aired, which was more blatantly fetishy/lewd than the last, to the point of even having a new loli character introduced. This enraged the “normal” people so much that they decried the show and pretended that they never liked it in the first place. This happened years ago, but it’s still funny to joke about.

I watch about four episodes or so before I decide that maybe I should probably go take a shower and then head outside the apartment for a bit. While I’m in the bathroom, I’m struck with a dilemma; I don’t really know where to go as I tend to only go outside for work and shopping for things I can’t just order online. This is an issue because I’ve been finding myself on a downward trajectory towards becoming a shut-in that neglects personal hygiene, and that’s a fate I’m desperately trying to avoid. But I also have no real place to “hang out” at either, not since high school. Well, I guess I have Marisa’s grave, even if that’s not much.

…I guess I’ll go to Marisa’s grave then.

The abandoned house I buried Marisa at looks as decrepit as ever. I’ve never actually gone inside it despite having a curiosity about it. It’s not even because I think it’d be disrespectful to the people who last lived in it or anything like that…It’s because I’m deeply worried about encountering spiders in there. Not only that, but I’m paranoid at the idea that some random passerby could come across me screaming at the sight of spiders. Look, when I was a kid, my siblings would use my aversion to spiders as an easy way to get me to do what they wanted, and I just can’t afford to let others know this weakness of mine after that.

My mental deliberation of if I should explore the house or not is soon interrupted by a loud voice.

“Hey! You’re that annoying guy from the store!”

I turn to see a small ginger girl pointing at me…Ah yeah, I recognize her.

“Oh, well if it isn’t Mermaid Girl.”

She stops pointing at me and looks confused.

“M-Mermaid Girl!? Where did that come from!?”

“Oh, you don’t like that? How about ‘God’s Lion’?”

Her confusion has now morphed into blustered anger.

“I-I’m not a mermaid or a lion! I’m just Ariel, a regular human girl!”

Okay that’s enough fucking around with her over her name.

“I’m just joking, I know you. You ever got a chance to watch any of the Berserker Man movies?”

She looks at me suspiciously, not knowing if I’m still fucking with her or not. But answers honestly.

“…I came across a streaming website that had them on there, tried watching the first one, but then turned it off 20 minutes in because it was that bad.”

It should be noted that the first kill occurs twenty minutes in the first Berserker Man. There is a chance that she turned off the movie because of its graphic content…If it weren’t for the fact that the first Berserker Man is the least gory out of the whole series.

“…Yeah, nobody likes the first one, it’s pretty mediocre. The kills are lame and the Berserker Man character wasn’t fully thought out yet. That said, it’s still better than the one where he was in space.”

Ariel is now giving me the kind of baffled look that any reasonable person gives when they learn of Berserker Man 7: Beyond the Stars.

“…There was one where he went to space?”

“Yup.”

From what I’ve read, it wasn’t even supposed to be a Berserker Man movie. It was originally just a really shitty sci-fi script about a spaceship crew all dying of a “mysterious illness” that turned out to be someone on the crew betraying and poisoning them. The studio hastily rewrote the script to feature Berserker Man, and this led to the creation of a movie so terrible that even Mildred, someone who loves trashy B-movies, can’t stomach it.

Ariel pipes up with a question.

“…How come you’re okay with talking to me about these movies now?”

“Because I’m not on shift. I didn’t sell you the movies, so even if you did get traumatized by them, it wouldn’t be my problem. By the way, it’s not good manners to get pissy at an employee just trying to follow their boss’ orders.”

“…I only got pissy because you were treating me like a little kid.”

She’s acting much calmer compared to that time at the store. That’s nice.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you about that beyond ‘tough luck’. You may not be a ‘child’ per say, but you’re still a kid at 14.”

Admittedly, what makes someone an “adult” is a bit more blurry in a time and place where age of consent laws aren’t a thing. Sure, most people find the idea of molesting children to be abhorrent and it’s not uncommon for business and landlords to have regulations regarding people under 18, but that doesn’t change the fact that there will always be sick people in world. It can get to the point where some territories have their own child porn studios to exploit children with.

Since there aren’t any laws against this, no one can really do anything about the sexual exploitation and molestation of children outside of mob justice, and from what I’ve seen from online anecdotes, angry anti-child molesting mobs almost always go after the wrong people, never actually catch perpetrators, turn out to be engaging in the very same behavior they were building a mob over, or a mixture of all three.

It’s unfortunate to say, but actual successful justice against child molesters is few and far between all the failures. But I doubt I could properly explain all this to Ariel, who’s now pouting at the fact that I called her a “kid”. Even though I conceded that she’s not a ‘child’. Of course, that’s still not good enough for her.

“Can you really call me a ‘kid’ when I have pubic hair, and I’ve been getting my period for two years now? In fact, I’m having my period right now!”

…You know, I was expecting her to talk back, I just wasn’t expecting her to be that blunt.

“…Just so you know, an actual adult would know not to bring up those sorts of things around strangers.”

“I don’t agree that we’re strangers. Sure, we don’t really know each other, but we’ve been talking for a bit, and I think it’s okay for me to tell you about personal things. You may be kind of annoying, but I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”

I have no idea what part of interacting with me gave her the impression that I can’t possibly be a bad guy. Sure, I’m so physically weak that even trying to start something with a little girl could end badly for me, but there are many other ways a ‘bad guy’ can hurt someone. Ariel starts to fish something out of her pockets.

“…Besides, even if you are a bad guy, my parents gave me these!”

She pulls out a pair of handcuffs from her shorts.

…Yes handcuffs. The things that police officers would use to take people to jail back in the old world. Nowadays the only people who own those are collectors, kidnappers, and BDSM enthusiasts. I guess the idea her parents have is that she can trick a creep into the handcuffs and then…Leave them to die? Take them to her parents? I find the logic here confusing. I feel like if you’re a parent worried about your kid getting attacked, you should probably just get them a gun, taser, or any kind of weapon really. I dunno, maybe her parents are pacifists.

“See? I’ll be okay if someone tries to hurt me!”

“Ugh, fine. I get it. Look, I’m gonna head off to somewhere else now so uh…You go have fun with your handcuffs.”

I decide to end the conversation and leave the abandoned house. Looking at my phone I can see that it’s 2 PM. I’ve only been out for less than two hours. I feel that if I want to successfully avoid becoming a shut-in, I need to be out of the house for at least three hours. But I don’t know where to go. Thanks to Blanche, grocery shopping isn’t really something I need to do right now. I suppose I could go to the rec center, but the people there tend to get mad if you just loiter around in the lobby, and there’s no way in hell I’m wasting money on a random class or game of basketball. I guess I could just walk around aimlessly, but that doesn’t sit right with me.

Maybe I could try the park? The problem with the park is that it’s not uncommon to find homeless people living there and… I’m not going to say that I dislike all homeless people, however I do find that most homeless people are so far gone mentally that It’s better to avoid them as much as possible. So, I guess I’ll head to the park and if there’s homeless people there I’ll just head home regardless of if I met my goal of being outside for three hours or not. With that in mind, I make my way to the local park.

…However, as I’m heading towards the park, I noticed something. I’m being followed. By Mermaid Girl. I figure that it’s best to treat her as if she doesn’t have malicious intent. For now.

“So, where are you headed too?”

I stop walking and ask her a simple question.

“Oh, I just felt like hanging out with you, so I‘m going wherever you’re going.”

I have no idea where she got the idea that I’m okay with her following me around. This is a misconception I should clear up fast. I’d really rather not start getting a reputation for being overly friendly with young girls.

“I don’t recall giving you permission to hang out with me.”

“…Do I need permission? You’re just walking around and so am I.”

“You’re aware that stalking was considered a crime in the old world, right?”

“I-I’m not stalking you! I’m not planning on following you home or anything like that! I just wanna hang out! What’s wrong with that!?”

“What’s wrong with that is I refuse to get hassled by people over a possible misconception of me being a molester that would be entirely your fault.”

“…How would hanging out with me make people think you’re a molester?”

This response caused me to bury my face in my hands for what was probably no more for a few seconds but felt like minutes. I can still hear her talking.

“…Hey, why are you acting like I said something stupid? How would the two of us hanging out make people think you’re a molester? That’s makes no sense!”

She really doesn’t get it, does she? I’m actually going to have to explain this to her.

“Ugh, God. Okay look… I’ll explain it as simply as possible. I’m an adult, you’re not an adult. Furthermore, we’re not family in any way whatsoever. When people see strange adults hanging around kids like you, they get suspicious of the intentions of said strange adult. Do you understand now?”

She puts her hand to her chin and ponders what I say for a moment.

“…I can see how that can be an issue. But it’s not like you’re approaching me or acting creepy, so I don’t see the issue at all. If someone gets suspicious, we can just explain things to them. And I’m 14! It’s not like I’m a little kid!”

She doesn’t get it. At all.

“You…Are way too optimistic about people. Look, why are you so bent on hanging out with me? Don’t you have scho-wait it’s Saturday… Don’t you have friends from school your own age you can hang out with?”

“I don’t wanna hang out with the kids from school, they’re stupid assholes!”

“Yeah, well, most people are stupid assholes regardless of age.”

This is going nowhere. It seems to be the more I try to get her to stop following me, the more pushy and emboldened she gets. I don’t get why she’s so obsessed with hanging around me of all people. Perhaps it’s just one of those cases of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time” for me.

CLICK

I feel cold metal against my right wrist. The reason I feel cool metal is because there’s a handcuff around said wrist. To my side I see Ariel with a handcuff around her wrist and a smug look on her face.

“Guess you got no choice but to let me hang out with you now.”

I should’ve just stayed home and continued the path to being a shut-in.

Author’s Note: This arc is starting to get a bit spicy. I admit I’m finding myself a bit hesitant with posting the later chapters, given the increasingly pro-censorship world that we live in. But then I realized, if I don’t post the rest of this arc, then the pro-censorship people win. There’s a reason I put up the age verification on the website, and even with that provision, someone’s definitely gonna get pissy at me about the subject matter for this arc.

It’s been about three days since Blanche started coming to my apartment to deliver me food. Outside of getting some extra food and being forced awake early for it, nothing else has really changed. It’s a bit too early to tell if the food she’s giving me is helping me gain weight or not after all. I’ve also got work today and am on shift. Mildred’s absent, not because she’s out on another expedition, but because she’s been working a lot lately and wants to take some time off for her family. So, it’s just me and Liam today. But given Liam’s typical attitude of never saying more than a single word of confirmation, it might as well just be me and a drone working together. The door opens and a burly man walks in only to trip and fall over himself.

…I recognize that guy. It’s Bernie.

Bernie is a rather extroverted and forward guy, the opposite of me. After the original email exchange we had, I had assumed that would be the end of interaction between us. Bernie however, saw the event as the beginning of a new friendship. He started sending me more casual emails about how his day went and wanting to know about how my day went. Not wanting to make an enemy out of a co-worker, I went along with it. The amount of personal information that he’s exchanged with me since is concerning. Over the past week or so I’ve come to learn far more about Bernie’s home life than I ever thought I would. I now know about life in his crowded house with his pregnant wife and seven children. I also know about his parents, the 3D printed gun store they run, and how they’re currently preparing to retire and have his younger sister take over. All I did was send him one message and now he won’t stop telling me his life story.

Bernie’s told me that he only talks this much with people he trusts. Even though I’ve done nothing worthy of his trust. It’s not like I’ve been giving meaningful replies about my life. All that’s been going on has just been him sending long paragraphs about his life with images to me (which is how I learned what he looks like), and then me just replying with a few simple sentences that don’t really say anything about me or my life whatsoever. Yet despite this incredibly shallow form of interaction, Bernie has decided that he likes me enough that he wants to actually meet me in real life and not just talk via email exchanges. I told him that really wasn’t necessary but it’s obvious that he disagrees given that he’s now visiting the store while I’m on shift. After he gets up from face planting on the floor, he walks right up to me. I’m taken aback by how he has the physique of someone who could pulverize me if he were less friendly. He examines me a bit before introducing himself.

“…You’re Gray, right? You seem to fit Mildred’s description. I can see why she made a joke about you being a vampire.”

I’d appreciate it if Mildred didn’t make dumb jokes about me when I’m not around.

“…Uh, yeah, that’s me. Is there any reason why you’re here?”

I’m not sure what he’s hoping to achieve from this. It doesn’t help that he won’t stop scratching his back, which just makes this feel weirder.

“Like I said in the email, I wanted to see you in real life!”

“…Yeah, but I’m on shift right now, so this isn’t really the best time for chit chat.”

This is of course, total bullshit. Things get boring when there aren’t any customers around, to the point where even an introvert like me needs to find some way to not be bored. I just don’t want to talk to Bernie.

“Hey, that just means we can hang out some other time! Actually, this is a good time to ask, what’s your phone number? Do you have a cell phone?”

I do have a cell phone, but mostly just to use as a clock and occasionally to call a store/business if I have a question and don’t feel like going there. I don’t really like to deal with random calls from people as I’d rather not get my phone bill up too high. I’ve heard too many horror stories of what the PearlCoin Organization has done to people late on their payments and I don’t want any of that to happen to me.

“…Yeah, I do. If I give you my number, you’re not just going to drive up my phone bill with long phone conversations, right? My sister did that all the time when I was young and my family nearly got in trouble over it.”

He laughs at my question as if he thinks I’m making a joke.

“Hah hah hah! No! It’d just be a convenient way to invite you to hang out! Much better than using email.”

That wasn’t a joke. There was an incident where my sister drove the phone bill so high, that my parents were late paying the phone bill and we were threatened by PearlCoin goons. Even my brother was scared. That incident led to my sister being banned from talking to her friends on the phone for six months.

“…I’m not one for casual hangouts, plus I’m pretty sure I’d bore you.”

“Nonsense! I’ve been liking what you’ve been sending me in the emails!”

I have no idea how casually responding to information about his life and then only giving vague details about my own life is appealing to him, but it’s clear that he’s not going to back down. As much as I’d love to be an asshole and find a method to push him off of me, there’s no way in hell I could get away with doing that to a guy of Bernie’s size.

“…Fine, I’ll do it.”

And so, the two of us exchanged cell phone numbers. I’m probably going to regret this, but I don’t really have any other choice. I cannot emphasize how much I don’t understand what the hell Bernie sees in me.

“Well, I’ll see you later then! I need to head to the drug store. I fell into a poison ivy bush earlier and the itchiness is driving me crazy!”

He gives his goodbyes as he leaves the store. At least I understand why he was scratching his back now. Even though I’ve only recently started any form of interaction with Bernie, I’ve been aware of him before. He’s kind of famous among workers at the store and Mildred’s talked to me about him several times. For whatever reason, Bernie seems to have been born with an incredibly bizarre streak of bad luck. He struggled with a weak constitution as a child, was and still is extremely clumsy, and has a tendency to wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has been threatened by random hooligans and PearlCoin Organization members (apparently, he resembles a high-ranking member from their main rivals, the ConchDollar Group), has suffered an injury in just about every body part you could imagine, and has gotten the brunt of all sorts of nasty illnesses. It’s to the point where he’s a regular at the clinic and everyone who works there knows him by name.

Yet despite all that, Bernie’s still standing. His existence is strange enough to make Mildred question if he’s actually human or just a joke made up by God. The joke hypothesis does make more sense when you consider that his family owns a 3D printed gun shop. To his family’s credit, they have banned Bernie from ever stepping foot in the store presumably because of his bad luck, and I imagine it’s also why his sister is taking the reign of being the current owner instead of him. My thoughts are interrupted by me getting a text message from Bernie saying “TEST”. To which I promptly send a confirmation reply to. Liam comes up to me with a duster.

“…Mildred wants you to dust the front counter.”

Right, Liam only talks when I have to do something, I’ve never worked alone with him before and this current shift is teaching me that working alone with Liam is unbearable. A customer (or someone else) comes in, I talk with them, they leave, Liam gives me a single sentence telling me to do something, I do that thing until someone else enters the store, and the cycle repeats. Look, I may not be one for making friendships out of a single email, but I still need someone to keep my shifts from being boring. But that’s not how Liam works, and several more hours go by with this torturous cycle of working with him continuing.

It feels like I’ve been stuck with Liam for a week, but no, it’s still the same shift and it’s getting near to closing time. The later hours of the night shift tend to be quiet outside of the occasional drunk or drug addict, of which there appear to be none showing up tonight. In short, this is quite possibly one of the most boring shifts I’ve ever worked and I demand conversation from Liam, who has somehow managed to make me look sociable by comparison. How the hell do I get a conversation out of him anyways? I know Mildred has had conversations with him, with her claim that “he’s willing to talk to me because I too was a socially awkward otaku”, but it could also be that even Liam knows it’s a bad idea to not respond to your boss. But whatever, I’m bored and I’m tired of Liam never saying anything, so I decide to come up to him while he’s in the midst of stocking video games on the shelves.

“How’re you doing?”

“…Fine.”

A typical, short reply from him. That’s no good.

“Nah, I mean. How’s life going?”

He looks up at me irritated.

“…If you have the time for idle chit-chat, you have the time to help me out.”

…You know what, that works. If I managed to get an actual sentence out of him from that, surely I can start a conversation while helping him out.

“Sure, okay.”

I go to get some games out of the box by Liam to put on the shelves. All of the video games sold here would be referred to as “bootlegs” in the old world. Due to the fact that game emulators have become so powerful in recent years (even including emulation of old PCs), most people don’t really bother with original copies of video games these days unless they’re collectors. As such, people like Mildred tend to repackage games into emulated versions with new changes implemented to make games look and run better than the original releases. Add in some bonus games, and even some sprite swaps, and you have a product people are willing to buy over the original. Of course, there are those collectors who not only want the original game in the original package, but also with the original console. So, we have a few of those as well, but since collectors don’t frequently come here, those items tend to collect dust.

A common type of release that gets made are multiple game packs containing several games centered around either a common theme, developer, franchise, and so on. This 5 in 1 farming sim game pack I’m holding on to is a good example of the average type of game release from a store like ours. But of course, people don’t have to buy gaming packs, they can just download ROMs and ISOs online, however those come with the risk of being infected with malware. Specifically, the type that uses another person’s computer for cryptocurrency farming thus causing even the best computers to burn up while playing a game.

…Hmm, this game pack I’m holding could make for a good ice breaker.

“…You play video games? I only really play sim games myself. I actually remember being big on these sorts of farming games as a kid.”

Liam remains silent, but he looks my way.

“…”

“Yeah, so what I liked about these games was that along with making something like farming surprisingly fun, you also had the whole town of characters to talk to and even get married too. My brother used to make fun of me for playing them, and it gave me kind of a complex about it during high school.”

“…That was mean of him.”

Okay, I managed to get another sentence out of him. A simple sentence sure, but a sentence, nonetheless.

“I also like business sims. There was this theme park one I was really into back in the day. Mostly ‘cause I enjoyed making extreme roller coasters that would kill the visitors or just picking them up and dropping them into lakes. My sister would call me barbaric and disgusting over that, which also lead to a complex for a short time.”

“…That was mean of her.”

…I’m just getting minor variations of the same sentiment. This isn’t working. I’m going to force conversation out of him even if it kills me.

“Enough about me, do you play video games? Or do you just have any stories about your siblings?”

“…I’m an only child.”

I need to bring up something that’ll guarantee me more than just simple one sentence responses. But to get that from someone like Liam, I would need to bring up something that would cause him to go on a tangent. But because he’s so tight lipped, it’s difficult to get a read of him. Mildred did mention him being a “socially awkward otaku”, so perhaps I could bring up CLOCK, the greatest anime ever made. The only issue with that is that I cannot talk about the scene where the main character and his daughter finally bond together as parent and child over his dead wife without getting emotional. I need casual conversation, and discussing emotionally powerful anime will just make me have a teary breakdown in public. Maybe I should just give up on this.

…But I’m still bored, and that’s a problem. Sure, putting stuff back on the shelves is giving me something to do, but I feel unsatisfied with how things are going. Perhaps I should just accept my inevitable fate of death by boredo-

“…Hey, could you go to the backroom? …There’s one more box that needs to be taken out… You’ll see it under a sign that says ‘boxes to empty’.”

“Sure, but weren’t you getting all the other boxes out?”

He explains in a surprisingly direct manner, and without pausing.

“Because you were at the front counter and not helping me, now could you please get that box?”

Interesting. He’s one of those types who’s quiet and doesn’t speak much until you get on his nerves. Granted, it’s really not that shocking, but still worth nothing.

…Actually, that gives me an idea. I’m going to play a prank on Liam. Nothing too crazy, I’m just going to spend a long time in the backroom until Liam decides to check on me and then startle him. Is it mean? Maybe just a little. But I’m at a point where I’m desperate to get anything from Liam. I walk back into the backroom as requested, and see the box as instructed, located just to the right side of the door. I can make this work. I just need to keep the lights off and hide myself behind the side of the box not by the door. Of course, I’m going to need to wait a bit, and I don’t know how long that’ll take. But I figure while I’m waiting, I can look through the stuff in this box. Sure, I’m keeping the lights off for the sake of my prank, but there’s a nightlight right by me that I can use to examine the products in here.

This box seems to be filled with DVDs of various movies and a few TV show episode sets. The concept of TV has radically changed since the old world ended. Since all of the big corporations are a part of LOVE, all television outside of LOVE is owned by the local cryptocurrency group. I suppose the old world term “public-access television” is the most accurate description for shows produced in the territories. Whatever is on TV will differ greatly depending on where you live and how much your local cryptocurrency group gives a shit. PearlCoin kind of gives a shit, mostly because helping produce entertaining shows can entice people into joining their ranks. I don’t really watch TV these days, but from what I remember as a kid…There was the daily news segment, talk shows ranging from boring people talking about boring things to conspiracy theorists getting into fist fights with each other, random documentaries that looking back I’m pretty sure were mostly fabricated, and the occasional cartoon that appealed to child me.

I remember there was this one show about talking fruit characters re-enacting stories from the bible. The creator of the show also had a strong stance against censoring the bible. I know this because I will never forget watching the episode about Sodom and Gomorrah as a seven year old and witnessing banana Lot being taken advantage of by his strawberry daughters and the daughters giving birth to raspberry Moab and Ammon. There has been much debate with people my age over whether the show was made by an extremely devout Christian who didn’t give a shit about traumatizing children, or an atheist who wanted to take the piss out of Christianity by traumatizing children.

“…Hey, are you still in there?”

Liam’s starting to get impatient. It’d be best to not reply so that he can come to the room faster and I can get to freaking him out already. I keep browsing through the DVDs. DVDs aren’t the most high quality video format out there, but after the world split, they became the most popular format in the territories if only because the more high-quality video formats were owned by companies that became part of LOVE. On that note, since the territories have no copyright laws, bootleg DVDs of all sorts of media are always being made and sold. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say that 8 out of 10 DVDs sold in all territories are bootlegs, especially if they’re from something that was released near the split due to everything being only available on streaming services at that time. That’s not to say that streaming still isn’t a thing, it’s just all that all streaming websites are either what people in the old world would refer to as “piracy websites” or they’re the official streaming sites of whatever territory they’re from. It’s usually the former as most cryptocurrency groups can’t be bothered to do the latter.

That isn’t to say that “legitimate” releases of movies and the like don’t exist and that people don’t seek them out. It’s just that the “bootlegs” are much easier to come by, are usually just straight up copies of the original “legitimate” releases and may even come with extra bonuses that make them of even greater value to a collector than the actual “legitimate” release. Sure, they’re not in HD, but there are HD torrents for many famous movies available, and AI has gotten quite good at upscaling old movies from the old world that never got HD re-releases. The current box I’m looking through seems to be filled with releases of the various type of shows that were shown in this area…There’s even a DVD of the Christian fruit cartoon, with a cover of pomegranate Jesus on the cross.

I can finally hear the sound of Liam’s footsteps. I put the DVD I currently have in my hands back into the box and close it up, right before crouching low enough that I can be hidden from view. As his footsteps get closer, I can hear him grumbling to himself as well.

“…I tell him to do one simple thing and he just disappears on me…Why are the lights off?”

Now the door’s opening and here’s my chance. As Liam fumbles around looking for the light switch, I jump out to him.

“…EIYA…”

I had no real plan of what to say when jumping out of him so all that came out was the first random thing to pop in my head.

“Aaah!!!”

But it doesn’t seem like whatever noise came out of my mouth would matter in the end, because my prank appears to have been successful. I turn on the lights and I can see that Liam’s clinging on to the door frame and looks like he suffered a heart attack.

“…W-Why did you do that?”

He asks me with a shaking voice. Although I’m aware of how bad this’ll make me look, I have no real choice but to answer honestly.

“…I was bored.”

Liam looks at me as if I just admitted to burning down orphanages.

“…A-Are you a psychopath?”

“I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, but I’m fairly certain that I’m not a psychopath. That said, I’m pretty sure I’m a high functioning retard.”

While that self-deprecating comment managed to calm him down, it did nothing to lessen Liam’s newfound negative perception of me. The rest of the shift went by with an awkward atmosphere between the both of us. Neither of us exchanged anymore words with each other until it was time to lock up the store, to which Liam said to me;

“…I can’t tell if I despise or pity you.”

Well, it’s not like he’s fully confident in hating me. So that’s something.

Author’s Note: The beginning of a new arc. I should note that this arc is seven chapters long compared to the four chapters of the previous one. This chapter is also a bit of a filler chapter as this arc is going to center around a certain ginger girl more. I get that filler is usually a bad thing, but I do plan on fleshing Bernie and Liam out more in future arcs, so I’m fine with them getting small cameos here…Just ignore the fact that I haven’t written anything more beyond this second arc. But ideally, I’m just trying to engage in some mild character building even if certain characters aren’t important to the current arc.

Oh another note, I do wonder how my way of doing pop culture references will come off to others. I have characters who are nerdy and work in a store related to nerdy things, so pop culture references do feel kind of necessary. But I also don’t really want to directly name anything either as this story doesn’t take place in the real world, so parodies of stuff people aware of those proprieties can easily recognize works for me. But does it work for other people?

Mildred and I head outside to lock up the store. The night breeze is cool and pleasant. Things are silent with the exception of cricket noises. While locking the door, Mildred starts talking to me.

“…We didn’t really talk at all this shift, did we?”

Since not a whole lot of people come to the store during evening shifts, we usually tend to spend the time chatting about random topics. These can range from mundane discussions about current events going on in the world all the way to philosophizing about the meaning of life. Seeing that Mildred recently came back from an expedition of hers, we could’ve talked about all her new acquisitions. But I guess I was just too busy being lost in my thoughts to say anything. Mildred keeps talking to me.

“I thought for sure you’d have something to say about all those mockbuster movies I found. I mean, Das Foot!? How obvious can you get? … Is something bothering you?”

Although she may be a misanthrope, Mildred is also the kind of person who wants to be attentive towards the few people she cares about. The problem with that is she’s also a bit of an airhead who’s slow on the uptake, so it takes her a while to notice these things. Hell, I’m pretty sure the only reason she noticed me feeling down about my ex was because I got mouthy with a rude customer. I don’t want to tell her that I’ve been ruminating on bad memories, so I decide to deflect.

“It’s nothing. Just don’t have anything to talk about.”

I feel like a regular person would know that I’m lying and keep pushing me to talk, but Mildred’s not the best at reading faces, so she’s satisfied enough.

“Well, that’s fine. I’m gonna call Blanche tomorrow so we can get everything set up.”

“Oh yeah that… I don’t have any food allergies or whatever.”

“Any preferences?”

“I don’t care. She can cook whatever. It’s not like I have to eat it if I don’t like it.”

Mildred’s annoyed with me again.

“Are you serious!?”

“…Okay I get it.”

I relent simply because I don’t want to deal with another lecture. I still don’t really understand Blanche’s motives to be honest. So, she sees me as a friend and is worried about my health, fine. But why is she going to such lengths like this? I mean really, she’s basically forcing herself to make extra food for someone she met half a year ago, had some conversations with, and then didn’t see again until just this week. This feels like way too much effort for something that won’t give her much benefit. Even just saying “she’s doing this out of the kindness of her heart” doesn’t really sit well with me. I live in an area that doesn’t get all that rowdy during the night, so walks home from work are usually pleasant enough. This peace and quiet allows my mind to wander with little to no interruption. After meandering enough in my past life, it seems my brain now just wants to think about the old world and what it was like, despite it ending years before I was so much as a sperm cell. It’s something I’ve always been fascinated with, ever since I was a child. Something I find particularly interesting about the old world is that looking at the media produced makes you think that the people of those days would’ve never allowed the world to become what it is today.

You see, the modern world is essentially split by various forms of authoritative leadership and collectivist societal structures, yet the vast majority of the movies, books, shows, and so on from the old world feature strong anti-authority and anti-collectivism messages in them. So many narratives were made about standing up for what was right, even if it wasn’t popular to do so and believing in the concept of “live and let live”.  Yet as the world fell into conflict and the factions formed, the vast majority of people responsible for those themes and stories became the first and most ardent LOVERS out there. Somehow the same people saying to not to bow down to authoritarianism and to not be afraid to upset the majority over what’s right became the ones who bowed down the hardest to authoritarians and the collective. They were the ones most happy to engage in the new society that the elites behind LOVE had cooked up and overjoyed about attacking anyone who didn’t want it. Sure, it wasn’t all of them, but it was the majority, which essentially means that most people don’t actually believe in the platitudes they spout. Still, the fact that the entire world isn’t controlled by LOVE must mean something, right?

It makes my DVD collection somewhat odd. I suppose it’s not as if artists being scumbags was anything new before the end of the old world. But it does make me think that by me watching films made by people who helped with the formation of LOVE and the general end of “modern society” (at least, what was modern society at the time), I’m essentially causing a lot of people who’ve been dead long before I was born to roll in their graves. If there is an afterlife of some sort, then these people have had to and still have to spend time dealing with the loathsome fact that people like me still enjoy the work that they made and will continue to do so until the end of time.

Back home, I turn on my computer and I guess because I’m feeling kind of masochistic, I decide to head on to fuhenfutou. There’s nothing interesting going on, and because it’s night, that means most of the current posts are coming from smug Europeans (redundant, I know) jacking each other off. I decide to look through my account and the ridiculously low post and comment score it has. Due to these low scores, I can only comment twice a day and can’t make any new threads. As for why that is…

…It’s really, really, fucking stupid.

The Long Journey is a film that despite its massive popularity, to the point where you can still randomly stumble upon merchandise of it that was made decades ago, I had never actually seen it until rather recently. It’s not even like I was super hyped to see it, I just saw a copy of the movie at the store, and after some conversation with Mildred, I decided to take it home for myself to see. And my god, it was an amazing movie fully deserving of the massive popularity it had in the past. A beautiful story of a loving family trying to make the best of a destroyed world. My face was covered in tears by the credits.

So, I did what most lonely losers do after watching their new favorite masterpiece, go on the internet and post about it in the hopes of validation. I found a movie related forum on fuhenfutou and made a post about the film and how it emotionally affected me and then went to bed. The next morning when I went to check on the thread, I was shocked by the insanely low score it had received and the derisive and mocking comments that filled the thread. I’ll be honest, I don’t really pay attention to what’s currently “hip” on the internet and what the latest “popular opinions” are. I guess there’s this popular internet reviewer that I’d never heard of before, and he gave a viciously negative review to The Long Journey only two days before I made my post.

Because people on the internet tend to see their favored online reviewers like gods, this means that the vast majority of the userbase on fuhenfutou came to the conclusion that they also agreed with the guy on his review of The Long Journey, regardless of if they’ve actually seen it. Not only was my post getting downvoted and derided to the extreme, so was my posting/commenting history in general. I suppose I could’ve used my new “only two comments per day” limitation to reply to some comments but given that people going against the general opinion were getting just as harsh treatment, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I knew that the userbase of fuhenfutou could be pretty obnoxious and shitty, yet somehow this behavior was still somewhat of a shock for me. Regardless, that’s the incredibly idiotic story of why I have extremely low post and comment scores on fuhenfutou. I really should just delete my account, but I can’t access the 18+ forums if I do that.

Still, all of this makes me think: are online social media point systems like this really all that different from the LOVE POINTS system? I mean sure, I’m not getting any possessions taken away from me and I don’t have to worry about being “sent away” for having “bad opinions” online. But there’s still something unnerving about how one’s activity on a website can get easily screwed over simply for saying things that the majority don’t like.  And sure, logically speaking, I could just make a new account to bypass the system, which isn’t something people can do living in LOVE. But I dunno, aren’t I letting the internet mob win if I’m still using the site under a “clean slate”?

Even though it’s not even midnight, I decide to get myself ready for bed. I’m having one of those days (well nights in this case) where my mind is filled with nothing but negative thoughts that make me upset and no matter what they do, I just can’t seem to make them go away. My mood tends to fluctuate between “almost okay” and “miserable”. I honestly have a hard time remembering the last time I was truly “happy”. Therapy is usually the recommended course of action for someone like me, but that’s a luxury I can’t afford.  There aren’t a whole lot of therapists in the territories due to most therapists in the old world having become LOVERS and agents of LOVE’s government propaganda after the world split. Which really only leaves me the option of relying on either emotional prostitutes or so-called online “therapy sites”. The problem with emotional prostitutes is that they’re just people with opinions who don’t know shit about psychology (who won’t even fuck you despite having “prostitute” in their job title), and the problem with “therapy sites” is that they’re scams whose workers purposefully make you more miserable so you never stop giving them money. It’s really not all that different from the scams employed by dating websites.

So, I just have to put up with this middle ground of feeling unhappy, but never so unhappy that I attempt suicide. Apparently in the old world, people like me would be given “antidepressants” to help make them feel better, but those aren’t available in drug stores anymore due to the fact that they never actually did anything. When your drugs can’t even get a person high, they have no use in the territories. Although, I have heard that LOVE’s medical professionals still give out “antidepressants” and you can lose LOVE POINTS for claiming they don’t work.

Two more days passed by without anything interesting happening. But this morning, I hear the doorbell buzzing loudly again. Looking at my phone I see it’s 8 again. That can only mean one thing. Well, person. And when I go to answer the door, it is indeed the person who I thought it was going to be, dressed in her nurse uniform and holding a plastic container with food in it. It looks like a fish meal of some sort. She hands the container over to me while talking.

“Good morning, Gray. I’m glad to know that you’ve changed your mind on this. Anyways, today I made you a cod fillet with rice, onions, beans, and a small spinach salad with black olives. You don’t need to worry about returning the container to me, I have many of those at home and can just go out and buy more if I need to.”

I take the food from her and use this time to ask what’s on my mind.

“…Why are you doing this? Ignoring the fact that any sane person would give up after the argument we had when you first came around, what do you personally gain from doing this for me? Because it seems to me, you’re just inconveniencing yourself for someone you barely know.”

She isn’t taken aback by my question in the least. If anything, it seems as if she expected me to ask something like that.

“Well, this isn’t really inconveniencing me at all. I told you last time that your apartment is right on the way to the clinic. Plus, I enjoy cooking as a hobby, and this is giving me a chance to improve and learn new dishes. I’ve never really had anyone outside of my family taste my cooking before. But even if it did inconvenience me, I would still do it because we’re friends. We may not be close friends, but we are friends nonetheless…As such, I can’t just stand by and allow a friend to wither away. And sure, you were rude that day but… everybody has their bad days, right? You’ve never snapped at me like that before. Although I do believe I am owed an apology.”

She seems to be completely serious about helping me. I have no idea what about me has left this much of an impact on her. I respond by awkwardly apologizing.

“Yeah, uh, I’m sorry about getting pissy with you.”

I felt kind of annoyed for a second, like she wasn’t going to apologize for anything herself, but she proved me wrong.

“And I’m sorry for being so forceful. I should’ve found a better way to get in contact with you. It’s just that our work schedules are so different and sure, Mildred did give me your phone number, but I still wasn’t sure when it would be a good time to call you, and I don’t like texting. It confuses me. Mildred also gave me your email address, but I don’t own a computer, so it’s of no use to me…Well, I best be on my way.”

She starts to turn away, but I suddenly called out to her.

“Wait, before you leave… D-Did you get the movie you bought?”

I haven’t seen the DVD case on the front desk during any of my previous shifts the past several days. But that’s not necessarily a sign that she got it. Someone could’ve easily just put it back on one of the shelves.

“Oh, are you talking about The Long Journey? Yes, of course I got it.”

“Ah well, that’s good… Did you like it?”

I really shouldn’t be asking this, but I guess because it’s a movie that I hold dear to my heart I just have to know.

“…Oh well, yes, I did. Quite a lot. Surprisingly so, given that I normally dislike movies that delve in darker subject matter.”

“Are you referring to the scene with the cannibal twins? I get that’s a rough scene, but it’s important to have a scene where the brother and sister reconcile their differences and-“

Oh no, it’s happening. Thankfully, Blanche interrupts me before I can go on a never ending tangent.

“Gray, I’d love to keep talking, but I have to go to work, we can talk another time, okay? I’ll be coming here on my days off too… I’m glad to see you get excited about something.”

She walks off while I feel my cheeks burn and close the door. I talked too much, and I fear I’m going to do it again if this keeps up. I’m too mentally worked up to go back to bed so I guess I’ll have some of the food Blanche gave me. While the food’s heating up, I search around my DVD collection before finding my copy of The Long Journey. Ever since that incident on fuhenfutou, I’ve found myself too scared to watch it again, worried that all the negative criticisms on it were right and I’d hate it now. But I guess I’m feeling a little brave today. Thus, I spent the morning rewatching The Long Journey while eating a breakfast that’s far more nutrient dense than what I usual eat for breakfast. It turns out, the fuckheads at fuhenfutou were wrong, and The Long Journey managed to provoke the same feelings from me that it did all the way back when I first watched it. It sounds dumb, but confirming this has actually boosted my confidence somewhat.

…Oh, and Blanche isn’t a half bad cook I guess. I’m still not excited about being forced awake early for…how long is she gonna do this? I guess I can tolerate it a bit. Just a bit though.

Author’s Note: And thus ends the first arc on a pretty short chapter. I should note that when I started writing LOVE, I was…still am I guess part of a group project that is either on hiatus or dead. I got this arc written, a second arc written…and that’s about it. But I am starting to feel a desire to get back into it. Also, I know I said I wanted to make character profiles after this arc, but I think that’s going to have to be in the backburner for a bit. Mostly because I’d be using a mixture of AI generation and Kisekae to make the character images, and I’m currently focusing on an AI bot project right now, but I will get to it eventually.