The Simulacrum

Chapter 44

"Oh? You're already done?"

Judy looked visibly surprised (by her standards) when I left the infirmary just a few short minutes after entering it.

"I told you I'd be quick," I responded as I threw my bag over my shoulder.

"I thought that you were going to drill Peabody about his involvement with Robatto."

"Nah, it's too early to put direct pressure on him. Not to mention, I don't want him to put Labcoat Guy on guard just yet."

After I told her that, I beckoned for her to follow me. It wasn't exactly prudent to discuss things like this right in front of the man's door, even if I already knew he wasn't eavesdropping due to periodically glancing at him with Far Sight. Speaking of which, I Far Glanced over to the rest of our group, and after observing them a little I said, "It seems things are wrapping up on the others' side as well. No injuries, though the class rep is pretty down. I guess she's disheartened by how accurate my script was."

"She'll get over it."

"I'm sure she will," I responded a little absent-mindedly just around the time we reached the shoe lockers.

"Do you want to go and meet up with them?" Judy questioned me as she passed me by on her way to her own locker, but I shook my head.

"Nah. Didn't we talk about how we should let Josh act independently every once in a while? He is doing good too; he is passive-aggressively heckling Armband Guy like a pro already."

My dear assistant gave me an odd look and said, "I will now graciously avoid the question of why you consider picking fights with vastly more powerful people a good thing, and instead I would like to know why Joshua did so."

"I wouldn't call him 'vastly' more powerful..."

"Chief, please focus on the actual point of the question."

"Right. To answer your query, I'd say it's probably because my description of the conspiracy and him playing along with it left a bad impression on Josh. Either that, or he is miffed by him acting so familiar with the class rep."

"You mean to say he is jealous."

I pondered for a moment on how to answer as I watched her put on her left shoe while hopping on the other foot for some inexplicable reason, but ultimately I simply shrugged my shoulders.

"Maybe? I mean, it can be pretty hard to follow the thought processes of a harem protagonist."

"I can attest to that," she threw an obvious bait my way, but I decided to ignore it, and instead I quickly slipped into my own outdoor shoes.

"Either way, Josh and company are fine, so let's discuss my newest discovery instead."

"Your Phantom Limb's ability to modify enchantments," Judy stated what she thought was obvious, but I shook my head.

"No, Dormouse. That's just the tip of the iceberg."

"Really?"

That comment piqued her interest all right, but before saying anything else, I waved for her to follow me.

"I'll tell you on the way home."

Saying so, I left the school building, with Judy following close behind me, and I only hit up the conversation again once we were already walking downhill.

"Okay, so, do you want to review what we thought my extra limb can do, at the risk of being redundant, or do you want me to cut the chase and tell you the big discovery I made?"

"The latter."

"Too bad, as I'm still going to do it," I told her before I cleared my throat and began to elaborate. "Do you remember what happened the last time I tried to use my Phantom Limb to experiment on my mug?"

"You scared me pretty badly," came the morose answer in return.

"Maybe, but that's not what I'm talking about now. Remember what I told you? About the overlapping mugs and the psychedelic experience surrounding it?"

"Yes," she said, though it was little more than a verbal prompt for me to continue.

"I think I figured out what happened back then. You see, this invisible appendage of mine," I said while waving it in front of me, though she still couldn't see it. "I still don't know where it came from, why I have it, or how it works, but now I know 'what' it does. It is, for lack of better terms, something that lets me interact with the World."

"Chief, that's literally what arms are for," she stated, her voice flat as an ironing board.

There was a snappy comeback right on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back down and instead I said, "Sorry, I suppose I wasn't clear enough. I meant the word 'World' with a capital 'W'. As in, the simulation or what have you we live in."

"Are you serious?"

I nodded to her, and Judy immediately took out her phone, no doubt in preparation for taking notes, but I stopped her in her tracks.

"Dormouse... just how many times do we have to repeat this conversation? Please don't take notes while we are walking. It's dangerous. When you're not paying attention, you can easily stumble into something or someone."

"Such as those people?"

"What people?"

I followed her eyes, and as I did that, I immediately recognized the silhouettes of a familiar trio.

"Crap!" the shortest member of the Goldfish Poop Gang let out a low hiss the moment our eyes met. "It's him! It's the bully!"

"What do we do, boss? I think he noticed us..."

"Shut up, you scaredy cats!" the big guy with the pompadour to end all pompadours whispered back so loudly he might as well didn't even bother. "Just hold yer heads up and stick to the plan. And remember, don't make eye contact!"

"I think I already did"

"Then don't do it again! And act casual!"

Saying so, the three of them formed an orderly line and then proceeded to... walk by us without even glancing our way.

We stood in place as they passed us by, and the moment they were behind us, they quickened their pace and soon disappeared behind a nearby corner.

"What was that about?" my girlfriend inquired without even trying to hide the suspicious look in her eyes.

"I'll be damned if I knew," I replied, similarly baffled by the experience.

"One of them said you were a bully," she noted with a hint of unwelcome curiosity in her eyes.

"Must have confused me with someone else," I forcefully stated before pointedly clearing my throat. "Anyhow, let's return to the previous topic, shall we?"

Something told me she was still really curious about what just happened, but she obediently nodded and put her phone away before she asked the pivotal question of the day.

"In that case, please elaborate on how you interacted with the capital 'W'."

"At once," I replied before taking a deep breath to collect my thoughts. I have actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to put my experiences into words even as I was experimenting with the artifacts, yet I still found the prospect exceedingly hard. "Okay, let's start with the basics. As I said, the phantom limb allowed me to peek behind the veil and see things as they are."

"Was there an old man who tried to convince you to ignore the man behind the curtain?"

"No, but I almost wish there was."

"Really?"

"No."

" Are you sure the 'S' in your nonexistent middle name doesn't stand for 'spoilsport'?"

"Yes, I am. Also please focus." After chiding her, I took a deep breath and began my explanation. "Okay, here's a disclaimer first: Please don't ask about how certain things work or how I figured out what I'm about to explain, because I'd bloody well like to know as well. That said, here is some of what I gathered. First off, let's put one of our old questions to bed; this world is certainly artificial, and more importantly, it is a constructed one."

"Constructed," Judy repeated the word after me, probably to stress its significance. "I would think that means it was constructed by someone."

"Most likely," I granted her that much.

"Could the creator of the world be the source of the narrative?"

"No idea. It could be them, or an autonomous self-correcting system. I don't know yet."

"You said 'them' just now," Judy pointed out my slip of the tongue with the precision of a trained sniffing hound. Or rather, an adorable bloodhound puppy. Doggy analogies aside, I let out a sharp breath before I answered her.

"As I said, don't ask me why, but I have something of a hunch that there are multiple people or beings or whatever running the show from the backstage."

"How many?"

"Idunno Let's say, more than three but less than five?"

" So four."

"Maybe? I mean, it could be 3.14 as far as I actually know." At this point I took another huge, dramatic breath and emphatically stated, "Anyways, we are getting off-topic. As I said, I've gained some insight into this world."

"I'm listening," my assistant prompted me, and I obliged.

"First and foremost, this is a world of natural physics, or at least 'natural' in the sense of what you would find in a textbook. Also, on that note, while I cannot rule out the hypothesis that all of this is a simulation in the traditional sense of the word, my foray into reality hacking made me realize that the 'resolution' of everything is insane. It might even actually go down to the atomic level, though I cannot be sure because I had a hard time conceptualizing changes on that scale in motion."

"So you're saying that even if this world really is a simulation of some sorts, on a physical level it's indistinguishable from a non-simulated world."

"Yes, though to be fair, that is a statement philosophers debating the nature of reality could probably argue about for days. Unfortunately, we don't really have the time for that."

"Unfortunately? Does that mean that if we had the time, you would like to talk about it for days?"

"You know what I meant," I told her while suppressing the urge to roll my eyes.

"Understood." Judy's response made me wonder what it was that she 'understood', but ultimately I decided it must have been that I didn't want to get bogged down like that, because she continued by saying, "So if this world is practically indistinguishable from reality on a physical level, then how can we explain placeholder behavior?"

"Beats me," I admitted freely, though it didn't mean I wouldn't attempt a few educated guesses. "Maybe simulating consciousness is harder? Or it could be that the world wasn't designed with simulating people in mind. Or people with minds. Or there could be a completely unrelated reason."

"In short, we don't have enough data to come to a definite conclusion yet."

"Exactly," I agreed with a small nod. "But back to the beginning of our discussion: you remember how I had an adverse reaction to interacting with my cup?"

"To put it mildly," Judy grumbled, but I ignored the edge her voice had lest we would get derailed again.

"So you do. The reason it happened was because changing something directly causes the world itself to push back. Let me give you an analogy: imagine you are at the bottom of a swimming pool."

"Okay."

"Let's say you put your hands together so that you have a ball of water which you want to replace with another ball of water. Are you following me so far?"

"I'm trying to."

"Okay, so, let's say you're really, really fast. Like, Superman on methamphetamines kind of fast. Yet, when you remove the original ball, it naturally leaves behind an empty space. Since it's empty, the water pressure in the pool immediately tries to fill up the space, no matter how fast you are. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

My girlfriend looked at me oddly for a second and ultimately stated, " Chief, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I think you're horrible at making analogies."

"Nonsense," I dismissed her out of hand. "Okay, let's try this more directly. The swimming pool is the world. The ball of water is the mug. When I interacted with it, I unknowingly attempted to replace it with another piece of glazed pottery. While both of them are technically the same, the act of changing things disturbs the fabric of the world, and it doesn't like it when it happens one bit. It's doesn't do it consciously though, it's more like how water immediately fills in a hole you try to create in it because of surface tension and pressure. The water doesn't do it to spite your efforts, it's just how it works. So, to stay with my analogy, in order to replace the water ball, I would first have to separate it from the rest of the swimming pool, and while the process lasts, I have to keep the water from pouring in and mixing stuff, because if that happens, it creates waves that others can notice."

"By waves you mean the three-point-fourteen creators," Judy stated with her tongue set in her cheek so hard it almost poked through.

"Yes, I mean them."

"And that would be bad."

"Probably."

Judy let out a soft grunt that I decided to interpret as agreement and cleared my throat before I continued.

"So, in short, using this arm of mine to hack reality is not entirely feasible. I think it could be done, in theory, but it's hard, dangerous, and it makes my head hurt something fierce."

My assistant looked at me expectantly, most likely waiting for me to continue, but when I didn't, she subtly rolled her eyes and said, "All right, I will ask the obvious question. If using your immaterial limb to change objects is unfeasible, then what did you do to the morphers?"

"Thank you for asking!" I responded with gusto before pausing and adding, "Before I tell you, remind me to come up for a new name of those gizmos later."

"Noted."

"Thanks. Now, as for what I did, it all ties back to my description of how the world seems to adhere to natural laws. In fact, the world seems to have multiple 'layers', so to speak. The surface one is what we see and interact with on a daily basis and which follows the laws of physics, and then there is the second stratum underneath it that is for the operation of anything supernatural. Spells, enchantments, transformations and such are all embedded into this stratum, and when they are invoked, they get superimposed upon the first layer, and thus they manifest in the 'real world'."

"So instead of modifying the morpher directly, you modified the substrate that housed the information of what the enchantment was supposed to do."

"Bingo!" I confirmed with a big nod. I knew she would get it right away. This is why smart people are awesome.

"So it's a loophole."

"Kind of," I told her a little less enthusiastically before adding, "There's also a third stratum I haven't mentioned yet. It seems to be under both the natural and the supernatural layer. To come up with an analogy"

"Please don't."

"Too late, already came up with one," I responded in the company of a smirk and explained, "It's like a firmware, and the world is like an operating system sitting on top of that."

"So what are we? Programs?"

"Idunno, I didn't think so far," I admitted, a teensy bit embarrassed.

"Figures," Judy mumbled under her breath before exhaling sharply and telling me, "Putting your analogies aside, do you think you could get a better understanding of the world by exploiting your newly discovered ability?"

"Certainly. I think I only scratched the surface of the system that runs this place."

"Then we need to experiment," Judy stated with the gravitas of an especially venerable patriarch making a declaration, like 'You shall not mix wool and linen in your clothes!'. The kind of declaration that is so authoritative it gets into important books and people follow them even though they were silly, just because they were said by a very authoritative guy. Of course it wasn't a perfect parallel, because what she said actually made sense.

"Agreed," I, well, agreed with my sageliest of sagely nods. "To do that, we first have to establish a supply of magical doodads and whatchamacallits to experiment on."

"You sound like you already have a source in mind."

"Two, actually," I responded with a modest smile. "The obvious one is the magical workshop under the school. They should have a lot of fun toys to play with, but getting them could pose a bit of a problem."

"Unless you can convince Amelia to smuggle some artifacts for you, I doubt they would be willing to hand their things over to you."

"I wouldn't bet on the odds of convincing her, but it's an option," I told her noncommittally before I outlined my second proposal. "I also had the idea of asking my alleged father-in-law if their dragon hoard might have a few trinkets I could borrow from them."

"Borrow it as you did to my catchphrase?"

"It wasn't your catchphrase, and please don't needlessly derail the conversation." My dear assistant clicked her tongue in displeasure, but I ignored her with the firmness of a mountain made of frozen Jell-O. Speaking of which, I was getting a little peckish. I wondered what we would be having for dinner, but I quickly shook away my salivating guesses, and instead I told Judy, "Do you think asking the irritating butler if I could play around in his study would be a bad idea?"

"Yes," she answered immediately.

"I thought so too. I'll do it anyway."

"Then why did you ask for my opinion?" Judy asked back with the tiniest of irritated frowns forming on her brows.

"Force of habit," I answered with my fourth iteration of the 'roguish smile' I may or may not have practiced in advance. It didn't seem to have too much of an effect, so I figured it was time to go back to the drawing board. Or rather, the mirror. Where I may or may not practice facial expressions when I get bored during the long nights. Please don't judge.

"Have you thought about the Hub?"

Judy's abrupt question threw me on a loop of a moment, as I had no idea about how it related to my smile, but then I managed to collect myself and requested her to clarify herself.

"Could you run that by me again?"

"What I was trying to say," she began with a frustrated huff, "is that if you want to have ensorcelled objects to study, you could use your black market connections to purchase some."

"Wait a minute... I have black market connections?"

"You do. Not as Leonard S. Dunning, but as Admin of the celestial hub." My dear assistant stopped talking for a moment and then in a deviously innocent voice she asked, "By the way, does the 'S' stand for 'scatterbrained'?"

"No..."

My answer was actually closer to a groan of exasperation than the actual word, but let's not split hairs about it. Judy certainly didn't do so, as she continued the conversation as if her jab against my very collected and thoughtful personage was just a figment of my overactive imagination.

"I believe there are no less than three black market vendors on the forums. You should ask them if they have anything you could use, or failing that, you could ask the regulars if they have any spare tools or leads on unguarded artifacts you could borrow."

"It's worth a shot," I agreed a little half-heartedly while simultaneously ignoring the air quotes she was making when she said the last word. "There are still some other minor hypotheses I have regarding the strata and my interactions with them, but let's save the in-depth discussion until I have some empirical evidence to back them up."

"If you say so," Judy responded with some degree of disinterest, but then she sidled closer to me and linked her arm with mine using practiced motions before asking, "Can I stay over tomorrow?"

The question came out of the blue, but after some consideration, I nodded in the affirmative.

"Sure. If I can get my hands on some magical thingamabobs, we might as well do some tests."

"I was thinking about something else," she stated with upturned eyes.

"Can I ask for some clarification? I can interpret your statement in a lot of different ways"

My dearest assistant rolled her eyes as she tightened her grip on me and she responded by asking, "What are you going to do with Eleanor today?"

I wondered if that was a trick question, but she looked straightforward enough, so after some consideration, I honestly told her, "Well, I guess we are going to have dinner, and then we are going to cuddle? I might have a separate discussion with Abram and the frustrating butler, but aside from that, I don't have any big plans."

"I plan to do the same," Judy told me quite categorically. "Not the discussion parts, but the first half." I might have looked a little puzzled by her words, for she soon elaborated by telling me, "We have been going out for more than a week, but we have barely acted like a couple. I don't like it."

"Soooo in short, you want to just sit back, watch a movie, and chill while we cuddle?"

"Something along those lines."

"I can do that," I told her in conjunction with the fifth iteration of my roguish smile. "Any requests on the movie front?"

"Anything goes, so long as it's not a sappy romantic comedy."

"Roger."

With that decided, we walked in silence for about ten seconds before Judy uttered, "You're going to get the sappiest romantic comedy on the planet just to mess with me, won't you?"

"I cannot confirm or deny such accusations, please direct your questions to my attorney."

"Just you wait, Chief," my usually deadpan girlfriend pouted in a rare, clear display of emotion. "Do it, and I swear I'll start to hate you."

"Yes, sure, if you say so" I muttered under my breath, and I couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle as we continued on.

It should be a little tricky to squeeze an evening of chilling out into my timetable, but then again, I was the one who declared that I would utilize my sleepless nights to have the time to cater to two girlfriends' worth of needs. I just had to put the determination into practice now! Oh, the crosses I had to bear!

"Hi princess, I'm" I greeted my girlfriend in the doorway of her room, but before I could finish, I was abruptly grabbed by the hand and dragged inside.

"You're late!" Elly exclaimed and immediately slammed the door shut behind us.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it."

My attempt to placate the sulking owner of the room was less than successful, a fact that she made quite blindingly obvious with a soft yet decidedly angry grunt.

"You promised it would only take a few minutes," she grumbled as she dragged me even further and more or less forced me to sit on her bed before she stood in front of me and continued by directing her patented brand of accusative finger at me. "You even promised you would come over a little earlier so that we could spend some time alone!"

"In my defense, I did come over early. It was your mother who kidnapped me the moment I stepped through the main entrance."

"That's right," the princess huffed and she re-doubled her finger-pointing efforts. "Why did it took you so long to discuss things with my mother anyway?!"

"You ask it like I had much of a choice in the matter," I protested and followed my words up with a tired sigh. "I didn't expect she would be so mad about allowing you to play around with the brainless robots."

"Aren't all robots brainless?" she absent-mindedly asked with a look of genuine curiosity on her face, but then she quickly remembered that she was supposed to be angry with me and she added, "I mean, it's true, mom can be a little overbearing sometimes, but you are smart! You were supposed to come up with a smart excuse and come over right away!"

"I am glad you think so highly of me, but it's hard to come up with a 'smart excuse' when your mother refused to even entertain the thought that the mostly harmless, brightly colored robots that were programmed not to harm you were, in fact, not a big deal." I paused here, extended an index finger of my own, and gently pushed hers aside before asking, "I mean, they weren't a big deal, right?"

"Not at all," my girlfriend agreed with my assessment while at the same time she swatted away my finger and pointed at me again.

I picked up the slack and pulled back my finger before stabbing towards her hand again. She skillfully parried my extremely dangerous attack while she absent-mindedly added, "There was one small problem, now that I think about it."

"Really? What is it?" I inquired while feinting and aiming a devious finger at her unprotected belly, but my girlfriend didn't get flustered and blocked it with a well-timed swipe of her own.

"To be honest, the Magiform was a little uncomfortable," she stated while changing her center of mass and attempting a low stab to slip under my guard.

"'Magiform'?" I echoed the word while simultaneously raising an intrigued brow and parrying her incoming finger.

"It's a name I came up with, with the help of Josh and Angie," she told me with a small smirk that told me she was probably taking more of the credit than duly deserved, but I naturally didn't call her out on my suspicion. "It's because they are magical, and they are uniforms."

"So magiforms," I concluded while launching a counter-attack towards her upper arm, which she dodged by moving to the side a little before she initiated her own riposte and I met her strike halfway.

"Yes," she confirmed with a beaming smile made somewhat strained by the way our fingers were locked in a contest of strength. I hate to admit it, but she was winning. It was probably because she was standing and I was sitting. Leverage and stuff. Obviously.

Anyhow, I couldn't allow my pride and honor to be besmirched by losing in an absolutely serious and downright momentous match of physical prowess, so I did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances and cheated like the AI in a strategy game on hard mode by opening my hand, grabbing hold of my worked up girlfriend and pulling her towards me with one mighty (yet careful) tug.

The princess tried to resist for a moment, but this time leverage was working for me, and in a moment she all but tumbled into me. Fortunately, and in no small part thanks to my well-honed girl-catching reflexes, I managed to guide her landing to safety and onto my lap.

"Aw!" she let out a dissatisfied noise the moment she gathered her wits and she glanced at me over her shoulder. "That's not fair! I was winning!"

"Maybe, but why were we finger-fencing in the first place?" I asked the fuming girl sitting on me, and my question gave her a pause for a second or two.

"I don't really know." She visibly deflated upon admitting it, but then a moment later she perked up again as she clumsily turned one hundred and eighty degrees on my lap until she was straddled on top of my legs with her face just a few fingers' widths away from mine. She looked me in the eye and abruptly declared, "It doesn't matter either. What does is that you still owe me a bunch of kisses."

"I do?" I asked back by reflex. Speaking of reflexes, my sixth sense suddenly warned me of incoming danger and I hastily put my hand in front of my face, just in time to hold back the princess' forehead before she could accidentally headbutt me by nodding in close proximity.

"Yes," she stated emphatically, seemingly not caring at all about the fact that she just sandwiched my poor hand between our heads. "You promised me on the roof."

"Now that I think about it I did so, didn't I?" Elly tried to nod again, but since we were already deadlocked, in the end she had to do with simply grunting in agreement.

Well, I was a man of my word, and since she was already in reach, I figured I might as well start fulfilling my promise right away. I took a shallow breath and, just by angling my face a little, I successfully got our lips to touch.

I expected her to stiffen for a moment, but instead she leaned into the kiss with a blissful little snicker. Because of this, what I originally intended to be just a quick peck ended up quite unnecessarily passionate. For a moment I even entertained the thought of attempting some of that tongue stuff people apparently considered an integral part of the experience, but I ultimately decided that it was a little early. I also wasn't entirely confident about the prospect. I mean, I obviously had no experience in the field, and although I have naturally researched the topic in detail, it wasn't exactly something one could practice in front of the mirror.

We stayed connected for a good couple of seconds before she finally pulled back, but only so that she could take a deep breath, after which she locked onto my lips once again. If my mouth wasn't otherwise occupied, I would have probably complained about excess and whatnot, but since I have already promised her and everything, I decided I might as well spoil her a little. I mean, it wasn't like it was some kind of ordeal I had to put up with. While it didn't make my head swim or light fireworks behind my eyelids, as some might have described it, but kissing my girlfriend was still a pleasant little experience, so I definitely wasn't against her indulgence in the act.

And indulge she did, as it took almost five minutes before she finally had her fill. She separated from me for the last time, her face positively glowing with satisfaction, and I couldn't help but say the thing that had been on my mind for quite a while.

"You know princess, you've changed a lot."

My mostly cute girlfriend cocked her head to the side, and while she looked curious for a moment, it didn't stick and her expression almost immediately bounced back into a content one even as she asked, "How so?"

"Well," I began as I put my hands on her waist and began to gently coax her to sit by my side instead of on me. "Not so long ago, you would've glared at me and made funny noises if I as much as just touched you." I suddenly felt a little mischievous, so I tried to tickle her a little, and she actually let out a pretty cute yelp in response, so I smugly added, "Exactly like that."

"Stop it," Elly reproached me while she pried my fingers off her sides and she took a seat beside me with an indignant huff. "It was precisely because of things like this!"

"I don't remember tickling you when we first met."

"No, but you were just as impudent," she countered, but then a moment later she reconsidered and added, "In retrospect, I have to admit that I don't entirely dislike this side of yours though."

"In retrospect," I repeated after her, and she nodded like it was a profound statement, and then she exhaled a shallow sigh before she spoke up again.

"It's strange, isn't it? When I came to this island, I never thought things would end up like this."

"You came to this island to seduce a boy you last met when you were in kindergarten, so yes, I can see your point."

"Uuu Don't put it like that! It makes me sound like a creepy stalker!"

Elly punctuated her argument with a playful yet fairly solid punch to my shoulder, so I figured it was in my best interest to cede the argument to her.

"I've got it, no creepy business at all."

"That's right," she declared with a huge nod, and for a few seconds we both fell silent.

"Now that I think about it," I broke the momentary lull in the conversation by absentmindedly uttering another question that had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while. "It really is weird how we ended up like this." My statement wasn't just idle small talk; as I looked back at our time together, it was hard to pinpoint why we ended up in a relationship. Early on I even mistakenly thought that I was the 'protagonist' of the story and Elly was the classic high school romance love interest for me, and I even consciously attempted to avoid any romantic development with her, yet we still ended up here.

"Hey, Elly?" I addressed my spaced-out girlfriend, and she immediately turned a questioning eye towards me. "When exactly did you start to like me?"

My somewhat strange question was little more than a whim on my part, yet the princess seemed to consider it with the utmost seriousness.

"When did I start to like you?" she reiterated while raising a finger to her lips and her face became a little flushed, probably from remembering an embarrassing memory (we had many), but at last she told me, "I think it was since that time we met on the roof."

"Really? Since Snowy started attending the school?" I wanted to tell her that she started crushing on me a lot earlier than I expected, but the princess quickly shook her head, much to my confusion. "No? Then the time after that?"

"No, before that," she clarified, and it took me several seconds to figure out what she meant.

"Wait a moment. The only time we met on the 'roof', just the two of us, was on the day you transferred." She gave me a small nod, confusing me even further. "Wait, hold on so you say you have liked me ever since the first day we met?"

"Yes," she answered with just the barest hint of hesitation. "I think I didn't really realize it back then, but looking back on it, it's obvious I liked you since then and there and I had no idea how to deal with it." After she said that, her previously rosy cheeks gradually began to pale until she finally uttered, "I have been acting really weird and stupid, haven't I?"

"Weird, yes. Stupid, nah," I reassured her while I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "But it's strange. I don't remember doing anything back then that would warrant you to fall for me. I mean, you technically fell on me at the time, but I don't think that counts."

"It does," Elly enlightened me as she nuzzled closer, though to be honest, I was actually feeling more confused after I've heard her words. "You caught me. You did it twice, in fact. You also took me to the infirmary and looked after me without complaining. You were really gallant."

"I was?" I asked back with a considerable amount of incredulity, but she just nodded at me with such a genuine smile that I had no choice but to believe her. "Weird. I don't remember doing anything special."

"And that's why you are cool," she heaped more unwarranted praise upon me, and I could barely manage to suppress a bitter smile forming on my lips. I wanted to say something in denial, but before I could open my mouth, Elly suddenly said, "Now it's your turn."

"My turn at what?"

"I told you when I fell for you. Now it's your turn."

I am not going to lie; I actually froze up for a good five seconds, blue screen of death and everything. My stupor thankfully only lasted for a brief time, and once I gathered my wits I repeated, "When I fell for you?" for confirmation.

"Yes. Now it's your turn," the princess stressed it, for the third time, and she nuzzled even closer to me like a kitten, probably thinking that I was teasing her and I needed some direct application of cuteness to loosen my tongue.

Unfortunately for her, I was genuinely on the cusp of a mild panic attack. I mean when did I start liking her? I don't think I ever had a proper, dictionary definition 'crush' on her, and while I found her attractive and seven flavors of amusing since pretty much the beginning, I never really 'fell' for her per se. And as for love I still wasn't entirely sure I even had a grasp on the emotion, let alone applying it to people close to me.

However, I had to say something, so after some thinking, I decided to go with, "Honestly, there wasn't a definitive point. I think you just gradually grew on me."

"That's a copout," she stated in a voice that, swear to god, channeled Judy to such a degree I was genuinely spooked for a moment.

"No, not really," I continued to excuse myself. "I just liked to tease you, and then I liked to be in your company, and now I just like you. It was a gradual process. There wasn't any one moment where I realized I like you; I just did before I knew it."

"Uu That sounds so unsatisfying," my girlfriend grumbled as her brows descended into a frown. "It almost sounds like you never fell in love at all."

"Does it?" I uttered reflexively while trying to ignore the cold sweat breaking out on my back like a tiny, immensely mortifying tsunami. Elly actually looked a little taken aback by my ambivalent response, and so in a panic I continued, "To be honest with you, I am really inexperienced with this whole 'love' business. I mean, you know I have amnesia, right?" She nodded, her expression clearly showing that she was curious where I was going with this. "What I am trying to get at is that I have nothing to compare my current feelings to." She had no adverse reaction to my words so far, and after some hesitation, I decided that if I already opened the mouth of the bag, I might as well let the cat out of it and be done with it.

"Okay, so what I am currently trying to clumsily convey is that, while you are truly dear to me, I love spending time with you, miss you when we are apart, and I would be happy to spend the rest of eternity in your company, what I feel just doesn't seem 'passionate' enough for me to confidently call it love."

"What about Judy?" she asked the obvious question, and I promptly shook my head.

"The same. I like her a lot as well, and I tremendously enjoy her company, but even if you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't dare to confidently call what I feel 'love'. I might not be the most sincere person in this world, but telling someone I love them without being completely certain is a low even I wouldn't stoop to. Do you understand what I am trying to say?"

The princess stayed silent for a short while, her face slowly twisting into an odd expression, before she muttered, "Leo, you're really weird."

"Am I?" I asked a little hesitantly, and my question was answered by a hearty nod.

"Yes!" she stated with the kind of gusto that reminded me of her father. "You're weird! You're capable of saying something as embarrassing as 'spend the rest of eternity together', and yet you still don't feel confident enough to say the word 'love'! That's weird!"

"I think you're right?" I muttered in response as I replayed the words I just said in my head. "I mean I did say that, didn't I?"

"You sure did," she confirmed with a somewhat giddy look in her eyes.

"It totally sounded like a proposal, didn't it?"

"It sure did," she reiterated with an impish little smirk. "And I'm going to hold you to it!" I couldn't help but smile at her confident declaration, and when she saw that, she quickly added, "Leo, you are overcomplicating this. 'Love' is just a word. You obviously think it's a very important one, but when you can say embarrassing lines like that with a straight face, I don't need you to say the word to believe in your feelings. If you cannot believe in your feelings, then believe in me, who believes in you!"

Once again, for the umpteenth time, there was a long pause in our conversation, and while she was looking at me with eyes as clear as the conscience of a goldfish, I couldn't hold myself back from asking the obvious question that demanded to be asked.

" Was that a reference?"

And like that, the serious atmosphere evaporated like a soap bubble on the surface of the sunny side of Mercury.

"What?" Elly uttered in confusion, and she even cocked her head to the side for emphasis.

"That last line? Was that a reference to the series with the drilling robots?" I repeated the question, and a few seconds after I did that, the princess suddenly punched me in the shoulder, this time hard enough so that I almost fell off the bed in surprise.

"Damn it, Leo! Why do you always have to ruin the moment! We were having a really good mood and everything, and you just had to throw in one of your stupid jokes!"

"Ow I wasn't joking," I objected as I rubbed my aching shoulder. "I really thought it was a reference, and the question just kind of slipped out."

"That's not an excuse," my girlfriend fumed in reply and she defiantly crossed her arms under her chest.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to do that," I readily apologized, and after taking a deep breath I told her, "Nevertheless, I think I understand what you were trying to say. If you are willing to believe in my feelings even when I'm not sure myself" I paused here, and after some thinking I decided to say something unusually sappy. "Let me say this: I am fairly sure I love you, but just in case I'm not, I promise I will make sure that I will properly fall in love with you as soon as possible."

Elly silently stared at me for a good ten seconds, as if to further fray my nerves, but in the end she failed to stifle her laughter and she told me, between two chuckles, "That was the sweetest and most awkward thing you have ever said! I'm dying to second-hand embarrassment here!"

"Why, you little!" I exclaimed and grabbed hold of her waist again, prompting a surprised squeak from her. "I am doing my best to open my heart to you, and you laugh at me?! I shall have my vengeance! To the tickle dungeon with thee!"

"No, wait! Stop!"

She tried to twist herself out of my grasp, but I held on tight, and in the scuffle we fell over and sprawled out on the bed. It was no reason to stop my assault though, and I kept tickling her until she ran out of breath and I no longer felt embarrassed, both of which took quite a while.

At last we both laid across the bed, panting, and somehow she even ended up nestled up to me and holding onto my back. Heaving and disheveled, we stayed still and silent for about a minute before I exhaled hard and told her, with renewed seriousness, "I meant what I said."

There was a moment of pause, after which she responded by telling me, "So did I."

"Good," I concluded, and as such we quickly drifted back into silence. It was a comfortable kind of silence, which made me appreciate just how much worse our previous discussion could have gone, and as I thought about it, I abruptly sat up, startling Elly in the process.

"What? Did something happen?"

"No, I just remembered something," I replied while pointing at the device on her wrist. "Before we completely went off the rails, you mentioned something about the uniform being uncomfortable."

"Oh, that's right." She also sat up and after quickly fixing her hair (and I do mean 'quick', it was back to normal in a matter of seconds), she began to explain her problem. "When I use it, it feels a little tight, or maybe 'stifling' is the right word. It's kind of like when you put on some old clothes that you grew out of already."

"I think I get what you're trying to say," I mused while trying to disregard how my girlfriend was already back to normal, as if the previous critical conversation about our love life didn't even happen. But back to the issue: "The what did you call them? Magiforms?"

"Yes."

"Okay then. So, remember when I told Josh that the Magiformer would inhibit the physical changes when he turned into an Abyssal? The same goes for yours as well, and since most of your draconic abilities come from your physique, restraining it would obviously feel really restrictive."

"Can you fix it?" She held out her wrist to me.

"I um I can't. I mean, suppressing the transformation and providing an alternative is the whole point of the device."

"But I don't like it."

"I know, but I can't help it."

Elly turned a disapproving eye towards the Magiformer, then back at me, and then she let out an angry 'Hmph!' and pointedly looked away.

"Oh come on, princess! Don't sulk!"

"I'm not sulking," she replied while pouting so hard it was almost comical to look at.

"But you totally are. Don't be like that."

My high-maintenance girlfriend didn't respond at first, but after just a few short seconds she let out a forced groan and turned back to me.

"All right. I'm willing to forgive you under one circumstance."

"Forgive me for what? I told you I cannot"

I got cut off before I could finish as she proclaimed, "I'll let it go if you say something romantic."

"Romantic?" I blurted out in surprise, and she nodded quite vehemently at the word,

"Yes. Something nice, like the last one about spending an eternity together."

" Do I really have to?" I tried to ask, but then she immediately re-entered into pouting mode, so I hastily sputtered out, "Err How about When you are not around, I err I miss you so much that one hour feels like sixty minutes!"

"That's," she began as her visage momentarily brightened, but then she immediately followed that up with a frown as she stated, "That's the same thing!"

"I'm sorry, but what did you expect when you put me on the spot like that?!" I excused myself maybe a tiny bit more indignantly than strictly necessary, but then to my shock and surprise, she shrugged her shoulders and nestled closer to me again.

"Oh well. I give you a pass for trying."

Saying so, she rubbed her head against my shoulder with a barely audible giggle, and somehow I couldn't stay mad at her.

"How gracious of you."

"You are welcome," she answered with a playful little smirk before she resumed nuzzling against me. It didn't last long though, as she abruptly looked up and said, "It's still an hour until dinner. What should we do?"

"I thought you wanted to cuddle?"

"I meant after that. Obviously."

"I don't know," I replied with a shrug before looking around in her room. Elly's eclectic bedroom had no television, so watching something on it was out of the question. She didn't have a PC either, so browsing the net for cute cat videos or something was also out. In fact, her room was fairly barebones when it came to entertainment, so much so that I couldn't help but ask her about it. "Say, princess? What do you usually do after school?"

She looked a little confused by my question, but after some thinking she told me, "Not much. I either study for school, study business, or spend time with mom and dad. Why?"

"I just noticed you don't really have anything in your room we could use to kill time here."

"I suppose not" She sounded a little disheartened. Maybe she took my words as criticism? I was just about to clarify my point, but I never got the chance, as her eyes suddenly lit up in realization and she grabbed hold of my hand. "Hey, Leo? Do you want to see my singing room?"

Now, there were a number of questions I could have asked here. What is a singing room? Was it literally a room for singing, or was it just some kind of euphemism? Why did she suddenly mention it? Why did she even have one?

I could have asked any of those, and more, but when I saw how excited she was, the only words that came out of my mouth were, "Sure, I'd love to."

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