Sofiane found Gomiko that evening in the back of their team’s wagon with Margaret. The two were talking with an unmistakable edge of anxiousness in their voices. Stepping up into the wagon, he expected Gomiko to be excited to see him again. Instead, he was met with an icy, injured stare. Margaret looked wearily between the two.

“Do you want me to stick around, Gomi?” Margaret asked.

Gomiko, wrapped in a quilt with her knees drawn to her chest, said, “It’s fine.”

Margaret wasted no time vacating the wagon. Sofiane sat down by Gomiko’s side and pulled her closer to him.

“What’s wrong, Frizzy? What happened to you in Deco Imperia? I heard about the trashed apartment. Did you all get attacked? Were you hurt? Was it other Heroes?”

“Why didn’t you tell us the world was gonna end?”

“Why didn’t I… How— who told you?”

Gomiko shook her head, refusing to nuzzle into his embrace. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me why.”

“Because I—” He found the actual answer hard to give in hindsight. “I was going to tell you tonight.”

“That’s not what I asked!”

He thought briefly that the anger in her voice was something novel, but that wasn’t true. This was how she sounded two years ago when she accused him of getting Margaret killed, before they realized she could be brought out of the Dungeon of Stars and re-summoned. Sofiane didn’t remember exactly what he said to her and the others back then, but knowing how he used to be, it was probably rude and nasty. To hear Gomiko like this again…

“I’m sorry, Frizzy. I thought… that is, my thinking process was—” he caught a side-eye glare for the prevaricating. “I didn’t want to ruin your last days. I didn’t know yet we would even have a shot at surviving. Hell, I’m still not sure we do. Maybe after all this preparation the other Heroes annihilate us with the help of the Yishang and none of it matters. That’s probably the most likely outcome. And you were so happy when we were together, the happiest you’ve ever been. I didn’t want to ruin that happiness. I couldn’t. I wanted my last moment before the lights shut off to be your smiling face, cuddled up next to me. Maybe that was weak of me. Maybe it was selfish. But there’s your answer. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

Gomiko was silent for a moment with a look of stoic judgment, but then her lip quivered and her face screwed itself into an ugly ball of tears and hiccuping sobs that he couldn’t help but giggle at because it was just about the ugliest expression he’d seen on anyone ever and he couldn’t believe the Yishang could even make a face like that.

She punched him in the shoulder. “You puffy purple asshole!”

This just made him giggle more and eventually, after pushing out all the tears she’d built up, Gomiko started giggling too with her throat all choked up. Sofiane, after hearing her start to laugh, realized a few tears had run down his own cheeks. Neither said anything for a little while, both feeling their way through what they needed to feel. Eventually, they recognized in the other’s body language a desire to go for a walk. Sofiane drew Gomiko up and she put on some slippers and threw the quilt around them both and they went for a walk.

As this short, lumpen quilt monster careened its way through the city of tents, Sofiane noticed his fatigue and stress were gone, replaced by the fuzzy warmth at his side, pumping heat back into him as the cold outside tried to draw it out.

Just when Sofiane was about to ask again what happened to her and the others in Deco Imperia, Gomiko asked, “what do you think another world would look like?”

Her eyes were drawn up towards the stars, or rather the grand painting the Yishang had asked them to see stars in. In reality, not a single one was another world. There was only one world and it was Po-Lin. Maybe there were other worlds in the Celestials’ dimension of existence, but not here.

“I don’t know. Those are fake, though,” Sofiane said.

“I know,” Gomiko replied. “But so what? We made a world here, didn’t we?”

“What do you mean? The Yishang made Po-Lin.”

“The Yishang made Po-Lin, and they made you and me. But they didn’t make us. They didn’t make Gomiko-plus-Sofiane. We made that.”

Sofiane thought about that for a second. He couldn’t tell whether it was profound or stupidly obvious, like saying, ‘the world exists.’

“I guess we did,” he said, hugging her closer under the quilt.

“You know why I don’t think the Yishang wants us together? Why they don’t want any of us together?” she said.

“Why?”

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“Because they can’t write a script that way. They can plug ‘Gomiko’ into a Special Event scene, and they can plug ‘Sofiane’ in, but Gomiko-plus-Sofiane doesn’t act the same way as either one by itself. That’s a different character. It throws a wrench into their whole continuity. And on top of that, why would Gomiko-plus-Sofiane compete for numbers when they’re happy the way they are?”

Sofiane didn’t really know what to say to that. He sort of understood what she was talking about, but also sort of didn’t. He was still Sofiane, after all. Sure he'd changed since being with her, but he was, in the end, a wholly separate entity. Shuixing proved that beyond doubt in her exploration of Numberspace. Sofiane-plus-Gomiko was a romantic idea, but it was just an idea.

“Maybe so,” he said, glancing up at the fake stars.

“You don’t believe me.”

Sofiane was unsure for a second whether that was a question or not.

“Did whoever it was that told you about the world ending—oh who am I kidding, I know it was Daisy or Natsuko—did they tell you about the Central Probability Algorithm and Numberspace?” Sofiane asked.

“Poorly, but I think I got the idea. It’s a big algorithm that sucks us in, swishes us around, and spits us back out again hundreds of times a second, and that’s supposed to be us, right?”

“Yeah. I guess in a way all of Po-Lin is one... Thing? Person? Entity? But we experience it separately. That’s the only way we can experience anything. Even if you and I changed each other, there’s still a big folder in the sky that says who Pechorin is and who Gomiko is.”

Gomiko hummed for a second then said, “maybe that’s how the algorithm keeps things interesting. We’re all different, but we’re all the same. And we bump up against each other and change each other. But I don’t know, I don’t think that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about Gomiko-plus-Sofiane.”

“So what are you talking about?”

“Well, it’s…”

When she had to put it into words, Gomiko realized she couldn’t articulate what was, at its core, just a feeling. It wasn’t numbers, and it wasn’t words either. It didn’t live in either of those places. It was a kind of knowledge that could only be felt; not seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. Or… maybe it could be tasted. Gomiko turned to Sofiane and leaned in. Something that needed neither words nor numbers drew their lips together. In his mouth were the sour traces of stale coffee, in hers the metallic tang of blood. While they kissed, neither was sure who was tasting what.

They pulled away, as they eventually must, and Gomiko smiled. “So, there’s that part of it. But you know what the other part is?”

“What’s that?” Sofiane asked numbly, dazed with bliss from the mouth he missed so badly.

“This!” Gomiko said, waving her hands in the direction of the camp of tents and burning lamps and Imperian flood lights illuminating the walls of Vermögenburgh. “A couple weeks ago, none of this existed. But our ideas about how the world ought to look changed, and now it looks like this. This is only the beginning, Sofa. Daisy and Natsuko said the Yishang made us so we look and act like them, and if we’re just like the Yishang, why the heck can’t we make a new world!? That’s what they did!”

Sofiane was stunned for a moment, and he didn’t know whether it was because what she said was so powerful, or because he was so madly in love with this woman that nothing else, not even breathing, could coexist with her in his head.

After remembering to gulp down some air, he said, “I guess that's fine, so long as this new world we build has Sofiane-plus-Gomiko-plus-Gomiko-plus-Sofiane in it.”

She giggled at that. Somehow, she had managed to avoid entirely answering his question about what happened in Deco Imperia. If she had told him she was tortured, he wouldn’t have been able to think about anything else for the rest of the night, or maybe even for as long as the two had left to live. So she kept that her own little secret, because she wanted the last thing he saw tonight to be her smiling face, cuddled up next to him.

“So… been to the Dungeon of Stars later?” Gomiko asked.

Sofiane blinked. “Um, yeah, that’s where Shuixing and I were holed up while Baphomet was conducting his reign of terror.”

“So what I’m hearing is it’s empty right now?”

“I doubt anyone has—”

She took his hand in hers and led him off towards the Anomalous Dungeon.

----------------------------------------

Sofiane had a panic attack when he emerged from the Dungeon of Stars the next morning and the sun was almost overhead.

“Oh shit! I’ve got an intelligence meeting with Vronsky and Zicheng at noon!”

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Gomiko said.

She had already figured out the defense preparations, important though they were, were mostly about giving everyone peace of mind before the final battle. If everyone was wound up tight, they would make more mistakes and miss crucial details that could be the difference between success and failure. In fact, it was Daisy and Natsuko’s visit that made her realize that. By the time Margaret returned to convince her to join Daisy's girls' day thing, Gomiko had already resolved to join.

When they returned to the wagon, a Hero in a purple waistcoat and gold pauldrons was waiting outside Team Harald’s wagon.

“Oh hey! Sofiane, right?” the Hero said, jogging towards Sofiane.

“Yeah. You are… uh… Crane… right?” Sofiane asked, impressed with his ability to remember that based off the one time Daisy introduced them.

“Almost a bullseye!” Crane said, shooting some Daisy-like finger guns at the two of them. “Here, we’re having a boys’ day, and you’re invited!”

Crane handed Sofiane a flier drawn in crayon that showed some stick fingers that looked vaguely like himself, Crane, Harald, and Faisal sitting around a fire with mugs in their hands. Sofiane folded it up and tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Thanks, Crane, but I’ve got a lot to do today and I’m already behind. Tell the others I said hi,” Sofiane said.

Sofiane tried to move around him, but Crane re-positioned himself to block Sofiane. “No can do! Daisy said I gotta do everything in my power to ensure you’re a part of boys’ day.”

Despite Crane’s cheerful tone, it was obvious he could squish Sofiane like a bug. Having no reason to trust him, Sofiane reached for the FDJ rod tucked in his belt.

“Sofa?” Gomiko said.

“What?”

She grasped his wrist and pulled it away from the rod. “Go have a beer with the boys.”