Shay wasn’t sure if Tyvan would actually like video games. He was always a stoic, traditional-seeming person, opposite of the silly and absurd arcade game imagery. There were also a lot of cartoon games-- and most adults didn’t place cartoons on a high intellectual pedestal.

(Huh. Tyvan was only a few years older than her but it was crazy that he seemed like so much more of an adult than she was.)

But... just as Tyvan said, he did like games.

He approached each machine at the video arcade with utter seriousness-- like he was facing an opponent on a battlefield. And when he was playing, his eyes had a furrowed focus that meant he was giving his all.

So... he was probably enjoying himself? (Maybe he’d enjoy himself so much that he’d forget every single way she screwed up being the worst dating partner ever?)

They started with the kids’ games at the front of the arcade. It had the loudest bells, the brightest and most colorful lights, and... the stickiest sections of crazy-patterned carpet.

Tyvan had some sort of weird, (probably magical), luckiness aura around him. If the machine had a ball that stopped on a random spot or rolled electronic dice on a light counter, he ended up winning an unreasonable amount of tickets.

Despite that, he said he didn’t like those machines much.

They gave their tickets away to wide-eyed children.

That was something of a mistake, though. A little girl in a princess dress gave Tyvan a toy she got with the tickets HE gave her. The brat even ran off before Shay could do anything about it.

The nerve...

Amyway... after that, they moved onto other games.

But as much as Tyvan said he liked them, he... wasn’t actually any good at any of them.

As a spaceship pilot, he couldn’t fly or shoot asteroids to save his life-- which was the goal of that particular game.

As a little pixel-person with a sword, he could defeat neither bad guy nor avoid a single hole-in-the-floor.

Oh-- he haaated all the two-player fighting games.

The shooting games! Tyvan kept trying to take cover. Cover was only a thing for one of the two of that genre they played, though-- he was okay at that.

And finally, they tried a racing game. The way it was designed made it practically impossible to get a good score if you tried to ‘obey the speed limit.’

Tyvan did mention that ‘Rider’ would have probably enjoyed it. Rider sounded like another member of ❴The Kingdom❵ she had yet to meet. That person’s name should have been ‘Knight,’ though-- if there wasn’t already someone named that. Knight was a cooler name, overall.

A lot of Shay’s coworkers had aliases. So far, she’d met Bishop and Rook. But there was also a Bastion, an Empress, and a Merlin-One and Merlin-Two she hadn’t.

Shay wondered if she could earn a nickname, too! Briar Rose and Yeonha didn’t seem to have one-- nor did Heidi, (unless she was Empress!)

If ‘Knight’ wasn’t taken, she wanted that.

Ooh. Or Knightress.

But, anyway...

They were at the arcade for a whole hour but it didn’t feel like that long, at all. And by that time Shay actually felt like they’d gone on a pretty good date!

--until she walked into the glass wall, trying to exit the arcade. It was right next to the open door-- and she was trying so hard not to walk too close to Tyvan, which, in hindsight, was totally counter-intuitive to her goals.

Thankfully, her pride hurt more than her nose did. And... after that, Tyvan held onto her arm until they got to the parking lot.

That almost made her want to smack her face on a door every day. Almost.

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Shay getting closer to Nuri was part of her plan to prove her usefulness to Tyvan. But the actual goal of that plan was to get closer to him. Nuri insisting that she ‘go out there and conquer him’ made Shay... no longer able to deny that.

So after Raia brought her and Tyvan back to Elysium, she ran back to her room to start brainstorming-- to put words to paper! She needed a way to keep up her momentum.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Also, she needed to brush her teeth. She did that twice.

It wasn’t too late in the evening by then, so she called Nuri. She had to report her progress and she also hoped to also, maybe, if it was okay, get some ideas. (And hopefully, she’d suggest one or two PG-13 ideas besides whatever else she had that wasn’t.)

Nuri didn’t pick up-- which was a grave disappointment. But, as promised, Shay left a message summing up all the good things that happened.

(She absolutely did not make aNy mention of her puking all over Tyvan’s sleeve. That NEVER happened!)

Ughhh.

But aFteR thAT!!! -- when Shay finally had time to actually brainstorm... she got scared, so she got a headstart on studying for the week after.

And then she went to bed on time because going to bed on time was what good students did.

Saturday was filled with more studying. Hours. Lots of hours. Her stellar grades were only possible with a lot of hard work and memorization. No time for planning the rest of her life with the only man she’d ever loved.

Then, on Sunday, she got dropped off at the Song Estate to learn gong fu. Grandpa’s lessons were a little different than usual, though. He was determined to teach her some super-secret sect-related arts-- and Shay was all about that. But that turned out to be... pill-forging-- which she found out she sucked at.

Bleigh. Not having talent was something she was used to, though.

Or... maybe she wasn’t in the right mind to figure things out? Because she was anxious? And feeling guilty? And terrified of her inevitable failure?

Tyvan, out of the goodness of his own heart had deigned himself to descend from the heavens and, eNtirely on her behalf, willingly spent rolls and rolls of quarters for her personal enjoyment.

So, obviously, Shay had to do... something for him, in return.

Something... nice... for Tyvan? Rich, handsome, and so confident that practically no one could read his emotions-- what would someone like him even like?

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Shay woke up bright and early before school on Monday. Due to the schedule, she didn’t need to help out at the nursery that day, so, for once, she had a bunch of time to herself.

After her basic morning things, Shay spent a few extra minutes lying back in bed, cringing about the things she said or should have said on her last date-- which was also her first date... and was hopefully not her last date.

Then, she fantasized a little bit on how she’d do better on future dates. She didn’t have any concrete ideas on how she’d manage that-- so instead, she just wallowed in the anxious feelings of wanting and needing to do better.

And finally, for a minute at MoSt, Shay thought about a problem she ran into with pill creation. But that made her really frustrated, so she gave up right away.

Her tummy rumbled. Having a snack sounded nice before going to school.

She changed into her uniform and grabbed a box of toaster pastries she bought for just-before-school snacking. Ooh. And she had enough time to toast them instead of eating them straight from the package.

So she took her box of goodies to the rec. room. Yeonha was missing... but considering the time, she was probably creeping on everyone doing their morning training, wherever they were.

Shay read the instructions on the box. She put her one pastry into the toaster. She pushed down the toaster-lever-thing.

She waited.

And... something went wrong.

Her pastry got stuck.

Shay tried to get it out-- ah. But she singed the side of her thumb.

She got a chopstick from the utensil drawer because humans invented tools to solve problems. But in using that chopstick, all that flaky goodness worked against her. The flakes started to flake and the inner goo threatened to goo even harder.

Shay then upgraded from chopstick to fork-- but, thankfully, she realized how stupid that would be. So she unplugged the toaster, then used the fork.

It got worse. The pastry fully boofed, spilling its sugary, sticky guts onto the inside of a toaster that wasn’t hers.

She flipped the whole thing upside down and started shaking it out. It was still hot, though, so she dropped it-- which put a dent on its side.

She was probably going to be fine, but she rinsed her hands in cold water to feel better about herself.

Oh. Was the toaster okay? Shay plugged it back in to make sure it still worked.

Then, there was smoke? Why was there smoke? She hopped over to prop the door open and slide open the windows to their maximum slide distance... Why didn’t they open all the way?

Oh. The sugary stuff was what burned... but since the heating element was obviously working, the toaster was fine, overall!

Shay still ate what was left... as burnt and gross as it was.

...And only after she finished did she realize she forgot to use the icing packet. She considered opening it and just eating the icing by itself like a child... but that really was too much sugar. She threw it away.

--and immediately regretted it. That was something she paid for with her own money.

But... anyway-- tHaT was how she got the idea of cooking as being the one nice thing she could do for Tyvan!