Mila
Mila didn’t know how she expected her first interaction with Aalam to go after he dropped out of his Id state, but she hadn’t thought his first response on seeing her injury would be to get angry about her losing his artifact.
Sure, she knew he’d put a lot of effort into the Left Hand of the Runescribe, but they’d lived together for five years. He should have at least some sense of empathy after seeing her hurt, yet his powerful aura was completely stable.
And he’d never called her Ms. Li before, not once.
“My arm was cut off by the leader of one of the invasion forces, the prince of the Amoranth Kingdom. And he has the Left Hand of the Runescribe now.” Mila felt defensive, and she didn’t try to hide it, but there was no reaction from Aalam. “I did manage to kill 4 leaders and 11 generals during the process of my escape, however. And this is on top of killing 4 leaders and 8 generals of other forces earlier.”
“Great.” Aalam looked at her and she couldn’t read the nuances of his emotions at all, as he seemed to be deliberately keeping his face and aura passive. She could just tell he was angry. “You’ve killed a lot of people. And you’ve apparently now enslaved quite a few to kill in my name as well. Your new form really suits you better.”
“New form?” Mila knew getting angry wasn’t going to help the situation, but she’d never actually had a fight with Aalam before as she’d always used manipulation to avoid them, and her control over her emotions was nowhere close to what it usually was.
“From what I read, you were always a bit of a harlot and you seemed to like killing people. Now you’re in a body designed for both. You must be so happy.”
“I was never a harlot, prostitute, or any other word for sex worker.” It was completely the wrong thing to focus on and Mila knew it. Aalam barely cared about that part. It was much more the lying and, to a slightly lesser extent, the killing, but it was the part she felt the most guilty about.
Aalam raised one eyebrow. “You slept with men for money. Sure, the men weren’t the ones who paid you, and, sure, you sometimes killed them. But you didn’t film the acts. So, technically, Mila, you were.” He continued to glare at her and his aura fluctuated with a different type of power as he advanced yet another Law in his anger, this time the Law Egg of Severing, which told Mila a lot about how he felt about their relationship. “We also never actually broke up, yet you slept with a Russian oligarch.”
“If you agree we never actually broke up, then let’s not.” Mila knew she was setting herself up to be hurt, but she continued anyway. “I don’t want to break up.”
“What?” Aalam’s strong aura started going through all sorts of changes, showing his emotions as chaotic, and his face showed confusion.
“We were good together. I don’t think we should break up.”
Aalam’s aura and face settled back on anger. “You lied to me our entire relationship.”
“Technically, I never once lied to you.” It was true. She’d been spying on him the entire time, but Aalam was pretty easy to manipulate once you understood how he functioned and she’d been using her real identity the entire time, so it had been pretty easy to avoid any topics which would have revealed anything about her mission.
She could see the wheels turning in Aalam’s mind, and he wasn’t able to find anything, which was only making him more frustrated.
“You said Henry Cavill was the best Superman.”
“Okay. I change my position.” Mila sighed. “I never lied to you without making it absolutely obvious. I rescind my joke from four years ago. Zack Snyder’s version of Superman was the worst.”
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“You spied on me and sent all my data to the Chinese government since before we got together.”
“It’s not like you were the perfect boyfriend. There were multiple major incidents where you were at fault as well.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, but, for this conversation, Mila was trying to squash that part of her which always overanalyzed social situations to find the best thing to do, and she was making some really dumb mistakes as a result.
For example, when Aalam just glared at her, she started listing the bad things he’d done.
“First, there was that time you came with me to the retirement party for one of my colleagues. Everyone thought I was single for months.” Aalam had done a very Aalam thing and forgotten to give full context to what he was saying in several conversations that night. And the result was many of the other teachers getting confused and thinking he was just her friend and that she was single.
Mila’s best guess was he’d started talking about Diana at some point, who was single at the time, without giving the relevant context to those he was talking to that he was no longer talking about her, and for some reason he’d also been trying to find Diana a date, even though Diana would have been extremely against the idea. The result was multiple male teachers trying to flirt with her, seemingly encouraged into the act by her own boyfriend.
“There was also the time you broke off your contract with Yamato Technologies without telling anyone, even Diana. I had to effectively blackmail their CEO so you wouldn’t go bankrupt.” Diana had been a lawyer specializing in patent and contract law and her main client had been Aalam. She was very good at her job, but when Aalam had decided to work full time on researching the plagues starting to go around the world and dropped his neuro-electronic interface work, he hadn’t told Diana and then accidentally verbally broke his contract with the people funding him.
Diana had been so pissed off she’d spent almost an hour shouting at him, and Mila had felt the need to step up. She’d called into work for a leave of absence and then gotten on a plane to Japan that very night, conned her way into a meeting with Yamato Technologies’ CEO the next day, and then calmly explained the kind of work Aalam would be changing to and how very, very bad the PR would be if they did anything to stop him.
Yamato Technologies decided to alter their contract with Aalam and Mila had been Diana’s favorite person for a good three months after that.
“Then there was that time you confused my friend when you literally told her ‘I love you’.”
That incident had been interesting. One of the main reasons it had taken a year for a relationship to start between herself and Aalam was she’d really not wanted to be the first person Aalam ever dated and especially not the first person he’d ever slept with. She was afraid if that was the case she’d always be compared with the ideal girlfriend in Aalam’s head rather than a true person, and that would cause small cracks in the relationship.
Getting him to date anyone else, however, had proven a lesson in futility, and she effectively friend-zoned herself. So, eventually, she just gave in, took off her clothes, and jumped him.
The potential issue of him comparing her to his ideal girlfriend instead of a real person, however, didn’t go away. So, when her two college roommates were going to move away from Boston, she invited them over and manipulated one of her friends into suggesting a foursome. It had been actually quite nice for her, but Aalam hadn’t enjoyed himself anywhere close to what he’d expected at the start, which was exactly what she’d thought would happen.
It was only when her friends were about to leave, however, that Mila told Aalam about the gift one of them had given to them earlier in the night, an old and hard to find video game with excellent couch co-op, and he’d hugged her as she left and said ‘I love you.’
It hadn’t actually taken that much work to get her friend to understand he’d just been really happy about the video game, but it had opened up an avenue for both friends to tease her for the next few years, so it had been quite annoying.
“Those don’t seem that major in comparison.”
“Of course not. There is a reason I’m the one begging not to be dumped right now.”
Aalam’s glare lessened as he seemed even more confused than before, and his aura became chaotic, so Mila decided to just say it. “I love you, Aalam. And I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of The Courtesan has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Base Stats +4, Soul +12
Confessing like that had given her an epiphany, and she hadn’t been in the right state of mind to suppress it.
Aalam’s aura hardened and his expression became cold, both for very obvious reasons, and Mila decided to just give up. The stupid universe had screwed her and nothing she said would make Aalam think she hadn’t been lying the entire time.
“You know what, never mind. Let’s just work together and get you back to Earth to see Diana. Then we can talk about other things after.”