What the hell? Are these three requests, or is it one sent three times because someone was impatient? The tiny portrait seems familiar, it's a redhead cutie with a dark eyeshadow three times in a row. There are some subtle differences though.

Oh, right. It's Little Red, that Lily or Lilith girl from the Pharmacy's crew. The name reads xX_CrimsonMage13_Xx, and she sent it while I was offline. But even if the portraits are very similar, the names are different under each request.

There is one called xX_CrimsonCriminal13_Xx and CrimsonKitten13 without the exes. The last name appears white while all the rest is grey. Does it mean that one's online and she logged off with the rest?

They must be her alt characters, right?

Well, there's no reason not to accept the requests, after all, she's a hottie. If there were doubts about it before, now it's obvious that she's not in a crime prevention program. We can only have one character. How would it feel to log in with more at once?

It must be a schizophrenic experience, and I have enough mental issues without that, thank you. She only has one logged-in at the moment, and there does seem to be an option to message her. What would I say though? Let's leave her alone for now.

This also tells me that the game keeps the friend list separate between the alts. She sent a request for every character, which would be flattering if she was this eager. Okay, well, a message can't hurt. Something like 'Sorry, I didn't notice your requests until now.'

And it's sent.

"No worries, Noob, haha." The chuckle in my head is way more pleasant than a jumpscare, but it's surprising nonetheless. It's her voice, almost as if she whispered it into my ears, even though I'm alone in the rain. Right, the character headed to the Textile Works.

"Wow, she answered so fast." If it means anything, the grey and white names should reveal if someone's online or not. According to that, it looks like COTTONEYEJOE already logged off. His NPC shopkeeper might still be able to help.

How does one respond? Oh, there is a chat window in the bottom left corner. Her answer is there with a grey background, and my previous message is blue. Although there should be only one message there.

"Besides, why is she still calling me Noob?" Wait, my thoughts appeared in the chat box again. Is it recording everything now? No, these didn't appear. Did the system already send it, or can I still delete it? "Whoa, chatting with this headset is super weird."

"Hahaha, you'll get the hang of it." It's her voice again. Her laughter echoes inside my head before the text can appear. And it looks like she got my messages too. The ones I didn't mean to send. Oh shit.

With a name like this, it should be okay to behave like an idiot.

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"Sorry about that. This chat thing does whatever it wants. I told you my name, by the way, so why don't you use it?" This is better. Careful what you think about, Arnim. Be careful to cut off every thought if letters appear in that chat box. "Or she might think you're a freak."

"Hahahaha, you're hilarious. Your username fits you much better than the real one." Wow, she doesn't pull her punches, and who can blame her after doing it again? This chat program wants me dead, but at least she has fun. "Check your message settings."

So weird, it's like telepathy. Hearing her voice up close gives me goosebumps, appearing on the character's skin. Or is it the rain? That ridiculous building is already here and the doors are open. I'll look inside after following her instructions or something worse might happen.

"She meant the settings from this window, right?" Oh crap, the system sent this one too, and her response is another chuckle. Sort this shit out before it causes a disaster. The options all look message-related.

[Auto-send: On (Default)]

Nope, turn that off, turn that off! That should let me delete my mistakes before she hears them. Like this one, the system wanted to send this too, but now it won't. Thank God, why did they set something like this to be on by default?

[Auto-read: On (Default)]

I'm fine with the second one but the auto-send was screaming for trouble. There are type settings too, the default is 'auto-type when thinking about the subject'. So whenever my thoughts included her, the controller thought I wanted to send it.

Stupid AI never heard of horny teenagers? No, no. Any thoughts I have about anyone should be mine alone, they don't need to know about them. They have an option that says 'Send everything in real-time'. My God, that sounds even worse than the current one.

Let's go with the setting that says 'Send only when focusing on the chat window'. This should mean that the text will appear as long as I look at that window and think of something. With the auto-send turned off, this should prevent accidents from earlier.

It makes sense that you might not have time to look away during combat, but why would you chat then anyway? The other options look fine by default, let's see if it works as intended now. As a test message, let's introduce myself again, and see if she bites.

"As I said, my name is Arnim. Noob was an accident, you don't have to remind me, even if it matches all the mistakes I make." And send. Yeah, this is much better. My heart is beating like crazy, those accidental messages are almost as stressful as a fight to the death.

"Oh? But I also told you, my friends call me Lilith, and you were like 'Then Lily it is, you ain't my friend'." She sounds upset, don't tell me the chat program even transmits the emotions. Did she get offended because I tried to be polite? What a silly chick.

"It was the first time we met. I would have felt offended if someone claimed to be my friend after seeing me once. In my book, it's something you have to earn." Let's hope my explanation gets through to her and these thoughts sound natural.

Telepathy is weird, no matter how you look at it.

"Fine, let me rephrase it then. Anyone who doesn't hate my guts calls me Lilith." Why did she introduce herself as Lily if she didn't want people to call her that then? Thank God I changed the settings, the system wanted to send this one too. No, let's play nice.

"Understood, then let's start over. Nice to meet you, Lilith. I hope we can be friends." That should deal with her problem. There is a setting to enable or disable the status for others on the list. So COTTONEYEJOE might have that off, and Little Red and DragonSlayer left it on.

I disable this setting to calm my paranoia while walking up the stairs to the Textile Works. The shop is empty after all, only the unnamed NPC is here. CrimsonKitten is very quiet too. Did I say something wrong?