When Fenrir was finally done with checking on and questioning the new prisoners that they acquired, he stepped back outside, closed the door behind him, and slumped down against it until he was sitting on the ground.

“Bro… you don’t look too good,” Rao said, making Fenrir’s ears twitch from the sudden arrival of his voice.

“Didn’t even see you there,” Fenrir replied. “My bad.”

“Everything alright?”

Fenrir looked up and noticed Rao was sitting on a chair right next to where he was. “Were you waiting for me?”

“Yeah. Rachel told me you were over here.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked her.”

“I mean, why were you waiting?”

“Oh. Wanted to make sure you’re alright. You’re my bro.”

“Somebody else could have told you that I’m alright. I saw your girlfriends just a bit ago.”

“But that’s not the same as checking up on you myself.”

Hearing that, it was impossible for Fenrir not to smile a little. “Thanks. And sorry for being kind of cold. I’m just tired, physically, but mainly mentally.”

“Don’t worry about it. And dang… you want to talk about it?”

“Not much to talk about, really. I questioned all the prisoners, they’re a bunch of unrepentant assholes who think having morals are cringe and that they should be allowed to do absolutely anything they want because we’re inside of a virtual world, and they acted like edgelords the entire time I talked to them. You know… back in the day, I didn’t really mind guys like this that much. They were assholes, sure, but so was I. Two sides of the same coin. What me and my old group did is no better than what they’re doing, we just didn’t act edgy about it. We messed with people and trolled them.”

Rao looked down at Fenrir while he was talking and spotted the bloodied knuckles he had. “Your hands okay?”

Fenrir brought his hands up in front of his face to check them out. “Didn’t even notice. But yeah, they’re fine. It’s not my blood.”

“Is it the prisoners’?”

“One of them decided to go into vivid detail about what he would do to Nell if he broke free. He was just trying to provoke me, and I knew that… but it worked. He wanted me to kill him so that he could respawn. Made sure to leave him alive.”

“Isn’t it kind of messed up to beat a prisoner?”

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have lost my cool. Even though prisoner rights don’t exactly exist in this game, and he wanted to kill all of us and tried doing so, you’re still not supposed to beat somebody who is basically a prisoner of war.”

“Well, I won’t tell anybody if you don’t.” Rao gave Fenrir’s shoulder a pat after that.

“I appreciate it. At the same time, it’s like… I don’t know. I feel like I’m getting soft. I’ve always been somebody who is willing to stand up for my friends when they get trash talked in a game, but I never really got… pissed off, if that makes any sense. But it—I guess a way to look at it would be… it doesn’t really feel like it’s just a game anymore. It doesn’t feel like it’s just trash talking over a microphone or whatever. These bodies might not be real, but we still feel them like they are. Anything that happens to them, we feel. Even if there are settings to reduce the pain we feel and to disable traumatizing content and all that, these are still bodies that are… effectively real.”

“Bro.”

Fenrir turned his head to look up at Rao and saw that Rao looked, if anything, shocked. “What?”

“You’re only just realizing that?” Rao blinked a couple of times, his eyebrows raised.

“Well, no, but I mean—you know? How do you look at it?”

“With my eyes, bro.”

Fenrir narrowed his eyes at Rao, prompting the latter to grin and laugh.

“Sorry,” Rao said. “I’ve been wanting to practice my dad jokes.”

“Practice them?” Fenrir asked.

“Yeah. I mean… I’ve got girlfriends now. And I want kids someday, which means I’m going to be a dad. I’ve got to get good at acting like a dad before I have them.”

“And being good at telling dad jokes is being a good dad?”

“Exactly, bro. My grandpa taught me that. What kind of dad couldn’t make his kids groan and roll their eyes from stupid jokes? Didn’t you ever get dad joked?”

“Well, my dad died when I was pretty young, and—”

“Oh, crap. Sorry, I forgot. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry about it, you don’t need to apologize. But anyways, he was pretty serious and traditional f rom what little I remember of him. Not exactly the kind of guy to go around making jokes. My memory of him is… him coming home from work, wanting to eat dinner, and then watching TV by himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never said a joke in his whole life.”

“Dang… I’m sorry.”

Fenrir shrugged and said, “It is what it is. He wasn’t a bad dad at all, but—wait. That’s not the topic and not what I’m worried about. How do you view this world we’re in?”

“With my eyes.”

“You can’t just use the same joke twice that soon.”

“When you’re a dad you can. But uh… I guess I just see it as like, a second life of sorts. I mean… with how realistic it is, it might as well be one, yeah? Ever since I started playing, I didn’t really treat it any different from how I treat the real world. It’s too similar to reality to be treated like it’s just a game, I think.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Are you… telling me that back when you tried checking under Olly’s clothes to see if he was a boy or girl, you would have done that in real life?”

“Okay, that’s different. I guess I can’t say I acted completely normal, but like… now I do. If anybody tried to hurt Shogun, I would treat it like somebody trying to hurt my pet in real life. If anybody tried to hurt me or anybody I care about, I would treat it like in real life. The only difference is that here, it’s okay to kill somebody who messes with you.”

“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Treating it like real life, and still killing somebody when you don’t need to.”

“I’ll be honest… it’s probably not a good thing. Even in real life, I’ve found myself being like… more aggressive, if that makes sense. I know people like to joke about how there used to be some people who actually believed games can make you more violent, but a game like this? I think it might be. Honestly, anybody who can intentionally act like a bad guy in this game kinda scares me. It’s too realistic to uh… what’s the word… disassociate? Yeah, that. It’s too realistic to completely disassociate from, and I think anybody who claims that they can perfectly separate the real world from this one is lying.”

“You’re not wrong. When I spend time with my girlfriends, it doesn’t matter if it’s here or in real life. It all feels equally valuable. When you can still feel somebody hug you, feel their warmth against you, interact with them with all the same realism as you could in real life—at what point does it become real? Sure, we’re in a virtual world, but it’s a real virtual world. It’s a virtual world that exists. Our avatars exist. It’s not like I’m reading a manga or watching an anime where the characters don’t actually exist. We all exist. This place exists. Even if it’s virtual, it’s starting to feel wrong to treat it as any less legitimate than the real world—the offline world. There’s the offline world and the virtual world. Both real.”

“Exactly. See, I knew you had it figured out. That’s why I was surprised. No way you didn’t already know that.”

“Well, I mean, I’m only just now coming to that conclusion, kind of. I already treated the AIs like they’re real people equal to us, but… didn’t really see the the world itself, and the way people act in it, as equal to real. Though, to be fair, I don’t think it’s impossible for people to disassociate. I’m sure there are some people who can genuinely separate their virtual behavior from their offline behavior.”

“I don’t really believe it, but maybe that’s because I can’t relate to it.”

“It’s probably only a tiny percentage of people. Most who think they can differentiate between the two probably can’t actually.”

“I don’t know, I don’t think I can believe that. It would be like somebody walking around in real life punching people for fun, then saying they were just acting and that it doesn’t affect them or represent them, or whatever.” Rao looked down at Fenrir’s bloodied knuckles again. “That’s why even if whoever you punched was a jerk who was taunting you… don’t let it become a habit. I know that I’ve been getting affected, and I don’t want that to happen to you. We’ve got too many girlfriends who are going to be upset with us if we get ourselves in trouble and get locked up.”

Fenrir might not have been able to agree with Rao’s stance, and he couldn’t think of any examples where he felt like the game could have been influencing his offline behavior in a negative way, but he still smiled and nodded out of appreciation for his friend’s concern. “Thanks. I’ll be careful. Besides, me punching that asshole… all I did was give him power over me and basically hand him a win. Ignoring him would have pissed him off even more. But… shit. You might be right. The whole reason we started this topic—but instead of the game affecting my offline life, it feels more like my offline life is affecting how I behave here. I treated that asshole like he wasn’t just an edgy griefer in a game trying to mess with me. I treated him like he was an actual threat to my girlfriends’ real safety.”

“At least it was a good reason. Most people would think you’re pretty cool for that.”

“I guess, but at the same time, I don’t want to be somebody who lets a captured prisoner taunt me into beating the shit out of him when he has no way to fight back and is purposely trying to get under my skin. And not even an hour ago, I was… basically thinking about how I could potentially torture the players. That’s not me. Ah. Shit. Maybe you are right. Are you actually smarter than I thought?”

“Bro… I graduated from university with pretty good grades. I might not understand how women and relationships work, but I’m kinda okay at everything else.”

“I think you should give yourself more credit. You’re more than just okay.”

Rao blushed a bit and scratched his cheek. “I don’t know about that, but I mean… I try.”

“And that’s all that matters.”

“Heh. Thanks. Anyways, uh, yeah. Maybe it’s a bit alarmist or whatever, but I do think this world is changing us. It’s kind of like… if you drink alcohol. Drinking alcohol removes, or reduces, your inhibitions, yeah? And while our inhibitions are reduced or removed, we’re acting in a world that’s as real as the offline world, and there’s like, zero difference between the worlds as far as our senses go. I guess it’s kinda like… you know how all those huge, comfy chairs from the start of the century turned out to be really bad for people’s backs? People didn’t evolve to be able to handle sitting all day. We didn’t evolve to be looking at screens in front of our faces all the time. Our brains didn’t evolve to be switching back and forth between two worlds that it thinks are just as real as each other. I’m kinda scared that the more times goes on, the worse it’s gonna get, and somebody will eventually do a study on it that shows how dangerous it can be. Like imagine if people start being riskier offline because there’s a subconscious part of them thinking that they can just respawn if they die.”

“Yeah, if this is actually going on, then that could turn out to be a huge problem. We’re forcing ourselves to limit our inhibitions here because ‘it’s just a game,’ but as far as our actual perception and brains are concerned, it’s just like the real world. So what if our brains start doing that all on their own even when we’re offline?”

“Exactly, bro.”

Fenrir sighed and leaned forward. “Now I’ve got even more to think about. Here I thought there were enough issues to worry about regarding the NPCs, and now I’m aware that I might be messing up my brain. But at least I think it’s done more positive changes for me than negative ones. I’m almost a different guy now compared to when I started playing, and pretty much all in good ways. Then again… that might just be because I have supportive girlfriends inflating my ego by a massive amount.”

“Speaking of girlfriends, uh… they’re taking a vacation and visiting my city soon. Do you have like… any tips?” Within seconds, Rao went from sounding educated and confident to like an innocent virgin with zero experience regarding relationships, which wasn’t inaccurate. “Like, should I pay for them to have a hotel room? Or like… let them stay over? But if they stay over at my place, my bed isn’t big enough for them to share. Some of them could use the bed and then the others can use the couch and chair I’ve got, and I guess I could sleep on the floor? And then what do I do about food? Should I buy a bunch of different things to eat? Crap… I don’t know what they like to eat. And what about—”

“Rao.” Fenrir placed his hand on Rao’s arm. “Just talk to them. With the kind of man you are, you need to not worry about things and instead just… say exactly what’s on your mind to them. Please. I promise it will work. Anything you’re worried about, ask them.”

“You’re probably right, but… at the same time, I don’t want to have to ask them for everything, you know? I want to be like, a cool, dependable boyfriend who can sometimes figure things out by himself so that they don’t have to worry. If I asked them everything on my mind then I’d be like an annoying little kid who is constantly asking them questions all day long.”

“I think they’d like that.”

“But what if they don’t? I don’t want to mess up, bro…”

Fenrir let out another sigh and stood up. “Alright. Helping you prepare will be a good distraction for me. It’s not good if all I do is punch people in the face and worry about NPCs. And until my girlfriends are free, I’ve got nothing else to do. Well, other than, you know, help fix all the damage those assholes did to our city. Let’s talk while we clean up the place.”

“Wait, hang on,” Rao said, bringing his thumb up to his mouth to give it a lick before rubbing his thumb against Fenrir’s cheek. “There you go. Had some blood on you.”

There was no way that Fenrir wouldn’t blush a little from that, and he even looked away afterward. “You know, I think you’re going to be a great dad if this is how you treat your friends.”

Rao tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

And yet again, Fenrir sighed. “Honestly, Rao, I wish I was as good of a person as you. Come on. Let’s help out with the cleaning while planning for your girlfriends.”

Rao didn’t quite understand what Fenrir meant, but he was happy to be seen as a good guy in his best bro’s eyes.