I was shocked.

I dropped her hands and then felt terribly bad for doing it.

“I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean to,” I stammered.

“No, Ollie. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m just lumping my own issues on you for no reason.”

She turned away, like she was ready to trudge back to camp. I couldn’t let her do that. I’d been the worst confidante in the history of confidantes.

I didn’t even address what she said. You’re a fool, Ollie. A downright fool.

“Wait a sec! Claire, it’s okay. I’m glad you told me. Now it won’t be weird when I want to have a break somewhere and look out at the scenery. This world is too beautiful to pass by, don’t you think?”

She paused, then faced me. She looked glad that I wasn’t falling all over myself to tell her how unlucky her situation was. I figured she would’ve come to terms with the hard parts a long time ago.

“You’re not just saying that? Is it gonna be weird between us now? Don’t make it weird.”

“It’s gonna be super weird. When I see a pretty flower on the side of the road, I’ll pick it for you. We can go back to Piliton’s Palace and have a picnic. Hell, I’d be willing to run back and get Percival to cook dinner for us. That guy’s cooking is a joy to look at.”

She looked horrified at the flower-picking idea, but her gaze softened when I mentioned Piliton’s Palace. It must’ve meant a lot to her — kind of like my experience when I was running around at the Great Plateau.

“If you pick flowers for me, I’m going to shoot you. And then I’ll come find you in real life and people will know that you got beaten up by a blind girl.”

“I’d like that. Not the part where I get beaten up, but meeting up. You’re cool. I like you.”

She narrowed her eyes and spun, actually retreating to the camp this time.

Ditching me is not the worst possible response. Far better than something like, ‘Ew’.

Penelope and I wandered back. We stayed a reasonable distance behind.

I tried looking up at the stars like she’d done. I thought about how I’d feel if it were all suddenly taken away from me. If it weren’t for B&B, she might never have seen a star, or a blade of grass, or another human being.

Seventeen years without looking at yourself in a mirror.

It was lucky I was having this discussion internally. It sounded like the exact kind of soppy stuff that she would’ve been bombarded with her whole life. The rolling pin might’ve come out if I’d gotten all mushy and felt sorry for her.

I did feel sorry for her, though. In some part of me. Somewhere beneath the far stronger desire to act completely the same as before. Nothing had changed. She could still shoot Ooze Man in the face without a problem.

“Yo, wait up a sec!” I rushed up to her, forgoing my plan to give her some space. “If you’re gonna vent to me about stuff, I have to be able to vent to you about my stuff. And you can’t say no because you didn’t ask for permission before dropping that on me.”

“No.”

“My dad is a massive pile of turds. I’ve been separated from all my best friends. My mom is awesome, but we’re stuck living in a shitty old hou—”

“Ollie!” She went to hit me on the arm, then held herself back in case she whacked Penelope who was somehow sleeping through it all. She thumped my stomach instead.

“You’re smiling,” I said.

“Am not.”

“You can’t hide it from me. I know you, that’s what you said. I know when you’re barely holding it in. Like now.”

She covered her mouth with both hands and kept walking. I could see the embers of the fire in the distance, nearly masked by the clumps of tall grass surrounding it. Tails of smoke drifted over us, making Penelope shift around and twitch her nose.

“So have you put two and two together yet?” she asked. “Or is your brain being intentionally dull to protect you?”

“From what? I guess it must be doing that dull thing you mentioned. Hurr durrr.”

“My dad’s fine. The krad was to fix my eyes.”

It got through to me. When I’d won the fight for Bill’s Yard, I’d stopped her from seeing.

“Oh. Claire, I’m so sorry. If you’d told me, I would’ve—”

“No. Nuh uh. You’re not allowed to pity me.” She pushed through into the clearing and sat on the tarp. “That’s the thing that pisses me off the most. Whenever anyone finds out, they always think that there’s something they could and should be doing to help me, and it’s so annoying. Like, I’m seventeen, I’ve been blind for my whole life, they are definitely not the first person to suggest whatever they are going to suggest.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I delivered Penelope back to her once she’d yanked the blanket from her inventory and arranged it.

“Anyway,” she continued, “it was a fair fight. And after hanging out in Asteroth, with Piliton, I’m starting to think that I wasn’t going to get the money even if I won.”

“Did he have something to do with it?” I couldn’t hold the suspicion and anger from my voice.

“No, no. Not him, I just meant that he’s kind of representing the whole nation. At least from our point of view. Did you talk to the locals much?”

I thought about it. I might’ve met eyes with a few travelling folk, and we’d had that conversation with Piliton’s sons, but they didn’t strike me as the norm.

“Nope. Can I ask how much they offered you? Maybe don’t tell me if it’ll make me feel worse.”

She chuckled. “That’s actually a good idea, because it’s the opposite — you’ll feel better. It was eight thousand krad. If this goes well, then hanging out with you will earn me almost double that. And we’ve already got Otto’s quest out of the way, so that’s one a bit thousand guaranteed.”

I quietly breathed a sigh of relief. With the resources that the Asterian Army had, I was worried that the number was far higher. My conscience had taken a beating today, and I wasn’t ready for another hit.

“Do you forgive me?”

The question hung in the air. I didn’t think I had the courage to say it, but then it just popped out of my mouth and I couldn’t take it back.

Claire looked startled, but then she properly considered it. “I…yes. I think I do. It was a pretty big shock when you beat me, though. I was so excited, and I was having dreams about going to the hospital for the surgery, so when that fell apart, you were really the only person I could take it out on. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. If I were you, I’d hate my guts. I’m surprised you let Otto hold you back when you were about to turn my head into cookie dough the other day.”

“He’s strong. I was trying to get you, trust me.”

“Octopuses, man.”

We went silent again, and I desperately wished that Percival had sent us away with the ingredients for s’mores. Even just a marshmallow on a stick would’ve been fine. I stared into the coals, thinking that I should have a go at camping in the real world. Duri had a tent, Annette would bring the right things to make the experience comfortable, and Joey could bring…enthusiasm.

“One of us should get some sleep,” Claire said. “I think we’re already halfway into one of the planned rest blocks. Yours, actually. Unlucky.”

She was right. I couldn’t even see the long grasses that were only thirty feet or so from the camp. We were lucky that it was a clear night — if it rained, there was no protection.

“That’s fine. It was worth losing a couple hours sleep. I’ll see you in a couple more, okay? Don’t bother replenishing the extra firewood — Penny and I will go on a scavenging trip when I get back.”

“Awww, you called her something other than Penelope for the first time. Just make sure you don’t wake her up for too long. Growing kids need their sleep.”

“I won’t. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

**************

I set an alarm for a meagre two hours of sleep — more of a nap, really. I’d skipped dinner, but the hunger pangs that threatened to bring me to my knees a couple nights ago weren’t there. Instead, my mind was completely occupied with Claire. Not in a weird way, but just working out why I was the ‘relative stranger’ that she’d decided to confide in.

My heart pushed me to one reason, but the logical part of my brain pushed me to the other.

She was basically the first person I spoke to in the Yard. Probably same goes for her. We’ve spent multiple days, maybe weeks either on quests together or having something to do with the other. Part of it was a bitter, ugly war, but we were still together.

If not me, then who?

It was one of my favourite quotes. I didn’t think it would apply to this kind of situation, though.

After my mind had run through a sufficient number of possibilities, it finally let me rest.

My alarm went off five minutes later. At least it felt like five minutes. I’d rolled around and managed to drop a pillow off the side of the bed, so it had to be a little longer.

I rummaged around in the dark and put my cold clothes back on. Mom and Dale would probably hear me scrabbling about, but I could explain myself in the morning. For now, Security Guard Oliver had a job to do.

--Immersing, please don’t disconnect--

Claire looked up from the fire. She seemed happy to see me. For me, it felt like only fifteen minutes or so since I’d seen her last.

“I hope you grabbed a book from Piliton’s. It’s boring as batshit out here.”

“Dammit. I finished the one I was reading and didn’t bring a second. I’m guessing you didn’t bring one?”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Piliton doesn’t stock a great deal of Braille. Any, in fact.”

“Oh. True. Can I ask how you go reading the System messages?”

She laughed, then quickly silenced herself as the bundle that was Penelope shuffled.

“I go very slowly. One of Mom’s friends bought me a book written in Braille, then made a second, identical book but with the ‘normal’ letters raised off the page in the same way. It would’ve taken her forever, but it basically taught me English.”

I nodded. “That’s extremely generous of her. Your mom has some handy friends, it sounds like.”

“It’s way less efficient than Braille, but I can kind of decipher the System’s messages and road markers and whatnot by imagining how the letter would feel and then translating the lines and curves into the much more normal dots of Braille. Seriously, it takes six dots to replicate the entire English alphabet. Y’all have it worse than I do.”

“Very cool. Now hand over the package and go sleep. If you get four hours of shuteye, we can kind of sync back up with our planned schedule.”

“Don’t call Penny a package. She’s a wonderful, delightful human.”

“Humans talk, packages don’t. That thing you’re holding is not talking, therefore it is a package.”

“Whatever. Don’t fall asleep.”

Claire passed the bundle to me then disappeared. I nestled down on the tarp, then immediately hopped back up to put on some extra firewood. My plan was to give it about two hours until Penny and I went on our mission. That would put us at four o’clock — hopefully early enough for Penny to go back to sleep afterwards.

Listen to yourself, man. You’re secretly doting on her as much as Claire is. So much for not caring about NPCs.

It was hard not to. I blamed genetics — or evolution — for giving us a desire to look after cute things. I’d heard of cuteness aggression — a phenomenon where seeing things like kittens or puppies or baby turtles made humans subconsciously a little more violent than their usual selves.

Penelope wriggled around, pulling me out of my tangent.

Woah. Claire’s gone for five minutes and I’m thinking about hitting baby turtles.

It was going to be a long night.