Soriya reached over and took my hands in hers again. “Hey, hey! What’s wrong! You… you leveled right? Isn’t… isn’t that a good thing?”

I laugh sobbed. “That’s just it! I don’t want this! I don’t want to level up! I don’t want to have an adventure! I don’t want to be pinkie the useless love interest!”

“Well… well who says your useless!” She looked affronted. “You’re my friend, and I don’t like people talking bad about my friends! So… so you take that back! My best friend is not useless!”

I blinked at her, surprised out of my nascent self-pity. My lips twitched, and I found myself smiling at her through my tears. “We’re friends, are we? I barely even know you. Do you even know me?”

“Well sure I know you! I mean… ok, yes, it’s true, I know a lot more about the Lilyanna that everyone tells me about. But I know you’re an isekai, like me! I know you’re the healer mage and I know you’re pretty and cool and everyone in the village loves you!”

I smiled painfully, and looked down at the empty potion bottle in my lap. “Do they? I think they love Lilyanna the Purity Sue. I’m… not her. I need to get beaten up to learn how to heal, I’m… I’m angry at the pixies, and I don’t want to be Lilyanna anyway!” Anger rose in me again and I picked up the bottle and hurled it against the far wall of my bedroom as hard as I could. The glass shattered against the wall, and Soriya jumped in surprise.

“I’m not Lilyanna! My name is…” I could feel the pressure the resistance pushing fiercely against me, but I was so mad! “My name is Ben!“ The world twanged around me, a loud and discordant note, a throbbing wrongness that filled the air and I didn’t care. “I’m not.. ff…ffff-! I’m not fucking Lilyanna!”

The twang stretched into a splintering crack that I felt through every bone in my body, like a shard of ice driven through my core.

“Oh… oh man, what the hell was that?!” Said Soriya with a shaking tone.

“And you can swear!” I turned and glared at her. “You can ff…ffff-! You can fripping swear if you like! Why can’t I swear!?”

Soriya looked at me, her eyes big. “You can’t… but you just…? Oh no. You… you bent the world to swear?”

“What the… the h… the hh…” I gritted my teeth and pushed against the weight on me, like I’d pushed to turn the stick into my staff. “Hell are you talking about?!”

The world cracked again, and I could hear another shattering note, longer and higher than the last that made my bones vibrate.

It hurts. Hurts in a way that isn’t a wound or a cut, it hurts like a shard of ice jammed into my brain!

Soriya’s eyes got even bigger and she slapped her hand across my mouth. “You mustn’t do that! You mustn’t do that anymore!

My words were muffled under her hand. “Why the… why the honey not?!”

Soriya’s mouth twitched and she pressed a hand over her mouth. “Oh spirits. Was that you trying to say ‘hell’? You’re adorable.”

I could feel my ears burning with the force of a furious blush. “Stop it! Stop laughing you meadowlark! It’s not funny!”

Soriya’s eyes sparkled and she giggled behind her hands. “Oh my gawd, was that you trying to say motherfucker?! You really are the most adorable thing.”

Before I could explode at her, she rushed on raising her hands placatingly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Let me explain. You mustn’t bend the world too much. It… it doesn’t like it. Don’t… don’t get mad.” She grimaced again. “Don’t get more mad, let me explain.”

She sat back in her chair, and assumed a lecturing tone. “Black mages don’t use guns. Well, I mean, they don’t have black mages in this world, they have {Elementalist}s. But whatever I am, we aren’t supposed to use guns, but you’ve seen Diaboli.”

I nodded. “Uh huh. I wondered about that. Ok?”

“When I arrived… which is something I’ll touch on later. Anyway, when I arrived and first learned that I had spells, I was told I had to use a staff. I even had one. Well. Soriya had one. Not much difference. I figured that was fine, I’m a mage after all, sure of course I need a staff or a book.” She patted the tome at her side. “I really love my book of shadows, the special effects in this world are to die for! But then I went down the market. This was about a week before the festival, and I saw the most amazingly cool guns for sale. Our blacksmith, Everett, makes them.

“Anyway, I thought ‘I want one of those!’ I picked one up and admired it for a bit, then tried to aim it. I couldn’t. It was like my eyes were wandering, or my arm was numb. I got mad, and kept trying. It didn’t make sense, why couldn’t I just aim the stupid thing?! And that was the first time I felt the discord. That stuff we just felt, only a lot less potent. And the gun looked so cool, and I couldn’t aim it!” I could hear the frustration in her voice as she recounted the events.

She huffed angrily then continued. “So. I bought it. Everett laughed at me, said he’d take it back when I gave up. I asked what he meant, he said only {Sharpshooter}s and {Commander}s can use guns. So I went back home. Actually that was the first day I tried to meet you, only everything kept going wrong…” she stopped and shook her head. “I’ll get back to that.

“So, I went back home with the gun. And I tried again and again to use it. I could feel something pushing back against me, like the world itself didn’t want me to handle it. And so I pushed it. And there was a… it felt like a break in the world. I’d been feeling this… ‘twang’ of discord up till then, but after I felt the break, I could aim and fire! I was so happy, I’d beaten the system, you know? But then I went to grab my staff and my hand went right through it. Like it had phased out of reality or… or I had.” She paused, and grew quiet and pensive, in marked contrast to her earlier energetic demeanor. When she continued, she was much more subdued.

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“I was scared. I’d just arrived and I’d already ruined my new life, you know? I grabbed for the staff, and this time I pushed like I’d pushed with the gun. And I grabbed it, and the world cracked a little, and then it twisted in my hands and changed shape. It became Diaboli. It’s my staff, but it’s a gun, you see. The world is willing to let me have a staff, but they must be guns. I can’t… I can’t even touch a real staff anymore. I have to bend the world to make them guns. And every time I bend the world there’s… I guess you could say fallout. Holes. Things that should happen that don’t, or shouldn’t happen that do. My hands go through things the first time I try to pick them up, or my voice goes strange and nobody can understand me for a bit. Things like that. The smaller the bend, the less fallout there is.” She went quiet.

The silence stretched out, and I ventured “So... so that’s how you knew when I picked up the stick, it would change into a staff? Hey, where is it, anyway?”

Soriya smiled weakly and pointed to the foot of my bed. I lifted up on the pillows and saw my staff laying on the padded hope chest at the foot of my bed. It was the strangest thing, but I felt a surge of relief and pleasure seeing it there. Like I hadn’t lost something important.

“You wouldn’t let go of it until your mom wrapped you in bandages soaked with healing potion.”

I frowned. “Huh. It’s still a staff though. Do you think that I can only pick up sticks to be a staff now?”

She shook her head. “No, that was a really small bend. Not even a break. You should have had a staff. I mean, obviously, right? You’re a white mage, you buy your weapons and gear at the festival, then head to the combat tutorial, right?”

I gave her a weak smile in return. “We do seem to keep doing things in the wrong order, don’t we?”

“Yeah. It’s… not been working out for us very well.” She sighed. “Anyway. I’ve never felt anything like what you just did, it was bigger than when I created Diaboli. And I’m… I think you just broke something. Something really big and really important. I don’t know what, and it’s not like anything obviously changed.”

“Maybe people will think I’m a boy now?”

Soriya looked around nervously, but I hadn’t felt any tension or that discord when I said it. She swallowed and relaxed a bit. “Anyway. That’s why it’s important you don’t bend the world anymore. I don’t think you forcing a swear will cause too big of an issue, but… just watch what you say.” She paused, lecture clearly over. “So… you were a boy before?”

I could feel the tension roaring in even as I opened my mouth to say it but I couldn’t help it. It was important and it wasn’t going away and I was so angry!

“I am a boy!” I burst out. The cracking splintering twang of wrongness was loud and violent, like I’d been stabbed with an icepick of dark and cold. And this time I felt something… dangerous. Something that shouldn’t exist suddenly did, and I knew in my bones that it would be a problem. The light in my room flickered, it grew chill and dark before flickering back to the bright cheerful sunshine and vibrant colors.

Soriya’s eyes grew large. She stood up and looked around wildly, then hugged herself, shivering. “Oh no. I warned you! I told you not to bend the world so sharply! Now something… you’ve broken something! The break will manifest! That felt… big!”

I swallowed. “You mean like… like with your gun? That… that doesn’t seem so bad?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Even Diaboli didn’t feel that big! This felt… different! Why bigger. Angrier.”

“But this isn’t fair! All I said was-“ Soriya dove across the bed and slapped her hands over my mouth.

“Don’t say it! I know you want to say it, but please, please! I’m begging you! Don’t… don’t break it again!” Her lips twisted in a sympathetic smile. “So you were a boy in another world. So what’s the issue? Isn’t it a dream come true to have a pretty girl available to do anything you say?” She babbled.

I glared at her furiously, and tugged at her hands over my mouth. She refused to budge, and the look in her eyes… she was scared. Really scared. Soriya’s eyes were pleading with me not to do anything further.

And that darkness. It was… scary. Like I broke something. Something big. Maybe… maybe I should just… let it be for now. I finally nodded and she gingerly took her hands off my mouth as though afraid I might say something unwise again.

Not an unreasonable fear, honestly. I took a deep breath, grabbed one of my pillows and shoved my face into it, screaming at the top of my lungs, letting the worst language Lilyanna would let me say gush out.

“Honeysuckle fripping meadowlark honey sugarpatch!” I emptied my lungs in a muffled long high-pitched scream of frustration, then let the pillow drop, panting.

Soriya’s smiled hesitantly at me. “Better?” She said gingerly.

I blinked a few times, probing at the anger bubbling inside me.

“Weirdly enough… yes.” Even my voice sounded much lighter and sweeter. Like I’d let go of a very heavy weight without realizing it.

“Well. That’s good.” She squeezed my hand.

“I don’t know about good. I’m still. Here.” I pressed my lips together. “If I don’t want to be here, I’d better start figuring that out then. I guess we should start with figuring out what I just broke.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re so determined to… no, scratch that. I just realized… if your previous life was… yeah, I guess it makes sense you don’t want to be the main character’s love interest.”

I shot her a glare, but there was no heat in it, and it quickly wilted. “Yeah. So… I guess you wouldn’t mind being the main character’s girl?”

She put her finger on her chin thoughtfully, and looked into the middle distance. “Actually… well, actually I don’t know. Some of them are pretty smart, but most seem to have a death grip on the idiot ball. Good scenery doesn’t make up for an empty head.”

That startled a laugh out of me. “Yeah, that’s fair.” I took a deep breath, took stock of myself. “Ok. Still a girl. What do you think might have broken?”

“I don’t know. I would have expected the world to… I don’t know, accommodate your demand? But you’re still… You know. Lily.”

I opened my mouth to complain, and we both felt the discord and tension snap into place. I fell silent, and pursed my lips, then very hesitantly said “Yes. That’s right. I’m Lilyanna.”

The ominous tension dissolved immediately and the sunlight streaming into my room grew a little brighter, a shadow I hadn’t even noticed vanishing.

“Oh… kay. Important safety tip.” I murmured.

Soriya’s lips quirked. “Surely you’re not planning on crossing the streams?”

I gave another startled giggle. “No, of course not. Definitely not. Wouldn’t do that.” We sat there for a moment before a thought niggled its way to my attention.

“Hey…” I said thoughtfully. Soriya looked at me quizzically. “Why aren’t you weirded out by being Soriya? You’re even more… you know.” I moved my hands in an hourglass figure.

Soriya stared at me mouth open in surprise, then burst out laughing. “Oh my god! Are you kidding me!? Do you really think only boys play video games?! I’ve always been a girl!”

I felt my cheeks and ears tingle with the force of an uncontrollable blush. “Oh.”