Chapter 67 67. Can You Actually Die?

The three had moved to the tea room. Buttons and Goggles sat side by side on a sofa in silence, thinking.

Rippa could tell they were feeling like shit. She found that rather comical, which she knew was a horrible thing to do, but she couldn’t deny that it was funny. After watching them agonize for some minutes, she broke the silence. “Goggles, I know what you are thinking, and I’m saying no to that.”

The cosmic butler looked up with an expression as if Rippa had just spilled coffee on his nearly completed homework.

“You are not elevating me. I don’t wanna deal with the responsibility.”

Goggles frowned, much to Rippa’s amusement. It was a rare delight to see the omnipotent butler fumbling and so helpless.

“I… have no clue how to handle this issue,” said Goggles honestly. “This is something so immutable and existential—”

“Well then, let’s just leave it be,” Rippa suggested. “We just keep it in mind and wing it.”

“Hmm…”

“Goggles, you are looking for a master key that unlocks every door. But I’m a fickle woman.”

Buttons brightened up. “That’s deep, Rippa.”

“Thank you.”

Goggles gave up. “Right. But please do tell us whenever we… erm…”

Rippa nodded.

Goggles sighed and leaned back on the sofa. “Friendship is hard.”

“Oh?” Rippa raised her eyebrows. “Hard to imagine you find anything difficult.”

Goggles looked at Rippa. He raised both hands and made them talk to each other. He looked back at Rippa.

“I see… understandable.” She cleared her throat and felt a bit sorry. Time to change up the mood a bit. “Anyways, please keep in mind I’m just a chicken.” Then, after a pause, she added, “A special chicken, eh?”

Goggles’ face went pale, and he waved his hands. “No, Miss Rippa, please, let us not use that term.”

Rippa grinned and reached for the tea on the table. “Welp, having said that, you guys really did scare me, bruh.”

“Yeah, sorry,” said Buttons sheepishly, but her voice was rather eager now that she sensed Rippa was no longer mad.

“Didn’t know you could stop a bullet like that, though.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Would it have hurt you?”

Buttons thought for a moment before answering. “Probably, yeah. It would have done some serious damage to this body.”

Rippa took a sip of her tea. “But you can remake it, no?”

The kid tensed up.

“Miss Rippa,” Goggles butted in. “Consider a save file worth three thousand years of gameplay. Muscle memory, neural paths… all that.”

“Yeah, Rippa, it’s not that easy,” Buttons chimed in. “If I made a new one, I’d probably be wheelchair-bound for some centuries.” The kid shuddered at the thought of that.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that,” Rippa apologized.

“Besides, this is Papa’s girl,” Buttons added. “Even thinking about anything bad happening to— Oh…”

“Now you see how I felt?” Rippa gave a knowing look.

Both Buttons and Goggles nodded.

“But the brainworm would still be OK, no?” Then Rippa realized she had just used the word. “Sorry, I meant the pilot. The pilot is immortal, yes?”

“I guess so.”

“What do you mean?” Rippa’s eyes then narrowed. “Wait, can you actually die?”

Buttons pondered the question a bit. “That’s an… interesting question. Can I will myself to die?”

“Well, it was just a question.”

“Gimme a sec. Let’s see.”

Rippa found herself back in her room all of a sudden. Buttons and Goggles had also teleported in.

“What the…”

“Just in case,” said Buttons, then she took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

And then, Buttons collapsed on the floor. At the same time, Goggles vanished.

“Buttons!” Rippa screamed. She knelt down to grab hold of the body that was now convulsing and twitching mindlessly, with the eyes rolled back and jaw slack.

“What the fuck?”

Rippa then felt something missing. The ring! The teleportation ring on her finger had also disappeared.

“Buttons! Buttons! Oh my god, what the fuck have you done?”

Rippa almost jumped out of her skin when Goggles suddenly popped back into existence.

“Wow, that was an experience,” he said. “Or, rather, none thereof.”

Buttons had also stopped thrashing. Her eyes, now back in focus, looked at Rippa. “Rippa, help me up, please.”

But Rippa just hugged the child and fumbled all over Buttons to check the kid was really back. She also noted the ring had returned to her finger.

“Funny, Goggles,” Buttons was saying, “it had never occurred to me I could do that.”

“I am not very impressed, though.”

Rippa had finally regained composure. “Guys, what the fuck happened?”

“I died,” answered Buttons flatly. “I stopped existing.”

“She means the octopus,” Goggles elaborated.

Rippa was baffled. She looked back and forth between her two friends. “But how are you back now?”

Buttons waved her hand dismissively. “Aw, it was a bunch of nothingness and… it’s just too boring.” She then beamed a smile at Rippa. “So, I decided I’d like to live. Here, at least I have you.”

“The fuck? But can you then say you truly died?”

“That is indeed an interesting topic to explore,” said Goggles, nodding.

Speechless, Rippa helped Buttons up.

In the meantime, Goggles waved his hand, and the three were back in the palace tea room.

As Rippa was patting and swatting the child to get the dust off the dress, it dawned on her. “Wait a sec…” She straightened up and put her hands on her hips.

“Buttons, Goggles.”

“Yes, Miss Rippa?”

“It seems you can’t die.”

“Technically, we did,” Goggles corrected her, “but I see what you mean…” He trailed off, seeing Rippa’s face.

Oh, the woman was furious. Her face was red with rage.

“You motherfuckers! You were never in any danger!”

“Eek!” Buttons sprang up and ran toward the door, but Rippa caught her by the collar.

“You scared me to death for what? I was genuinely worried, but it was all just playing pretend to you guys?”

With a whack, she spanked Buttons. The kid yelped.

Rippa snapped. She threw a tantrum, screaming and yelling, huffing and puffing. And lots of stomping around. All the while, the two gods sweated bullets and apologized profusely, promising never to do such things again.

Buttons resorted to a dogeza to placate her friend, and only then did Rippa calm down and stop yelling.

Taking a big gulp of soda that Goggles had a maid bring in, Rippa steadied her breathing. She eyed her two friends, who were nervously watching her for any sign of renewed rage. She couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of unease. She had just witnessed something so horrendously terrifying. Yet, she wasn’t scared. ‘Has my sense of normalcy become so skewed, or do I just love them too much?’

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