Chapter 42 Episode 42: Obviously

Akira’s POV Obviously

Twelve days of silence and then the screen popped up with the quiet certainty of something that had been waiting for exactly the right moment and had decided this was it. I sat up and read it in the particular stillness of an hour that belonged to nobody.

[Quest Resumed.]

[New Mission: Enter an A-rank dungeon interior. Reach the second level.]

[Classification: Joint entry required. Minimum one additional hunter.]

[Note: Partner selection is Host’s responsibility.]

I read it five more times.

The fifth time was not because the words were ambiguous. The words were the clearest the system had ever been, which was the problem.

Every previous mission had been specified in terms of what I needed to do... clear, survive, grow, log. The parameters had always been about capability, about what the dungeon required and whether I could meet it.

This one had a qualifier that none of the others had carried.

’Alongside’. ’Joint entry required’. ’Partner selection is Host’s responsibility’.

The system had never specified a partner. In twelve missions across two months it had sent me into dungeons alone, into team assignments where the teammates wasn’t my choice, into gate events that produced their own circumstances. It had never once said, ’you need to bring someone specific’.

The interpretation that didn’t lead where it led would have been useful right now. I looked for one with the focused attention of someone who genuinely wanted to find it and came up empty every time.

A joint entry meant two hunters. Going to an A-rank dungeon meant the partner needed to be capable of an A-rank interior, which narrowed the field significantly. The system knew my situation, knew my contacts, knew every person I had been in consistent proximity with since registration.

There was one person whose name fit every parameter the quest implied without requiring me to say it out loud.

I closed the screen. Lay back down and gazed at the ceiling. Why was it him? Why did everything about today have to revolve around him? And on the other was the system.

The system had been building something since I woke up from the hospital bed. The progression was visible in retrospect even when it hadn’t been visible in the moment... each mission a prerequisite for the next, each rank advancement unlocking a threshold the previous level hadn’t been able to reach.

The pattern had always been pointing somewhere. I had known this in the abstract way that you know something is moving without knowing exactly where it’s going.

The alongside was the first time the destination had shown a specific shape.

I wasn’t going to ask Kael tonight. I wasn’t even going to tell Kael at all until I had thought about it long enough to understand what telling him would require, because telling him meant explaining the quest, and explaining the quest meant explaining the existence of the system entirely.

Which meant Kael would reach the same conclusion I had reached in thirty seconds and the conversation that followed would be something I needed to be ready for.

I was not ready yet.

I got up at dawn and went to the housing unit.

***

Gleam was awake.

The Spirit Well hummed at the edge of my awareness as I walked, the warmth of it that told me she was settled and alert inside it, and when I reached the unit and found her enclosure and sat beside her she looked at me with those deep blue eyes and the bond carried the quality of something that had already taken the full measure of my current state and had arrived at conclusions.

"The system delivered the next quest," I said.

She waited.

"It requires a partner." I looked at her. "For an A-rank dungeon interior."

’Yes,’ she said.

"You knew."

She blinked once, slowly.

"How?."

The bond carried something that was not quite confirmation and not quite evasion.

"Gleam," I said.

’It was bound to happen. Plus lately I keep having visions of a screen. Perhaps being bonded to you helps me access it. And besides, it was very obvious’, she said.

I looked at her. "What is obvious?" I tried to ignore the fact that my bonded dragon and the system were sharing a connection somehow.

She said nothing.

"Obviously you knew. Obviously the system specified a partner. Obviously..." I stopped. The word was doing something specific in her register, carrying more than its surface content in the way her communications often did.

"What does obviously mean?" I half yelled.

The bond was warm and unhurried and entirely uninformative.

"Are you going to elaborate?" I asked.

She looked at me with the expression that meant no.

"That’s not helpful."

’It’s accurate,’she said.

I sat back against her side and let the warmth of her settle around me and looked at the enclosure ceiling and thought about the quest screen and the word alongside and the one person whose name fit every parameter without being named.

The honestly irritating thing was that she wasn’t wrong.

’Obviously’ was the right word for the conclusion the system had been building toward from the beginning, or close enough to the beginning that the distinction didn’t matter.

The mission structure, the rank progression, the Thursday sessions that had started as corrections and become something else by degrees. The phone linked between our devices. The ramen shop on Thursday evenings. The industrial district steps. The corridor, the stairwell, the black unicorn chamber.

’Obviously’ was the word for the thing you could see clearly only after it had been accumulating long enough that the full shape of it was visible, and the system apparently had a better view of the full shape than I did because it had been watching it develop from the outside.

"He doesn’t know," I said. "About the quest."

’No?’ she said.

"I need to tell him."

She said nothing but this time, in her version of yes.

"Not yet," I said.

The bond carried something that was patient and slightly pointed.

"I need to understand what telling him requires first."

’You already understand,’ she said. ’You’re just stalling. Cowardly pimp’

"Heiii"

I looked at her. She looked back at me with those blue eyes and the patience of something that had agreed to be bonded to a person who stalled on the things that mattered and had made peace with it as a recurring feature of the arrangement.

"Give me a week," I said.

She said nothing.

"A few days."

The bond hummed.

"Two days," I said.

’One,’ she said.

I opened my mouth.

She closed her eyes, which was her way of indicating the negotiation was over.

I sat beside her in the enclosure with the dawn coming through the high vents and the Spirit Well warm at the edge of my awareness.

The quest screen was sitting in the corner of my peripheral vision with its partner selection note and its Host’s responsibility. The complete absence of any interpretation that led somewhere easier than where it led.

’Obviously.’

The word sat in my chest in the way that something that had arrived and was not going anywhere, the same way the warmth from the Thursday evenings had arrived and was not going anywhere, the same way the image of his jaw in my hand in the black unicorn chamber was not going anywhere.

One day.

I had one day to work out what telling him required, and then I was going to tell him, and whatever came after that was going to be whatever it was going to be.

Should I tell him everything that came with this particular knowledge? That I didn’t belong here? That I was a foreign soul in another person’s body who just happened to bear the exact same as me? That this wasn’t even my original look?

That my mother wasn’t my mother and the life I was living wasn’t even mine. Fuck, I didn’t even know where the original of the body was currently. Was he dead, was he on Earth? Or is he trapped somewhere in this body with the system suppressing him from coming out?

That every mission here was a test to prove myself or I would disappear once more.

Or that I was basically taking instructions from a floating screen and that floating screen is basically the last hope and shot I have at being a living human being?

How do I deal with all this?

Gleam’s tail moved once across the floor, the slow deliberate sweep she used when she was done with a conversation but wanted to communicate that she was still present.

"Thank you," I said.

She said nothing.

"For obviously," I snarled. She was sometimes annoying but how the hell do you scold someone who could end your life with just a puff of breath.

The bond carried something warm and dry and entirely without apology.

I stayed until the light through the vents shifted to full morning. Then I tried to form the words in my head. Just one day. What could possibly go wrong?