Rasmus figured as much. Although the information on the note stated she liked small animals, in the end, it was false.
He shrugged. “Never mind.”
He turned to find a better place to spend the remaining time of class. Without a timer to keep track of the time with, he figured it would be better to be somewhere where he could easily tell when class was over. Once it was, he could figure out how much time he had left.
“I do like them,” he heard Edith say behind him.
He swivelled around. “What?”
“Hamsters. I do like them. I actually own one.”
Rasmus was stunned.
The note actually had something correct?
“What about chocolate? Do you hate it?” he asked cautiously.
“Hate is a little strong, but you’re right.”
“How can anyone not like chocolate?”
Edith fell quiet.
Rasmus’ face turned burning hot. It would seem his bad Charisma stat struck again.
Unexpectedly, Edith spoke after a moment’s awkward silence: “How can anyone like coffee? Why doesn’t everyone like beans? Everyone just happen to have things they don’t like and I don’t like chocolate.”
“Well,” Rasmus began, thoughts elsewhere, but mouth moving, “I suppose that’s true. Likes and dislikes aren’t always obvious.”
He turned his gaze to the ground and held his chin in thought.
Could it be that the information on the note was actually correct all along? If so, he had probably been able to manage this much easier, and he had made things harder for himself. But how would he have known the System gave him accurate information? He couldn’t just plainly trust an entitiy that offered information readily at some times and then was quiet others, and then would turn around and only offer what he already knew at some other occasion.
As far as he knew, aside from small animals, Edith was supposed to like peaches, strawberries and nature. He could work with that.
“Putting chocolate aside, tell me about your hamster.” He walked up to her, holding his hand toward her, his face still flushed from embarrassment. “Let’s find a bench or something. My bum is cold, while my pants are covered in mud stains.”
“You also have a very large dark spot on your behind, so it looks like you’ve had an accident, so to speak,” Edith kindly pointed out to him as she took his hand. “If anyone else sees it, they’ll definitely have suspicions about why you skipped class.”
Death by humiliation it is.
“…I’m in need of filling up with fluids, not leaking it,” he said with a pained expression.
And there was certainly some truth to it. He was starting to noticing that he was actually very thirsty, his mouth feeling a little dry. It wasn’t too bad yet, but perhaps the System was making it noticeable enough to cause discomfort.
It made sense to him though — the situation he had been presented with was that his classmates wouldn’t buy him anything nor lend him money and that the water was turned off. That he got increasingly thirsty, wasn’t that just adding urgency to his mission?
He had found out very few things about “himself”. He apparently liked making people buy things for him, and while liked, people probably had some reservations about him, possibly because of his tendency to spend other people’s money.
Compared to that, he did know far more about Edith.
As they went to a bench, Edith told him about her little pet: “Her name is Sweetie. I wasn’t the one who named her, though. But she’s a sweetie, so it’s all right, don’t you think?”
“How do you like having her?”
“It’s nice. Taking care of a pet makes things better. I don’t need to think about other things.”
Rasmus imperceptibly paused. “Is there something you’re stressed about?”
Edith smiled at him. “Doesn’t everyone get stressed about school?”
“But school doesn’t make you avoidant of it by default. So school is not necessarily the stressor. But it could definitely be a person,” he replied.
The girl stopped walking, while Rasmus continued a few more steps. He picked up a few pebbles and tossed them at a branch of a blooming tree. A few hit with a “thunk”, others missed terribly.
He threw a glance over his shoulder at the girl.
“It’s human nature to complain about what we don’t like, to change injustices we suffer and can do something about, and to silently suffer when we believe we deserve it.” He turned to her. “And we will also keep quiet when we feel fear and want to protect ourselves or someone we care about. Which one is it? Are you afraid for someone, or punished by someone?”
“You’re overthinking. I just don’t like the class I had next.”
He smiled, visibly startling her. There was no judgement or pretences in that smile, just genuine warmth to be seen.
“I do that a lot. I overthink everything, I analyse things one time too many, I question people’s objectives with every action. So you just absolutely loathe the next class you had, so you skipped it. I have a bit of a headache, so I skipped mine. We’re both terrible students.”
Edith looked at him. “You’re not what the rumours say.”
“Oh?” He saw a bench and started walking toward it, followed by her. “What do the rumours say?”
“You cheat people off their money all the time. You have more IOUs than the school collectively have exam papers. Not that people say you’re mean, and you hang out with others all the time, but you’re extremely stingy.”
“Wow, I really am scum,” he agrees.
Or his character seemed to be, anyway.
“I can’t promise I’ll be better.”
After all, he’d be gone soon, and who knows what happens to the NPCs.
He sat down on the bench and patted beside him. He completely ignored how the moisture that the fabric of his pants had soaked in seemed to seep into his skin and bones.
Edith smoothed down the back of her skirt before sitting down as well.
“Another part of human nature is to create narratives. Sometimes those narratives are about ourselves, and other times those narratives are about others.” He could see the corridor where their classrooms were, but he couldn’t see the classrooms themselves, just the ceiling. “These narratives are to explain things. It can be explaining why others treat you a certain way, or it’s giving yourself permission or reason to act a certain way.” He pointed at the corridor on the second floor. “For instance, ‘I woke up during lunch with a headache, so if I find a pretty girl to talk to,’” he turned to point at Edith, “‘I won’t need to go to class.’ It’s a terrible justification, don’t you think? But it’s also a narrative. My narrative is a little different, though. It’s ‘I want to find out what’s causing Edith distress, so I’ll talk to her, but I have limited time, so I’ll skip class.’” He chuckled lightly. “When people gossip about me and make rumours about my thousands of IOUs, those are narratives, too.”
Edith seemed to process this before she said, “So you’re saying they’re not true?”
“On the contrary. It’s probably true that I have lots of IOUs. Am I cheating people of their money? Maybe, maybe not. That’s not really important. But if I really was taking other people’s money, they’d probably avoid me, but instead they invite me to play sports, and are generally friendly. Doesn’t it mean I might have other reasons and that people are understanding of circumstances? It’s just that other people don’t know those circumstances, but know about the IOUs.” He shrugged. “Or I’m absolute scum and an excellent manipulator, so even if I keep taking money, the only suffering I get is no one being willing to lend me money.”
“Why does it sound like you’re not actually talking about yourself?”
“I’m making an example. ‘I’ am just a good one. Or bad one, your choice.”
“You…”
“Hey, how much time left before class ends? I’m feeling like someone who’s dying from thirst. Can’t they fix the water soon, man?”
Edith gave him a complicated look before she took out her phone. “There’s about half an hour left.”
“All right, tell me more about Sweetie. You didn’t name her, so who did?”
“My mother.”
Rasmus nodded and showed for her to continue. She was cautious at first, but when she realised he wouldn’t interrupt to start talking about human nature or her troubles anymore, she continued with much gusto.
He was really starting to feel the thirst by the time their class should be close to the end. It was gnawing at his throat while his mouth felt sticky, to the point he couldn’t easily move his tongue.
The game was really urging him with extreme measures, and he knew that he would soon need to beg on his knees and hope she had some kind of mercy towards him in her heart.
But he could still endure it. For a while more, he had to endure it. He told himself this.
He nodded and made sure to add interjections to show he listened, but the more time that passed, the harder it was to focus.
When the lesson ended, he said goodbye before he fled to avoid all the public attention. He wasn’t particularly fond of that, after all, and snuck into his class while the teacher couldn’t see it.
He felt rather bad. He hadn’t figured out what the backstory was, although he had tried to find out, and he still needed to find a way to get Edith to buy him juice.
This situation was difficult and, by all means, unfavourable for him.
He was despairing over this matter when there was a sudden thud on his desk. He looked up and saw Edith. He then lowered his eyes to see a bottle of juice.
“You said you were thirsty.”
Rasmus stared in shock.
He had abruptly cleared his mission…
It really felt quite anticlimactic, didn’t it?
He blinked and found himself enveloped by darkness.
Congratulations, Player.
Author’s Note
That’s the introduction of this story all posted. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far. I am working on the plot for the first break section as well as the next instance.