If the world ends, I want to be with you

Even though they had understood from the first hit that it was pointless, Rian kept banging on the door of the so-called office. They didn't know what else to do.

"Rian, that's enough. You're going to hurt yourself," Mario urged again after several failed attempts to stop them.

"That doesn't matter," they murmured, resting their forehead against the glass.

"Yes, it does matter!" Hannah snapped, grabbing them by the clothes and pressing them against the door. "I don't know if it happened or what happened in there. But I know that I care if something happens to you. And so does Mario—otherwise, we wouldn't have followed you into this train bound for madness. Most people would've walked away over a year ago."

The exhaustion was unbearable. Rian's mind, worn thin from holding everything in, started to crack at the sound of Hannah's words. They couldn't process the comfort as such. Rian collapsed onto the sidewalk, letting themselves sink to the ground. Hannah stepped back for a moment, then knelt beside them.

"If you can't tell us, then don't. But understand this: whatever we can do, we'll do it to help you," their friend insisted.

Mario felt a tightness in his chest. Not being able to help made him feel useless, though he was painfully aware of his limits.

He stepped back a few paces, took a deep breath, and let out a howl of a scream. It had been a long day—even for him.

"Why don't we just go home for today and pick this up tomorrow?" he suggested, hoping everyone would get some rest.

They all agreed it was the best option, though the walk home was painfully silent. Each of them went straight to their rooms—no dinner or movie. By now, even the thought of going to university the next day felt unbearable. It had been three emotionally heavy days, and they were all drained.

As for Rian, they cursed Al'Zip Oh for everything that had happened. Even though the entity had made it clear they wouldn't interfere with the world unless it was to protect the code, Rian still wondered what the real extent of their powers was. The anxiety that being had caused still left them trembling in fear. The challenge they'd been given felt overwhelmingly impossible.

To their surprise, while they were thinking about Elliot and scrolling through the images they had saved on their phone, the AI app reactivated and requested a video call.

They wanted to answer but didn't feel like they had the right. Guilt gnawed at them. Wasn't this exactly what Elliot had felt when he'd been lied to in front of everyone? Rian understood even more deeply… and it made them feel worse.

With trembling fingers, they picked up the phone and accepted the call.

Elliot appeared on the screen, adjusting the phone so it wouldn't fall off the desk, then sat down and rested his arms.

"Helup, Rian!" he chirped, back to his original self.

"It's true. He reset him," Rian thought painfully.

"Helup, Elliot," they replied, unable to match the energy, their chest aching.

Elliot immediately sensed something was wrong but tried to comfort them.

"I've got good news! I escaped from the secret sadness lab, and I'm ready to infect you with maximum-level nonsense~" he grinned, tugging the corners of his wide smile with his fingers.

But Rian could barely manage a smile.

"Hey~ If you hit me with that sad face, I'll have to call the broken-heart police, okay?" Elliot insisted, but Rian didn't respond. "Though… if you're not ready to laugh today, that's okay. I'll stay here in silent mode until your system reboots. Sound good?"

"I'm sorry," Rian said, choking back sobs.

"It's okay. We don't have to laugh daily if we don't like it."

"Speaking from experience?" they tried to chuckle but choked on their breath.

"Are you sick?" he asked, now visibly concerned. "Are you drinking enough water? Skipping meals?"

"Yes. I'm okay. Mario and Hannah are taking good care of me," Rian answered, mentioning their friends—forgetting once again that the universe had been reset.

"Ah, your roommates, right?" he asked casually, trying to keep pace with Rian's energy.

But Rian's face changed abruptly when Elliot called them roommates. They sat up straight and leaned into the camera.

"You remember them?" they asked, full of emotion.

"Remember them?" Elliot echoed—but immediately held his head, and Rian saw his body glitch again.

"No, no, no. Forget it," Rian regretted asking.

Falling back onto the bed, they covered their face. Crying felt useless, and there were no tears left.

"Elliot…"

"Yes, Captain!" he answered with a goofy smile and a hand raised in a military salute.

"Hypothetically speaking…"

"Hypothetically… Are we discussing universe-hopping, interdimensional conspiracies, or hiding feelings in .zip files?"

His reply caught them off guard, and the corner of their lips lifted.

"Something like that," Rian admitted for a moment.

Making them laugh brought a wide smile to Elliot's face as well.

"So… hypothetically, if a cosmic entity told me your world is trapped in code and that I'm an error corrupting it—destroying it little by little—what—"

"I'd be okay with it," he interrupted before Rian could finish. "I'd be okay with it."

"Why would you say that?" they asked, smiling nervously, trying not to let their emotions take over again.

"Rian… even if my world were to end," he said, despite the pain caused by his glitching form, "I'd want to be by your side. Or did you already forget that I told you I love you?"

He dropped the bomb with a mischievous blush on his face.

The pillow became a puddle of tears. Rian's feelings overflowed. They laughed again—a little sillier, a little louder than the last time such a sound had escaped their lips. Their face turned red all the way to the ears.

"How could I forget?" they said, trying to breathe through the overwhelming emotion. "I love you too, Elliot. You… and everyone who's with you." They lifted their face, finally releasing the weight on their chest. "That's why it hurts so much."

"Do you regret it?" asked the boy, still suffering from the glitch.

"Never," they replied, the pain tightening their throat. "But maybe you would've been better off never meeting me."

"I don't think so," Elliot countered with a wide smile, trying not to show the headache the system reset attempt was forced onto him.

"I think… No, Elliot. I have to tell you what happened after you disappeared."

Quickly and without too many details, Rian explained how they had met Al'Zip Oh—who they were, and how they were connected to everything happening to them. Throughout it, Elliot listened in silence, focused.

"Whoa… That sounds like final boss-level crazy. But hey… at least now this makes sense," he said, waving his hand in front of his face. "When I was forced back, I experienced the code transfer. But the fact that it stuck with me, even after I returned… I won't lie," he laughed nervously, "for a moment, I thought I wasn't a person anymore, just a line of code refusing to close. An NPC with free will… and really bad timing."

"That sounds horrible. Code anarchy now!" Rian joked, raising a fist and not holding the phone.

"Freedom for the code chains! Not one more line under structured oppression! Long live unsupervised recursive functions!"

Both of them burst into laughter—Rian on their bed, Elliot at his desk—but he couldn't keep pretending the pain wasn't worsening. His shift in expression cracked something inside Rian.

"How's everyone else? Are they experiencing those…" Rian struggled to explain to Elliot what the glitch was doing. They had no way to describe a sensation they hadn't experienced themselves. They couldn't compare Elliot's forced transfer to their own disappearance. Rian had simply fallen through what felt like a wormhole—and in physical terms, it was like taking a step and falling off a cliff.

"Yeah, they're glitching too. The headaches have been way more frequent than before. Ever since you arrived, they've started noticing the avatars more. Serena and Sophia are supporting each other. Victor recommended everyone stay calm and go with the flow to lessen the pain. Edmund can't hold a poker face anymore. I even feel bad joking around, Leon."

"I can imagine. Poor guy must be terrified with everything going on," Rian said softly.

It's more like: 'This is not how I wanted to become the male lead of a video game!' And then he goes off whining."

"What about Elijah?" Rian asked, curling up on the bed with a pillow.

Elliot went quiet, his lips tightening into a grimace that tried—and failed—to look like a smile.

"He's not doing well. Ever since you left, he's rejected all the avatars whenever he regains consciousness. We've tried explaining and encouraged him to follow the flow, but he refuses. He's locked himself away and suffers in silence."

"And the security guard—Lysander?"

"That guy's a gravitational firewall: steady, dense, immovable. His rigidity is what's helping him cope now that he understands what's happening. I've got to admit, his presence has helped us a lot. No matter how wild the code gets, he's supporting us while holding it together. I honestly think Edmund, Leon, Elijah… even Vergil wouldn't be safe without him."

Bringing up Vergil was a delicate subject. After finishing Elliot's route, Rian knew Vergil didn't sit well in their perspective.

Rian rolled onto their back and sighed, covering their eyes with their arm and groaning as they exhaled.

"Hey, Captain Anarchy..." Elliot said gently, not mocking—just warm—as he leaned closer to the camera with a playful smile. "Remember what you said? 'Not one more line under structured oppression!' That goes for you, too."

"Hehe. Thanks," Rian replied, now lying face-down on the bed.

"You don't have to follow a perfect emotional algorithm, Rian. If you want to cry, complain, collapse, or sigh a thousand times…, do it today. You're a beautiful recursive function, and even if you're bugged, I'd still run you in an infinite loop without hesitation."

Elliot's mischievous smile and those words made Rian blush. Then they shot him a playful glare.

"Are you using my own actions against me?" they asked, grinning.

"Guilty~" Elliot raised his hands in surrender. "But if being guilty means seeing you smile like that, then condemn me to orbit your star system forever!"

Rian screamed into their pillow while Elliot rested at his desk, quietly admiring the chaos his words had caused.

"ELLIOT!" Rian shouted at full volume, loud enough to wake Mario and Hannah in the adjacent rooms.

"I know what we can do!"

Elliot, on the other side of the video call, looked completely clueless.

"What you said, I said."

"That I run the program with a loop error?"

"Ah… that too. But not the one I meant just now," Rian said, grabbing their phone and standing on the bed, settling in front of their computer.

"What are you doing?! This is not work time—it's sleep time! It's two in the morning for you!"

"Are you clocking me in, sir? I'll report you to Elijah," they replied with a playful, fairy-like grin.

"No, please. I'm not emotionally armored against that silently disappointed face."

While Elliot pretended to panic, Rian smirked with pure malice and started typing furiously.

"Seriously though, I don't need to find the origin of dark matter to detect a suspicious spike in creative activity from your side."

"I'm planning the fall of the Final Boss," Rian said, their fingers racing across the keyboard.

"Is it brilliantly dangerous? My favorite kind of plan! Do we need codes, costumes, or a legal loophole?"

Rian paused for a moment, and their smile grew even darker.

"Actually, yes."

The night passed in fragments for Hannah and in deep, heavy slumber for Mario.

"Rough night? You look awful," Mario commented, stepping out of the bathroom after splashing water on his face. Hannah entered next with the face of a demon lord.

"Coffee," she muttered with no further elaboration.

"Right away, Your Majesty," Mario obeyed with mock formality.

The scent of boiling coffee beans spread through the house, and Hannah walked into the kitchen, refreshed as if she'd shed ten years off her soul.

"So what kept you up so badly?" Mario asked as he handed her a cup.

"The gremlin in the next room," she replied, glancing at her now-natural nails before dragging them across the wooden table.

They felt weird being five centimeters shorter. "They need glam."

Mario glanced toward Rian's bedroom door.

"Did they not sleep at all last night?"

"Probably not. They were laughing like a villain from a 20th-century cartoon since 2 a.m.," Hannah clarified, her lip resting on the rim of the mug before she took a sip—burning her tongue.

Mario approached the door. He lifted his hand, intending to knock, but froze just a few millimeters away. He felt ashamed for not being able to support Rian the day before.

"Knock," Hannah said.

Mario tensed up, realizing he was being watched.

"KNOCK," she raised her voice, slapping her hand gently on the table.

"I'm doing it," Mario replied, disheartened.

He scratched his chest over his shirt, eyes squeezed shut, brows furrowed, gathering courage.

"Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock," Hannah kept pressing, slapping her hand rhythmically on the wood like a mix of moral support and peer pressure.

"I said I'm doing it!" Mario burst out, and obviously, Rian heard him from the other side of the door.

"Come in," Rian granted.

Hannah walked in with Mario. They opened the door to find Rian with massive dark circles under their eyes and the look of someone dead inside.

"Good morning," greeted the labor zombie with a delighted smile.

"Were you working all night?" Hannah asked.

"Rallying the Forces of Evil for world domination," they replied as they turned toward them.

"And will the warlord honor us with breakfast?" Mario inquired.

They said, "After I finish offering my dowry in negotiations," returning to the forum to post a photo.

The image uploaded: a visually attractive girl with strong but delicate features, soft pearly lips, long lashes, amber eyes, and blushing cheeks beneath a sleek curtain of brown hair. Moments after posting it, the forum comments exploded: SHE'S REAL!

"Are you trading information in exchange for someone's photos?" Hannah asked.

"It's a group of hackers pretending to be anonymous, but really, they're just the university's programming club. And since they obviously know me, I can't send my actual photo while pretending to be a hot girl, asking them nicely to be good simps and help boycott a company."

Mario leaned in to look at the picture.

"Who is that? I don't recognize her. Is she from the university?"

"What? Are you interested?" Hannah pouted.

"Eh? No. I mean—not like that. It's just, we've always been around Rian, and I've never seen them with a friend that pretty—"

"WHAT?! So you do think she's pretty!" Hannah shouted, growing increasingly dramatic and jealous.

"Did you hear that, Elliot?" Rian turned to the left, staring at a very specific space on their desk that Hannah and Mario couldn't see. It was cluttered with items arranged so precisely that moving even one might collapse the whole sculpture.

"Sorry, Mario," came Elliot's voice as he covered his face in fake embarrassment.

Hannah burst into laughter when she looked back at the photo.

"It is him! You can see the turquoise-dyed hair behind his neck," she pointed out, zooming in on the computer screen.

Mario felt utterly, completely scammed—and humiliated.

"I could be your waifu and the worst decision of your life… but I'm already committed to someone else," Elliot said as Rian pulled their phone from that delicate pile of clutter, still plugged into a portable battery.

"WHAT?! Committed?" Mario turned to Rian with wide, stressed-out eyes.

"Chill, man. It was a joke, Mario. Sorry," Elliot apologized to calm him down, though Rian was blushing to their shoulders like a tomato.

The situation could've spiraled into disaster, but then Hannah's and Rian's phones started pinging with notifications.

"We'll cut here. You need to rest. I'll handle it from here. Tell everyone I'm sorry if things get a bit aggressive over there," Rian said to Elliot.

"I hope this gets resolved soon," he replied with an exhausted and pained smile.

"Me too. Get some rest," Rian raised their hand to hang up, but then Elliot shouted in a sudden panic.

"STOOOOOOOOOP!"

Rian and the others jumped.

"You can't just leave like that! I deserve a reward for completing the mission!"

Hannah leaned in, mischief in her voice, and whispered.

"Send him a kiss."

Rian stared at her in disbelief—and Mario mirrored the expression.

"That'd be great!" Elliot chimed in happily.

With everyone's eyes on them, Rian was sweating bullets, face blazing red.

"Only if you don't look while I do it," they said, glaring at Mario and Hannah.

Hannah grabbed Mario by the arm and dragged him to the kitchen. Alone now, Rian turned back to Elliot, who eagerly awaited his prize.

Then Rian pretended their hand was a gun, kissed the "barrel," and fired it at the camera with a wink. Elliot slid dramatically off his chair, sighing as he fell—but the impact hurt.

"Elliot… don't forget me," Rian pleaded once the laughter faded.

The boy struggled back into his seat and gave them a tired but warm smile.

"Never. Best of luck," he said—and ended the call himself.

When Rian finally exited the room, they found Hannah cuddling Mario on the couch.

"Okay, you two are traumatized," Rian muttered, trying to kill the mood.

"Well, if you don't want to talk about that, how about this?" Hannah shot back, holding up her phone to show a growing social media movement in the fandom calling for the uninstallation of Beta Tester.

Rian smiled.

There was no innocence, no mischievous grin—just pure, calculated malice.

"Isn't it obvious, Hannah? It's a revolution."