[CITY 3 – PART A]

The drowning feeling combined with the pain in his head overwhelms him. It hurts way more than the previous deaths.

…But like the others, the sting of it subsides in only a few seconds, and the feeling of water in his lungs leaves just a moment after.

He opens his eyes to see his keyboard, laying ready and gray on his desk.

With a scoff, he reflects back on it while he enjoys the safety of the office. It seems like the only reason he has to go out is to catch Valerie before she dies.

He looks out the window and across the street.

The upper light of the vacation office is on – he must be too late.

With a sigh, he pushes his head into his knuckles, rubbing the stress off his face and he comes to terms with what he’d done.

“So… no running away,” he recites, his tone irritated, marked with discomfort, but resolute all the same.

With a breath, he envisions the one stat he owns in this world.

[RES] 51/100

He nods in his spot hunched over his desk.

Doing great, idiot, he thinks. Just got to learn something new every time and I’ll bag that loser’s soul. He snorts a little. Right on time to lose it all on the next run.

The elevator pings behind him. While he’s aware of it, he doesn’t turn around. He might learn something new again, especially if he could think of the reason why his copy would try and ambush him like this. He scoffs, and slowly pushes up to a sitting position.

“You know,” he starts just as the elevator doors open, “If you’re really so great and sooo cool, then maybe you don’t need to bother with a low-life like me, huh?” He waits, his eyes to his keyboard as he anticipates either a scathing remark, or immediate death. Either way, he’s in the zone already: observant, in his lane, and ready to learn, and die trying.

“So… you know they’re not that big, right?” Valerie, standing with a bemused look, says as she eyes over his monitor.

He swings around to see her, and then swings back to his computer screen.

There she is, in all her paint program glory, and yes, perhaps Masaru’s subconsciously made version of her embellished a little bit – just a little.

“Uh, this?” Masaru asks with a stupid grin. “Its not actua—”

“You men really all want the same things,” she interrupts with a calm, but good-natured look, as if she’s long made peace with it.

Masaru rears back as he quickly closes the image without saving. “Look, that’s not—”

“D cups, if you’re curious,” she says.

He flinches. “Wh—”

She smirks. “So this is where you wake up?” she asks, glancing around.

He nods as he clears his throat, glad to be moving past the topic. “Yeah. It’s uh, my office building.”

“A fishing company?” she questions, leaning around the side to one of the other cubicles, her rifle at the low-ready.

“Sort of,” Masaru answers pulling up from his spot and taking up his briefcase– less like an anchor to his horrible past, and more like a tool to be kept close at hand.

“Sort of?” she mimics with a slant look from behind her bangs.

“Sort of,” Masaru repeats. Not really a good way to explain what it is that he does. “We mostly sell fish. We’re more of a distributer that moves shipments of goods from one port to another. A-”

“That’s still a fishing company,” she interrupts with a shrug. “Is what they do with the fish that much more important than that you do ‘fish stuff’ all day?”

This girl just doesn’t get this kind of thing, he ponders with a wince, but then he really thinks about it: what exactly would a regular person know about the fishing business?

“Probably not so much,” he admits.

A comfortable silence weighs on them, and a genuine smile forms on his face.

“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “What do you do? Do you wor-”

He stops himself as her eyes deaden. The place becomes cold in a way Masaru’s completely unfamiliar with.

“She went cold… instantly! What the hell did I say?” he wonders.

“Sorry, is that not something you’re comfortable discussing?” he asks, his inner salaryman kicking in for just a blink.

She turns her eyes to the window as she adjusts her jacket to make herself at least a little more decent with her tank top. “It’s not important. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t okay with answering back.”

“It’s alright,” he coughs. “So, uh, I guess it wasn’t hard to find me, then?”

Valerie glances back to him, and he can’t quite place the emotion.

Is she grateful that I moved past it? he thinks as she produces a short nod.

“I wake up on the block opposite to the tourism center. The one on the other side,” she directs, pointing to the tourism center, its light abruptly flashing on as if simply waiting for them to think about it.

The two share a brief, nervous pause.

“This is some creepy shit,” Masaru notes. “And, sorry about the whole, ‘running away during the battle’ thing.”

Her smile returns faintly.

“It’s okay. I was extremely confused at first, too… but now I feel like the mystery just keeps going deeper.”

Masaru stands shoulder to shoulder with her as he crosses his arms. The single light in the tourism center waits like a lit beacon to the underworld through the haze of the ruined city.

“It’s okay,” Masaru says, “We’ll figure it out together.”

She nods, her gaze held to the tourism center’s lit room.

“I meant to ask…” She pauses a moment as if weighing her words. “Do you think I’m good enough as I am?”

Masaru’s black brow furrows in thought as he glances over. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

She fails to suppress the flush in her face as she purses her lips.

“Last time we were here, you said that simply because I was real I was better than her.”

Masaru blinks. “Uh, yeah? I suppose I did say that.”

“Okay… but you saw her, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you heard what she said?”

Masaru hums.

“Part of it, why? She’s fake, it doesn’t matter what she thinks.”

Valerie, her gaze still glued towards the tourism center, takes a deep breath before continuing.

“But what if she didn’t make a mistake I did? What if you knew that I let everyone down. You barely know me. How could you say that I’m better than her when you don’t even know what I’ve done?” she says, finally looking over to him with those eyes he feels like he could almost fall into like pools.

He clenches his jaw.

Okay, so what the hell is it that I’m supposed to read from this? he asks himself as he weighs his options.

The slow buzz of the fluorescent lights prepare the arrival of his response. He clears his throat.

“Well, I suppose I can just tell you’re a good person,” he starts, delivering the best smolder he can.

Truth is, he saw a dude do this in a detective movie once, and she immediately kissed him— maybe picking up girls was always as simple as getting murdered and surviving a death loop?

Her eyes alight as he continues on.

“It’s obvious you cared a lot about for person that passed on in the hospital. I don’t need to pry into your life and know everything to understand you feel responsible for her, and while I don’t think you really can be responsible for someone else like that, the fact that you’re still fighting here with me tells me that you want to help people just as much as I do.”

Her chest heaves with emotion as she stares at him like some kind of descending angel.

He smiles. “You’re a good person, Valerie, because you’re willing to fight hard for other people. You put yourself in front of The Knight because you trusted I could run faster. If you’d do that for me, I’d imagine you’d do that for other people too… We’re a team, and good teams require good people.”

Masaru’s eye twitches.

Did I just finish with the quarterly sales reflection?! he wonders in his panicked mind as the image of that boring presentation slide flashing to the front of his mind.

But he can see her eyes glass up. She turns away, wiping a hand over her face.

Maybe it really is that easy, he reflects, his soul wincing.

“Thank you,” she says, still holding up a hand to shield her face. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Masaru nods. “Okay, let’s go.”