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Boards >> PC >> has anyone else gotten stuck in this game? [Page 1 of 1]

bananya502 » 12 hours ago 

for context, my sister keeps asking me to try one of her games so i can give her real answers when she talks to me about them so i want to do a blind playthrough first before breaking out the route order 🧐🧐🧐

im not gonna sweat a vn but like... i swear i keep getting funnelled onto the same guy's route????? i just wanna get through the common route first! any advice? 

no spoilers pls c: 

coffeespoon » 10 hours ago 

It could be a route thing. What game is it? There are plenty (and some of them are my favs... the build-up is just *chef's kiss*) of titles where the more spoiler-y routes are gated by your progression. 

This might be one of them. 

Orchird69 » 9 hours ago

coffeespoon posted…

It could be a route thing.

ya but they said common route. wdym by stuck? what character? maybe they're confused. might not be a route at all 

bananya502 » 7 hours ago 

ill check when i get home! i think he was a criminal or something? mafia??? honestly idk he just keeps saying weird stuff and i dont wanna screw things up

coffeespoon » 4 hours ago 

Weird stuff? Maybe it’s Ukyo then? Tei?

lemon314 » 4 hours ago 

uohhhhh my boys.. I wish I could play that game blind for the first time again… but yeah idk what to say except that u should just let it happen. random bull**** is the name of the game sometimes

super__dog » 2 hours ago

bananya502 posted…

criminal or something? mafia???

the way this could be literally any game?! It's actually so funny wtf is going on in the otome sphere 😭 piofiore? ozmafia?? BUSTAFELLOWS?!?? 

honestly, if ur gonna spoil urself on route order or follow a guide later, then just play whatever route you end up in blind now. You can always come back to it later

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Shu’s cursor is still hovering over his preferred choice when a voice finally breaks through the walls, tugging him back down to earth.

“Shu? Are you still here?”

Oh, god. What time is it?

Shu takes a quick glance at the clock before pulling off his headphones, squeezing his arms together as he tries to extract himself from his tactically arranged tangle of wires. Once his ears are free, the gentle sound of strings gives way to another call— closer this time— and the unmistakable tak-tak-tak of knuckles against wood. He’s got to hurry to hide most of the evidence. 

First things first, it can't look like he was rotting at his desk again.

“One sec!” he shouts, hopping over to his closet, but Petra barely gives him enough time to find a clean, decidedly not slept-in shirt and pull it over his head before she bursts in, standing in the doorway without an ounce of shame. In fact, she has the gall to laugh while she watches him pull on a pair of mismatched socks, take a few steps, and then decide it’s better to get a matching pair as he dives back into his pile of rolled-up socks.

He’s pretty sure they don’t have any pressing matters to discuss, but it wouldn’t be the first time something’s slipped through the cracks. They finally closed that haunted piano case earlier though, so it can’t be that, and she doesn’t seem especially hurried anyway, seeing as she still has the energy to point and laugh before looking away.

“Morning.” Shu stretches, waving his hand towards his gear as he considers grabbing it. “What’s with all the noise? Did I miss something again?”

Even though she’s the one who wanted to see him, Petra hardly acknowledges him once he’s finally ready, too busy staring at the grid of half-filled save states still displayed on his laptop. So much for hiding the evidence. It’s hard to kick the impulse to save before each major choice in case it looks like he’s ended up on the wrong path.

“We did get something, but I haven’t really looked at it yet. I just thought you’d still be asleep,” she explains, shrugging. Her eyes narrow. “Were you playing Manosaba again? I thought we were going to do it together!”

“I wasn’t! I grabbed one of your games earlier, you know, to try it out.”

“You did?!”

Before she can take a close look, Shu covers the screen with his back, clicking his choice before switching his monitor off. The last thing he needs to hear is a dissection of exactly who he’ll like most before he’s even gotten a chance to decide. “You said you wanted me to!” he sputters, pushing her out the door. “Anyway,” he begins, coughing to bring his voice to its normal, more casual pitch. “What do you want? Are we supposed to go meet a client now?”

It’s a little embarrassing to resort to guides and curated advice before he’s even completed a single playthrough, but he doesn't really have time to dillydally or get it wrong, not when a case could come at any time. That’s just the nature of their business. He didn't even have time to consult with Petra before grabbing the first box off her desk and booting it up, but that doesn’t mean he wants her help figuring it out.

Tossed in the corner of his desk is a box that’s pink in a dingy, almost mauve sort of way. The cover’s full of crisscrossing lines and the promise of an unforgettable romance that's bound to steal your heart, so it seemed like a good enough place to start. It almost looks like it's been bleached in the sun, stripping the key art of its most remarkable features, but that’s actually better in situations like this. There’s a slim chance that she won’t recognise what he’s been playing, so he can save the conversation for when he actually knows what to talk about.

Petra offers him an appraising look, but she doesn’t really answer his question. She doesn’t even get close to it, dashing towards the kitchen as she asks him if he knows how it feels when you eat something really good and suddenly sprout a second stomach that can fit an infinite amount of deliciousness inside it.

That must be a no, then. No meeting and nothing important.

“What?”

“We’re going out. I’m hungry, and we don’t have any food.”

“What about the zucchini in the—”

“I threw them all out. They were going bad and… I dunno. I think it's too wet in there.” Petra’s nose crinkles as she recalls whatever horrors she found in their poor, often empty refrigerator. “We really need to get it looked at.”

The midday sun pierces into his eyes as he hobbles over to his shoes, pushing his feet into the most casual ones. That’s another thing they’ll probably never get around to doing— fridge repair. He still subscribes to the notion that the ghost of who knows what followed them home one day, building a new home in their kitchen appliances as payback for whatever they did to its original one. Why else would they have so many issues?

“Fine. But it’s already three o’clock,” he says, squinting as he tries to lock the door behind them. “We are not getting pancakes again.”

Petra gestures wildly at the city, steel behemoths and a hundred people all lit in bright blue and green, and covers her giggle with her hand. Her voice hardens as it bounces off his chest, slightly snarky. “It’s not just pancakes. Haven’t you ever heard of afternoon tea?”

Shu stares down at her, and she stares right back, unwavering. Their stares meet in the middle and they start brandishing swords, pinging off each other for a minute before Shu inevitably gives in, saying he’ll eat the sandwiches, then— or scones or whatever else that isn’t another stack of pancakes. The wind whistles through his hair as they dash across the street, making it just in time for the light to turn red behind them, and as he looks at Petra, full of good humour before they’ve even gotten to the café, he figures he can stop being combative just because it’s a little funny. 

There are plenty of other ways to have a good time together, and once they’re parked at their table, they don’t really talk about the game or the job or anything in between, but they do come home with a bag full of fresh ingredients, and that’s good enough. The rest can wait for another day.

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Boards >> PC >> has anyone else gotten stuck in this game? [Page 2 of 3]

bananya502 » 5 hours ago 

update: i decided to just play through it anyway c: that’s probably a better use of my time anyway instead of trying to sweat out the perfect blind run

it’s still a little weird tho… i haven’t found any info online so that’s why i asked here. it’s an old box, kinda beat up tbh but it booted up just fine? and it was a physical disk too

are you sure you’ve never played it before? seems like it’d be pretty popular. cute characters. interesting story (i think we’re gonna investigate the theft or something). idk

solve a little crime. fall a little in love. i get why she liked it

super__dog » 4 hours ago

bananya502 posted…

it’s called strung up in red and the main character is an idol of some kind… i think

ig it could be an indie game but u said u have a disk so idk… the only one ik about that’s got a similar name is Red String of Fate and that’s deffo not it

StayFreshCheeseBags » 4 hours ago

Dude. You know there’s a flair for shit fiction, right? First you tell us about the criminal dude that keeps “breaking the fourth wall” and “interrupts conversations with other characters” and now you’re trying to say it’s a game that doesn’t even exist?

There’s nothing substantial ITT. This is just as bad as those stories of finding old glitched copies of games in your grandparents’ attic. Find something better to copypasta about LMFAO.

jumptrashdotnet » 3 hours ago

StayFreshCheeseBags posted…

You know there’s a flair for shit fiction, right? 

nah some ppl just cant read. dont bother. give it a few hours and the mods will archive it for sure

lemon314 » 3 hours ago 

send pics!! 4th wall breaker? yandere? is he one?? is he??? they usually areee 

what does he look like? who cares if it’s fake TBH like that’s not what matters. I want to create the story in my delusions tonight <3 ignore those losers and pls update me bananya tyvmmmmmm

-

Deciding to push through and finish the game doesn’t really change much at all, other than his mindset. Flashing across the screen, surging through the relative darkness to paint his skin a few muted shades of brown and gold, is the face of the love interest who just won't leave Maria— or him, he supposes, since he’s technically on her side— alone. He still shows no signs of dialling back on his strange behaviour. 

He’s a pretty funny guy though. His name’s Luca, and he is pretty handsome, and he's not quite a yandere, much to that one commenter’s disappointment. His most notable feature, however, is just how weird he is. At least half of his events involve him talking about everything but the necklace and who tried to frame Maria for stealing it, and they don't really seem to swing into romantic territory either, so it just feels like a strange addition. Sometimes he’ll make meta allusions to the game for no reason at all, like now, where he’s midway through telling Maria that he’ll gladly deploy his underlings to help her out despite knowing that a group of side characters aren't going to be the ones that magically crack the case wide open.

For her part, Maria kinda just ignores it. Maybe she thinks it’s one of his endearing quirks.

It’s not exactly the most romantic way to get to know someone, but he is kinda nice when he isn’t trying so hard to come off like he’s bigger than he really is, so it hasn’t been as bad as he feared.

By now, Shu’s got a pretty decent idea of how it works. There's a few recurring guys that pop up, and each choice that favours one of them must build up their affinity somehow, forging a tentative relationship under the guise of solving the overarching mystery: Who tried to frame Maria and what did they get out of it?

If you ask him, he’d say that treating a precious artifact like it’s an ordinary prop was already a scandal just waiting to happen, but it makes for a good story. It’s more believable than making an idol investigate a murder, at any rate, so he can’t really complain about the semantics.

The whole cast’s a little shady, but that's probably the point. There’s Vanta, the chill coworker who flakes out sometimes and may or may not have forced his way into the show. Then there’s Doppio— the estranged childhood friend archetype, which is typical, but his demeanor is anything but. He quite literally ran into Maria a few days prior, and he was in the audience the night the artifact went missing, and he might have some sort of superhuman strength? It’s a little unclear. They're probably the common route targets, together with Luca, given just how much they’ve seen of each other thus far. 

Rounding out the cast of (probable) love interests is the guy handling the bulk of the official investigation and the museum curator, who was already under fire for his part of the collaboration, but their paths don’t really cross that much, so they must be locked behind another playthrough or two. 

Shu shakes his head as he eventually agrees to let Luca do whatever he wants. That's another thing that's weird about him. He drops way too many (thinly veiled?) references to his criminal underbelly. Maybe it’s just a quirk of his, some inflated sense of self-importance that manifests itself as a chunnibyou mafioso persona, but it could also be some galaxy brain strategy he’s come up with to look so suspicious that everyone automatically brushes off their doubts about him. He could see it going either way.

Either way, it’s weird and it’s effective because the only thing he’s certain about is that Luca’s probably innocent. A guilty man wouldn’t spend so much effort drawing eyes his way, and he doesn’t seem like the scheming type either.

As he keeps talking, Luca shifts the conversation from the stolen necklace to the arraignment (“It’s fine! We won’t touch any of the evidence! No one has to know!”) to something a little lighter. He liked the show, apparently. He got a friend to cover for him the night before so he could finally watch it, and he liked it, but sometimes he wasn’t sure where to look, twisting his head all over to try to capture each part of the stage. 

Maria confides in him in turn because they’re friends now, probably. Friends. People who may be teetering on the edge of something more. 

One of her coworkers— not Vanta, though he’d probably sign up too if he could— quite literally ran a marathon before dashing over to the matinee and freaking nailing his part, and sometimes, when she reflects on sharing the stage with someone like that, it’s hard not to feel like she should be pushing herself even harder. But then again, what’s the point in throwing herself out there when everyone’s already convinced that she’s a thief or just another pretty face riding on someone else’s coattails?

It’s a bit of a selfish desire, her quest to find the true perpetrator, but it’s not just for her. She’s the most public face, but there’s a lot of people who poured everything they could into this show, and it just sucks to feel like there’s something else she could have done to stop all this from happening. 

Luca’s bravado peels away as he tries his best to smooth down her worries. ‘There’s no way she’s cursed,’ he says. That’s just not how it works. And even if it were true (and it’s not), then he’d recruit a whole party just to scour the city for a witch or some way to break it, so she’s got nothing to worry about.

As the night coalesces around him, Shu stares down at his nails, suddenly fond. He takes back all of his misplaced annoyance from last night. Luca might be a bit loud and excessive, and he may have forced him into a myriad of truly strange situations as he poked around the game, but he’s not a bad guy. 

Does Shu think they’ll actually solve the mystery? No, probably not considering how little progress they’ve been making, but maybe they don’t have to. It’s just like they always say. Don’t let the perfect get in the way of something that’s good enough… or however that saying goes.

Maybe it’s enough for them to just wander around the city night after night, letting the breeze carry off their worries until they land somewhere on the edge of the moon, floating amidst the glittering space dust. Maybe they don’t need to find an answer to everything. That’s what Shu thinks as he clicks off for the night, slipping back into work mode like it's a second skin.

Petra’s right. There’s something satisfying about watching the story unfold in front of you. With nothing else to do but talk and listen, it makes the world feel more lived in, for lack of a better term, which is fun in its own right. They’re like movies you can walk around in.

He’s about to tell her something to that effect— along with a general reminder that they’re supposed to close out a project tonight— but before he can type it all out, his phone leaps out his hands, buzzing with a frantic call that they’re needed immediately in the financial district, so instead of doing any of that, he scoops his bag off the floor, tripping over his slippers as he slings a jacket around his shoulders and dashes out to deal with whatever magical mishap happened overnight. 

The rest can wait for another day.

-

It takes another few nights, but he eventually makes it through the game. His first playthrough— neutral end, some mysteries solved, some feelings uncovered— is a decent introduction to the genre, and he has no regrets about giving it a go, even if the last chapter lasted an hour longer than he originally expected.

The sun’s already out by the time he flops into bed, so he makes the mental note to tell Petra about it later, once he’s had enough rest. For now, he lurches into bed, pulling up the blankets so high that they almost shield him from the sun.

He falls asleep with his phone wedged under his pillow, so tired that he doesn’t even care.

-

When he wakes up again, Shu tries his best to fight it. No matter what time it is, it’s way too early to be anywhere near conscious, so he rolls around for a while, trying his best to burrow into his sheets and lull himself back to sleep. Not even an extra pillow and the woolen barrier of the blanket drawn between his eyes and the sun are enough to knock him out for good, already elbow-deep in wakefulness, but that won’t stop him from trying.

A second passes. If he’s lucky, maybe it’s been a minute, but it feels so drawn-out that it could easily be less. Distantly, he can make out the sound of a bus, beeping steadily as it backs up towards… wherever it’s going. He’s only half listening. He’s trying not to listen. He’s trying to sleep, so he doesn’t care what’s going on out there.

So, he tries. He tries his best, but his head won’t cooperate, and he can’t help but hear it all anyway. It doesn’t help.

If he had his way, he wouldn’t be paying mind to it at all, but his body refuses to get with the program, already tainted by impatience and the thundering mantra that he needs to stop thinking so he can actually drift off. Stop thinking. Stop thinking. One more second, and then he’ll fall right back asleep. Just a little bit more, and— okay, nope.

The blissful ignorance tactic doesn't pan out, and neither do his attempts to transcend this plane of existence and launch himself into dreamland by imagining it hard enough.  Maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and buy those ridiculously expensive blackout curtains, or maybe it’s time to stop being so stubborn about his sleep schedule, but is it really being stubborn when his shifted schedule is hardly even his fault?

Shu squints, blinking at the overbearing brightness of the world around him, and shuts his eyes again, repeating the cycle about five times before he actually rolls out of bed. He’s long past feeling ashamed at living through the occasional nocturnal day or two (or twenty), so he wasn’t planning on getting up until it was dark again anyway, knuckles clutched tight to the reins of sleep whenever he briefly resurfaced, but whatever. It’s fine. Sometimes, the universe has other plans, and today, he’s going to listen.

Muscle memory takes over. He’s not really thinking as he straightens out his sheets, and it’s only when he’s midway through tugging a shirt past his ears that the strangeness of the whole situation finally registers. 

His room is never this bright in the morning, not really, because they always knew this would be a problem someday. Petra’s room is the one that faces vaguely east, so either that clock is wrong or the sun is, and neither is a prospect he especially wants to entertain.

Still, some things make more sense than others.

Surely it isn’t a sun problem, so he fumbles around his bed to find his phone. Clock settings: automatic. Daylight savings? They don’t even observe it. Even if they did, it wouldn’t be for another month anyway. The time? It’s a few minutes off from the clock by his desk, but that’s not enough to make any real difference. And other than the brightness problem, his room is just as he left it. His headphones are still coiled up by his monitor, ready to be properly put away after binging through a partially satisfying ending in the idol turned actress turned scapegoat story. So it’s not the clock, and it’s not his phone, and it’s also not his room that’s causing all these issues.

The only issue is that it only leaves him with so many options.

With nothing left to plausibly investigate, Shu takes a deep breath, shields his eyes with his hands as best as he can, and presses his forehead to the window, staring down towards the street down below.

It seems like the sun's not the only thing wrong about this picture.

The road is both duller and brighter and fuller than it should be. It curves the wrong way, forming a bony squiggle that veers to the left. The neighbouring building’s taller. His window faces directly towards the sun, and there aren’t enough clouds. There are lights strung up absolutely everywhere, shining in all the neon shades of summer. Lemon yellow wraps around a restaurant’s canopy while an eye-searing red fights to advertise a hundred different cuisines that aren’t usually there.

It's like someone visited ten different parts of the city he knows and mashed them all up into one monstrous beast, giggling at the way its teeth spring out the nostrils or the way one hand has three fingers while the other manages to have seven. It’s just not right.

The fact that his room looks so normal makes it even worse.

Shu briefly considers pulling out his phone again, maybe shooting off a text, but if Petra doesn’t answer, then the wrongness will start to fester. It’ll be indirect confirmation that the world has abandoned him and left him wherever this is, trapped in a world packed with mismatched light and sound.

It’s like the first time he flew home for the holidays just to discover that the home he remembered doesn’t really exist anymore. After a few years and a slightly uncomfortable journey through the skies, he bumped into Petra with three sweaters stuffed beneath his thickest jacket because his mound of presents took up far more space than he anticipated, and that seemed like the best way to compensate. It was a bit colder at home than it is in the city, so the layers weren’t wasted, but he couldn’t help but stare at the snow that seemingly appeared overnight, coating everything with this whitish sheen. His dad took over his old desk, covering dusty notes and faint scribblings of formulas he ought to have memorised with a big rubber mat and an old TV-turned-monitor and inevitably apologising for the mess.

This is like that but flipped. It’s like someone lifted his bedroom up and dropped it down somewhere new just to see how much he’d squirm— and squirm he does, cringing at the chill of the glass as he tries to take it all in.

Eventually, his curiosity triumphs over the dregs of confusion, and he decides to take matters into his own hands, marching out of the room like it doesn’t even affect him. His shoes look a bit lonely as they wait by the door, but even that only makes him falter a little, determined to get a read on the weird, weird place. 

There are more important things to do than sleep, so he continues blazing forwards, choking down the sky as the metallic monster sizes him up. 

Shu keeps marching. It can do whatever it wants.

-

There are a couple trends that he’s picked up on over the years, considering his chosen profession as a cursebreaker. Locational curses typically have a very clear catalyst. The same’s true for targeted ones, but those can be a little harder to tease out. 

A strange teleportation like this is most definitely a curse, so all he’s really got to do is figure out the trigger and destroy it.

For a couple days, he’s been rotating around the apartment, scouting out cafés or benches that offer a decent vantage point. It’s easy enough to talk his way into lingering somewhere for a while, chatting with the nice ladies who tell him he needs to eat more, so yes, of course you can stay, even if he only has a scant amount of interest in the food. 

Nothing seems to be especially out of place, but tackling an entire block is no easy feat, especially on his own. Sometimes, when the wrongness weighs too heavily, he imagines what Petra would say if she were here. She’d probably laugh at him for being so slow before offering to split up each sector so they can cover more ground.

The sun scorches his skin until he ducks under a tree, so he drops the thought as soon as it comes. First, the catalyst. Once he finds that, he can spend time thinking about going back home.

The other thing he did here, probably an hour or two after he first ventured outside, was step into the first convenience store he found. It didn’t prove to be that interesting though. Standard fare, mostly. Rows of bread and drinks of every colour. A cooler with cups full of what claims to be a french toast parfait. He was hoping for something a little more exciting, like a fruit that doesn’t exist, but this world is only slightly different from his own.

Still, sometimes he goes looking around anyway, trying his best not to stare as he pokes his nose into another store. It’d be a fun story to tell once he finally gets out of here, him and the taste he can’t even begin to explain that he wasn’t sure he even liked. That’s what he’s really looking for.

There must be some way to turn this into a fun anecdote he’ll drop some day, chuckling about that time he accidentally walked into a curse.

But today? Still no such luck. No catalyst and no strange food. All he really got from this particular excursion is the acute sense that the last few bars of the pop song that’s been floating around the aisles are gonna gum up his ears and keep looping all day. Now that he’s here though, he decides that he is a bit thirsty, so there’s no harm in picking something up, even if it isn’t very special.

That’s when he spots him, dressed poorly for the weather amidst a wall of drinks. Blonde hair that’s been gathered into a rough sort of ponytail. Broad shoulders. Fur collar that arcs around said shoulders instead of hugging his neck— a choice that sacrifices warmth for aesthetics.

His heart crashes into his ribs as he stands there, drink long forgotten.

It starts as a suspicion, an impulse, the intrusive thought that this guy looks like he’s been plucked straight out of his memories. Then, Shu hears him speak, and there’s no room for doubt. He just spent hours listening to that voice go on and on about all sorts of weird musings as they acted like they were gonna solve the whole mystery on their own.

Shu’s body moves without his permission, his sneakers squeaking against the floor as his feet carry him closer and closer to the source of the voice. His hand starts floating, getting close enough to brush against the other dude’s shoulder. “Luca?! Is that really—”

Before his hand makes contact, the man turns around, and a stone drops straight into his stomach. It skitters as it goes down, sinking deeper and deeper until it disappears beneath the floor, leaving him there to nurse all the shock. Sure enough, standing with a backdrop of ten different flavours of water is Luca Kaneshiro himself, and looking at him is like waking up all over again. It completely recontextualises things.

This isn’t just someone’s strange fever dream of a world, then.

Luca’s eyes flash for a moment as he stares Shu down, confused. “That’s me!” he chirps, but his face ices over as a smaller, more polite smile starts to settle on his lips. “Sorry, uh, do I know you?”

There’s no room for doubt now. If Luca’s here, looking just like he did in that game, then surely, he must be involved somehow. And whatever’s going on, it’s definitely some sort of freaky curse, so this is progress! He can definitely find a way to break it, so long as Luca doesn’t write him off before they locate the catalyst.

After a few seconds of sifting through his thoughts, Shu shakes his head. “I guess not,” he says, cursing himself for not answering faster. Luca probably thinks he zoned out or worse, that he was too busy ogling him to string together any coherent words. Not exactly the greatest first impression.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you then. I’m Luca.”

Shu sticks his drink between his arm and his ribs as he grabs Luca’s outstretched hand, squeezing it slightly as he shakes it. It certainly feels real. “I know,” he replies, swallowing down his laugh. “Shu. I mean— That’s my name. I’m Shu. I’m not telling you to leave me alone.” He manages to swallow down the laugh but not the smile, but that’s an acceptable loss. “Actually, are you busy right now? I could really use your help with something.”

It could be because he’s kind or because Luca finds his actions entertaining or just that he’s been programmed to be amenable in that way, but somehow, even though it sounds like he’s propositioning him, Luca agrees without a second thought, giving him plenty of time to mull it all over.

How should he frame this? Usually, he’s the one breaking curses as opposed to the one afflicted with them. It does present an interesting conundrum though. 

Is it too hard to swallow if he starts with the fact that he’s pretty sure he got trapped inside a game and that Luca was definitely a part of it?

-

Luca refuses to accept his scarf, claiming the cold is too afraid of his aura to even consider touching him, but he does listen through most of the spiel, nodding here and there whenever something especially resonant comes up. He takes it pretty well too, hardly interrupting or protesting or even trying to butt in even though it’d be perfectly understandable if he wanted to, and he receives the bombshell of a revelation with infinitely more grace than he’d probably be able to muster if their roles were reversed.

While they were waiting in line, Shu looked it up on his phone, shielding his screen from view with his shoulder and what he hoped was a disarming smile, and sure enough, the major complications have already started. Headline. 9:17AM. Local theatre production comes under scrutiny after the theft of a historic artifact, thought to be recovered from a coven in the 19th century.

He doesn’t really know how he wants Luca to respond anyway. It’s nice enough to not know he’s alone, even if that means they're probably stuck here for the foreseeable future, so the response doesn’t really matter. 

What can he even do anyway, other than listen? History has already started to repeat itself, and he’s a predestined part of it.

Still, he manages to surprise him. Once he finally has space to speak, Luca places his palms on the table, surging like a bullet as he leans into Shu’s space. If they were still outside, their breaths would have collided into a big, amorphous cloud as his face parked near his. “This is great!” he proclaims, grinning like a fool.

Nevermind. Shu takes it back. Maybe he wasn’t listening to him after all. 

“I just told you I got cursed. What’s great about that?”

He’s not sure what he was expecting. Shock, maybe. Denial. A soft-spoken, placid reassurance offered as Luca tried his best not to call him crazy for saying that. He could have understood his reaction landing on the other end of the spectrum too— an academic interest in how curses can be used to extract information out of people, a chance to hijack his skills for his own nefarious purposes, that kind of thing. Whatever it was that Shu was waiting for, he certainly wasn’t ready for the jaunty proclamation of “I’m cursed too!” that seems to reverberate around the room, snuffing out the overlapping hum of the city.

“Cursed too,” he whispers, waiting for Luca’s face to crack into a wolfish grin. Surely he’s joking, right? He’s joking, and now that Shu’s acted like he believes him, he’ll spring up and reveal his true intentions.

“Yeah, and now you’re here, so maybe we can get out!”

Yeah, maybe they can. It’s just as likely that they’ll both be stuck here for the foreseeable future though. How is he supposed to purify an object that he managed to get stuck inside?

He really, really should not have insulted that game, unsatisfying ending or not, because the minute Luca mentions it, it all starts to click. The game. Their new case. Luca’s strange behaviour throughout all of it.

“So, then, when you kept saying all that stuff about side characters and figuring things out…”

Luca’s face scrunches up, eyes going slightly splotchy. “I’m not sure what you heard, but I kinda stopped trying to hide it by now. I guess I thought if I told everyone, then it’d eventually interest someone into helping— or at least get them to what the hell I’m talking about, but no one ever seems to care.”

He takes one look at him, trying to determine if he wants to say his piece, but Shu’s at a loss for words.

With the ball firmly in his court, Luca goes on to build the most outlandish story, trying to match their stories up. “So when you played it, I was in there too? Yeah, I dunno,” he says, rifling through his pockets for a pen. Once he finds one, he tosses it across the table. “The box said it was a hyper realistic game, so I thought, what the hell. I had some time. Why not give it a go? I didn’t think it’d go that far.”

Shu nods, scribbling on a napkin as he listens to him speak. Catfished by game? Bad end. The mafia made the jump over with him. (is that a joke?) Sonny, Doppio, Vanta, Kaelix already there. So who framed Maria???

Their ankles meet beneath the table. “How’s Maririn?” he whispers, eyes glued to the crowd of other patrons. Didn’t she miraculously ‘run into’ Doppio in a place just like this? They’ve got to be careful. Any one of them could secretly be in on it.

“She’s fine. I think she’s more annoyed than scared, honestly.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.”

There’s a minute pause as Luca busies himself with scarfing down his lunch, but then his voice comes thundering out again, now a little brighter, a little less serious. “So how does curse breaking work anyway? You actually took a job at a haunted mansion?”

Shu shrugs, playing with his nails. “It wasn’t a mansion. It was more like a big house, but… yeah. I guess it was haunted. And then it wasn’t. Because of us.”

“Ghosts aren’t real.”

Luca’s not really in a position to judge him, if his mafia story’s true. He’s got no sense of self preservation, freely advertising it to anyone he meets, and yet he draws the line of plausible deniability at ghosts?!

Shu can’t help but push back, and it’s clear that Luca likes it that way, revelling in the way his voice gets higher and louder as he makes his case. “It isn’t usually ghosts! That’s just the easiest case to understand. And even if they— Oh, that’s right!” Shu’s face brightens, gaze flitting back to a safe spot on the table as he maps it all out. “My sister can help us… probably. The disk should still be somewhere in my room.” Of course! It’s so obvious. Why didn’t he think of that before? “When did you get stuck here?”

Luca frowns, mouthing something to himself as he counts with his fingers. “Monday?” he says, voice wavering. “Mmm, no, actually, it was probably Tuesday, so it’s whatever day that was. The eleventh? I dunno.”

“Of November?”

“Yeah. 11/11. Make a wish.”

So much for that plan. Shu groans, flopping on their table with the heft of deflating dreams dangling from his neck. His palm narrowly misses Luca’s plate as his spine buckles. If he accounts for a couple days for someone to notice Luca’s disappearance and another few for Shu to run through the game himself, then practically no time has passed at all. Time here must be its own self-contained object, so there’s no telling how long it’ll take for Petra to notice, much less rescue them.

The disappointment makes his stomach curl into himself, so he stays there for a while, content to wallow in his misery. He doesn’t budge an inch, not even when Luca starts stacking things on his head and hands like he’s trying to nail him to the table instead of trying to cheer him up.

“Stop it!” His hair hides the bulk of his smile, but Shu can still kinda hear it curling around his words, lengthening his vowels into something embarrassingly fond and unbothered.

A stack of napkins falls off his head, tickling his neck on the way down, but Luca isn’t bothered that his masterpiece is crumbling in front of him. “It’s fine,” he says after a while, laughing again before he finally starts to put everything back. “We don’t need anyone’s help. The way I see it, we just have to win the game.”

Once his head’s free, Shu looks up at him again, silently asking how the heck they’re supposed to do that when they don’t even have a game to play. He’s 90% certain that it wouldn’t have made the jump with him, so it’s not like it’s as easy as it sounds.

“It’s a romance game, right? We just have to make them kiss! We find the thief, and we make sure Maria gets her happy ending. She kisses them, and bam! Curse over.”

Scratch everything. Shu gets the sense that he’d never be able to prepare himself for this conversation. He considers it for a second, their scheme, him and Luca acting like little kids pushing two people’s heads together just to make them kiss before ruling it out entirely. “What?” he asks, rightfully confused. “No we don’t.”

“How do you know? You wouldn't have gotten stuck here if you won.”

“Haven't you ever played a— nevermind. If anything, it'll end when they confess to each other. That’s not really the point. The kissing part’s just a bonus. Like for CGs and stuff.”

Luca hums as he looks him over, chewing on his words. “Oh,” he says, sounding a little disappointed. ”It'd be easier if we could just make them kiss though.”

The sight of his little pout mixed with his tangible sincerity is enough to make Shu burst into a full-bodied laugh. It would be great if it were that simple, but it probably won’t be. It’s not as easy as matchmaking either, considering how tangled everyone seems to be in the case. And can he really condone any of them as a potential partner, considering all that? What if they accidentally push Maririn into getting cozy with the thief?

Still, it’s not like he’s got any better ideas. And he wouldn’t exactly call them friends, but he has gotten rather fond of Maria, so securing her happiness will be a decent use of time, seeing as they’ll be stuck here for the foreseeable future anyway.

“Yeah,” he says, offering a commiserating smile. “It would be. We can still try it though.” From what he remembers of Luca’s parts of the playthrough, it never got that romantic, so he’s not exactly hopeful about their chances either. “Are you any good at that though? Like… setting people up and stuff?”

Luca stares directly at him, eyes gleaming as he nods again and again, each somehow more pronounced than the last. “I’m basically the rizziest rizzmaster you’ll ever meet,” he proclaims, puffing out his chest.

It’s not a bad plan— trying to solve any love problems from the inside out.

Shu laughs again as he slams his fist on the table. He supposes that it doesn’t really matter if it works or not. Even if they both suck at it, it’ll still be a fun way to spend the next couple weeks, so he readily agrees, turning over his napkin-turned-notepad as they start debating how it’ll play out. 

He throws out whatever plans he can think of, building and building on top of Luca’s numerous ideas (some good, some bad, some good but not at all related to the case, which go into a separate list entirely) until they get to something that’s a good enough launchpoint. Once satisfied, he scribbles ‘Operation Matchmaking Detectives’ on top in large print, halfheartedly batting Luca’s hands away as he reaches over to scribble on an upside down ‘Rizzmasters’ on top of it.

‘Operation Matchmaking Rizzmaster Detectives.’ Sounds like as good a plan as any.

- 

The plan is a good anchor point, so he’s ultimately grateful that it gives him a chance to metaphorically chip away at the curse.

Still, no matter how much he tries to acclimatise himself, it feels a bit strange to go from a fairly faithful mockup of his apartment to this place, this sprawling mass of roads that’s got a hundred mysteries lurking around every corner. It's not like he’s worried or particularly anxious, but the knot in Shu’s stomach tightens up as he passes another theatre, trodding past a blinking sign detailing how someone named Vox Akuma will be reprising their role as Vosk, starting next week. 

It’s just hard to stop feeling like an intruder when the walls are full of history he’s never lived through.

As he trudges past, one of his ears is always open and roving, just waiting for someone to catch sight of him and realise that he doesn't quite belong here. This isn't a measly teleportation curse that’s sent him to a different prefecture. This is a whole different beast entirely, and he just doesn't know how to anticipate its next reaction. Luckily, the streets are full, lines of people stretch around what seems like every corner, and there’s enough cover that he can sneak towards one of the smaller venues near the outskirts of what must be the arts district, all without being chased out.

Someone winks at him as they stand beside each other, waiting for the light to turn green. A whole group seems to give him an appraising once-over when he tries to shimmy past. It’s hard to tell if people are genuinely watching him or if that’s just his nerves talking, but it could easily be both.

Supposedly, Luca’s gonna meet him there, but he can't help but type and delete and retype and redelete a message to him, mostly to give himself something to stare at whenever he has to stop. They can't watch the actual performance tonight since Luca’s shifts have basically doubled after the theft, but he said the layout of this stage should be roughly analogous, so it’s almost as good as watching it. And then once that's done, they’ll head over to the real theatre to have a poke around.

In and then out. It’s simple. It’s foolproof. Luca already has a key, and it’ll be way after hours anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about!

The only wrinkle is that it could also go very wrong very easily. If anyone catches them, they’ll have no good excuses to hide behind. Still, it’s the best plan they’ve got, so they’ll just have to minimise the risk.

Luca’s phone started going off before they could really do any real investigating, so there’s still a lot left to hash out. He apologised before he ran off, practically leaping out of his chair as soon as he saw the time and realised just how long they spent trying to get all the facts in order.

First things first: the crime. 

The details are largely the same as what he remembers from his playthrough. The artifact? It's actually a brooch— inset pink stone, deep colour, slightly murky— but they didn't want to risk damaging the clasp, so they strung a chain through it. It’s more sensational than valuable, in all likelihood. Vintage but storied. If it were truly valuable, they wouldn't have offered the real thing as a prop in the first place, so the theft probably wasn’t about the jewel itself. No clue who did it.

According to Luca, getting hired as security was laughably easy. It's like the world was eager to find a new place for him, so no one really questioned it when he turned up one day, lugging around a giant sandbag to add credence to his story as he claimed that he was brought on last minute given the high profile nature of the show. Apparently, they were already looking for him, so he didn't have to try so hard to make it inside. 

He was working, but he didn't see much on the night in question, so that means that the thief must have found some other way to escape unnoticed. No one tried the back door before or after the show, though, and the other guards noted much of the same, so there must be a clue somewhere, right? There must be something that’ll reveal how the thief got in and out undetected, so they’ve just got to break in and take a peek.

Shu’s stomach lurches when he finally makes it to the theatre. The neon signs blur into a monochrome mass as his attention lapses. It feels illegal to even think about what they’re gonna do. Aren’t they meddling too much?

Still, solving the mystery will probably be easier than trying to set Mari up, regardless of how much of a ‘rizzmaster’ Luca believes he may be. He should feel relieved. Action is better than inaction. He knows for certain where he is now, and there’s a little flicker of gratitude that curls around his throat whenever he thinks about their plan and the risk Luca’s willing to take on just to make it happen. 

There’s another side to that coin though. It’s equally fine and fair for someone to try to stop them. If they’re willing to drag the whole production down with them, then they won’t hesitate about bashing a few no-name skulls in for insurance. They have no idea how powerful their enemy is.

And he trusts Luca because he knows him, but he doesn’t really know him, does he? All he knows is the way he presented himself to Maria back then, and he just seems so genuine. He’s the kind of guy you want to trust.

So, yes, he wants to trust him. He chooses to trust him, even if it puts him in a dangerous position.

Eventually, Shu closes his eyes, mind swirling with a hundred different questions and their hypothetical answers that feel more and more outlandish the longer he stands here. He focuses on the small, breaking up the facts into smaller, more digestible pieces that still don’t make it past the knot in his chest. Anything to keep himself from getting lost at sea.

It’s funny. This is the perfect place for an ambush.

If someone wanted to shut him up, it’s be easy to—

A hand lands on his shoulder, followed shortly by a terse voice that rumbles into his ear. The dual sensations make his skin run so cold that he’s certain it’s gonna overflow into something that’s about to erupt. “Banana?” they say. “Come in, Banana. This is Mango. I have reached the rendezvous point. Over.”

Their callsigns? How could anyone know them? He knew it! They should have moved somewhere more private the second they started getting serious. Someone was there, their eyes like knives pressing into his skin.

So, who is it? Who was listening in while they were—

Shu shakes his head as he spins around, hopping backwards to create some space between himself and his assailant. He whispers an apology to the couple standing behind him before he turns to find the less frazzling sight of Luca, now decked out head to toe in black.

Not a threat then.

“I thought we agreed we weren't using those,” he grits out, silently asking his pulse to chill the hell out. Stupid heart. It's just Luca. It’s fine. They’re fine. Stop getting so worked up. And then, because he isn't actually upset and because the sight of Luca’s easy grin bolsters his spirit, he manages to smile before tacking an “Over” to the end, settled enough to turn it into a joke.

Luca shrugs. “If we don't use them now, then when will we ever have the chance to? Here you go, by the way.”

Proudly nestled between Luca’s fingers are their tickets, and Shu grabs his as they shuffle towards the entrance. He looks down at his feet. He looks at the ticket. He looks at Luca’s face. He busies himself with comforting sights until the tension dissipates.

“They’re not even good codenames,” he argues, taking a big gulp of air just to clear out his throat. “‘Mango’ and ‘Banana’ make it sound like we’re corny spies.”

“Corny?”

“No. Don’t—”

“Corn? Come in, Corn. Do you read me? Over.”

Shu feels another laugh start to germinate inside him, but he tries his best to tamp it down, scoping out the crowd again as the line gets smaller and smaller. No one seems to notice them. No one seems to care at all, too caught up in their phones or their partners to bear them any mind.

It’s harmless. He doesn’t have to try so hard to hold himself back.

“Mango?” he finally asks, shrugging his coat off his shoulders so it can run through the metal detector. “This is Banana. Corn has been popped. I repeat. Corn has been popped. Over.”

Luca snickers when they meet up again, but he doesn’t build onto it, suddenly mesmerised by the hall and all its adornments. They’re surrounded by the hum of overlapping whispers as they clamber into their seats, and the lights soon dim, shutting everyone up in an instant. The silence slowly gets filled with the sound of a lone violin.

As the show starts, he almost forgets why they’re there, but his peace doesn’t last for very long.

“That’s where Maririn makes her entrance," Luca whispers, grabbing his hand so he can point it out in the dark. Out of necessity and politeness, he speaks as softly as possible, lips brushing against Shu’s ear. “There’s a hatch in the ceiling where she drops down. I think it’s supposed to highlight the jewel or something. You see that? There’s a spotlight down there that they turn to face her.”

The sound reverberates around his skull long after Luca lets go. His fingers are still a little tingly and warm as they curl into his sleeve, and the lights swirl around them, switching from deep blue to red to violet. He glances at Luca for a second before his head turns to continue staring at the stage, mesmerised.

That’s right. They’re here for work. Now’s not the time to get distracted.

-

After the curtain drops, the streets become an ocean. 

Shu stumbles to his feet as they weave through throngs of people who cluster around the stage door with stars in their eyes. The ground smells like late nights and the dust from dreams that have been carefully polished year in and year out until they absolutely glow beneath the spotlights. There’s a ginormous puddle that Luca fully leaps over, clearing it without any run-up as he talks his ear off about his little corrections.

He was wrong earlier. Maria does make her entrance from this cramped compartment in the ceiling as she gently floats to the ground, but she’s not wearing the necklace then. That part happens at the end of the number, with the prop hidden inside one of the set pieces. Then she vanishes as soon as she arrives as this huge partition slides into view, so it’s hard to see exactly what happens.

“It’s a real maze back there,” Luca says. “Like there’s a bunch of stairs and thin hallways full of random racks and stuff are just hidden underneath the floor.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I thought the necklace could have gotten lost somewhere in there,” he adds, looking proud at himself for the initiative, but apparently, that didn’t pan out either. All he discovered were a few dog-eared scripts and a box of glasses made to look full with some sort of resin. “And I’m sure the investigators did a better job combing through it than I did,” he says, shrugging.

“Maybe we’ll find something they couldn’t.” Another puddle. Shu takes a shot with this one, hands waggling in front of him to push Luca out the way if his momentum carries him a little too far.

It sounds so much simpler in his head. In and then out. And maybe everyone else was just programmed to fail, so why can’t it be them? Maybe they’ll skip a few weeks ahead, solve this whole thing, and let Maria focus on her inevitable romance arc.

Regardless, it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing they should be so openly talking about, so for a while, Shu pulls the conversation in a different direction, offering a jumbled picture of his life outside here. There’s this arcade that he always meant to check out someday, for example, but it’s always a bit too loud and a bit too far of a distance to travel when he doesn’t really have a game in mind in the first place. Once they’re out of here, maybe he’ll finally give in and go.

Luca nods, eyes a little cloudy as he says something that gets lost to the wind. Midway into the older part of town, they duck into a dingy restaurant to pass the time, but it feels like they resurface just as soon as they arrive. Another hour slips through his fingers.

The world looks much smaller without the crowd to bulk it up. The sky melts into steel corners and rows of shiny squares and windows. The lights are still on though, everpresent and expansive as they snuff out the stars. 

After they cross another street or so, Luca swivels around, pressing a finger to his lips as he gestures for Shu to stick close. Their shadows bump into each other as they slip into an alley, the bricks cold beneath his fingers.

That must be the theatre.

He can hardly see a thing with Luca’s hulking shoulders in the way, but he can feel the caution laced around his shallow movements. Luca’s elbow narrowly misses his ribs as he digs through his pocket. “Careful,” Shu whispers, glancing back towards the street. Still empty, thankfully. All he can make out is a pool of white light and the occasional passing car.

Luca creeps over to press an ear against the door, seemingly satisfied by whatever he hears. “I’ll have this thing cracked open in a sec.”

“Is it really breaking and entering if you’ve got a key?”

His eyes never stray far from the lock. He looks nonchalant, but the key jumps around in Luca’s hand, unwilling to sit neatly in the lock like it’s supposed to. “It is if you’re not supposed to be here,” he whispers, shoving his shoulder against the door as if the extra support will smooth it all out.

Shu is, ostensibly, supposed to keep watch, but there’s not much he can do from back here. There’s hardly any cover either— not unless they want to jump into a crowded dumpster— so there’s not many options, should they get caught. All he can really do is hope that the heat death of the universe comes unexpectedly early, taking everyone else out along with them before anyone can arrest them.

“Luca?”

There’s another false alarm as a biker zips past. So now, they’re okay, but their only real protection is the relative lack of light. This is taking way too long. It’s either a sticky lock, or he’s got the wrong key, or… or something. He should have known there was no such thing as a simple break in.

When Shu tries to catch his attention a third time, Luca finally turns to face him, doing his best to chase off any notion that this plan is wildly impractical and on the verge of collapse. He’s just waiting for the right moment, the best time for them to slip inside. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice it, suddenly detached from the surface of the door. 

Shu’s voice is sharper this time, sharper and quieter. “Luca! Quick. Someone’s coming.”

It’s hard to tell if his hand is cold or if Luca’s just a furnace, but it almost burns as he yanks him closer, hardly giving him any time to react as he uses Luca’s body to shield himself from view. And sure enough, he can definitely make out the sound of faint laughter and reluctant footsteps getting louder and louder as someone approaches the door.

They’re not the only ones here tonight.

His voice drops to a whisper as he burrows into Luca’s neck. “I thought you said it’d be empty by now!”

“It should be. I have no idea who the heck is— What are you doing anyway? Shouldn’t we be running?”

Shu’s heart picks up speed as he rifles through their options. None of them are great. “It’ll look worse if they see us running,” he says, managing to sound much calmer than he feels. Where’s the key? It better not be stuck in the lock. He prays to every deity all at once that the stupid lock won’t be what gives them away. “And don’t look so stiff. Get closer. Take another step toward the wall.”

“And do what?” Luca asks, no less distressed than before. The chill brings an extra flush to his complexion, and he’s already so close that the world is half Luca and half everything else. He apologises before crushing Shu even closer to the wall, coating them both in shadows.

Isn’t it obvious? What plausible non-criminal reason is there for two people to be caught standing in a (not so) random alleyway?

Shu’s hands migrate up Luca’s shoulders until they reach the nape of his neck, tugging the elastic out of his hair. The only direction he can coherently articulate is that they should make it ‘look believable,’ and Luca eventually listens, splaying one hand against the wall while the other grabs one of Shu’s, forcing him to stop.

Somehow, pretending like they’re about to kiss is infinitely worse than going through the motions of actually doing it, and he’s grateful that Luca’s taken over because it gives him the chance to keep watch. Shu’s jacket slips off his shoulder. Luca whispers something into his ear, some request to signal when they’re safe, and he traces out his agreement into Luca’s back, unable to say it out loud.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the door opens and someone steps out. It’s still hard to make them out without exposing his position. 

“I’ll see you later,” they call out, voice warm and crinkled as the door creaks on its hinges. It carves through the air like a pointed blade, leaving Shu short of breath, and he can feel the way Luca shifts against him, muscles tense. For a second, the figure doesn't move, not even after the door closes, and he’s certain they’ve been made.

Shu counts it in his head. Ten more seconds, and they cheese it, no matter how suspicious it makes them look. It’ll be worse if someone manages to memorise their faces.

Thankfully, the dude slowly starts moving, still distracted, still staring into the middle distance behind them until they nearly collide with Luca’s feet, and the nerves start to dissipate. “Oh shit!” he says, scrambling backwards. “Sorry, guys. Sorry. My bad. Keep, um… Keep having fun. Sorry! Have a good night, bye!”

Kaelix practically sprints away from them now, mouth moving so fast that the last bit comes out like it’s one conjoined snake of a word.

Once he’s definitely gone, Luca leaps away from him, opening the door in one swift motion. “See?” he says, shining with pride. His eyes are like miniature stars, blanketed by the night. “I told you it’d be easy.”

Shu’s only half listening as he stares into the theatre. He wants to say that it was at least a little complicated. He wants to ask what he thinks about Kaelix’s appearance and what that could mean, about the possibility that he’s more involved than they realised, but he doesn’t, suddenly at a loss for words.

That makes Kaelix their next target, most likely. Somehow, they’ll have to catch him and Maria at the same time to get a read on the situation— since neither of them have any idea of what his route was like.

This is good. This is their first step towards winning their way back home, and Luca waits for him before stepping inside, swinging their interlocked fingers through the overflowing wave of yellow-white light.

It’s only then that he realises that their hands are still connected, but Shu doesn’t let go as he runs through the door, grateful for the easy excuse of adrenaline that he can lean on, should anyone interrogate him about his reddening cheeks and the fact that his heart’s never slowed down.

It’s fine. As they march closer and closer to the heart of the stage, Shu gets the sinking feeling that this isn’t going to be very easy at all, but it’s too late to turn back now, so he continues marching ahead, smiling as Luca squeezes his hand in what feels like agreement. 

They’ve got to find something, right?

-

Inside the theatre, there’s an empty wooden crate, a few crumpled letters penned in various shades of crimson, and Freo, who’s staring at a rather impressive tear in Vanta’s cloak like he’s ready to thoroughly dissect it. Foibles of being a costume director for an increasingly messy production, he supposes, though he’s pretty sure that Vanta’s got something more going on than your average, garden variety clumsiness. He’s gone through way too many wardrobe malfunctions already— easily more than everyone else combined.

Still, he’s got to hand it to Luca. His plans are anything but perfect, but he adapts so smoothly that it's hard to tell if any of it even manages to fluster him.

As they get caught peeking into Freo’s makeshift headquarters of sorts, Luca strides confidently through the door with a million excuses dripping off his lips about how he simply forgot something and how he came here to look for it and wow, has anyone been hanging around more than usual because he gets why someone’d want to steal the necklace, you know, because it’s all historical and magical and stuff, but he’s pretty sure there are plenty of nicer, thicker, warmer coats available than his, should any thief be looking.

The whole charade gives Shu a good chance to look around, confident that Freo won’t be paying him any mind (even if he isn’t convinced by the act, which he might not be), but there's nothing particularly noteworthy here. There’s nothing obvious, anyway, and he tries his best to signal that to Luca with a tap on his spine and a subtle shrug of his shoulders. 

“—and by the way, this is Shu!” Luca finally adds, blending his nod into this weird gesticulation he does where he kinda dances up to him to make a big show out of their introduction. “He’s joining the security team, so I’m showing him the ropes! Corporate wants a magic expert on hand in case anything else goes wrong. You know how it goes.”

The floor rocks slightly as Freo looks him over, and there’s a tortuous moment where he’s sure, yet again, that the jig is up. The lights are disgustingly warm, and his shirt starts to cling to his back, and his knees tremble slightly. There’s no way he’ll buy that.

After a while though, Freo shrugs, offering a quiet greeting of his own. Luckily, he doesn’t pry into why Luca needed a friend to find his missing jacket or why this can’t all wait for the morning, sticking to his story. No, he hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, and he’s probably the only one still here, like always.

If anything, he seems a little too eager for them to part ways, poking incessantly at the cloak’s fraying edges, needle in hand as he tries his best to look busy. It’s a little uncanny seeing him in three dimensions— the downturned eyes, the subtle curl of his lips. Freo says it again. He hasn’t seen anything weird lately, but he’ll keep an eye out if Luca can’t find his stuff.

He’s obviously lying, but he wants them to leave, and they want to go, so with their needs in perfect harmony, they disappear as quickly as they arrived, dashing through the labyrinth of tunnels and note-covered walls as they keep searching and searching for some sort of sign.

They don't find the necklace or anything remotely pointing at how it disappeared, but they do find Luca’s jacket right where he left it, draped across a chair in the back, and he looks especially proud of himself for planting it there. He drapes it across his shoulders as they pass Freo’s room again, now dark and empty and shuttered for the day.

Shu doesn't mention that detail though, and he's sure that Luca doesn't really care if his act went unnoticed. He doesn’t even seem bothered that their mission was a failure, but he supposes in many ways, it wasn’t.

So what if they couldn’t find any physical evidence? At least Freo has enough of a reason to be here, but Kaelix? Not a chance.

As they leap into the streets, riding purely on the adrenaline that comes with making it through something crazy relatively unscathed, there’s only one thing on his mind. 

This crazy plan just might work out after all, even if it takes them on the most roundabout path ever. Maybe Luca was right after all.

-

Or maybe he was a little too rash. Freo’s definitely not in on the thief plan, and there’s a good chance that Kaelix isn’t either.

That’s the only thing he knows for certain as they try their absolute best to tiptoe around the museum floor, trailing a healthy distance behind Kaelix and Maria on what could almost be considered a date? Maybe? But in all likelihood, it’s something else entirely, considering how keen they are to talk about absolutely everything but each other.

It’s an interesting place, this museum, and it’s certainly not what he expected either. There were at least five different sets of doors they passed by as they snuck behind an elderly couple, abandoning their cover to run up to grab one door each and prop them open for them. He kinda had the impression that it must be on the small and shabby side, given their willingness to push for some sort of theatrical collaboration, but it’s all quite neat and tidy— filled with white, gleaming lights and mottled tiles that look a little too much like marble for comfort.

Luca lags behind him a little, stopping at every plaque they pass, but he isn’t missing much. Even without them hovering nearby, Kaelix’s behaviour hasn’t changed at all. He still marches ahead, pointing out whatever details he thinks Maria would find most intriguing as they pass by an actual brazen bull.

“It’s not a replica,” he says, stroking the air beside it like he’s some kind of shepherd. “That’s 100% real bronze right there. There’s nothing inside though. Don’t worry. I checked.”

Maria sounds intrigued, but it’s the academic sort of intrigued, the same sort of tone she’s had for the duration of this maybe-date. And unlike Kaelix, who’s been blessed with the power of infinite vocal projection, it’s harder to make out exactly what it is that she says that makes him puff out his chest and slather on a fresh coat of bravado.

Either way, it’s not looking great. 

“A ghost?” Kaelix asks, staring it down. “Well, if there’s a ghost in there, then they can have it. They’ve probably been in there forever, and I’m pretty sure it’ll kick my ass.” Then a laugh, this time in disbelief. “Wha— No, I’m not saying I think someone died in this thing! Stop laughing! That’s not it!”

Shu sighs, taking a quick peek at Luca, but he looks perfectly unbothered as he fiddles with his gloves.

Okay, so maybe it’s not a date. You don’t invite other people along if you’re trying to woo someone, and neither Kaelix nor Maririn had any reservations about the pair of them tagging along, readily agreeing before they even had the chance to offer up their prepackaged excuse that they’d merely be there as Maria’s security detail and would make themselves scarce as soon as they got inside. It was supposed to be code for the fact that they’d still have plenty of alone time for date-related things, even with the intrusion, but they didn’t even need to hear it before they agreed.

“Do you think something’s broken?” he whispers, heading back to Luca’s parking spot. He’s still staring intently at a case of poison rings, looking back and forth between those hinging bezels and the chain looped around his neck.

“With what?”

“With everything!”

Luca shrugs, unsure what the problem is, and Shu groans, pulling him away from those stupid rings as he warns him against considering it. The technology’s way out of date, and it’s just far too traceable. There are hardly any poisons that are strong enough for such a small container anyway, and they stand out too much since they’re so ginormous, and— well, at any rate, it’s a bad idea all around. He should know that and probably does, but Luca also has this tendency to get wrapped up in imagining cool-sounding hypotheticals once he finds something he likes, so he sometimes needs a sounding board just to bounce things off of.

It turns out he wasn’t exactly joking about the mafia thing either, but sometimes Shu doubts how fearsome they can be if their leader has enough spare time to galavant around a decrepit theatre and act like he’s some sort of hard-boiled gumshoe.

There’s a layer of distance between them that’s slowly peeled away through all this planning. They’re basically friends now, and that means he can safely tell him off for getting ahead of himself without worrying about unintentionally treading on a line. Shu opens his mouth then decides against it and closes it, crouching as he tries to get a read on the date situation.

In the next room over, Kaelix and Maria seem perfectly happy to continue at their unhurried pace. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he says, leaning down with her bag still slung across his shoulder. They walk and they walk and yet never seem to get any closer than a few paces apart. “A doll walks into a museum, and—”

“It’s just…” Shu sighs, unable to fully articulate it. He is and yet isn’t the problem. Kaelix is a good guy, and he’s friendly. He seems to like her rather than merely respect her, and there’d be a million better ways to go about it he truly wanted to ruin her or tarnish the whole production, so it probably isn’t him, but his motivations are still pretty opaque— unless they begin and end at something relating to Freodore, like a good third of his sentences seem keen to. “Why isn’t he interested in her?”

They’re getting nowhere, chasing after leads like this.

It’s just a little hard to push the love half of the Matchmaking Detective (Rizzmasters) plan when said love interests seem to be completely unaware of the role they’re supposed to be playing. It was so promising too. On paper, they're a great match. And last time Kaelix was there for a matinee, there were a few brief stints of time where no one knew where the pair of them went, so it really, really felt like something should have happened between them, but they’re just as close as always, which is to say there’s still a long way to go to reach that good ending. Probably too long, in all honesty, given the way this date is going.

Sometimes he looks at Kaelix and he can still see that CG. It was him and Maria slumped against a wall, though all you could see was him, knees pretzeled and bent to be eye level with her as he told her that everything would be fine. ‘Who cares about what they say?’ he had said, wincing as he looked up and imagined whatever horror show was going on in the rigging. It was full of old rope and old harnesses, and one flyman’s issues weren’t some sort of cosmic issue. They certainly weren’t her fault, rumours be damned. ‘I loved your performance— And honestly, there are people all over the place that feel the same way. And even if you didn’t have any that, and you do, so this is just like… an if, you love to do it, and that’s what really matters at the end of the day.’

In the other room, he’s pretty sure they’re still chatting about ghosts. It’s another stark reminder that all of his hijacked knowledge only amounts to a sliver of what’s actually going on in this crazy world.

Today was supposed to be their chance to cross Kaelix off the suspect list and wingman him firmly into the love zone, but now, they may have to strike him off both. There’s just no way he’s going to turn around and miraculously fall in love with her, not at this rate.

The only saving grace about this whole endeavour is that Maria mentions Doppio every once in a while too, albeit a lot more subtly, groaning as she looks at another case and starts telling this story about a childhood friend who used to bring her bugs to look at (‘only the cool and the cute ones, he said, but that seemed to be most of them’), each cordoned on its own leaf so she didn’t have to touch them. “It was still scary though!” she insists, chuckling through the recollection.

Luca hums, peeking his head around the corner until Shu yanks him back for being too obvious. The walls are full of the sound of Kaelix’s mirrored, disbelieving laughter. 

“Hear that?” he asks. “Seems pretty interested to me.”

Does he? When he keeps bringing up someone who isn’t even here? They’re lucky that there are still some options left on the table because he’s pretty sure they won’t get anything useful out of Kaelix any time soon.

Shu can’t really hold it against him though. Luca wouldn’t know love if it smacked him in the face. He’s a strategist. He’s quick on his feet, and he’s got a good eye for detail and for people in general, but even diamonds have their flaws. Anyone remotely skilled in the romance department wouldn’t fall prey to a cursed game just because he was a little too curious about what falling in love might feel like.

At any rate, some sort of tryst with their designer would explain the late night visit, so he doesn’t mind striking Freo off of their suspect list, seeing as their little late night run-in was the sole reason he was on it in the first place. Kaelix, on the other hand, hasn’t fully won him over yet. There have been a few rumours floating around that this whole thing was the work of some sort of master criminal, that it had nothing to do with Mari or the play or even the artifact itself, but Shu doesn’t really buy it. Kaelix has got to be a part of this somehow. He wouldn’t have had some sort of hidden route if he wasn’t.

“He definitely isn’t. Not in the way that counts.” Shu groans, weighing their options. Maybe they should just call it a day. It’s not like they’re getting anything out of this.

His words were brusque, but his tone was light enough, and Luca doesn’t seem to mind, trotting along until he reaches some sort of spike-laden coffin. “Zaddy, c’mere!” he calls out, looking utterly fascinated.

“Looks sharp.”

“Yeah. You’d probably come out of it looking like a wheel of cheese.”

They certainly have an eclectic collection here. It sorta feels in character for Luca to be drawn here, what with the torture and whatever else that comes with his chosen profession, but it’s a little morbid nonetheless. “I dunno,” Shu says, letting his mouth keep running. “Maybe I’d crush the spikes and they’d come out looking like me instead.”

“Shu— Shu… Hmm. So it’s like Shu-wiss cheese!”

“Not really? They will be me. So, I’m not— If anything, it’d be a bunch of Shu-pikes,” he argues, preparing himself for the inevitable back-and-forth of all the methods they’d employ to avoid getting crushed in the first place.

It’s a bit silly, but this is why he likes Luca. He’s like an umbrella. Whenever they’re together, his worries just fly off his shoulders, unable to find purchase. It’s a good thing to have whenever the existential dread kicks in. What if this doesn’t help at all?

Something must show on his face because the minute Shu starts getting serious again, Luca’s face sharpens too, matching him beat for beat.

“Do you think it’s better?” Shu asks, thinking again of Maria and their half-baked plan. “Having Kaelix as a guide, I mean. Surely he knows more about the stuff in here. That should make it more enjoyable… right?”

Whenever they split up to tail their people of interest, Luca was always the one who took the museum, but Kaelix was never an easy man to find. He probably spent hours here in the last week alone. It’d be hard for anyone else to tell though, considering how awestruck he seems by just about everything they pass, but maybe he’s just trying to act super in character. Maybe he really wants to sell the part of an innocent bystander and this is all part of the plan.

Luca goes quiet for a bit. All he does is stare at that ridiculous coffin before moving to the floor and then back in a tortuous cycle. 

“It’s different,” is what he eventually settles on. “With Maririn, and with Kaelix, and… yeah. It’s more fun than when I was just doing recon alone. I think it’ll be fine.”

There’s something weighty to that admission, something serious. That’s the real theme of the day. Nothing about this is going exactly like he expected, even if they’re still making progress.

And if all else fails, he’s well aware that Luca could step up and take on the role of suitor himself. It’s not like the game had any issue with that when he booted it up last week. Somehow though, the thought of Luca’s tangible involvement in either prong of the plan makes Shu’s stomach twist into knots.

It would have been nice if things were easy, if Kaelix was a quick one and done fast track to their good ending, but that seems less and less likely as the day progresses.

It's still quite cold here, climate control blasting them right past autumn and straight into winter, and the air sinks down his throat like it’s made of honey. His lungs are chafing against his chest, and the sound of a distant conversation tumbles in there too, nestled somewhere right beside the chill until it clogs up his head. 

“You’re right,” he murmurs, refusing Luca’s coat when he tugs it off his shoulders. “I guess it is a little different.”

Luca drops it in his hands anyway, spouting off something about it being too hot in here, so, really, it’d be a service to him if Shu could take it off his hands. It’s better if they’re both comfortable, and this way, they can be. 

Shu waits a second before draping it around himself like an overgrown blanket. 

When they eventually regroup with Kaelix and Maria, they don’t even ask them where they’ve been all this time. They just continue acting like they always do, except this time, all four of them chip in to the conversation, marvelling over case after case of gruesome instruments. Definitely not a date, then.

Shu smiles through it, genuinely happy, but something in him still seizes at the subtle confirmation underlying all of it. They’re wasting so much time chasing after leads that are barely useful to the overall investigation.

It just feels like an ill omen. That’s all.

What are they gonna do if there are no viable options left?

-

Upon further reflection, though, maybe their problem was assuming they could extract themselves out of here in the first place. All they really seem to find now are new ways to inadvertently sabotage themselves. It all sounds so easy on paper. Solve a little mystery. Watch someone fall in love. Cheer for their happiness.

It sounds easy, but it’s not.

Case in point, the next step of their plan somehow leads Shu to a corner table in a poorly lit restaurant, squeezed into the nicest shirt that made the jump over with him, which is one he forgot he even owned. He probably bought it to go to a wedding or something, and he wasted five minutes ironing it before realising he didn’t really have to worry about his appearance.

Across from him stands an empty chair, but he trusts it won’t stay that way for long, no matter what the staff seem to think, sending him pitiful looks every time they mill around. Their server has already come by twice to ask him if he’d care for something to drink while he waits! Twice! Two whole times! Does he really look that thirsty? Or pathetic?!

His refusal is probably making it look worse and ten times more suspicious, but what’s he supposed to do? Fall asleep before he gets anything out of this? Anyway, he’s certain that he’s not being stood up right now, so none of it really matters— though he supposes being ‘stood up’ in the first place kinda requires this to be a date, and he certainly hopes it isn’t.

The vaguely orchestral music is just loud enough to muffle his groan, but it does little to soothe his heart. Shu flops onto the table before remembering himself. It better not be a date. It would be so, so laughably counterproductive if this was a date, but if he’s being completely honest for once, if he didn’t have the slightest inkling that it could definitely be seen as one, then he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to dress up in the first place, so the button-up already says a lot about the precariousness of this whole thing.

As he shifts in his seat, aiming for something casually unaffected, Shu makes the mistake of locking eyes with their server, who absolutely saw him make a fool out of himself. Oops. It’s fine. Slightly slouched posture, flat expression, phone resting on the table, a good hand’s length away, still displaying with some puff piece about another break-in— this one solved right away, courtesy of the city’s shining heroes. He can make himself look unbothered if he really tries.

The real sticking point is that he can’t believe that everything could have gone so wrong so fast. This is even worse than what happened with Kaelix, and that’s saying a lot.

All he did was contribute to his half of the equation! And it started with Luca, so really, only half of this is his fault. One night, maybe ten minutes after the curtain came down, he ended up chatting with Maria while she unpinned her hair. They were already down a man, so Luca really laid it on thick, telling her in great detail about all the reasons why he thinks Vanta is really, really great.

And what was Shu supposed to do when he walked in on that? Not back him up? So, of course, he came over too, laughing softly at Luca’s overblown gestures as he told her that they’re pretty sure that Vanta once fought a hundred thousand people and won, all without getting hurt. They surrendered right away because he was just so sexy and cool and strong, and Luca’s right, it’s a good thing he’s using his powers for the arts, instead of gallivanting around like some sort of superhero, which he easily could be if he really tried. It’d be selfish to hide away such brilliance.

It wasn’t the worst idea. Sometimes, all you really need to start falling for someone is a little spark to change how you see them, so if a little embellishment was going to get Maria down that path, then what’s wrong with that? 

It felt so good too. Her eyes seemed to sparkle as her hair finally tumbled downwards, silver pooling around her shoulders. Something about her was just so bright, and Luca gave him a giant thumbs up from his place behind her, and it just seemed like the right thing to do to keep spilling praises for him. Maria smiled as she took it all in, receptive even when he ran out of words and resorted to the most baseless compliments he could think of, most of which he composed while staring at Luca as he silently asked him to take over. 

Now, with the power of hindsight on his side, he can tell that her lilting ‘oh, really?’ probably had a lot more to do with an assumption that he must really like Vanta rather than some grand recontextualization of how much she actually does.

So, here he is. On a date. With Vanta. At Maririn’s behest. 

Probably.

It’s way too hot in here, somehow sweltering despite the dim and dingy lighting, and he’s almost certain he’s grossly sweaty and otherwise entirely unappealing as Vanta finally dashes inside, spouting off apology after apology of how a work friend desperately needed something (improbable, since today’s his rest day), leading to him dropping his phone into a puddle on the way over (far more likely). His shoe’s untied, the lace soaked through with water, and he missed a button on his shirt, but Shu doesn’t mention it. He looks flustered enough already, wardrobe malfunctions aside.

“Sorry,” he says again. Vanta’s smile floods onto his face, a little boyish and a little shy. “Hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

“Not really.” Shu’s fingers glide across the menu, mostly to plausibly occupy himself. Nice shirt. Stilted laughter. Vanta definitely thinks this is a date. “Just long enough to get a few pitying looks.”

“Oh, shit. Really?”

“I think if I stayed here much longer, our server was either gonna kick me out or offer to join me,” he says, mostly joking. From across the table, Vanta’s mouth drops, eyes so wide they might pop out his skull, so Shu rushes to correct himself, saying he was just joking. “Everyone’s been pretty chill about it. And things happen. You’re fine.”

“Are you sure? Because if anyone’s been giving you any trouble…”

Shu bites down his grin. Who would bring him any trouble except himself? He’s the root of all his own problems, it seems. Him and his big mouth.

“It’s fine,” he says, letting the menu clatter onto the table. “You hungry?”

Vanta certainly looks hungry. His breath has only just begun to level out, and he gulps down sip after sip of water like he’s fresh off a marathon. Looks like it hasn’t been much of a rest day after all.

“Are you kidding? I’m fucking starving.”

Shu stares at him for a moment, waiting for the awkwardness to settle in. He was expecting something worse. Flowers, maybe. Funny stories and deep, probing questions now that they’re finally alone and can talk without any interruptions. Vanta seems like the kind of guy who’d really try to charm you, but he doesn’t say anything more, and Shu can feel some of his anxiousness start to seep out of his skin.

“Me too.” And it’s not funny, but this time, he can’t help but laugh as he slips his phone into his pocket, shedding the carefully curated image of nonchalance. “Good thing we’re in a restaurant, then.”

He expects Vanta to take in his lame excuse of a joke and call this whole thing off, but he just tilts his head, lips twitching like he’s testing the heft of his response before it springs out. “Guess so,” he eventually says, letting a laugh bubble out with it, and Shu realises that date or not, he can still make this work.

“So,” he asks, slightly coy. “What does the infamous Vantacrow Bringer like to do on his rare days off?”

-

It’s not a date because Shu doesn’t let it become one. Be direct and to the point. That's the easiest way to deal with unexpected complications.

That’s what he opened with, once they both shook off the rest of their nerves. “I don’t know what you heard,” he had said, elbows propped on the table, “But this isn’t— I’m not really in the right place to be dating anyone right now. So, I’m sorry if you, uh…”

“If I got the wrong idea?”

“Yeah. That.”

And he expected it to be awkward as it all came pouring out, to drown the room with shadow and stuttered apologies, but Vanta just shrugged like he half expected it from the beginning, nice shirt or not. “It’s cool. I kinda figured, but you know how it is. It’s Maririn, and she came to me all excited— and I… you just can’t say no to her. It’s like, well, you know. It’s like kicking a puppy! I can’t do that. But I’m not— I won’t hold it against you or anything. We’re cool.”

Shu nods. It’d be stupid to refuse to take the easy way out, and he’s certainly not in the mood to pick apart all the implications of that admission. “Yeah,” he says. “I get what you mean.”

Without the weight of a romantic entanglement lying on his shoulders, the rest of the conversation flows a lot easier. The stifling heat recedes, and they meander towards simpler, safer topics, less purposefully probing than before. 

Vanta shares the craziest thing he’s done for the sake of his role study, which involved a self-imposed lockout from any and all modern tech—  though he's pretty sure his buddy once took up pole dancing for his, so he realised that he could live without a microwave for a week. At least that won't leave him sore and shy as he keeps having to explain how the hell he managed to pull a muscle on his rest day.

For his part, Shu somehow ends up on a tangent about the first thing that comes to mind. Suddenly, he’s talking about how rats can’t vomit, which is why poison works so well on them— a fact he learned during a rather tricky case a couple years back. He can't really say that though, so he ends up spinning a tale of some fake docuseries that he’s been binging recently to explain it all away.

That’s another reason why this investigation stuff hardly phases him, unexpectedly complicated or not. Learning the ins and outs of poisons and just about every other grisly way to maim or murder someone is kinda a prerequisite of the business. The way he sees it, it’s kinda like reverse engineering. Without a steady base of knowledge, he wouldn’t be able to tackle any curse that’s worth its salt, so there’s a lot of wild facts he’d picked up over the years.

“Isn’t rat poison, like, really sweet too?” Vanta muses, hardly suspicious.

Shu can’t control the laugh that tumbles out of himself, summoned by the image of nothing in particular. Something about the way Vanta enunciates is just really funny. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried it before.”

“Wha— hey! Don’t look at me like that. I’m not asking because I have! I’m just saying. There’s got to be something appealing about it to get them to eat it.”

“You just sounded so confident! That’s all.”

Vanta opens his mouth, ready to parry and refute his bold claim, but before he can, their server comes back, this time with their entrees in hand. He looks much happier than before— as if Shu not getting stood up was a huge victory for him, somehow— and his appearance effectively shuts down any poison-related retorts. 

Shu thanks him as his plate lands in front of him, and he’s immediately greeted by the warm scent of herbs mixed with something vaguely earthy. It smells nice, which is reward enough on its own, but more importantly, the silence gives him a natural chance to steer the conversation in a more favourable direction. 

“So,” he says, picking up his knife. “Do you think the show’s picking up again?” Across the table, Vanta’s already started digging in, chewing thoughtfully as he tries his best to listen.

It's like asking someone what time it is when all he truly needs is for their attention to slip for a second. It's close enough to what he really needs to know.

“Picking back up? From what?”

“Oh, you know, just from the increased buzz now that you found the necklace. I heard it’s still on lockdown though. Just in case.”

Vanta stumbles a bit, wincing as his fork squeaks against his plate. His tone’s a little higher and thinner than before, muddled by confusion. “After I found the…? Oh. Oh. Right. Yeah, I doubt it'll change anything. Granted, I’m not that connected with sales, but I don't think it mattered that much? Poor Doppio though. Man just trips over it when he's going out for a walk.”

Shu hums, deciding against pushing it. “Yeah,” he says. “That is pretty crazy.” After a couple beats, he takes another bite of his food to space out his words. “I’m glad it didn’t change much though.”

Vanta’s hands still, his face frozen in deep contemplation. With people like him, sometimes it’s better to just let them dig their own grave, and talk he does, starting with his issues with the whole concept in the first place.

“I just think it's stupid that anyone could've possibly thought that Maririn was behind it in the first place,” he says, jaw so tight Shu’s surprised it doesn’t crack. “She's the last person who'd ever dream of something like that! And she wanted to use a replica, you know. I mean, maybe you don’t, you weren’t there, but she did, and it wasn't even her choice to wear it! It’s just…” A deep sigh cuts him off. Once he's gotten the bulk of the rant out of him, Vanta deflates, squeezing his hands together. “I guess maybe they don't know that either, but they shouldn’t have doubted her.”

Shu nods. For a moment, he loses himself in the delusion that everything will be easy. By chance, even though he’s debatably not interested in being with Maria, Vanta will be involved in the other end of the equation, and the answer will fall into his lap. In the morning, he’ll wake up in his own bed, swaddled in the memory of triumph because pushing for progress on the rizzmaster front is finally gonna pay off.

Maybe it’s silly to hope there’s some hidden wealth of malice stored beneath his kind facade though. Vanta’s a good actor, but he isn’t that good.

In all likelihood, if his secret plans haven’t revealed themselves yet, then they aren’t there at all, so all he can really hope is that Luca’s having more luck than he is.

“Sorry,” Vanta eventually blurts out, cutting himself off rather decisively, and Shu can feel the opportunity slipping out of his fingers. “You don’t want to hear all that. It’s just so fucking stupid. You know Sonny’s making another set of rounds now? And we already had to move things around, and there’s the added security, and I just… I’m not saying I don’t like that you’re there. I just don’t want anything else to happen. It’s been hard enough already.”

This side of him is precisely why part of him has always been rooting for Vanta, personal loyalties aside. He just cares. He cares in such an unapologetically mundane way.

“Wow. You must really like her.” It sounds lame coming out, and it probably isn’t that comforting, but Shu can’t help it. He can’t say it, but he knows how it feels to be so powerless.

That finally breaks whatever dour mood that’s started to settle on their shoulders. Vanta’s laugh is sharp and bright as it leaps out from his teeth. “You really weren't kidding about not being into this date,” he says, taking a full minute to catch his breath. “Sure. If it makes you feel better, let’s say it’s ‘cause I really like her.”

“But you don’t.”

Vanta shrugs, and it’s probably supposed to be mysterious, but it isn’t. Whenever their eyes meet, his lips quirk into a fresh smile. “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. But I prefer to look from afar.”

No matter what he claims, Vanta’s face already gave it away long ago. His furrowed brow, the way his hands locked up as he spoke. He knows something. He’s probably another Kaelix though— involved but not interested— so in a long-winded way, the night is helpful, even though it isn’t.

The wind cuts through his flimsy shirt when he trudges back to his apartment.

Vanta’s off the table too. Three down and two to go.

-

The beginning of the end happens because of a letter. 

Originally, it was just going to be another strategy meeting, a recap of sorts. Luca was supposed to follow up with Doppio (wrong place, wrong time?) while he closed things out with Vanta, but they found a genuine clue last night, and the detective prong takes precedence over anything else.

His update isn’t that interesting anyway. ‘Gassing him up didn’t work. Maria took it the wrong way.’ End recap.

This letter wasn’t like the other letters. In fact, it was barely much of a letter at all, scribbled on a torn scrap of brown butcher paper. Whoever left it certainly knew what they were doing because that was the only trace they left behind, folded and shoved into the side door.

Luca had some quip ready, some hypothetical he once heard about how you can’t fold a piece of paper in half more than seven times and how he’s pretty sure he could manage it. There was probably more words to follow, but his mouth clamped shut as they stared at the message kept inside. Brown ink. Divots in the paper that matched the scratchy lettering. 

if I really did it, then the artifact never would have turned up. i know what you’re doing. consider this a warning. this is the last time you’ll hear from me.

They obviously couldn’t take it with them, so it’s a blurry photo of the letter that shines up at them. Luca’s brightness is set to super ultra hyper max, which kinda suits him, and it highlights the planes of his face with its unfortunate glow.

“I think it’s a sign,” Luca argues, standing his ground. There wasn’t much to report on the Doppio front either. “Everyone’s acting super sus and now this? We should double down, maybe stake the place out. I’m telling you, Shu! This is it!”

Honestly, after failing to make any progress at all on the mystery front, Shu was just about ready to give up on the detective half of the plan. He still feels that way. It just splits their focus too much, and now, there’s only so many viable love interests left.

What’s he supposed to do if they drag it out too long and Luca’s the only one left? What then?

Shu grimaces. He wouldn’t mind a stakeout, but the consequences never leave the corner of his mind. “That’ll take too long,” he argues, thinking of the last line. It doesn’t sound like they’re ever gonna come back. “I really think we should focus on the rizzmaster side of things instead.”

Luca’s uncharacteristically combative today. His tendency to dig his heels in or jump from topic to topic is usually easy for Shu to pinpoint and follow, but today, it pours out of him like he can’t contain it. HIs whole body shakes from the effort of speaking.

“We can do both!” he half-shouts, but what Luca really means is that they can do both after they finish the stakeout, which is something that will never truly end. 

Usually, Shu likes this side of him, the part that sees a problem and decides they can, in fact, attack the whole thing even though they’re hopelessly outnumbered. It bolsters his spirits and leaves him feeling safe enough to throw out whatever he thinks too, consequences be damned. Usually, he likes it. Right now, though, it just comes across as mulish stubbornness.

“I think we keep discovering that we actually can’t,” Shu replies, voice clipped.

“This is different though!” Luca’s frown deepens. His eyes crinkle, and he grabs his phone, waving it in Shu’s face. The sight of it floods his synapses, but he resists the urge to look away. “Don’t you get it? This is a real clue! And it’s new! We’re unravelling this whole freaking universe!”

“I— This is literally a dating game. It’s about falling in love! Don’t you get it?” Shu pushes his arm away and gets to his feet, his chair clattering as it skitters backwards. His brain is moving faster than his mouth, or maybe it’s the other way around because all these awful things keep spilling out. “I’m not saying no because I think your plan sucks. But it does. Kinda. I don’t know. It does and it doesn’t. The important thing is that we’re running out of time! And… and—”

“And what?”

“I just don’t see what makes this letter any different than the others— which you didn’t care about, by the way! So why should we care now?”

Luca stares at him, glassy and golden, and Shu can feel the force of his gaze sinking into his skin. Then the room itself shakes as he huffs, asking why he’d care about those letters when he already knows who sent them, his words crashing into each other in their haste to get out as if that bombshell of a detail is insignificant. “I thought it’d help if she knew in advance!” he adds, no longer concerned about keeping things secret.

“You wrote them?!” Shu yelps, his heart swelling and constricting so quickly he’s certain it’s going to rupture. “Okay,” he says flatly, voice as even as he can get it. Big inhale. Bigger exhale. “Okay, fine. That’s fine. So, you didn't write this one. I still think it’s a bad idea.”

“I thought it didn’t matter!” Luca’s almost pouting. His hand reaches out to rub wide, placating circles on Shu’s wrist. “I wasn’t gonna do it again, so why would it matter?”

Shu’s heart’s weak to the display, but his mouth soldiers on, equally stubborn. Of course it matters! “You know,” he spits out, heavily considering whether or not he should wrench his arm away. “Vanta warned me about getting close to you. It was just because of the mafia rumours, probably, but you know what? We both know those are true.”

It doesn’t feel as good as he hoped to see Luca recoil in response, taking his hand off as he steps back. There’s something prickly and hot in Shu’s bones as he stands there, steeping in his hurt.

Luca freezes, his lips creating half-formed shapes. There’s a layer of irritation floating on top of each of his words when he finally speaks. “Did he say that on your date?” he asks. “Because I don’t see how going on a date with him helps the love plan either.”

Shu’s blood ices over. It wasn’t a date! He didn’t strike Vanta off the list because he wanted to date him! But the bigger, more rational part of him knows that the moment he tries to double down on that fact is the moment this fight will escalate into something more monumental than it already is. He tries to breathe but only manages sharp, harsh puffs. In. In. Out. In. Out. In.

It all coalesces into a frightening image in Shu’s head. They fight. And everyone fights, so that’s not the problem. Even married couples fight, but this one’s special because they won’t reconcile. They won’t reconcile, and then they won’t solve things, and the curse will never end, and he’ll have to live through it all again, but this time with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to face it on his own if he wasn’t so stubborn.

The adrenaline makes everything worse. Luca says his name, tries to get his attention once more, but it feels like someone shocked him in the spine. It’s like a sucker punch, sinking into his stomach and lungs. 

“—look Shu, I’m sorry. I should have told you.” Then there’s a pause. The pauses bracket the sound of Luca’s voice, warm and close and fleeting, and it’s all sounds instead of words. “Shu?”

They’re so close. They always are, tossing their jumble of notes onto a table that they stare at from two chairs, plastered side to side and close enough that the heat from his body often leaks into Shu’s ribs. Even now, they’re close enough that he could reach down and tilt Luca’s chin up and do something stupid.

Once time starts flowing again, Shu swallows the rock in his throat and manages to take a step back. His fingers itch to do something, but he won’t. He can’t.

“Maybe we should talk about it next time,” he suggests, a little hesitant. He has to cool off before he does something he can’t take back. 

If they were anywhere else, he’d make some lame excuse right about now about having to leave so he can sleep early, one that Luca would honour despite knowing it’s a lie, but it’s a little hard to do that, seeing as they’re currently huddled in a corner of his apartment with their hard word splayed out in front of them.

Luca takes one long look at him, eyes roving up and down to his curled up fingers, to the way his voice softens into foam. Then he nods, getting up without another word. 

Shu feels his body walk to the door. He watches his hand reach out and grab the handle, squeezing it as Luca walks out, as he turns back to tell him that he’ll see him next time.

Next time. 

Luca’s generally too nice and too accommodating, and right now, he needs space, so he lets him leave, ignoring the itch in his legs that tells him to run after him. It’s better if he can accept it now. After all, it’s not Luca’s fault that he’s getting ahead of himself.

The sooner they get out of here, the better.

-

The week passes, and unlike most others, they don’t cheat by meeting up informally in between their official strategy meetings. 

Shu occupies himself by following up on the rizzmaster side of things, just like he promised, and ends up as a third wheel of sorts to Maria and Doppio. He learned from their last venture though, employing a better strategy than hyping up one of them in hopes of sparking something in the other. 

He doesn’t think very hard about it at all, in fact. All he does is make sure they have a fun day. Sometimes good memories are all you need to fall a little in love with someone, though they don’t really need his help with that. If anything, they’re the ones lifting him up, and he tries his best to hold steady, to stick with the plan.

No one knocks on his door or texts him links to just about anything under the sun that they thought he’d like to see. 

It’s the slowest week he's lived through since he woke up here.

-

It’s funny how much this world is, yet isn't, like his own. When the weather gets colder, his breath still fogs up, white-silver-purple tufts amidst a rainbow of lights, and he still isn’t quite used to it.

Sometimes he shoots up out of bed at night, startled by the silence. Sometimes he spends more time staring at the familiar planes of his room instead of sleeping. How is Petra doing? Maybe they’re wrong about the strange time conversion. Maybe she’ll find a way to break the curse before they do, but it's impossible to tell. The stars don’t do anything except shiver in silence, unable to give him any clear signs. 

He’s decided to stop being so stubborn. And Luca agreed to it without a moment’s consideration, their squabble long forgotten.

The trees rake cloud-shaped divots into the sky, matching them. Shu tries his best not to look, but he still finds himself watching breath after breath slip out of Luca’s lips until the wind carries them into the ether.

He supposes calling it a week is a technicality. Later today, they’ll have their strategy meeting, but their interests conveniently intersected, so it wasn’t cheating if they popped over to check in with (read: interrogate) Sonny together, even if they didn't get much out of it. It helps both plans.

That's why he doesn't understand, even if he entertains, Luca’s suspicions. It just doesn't make any sense. 

“But why do you think it’s him?”

Luca shrugs, letting out a waffling, noncommittal noise. When the wind picks up, he lets Shu stand slightly behind him, partially shielded from it. “It’s just a feeling I get. There’s definitely something up with him.”

“There’s something up with all of them.”

“He’s definitely acting the weirdest though. It could be like… I dunno. Maybe he wants to keep the case going as an excuse to keep Maririn near him.”

Would he really go that far though? It just seems like a lot of effort to manufacture something like that. And besides, he didn't even look jealous when they emphasised their connection to her, presenting it as an easy excuse as to why they're always asking for updates. All he ever wants to talk about is the case, the letters, both the ones Luca wrote and the other one, the ones that got him tangled up in this mess, alerted as a precaution when it seemed like someone genuinely had it out for her.

It’s a little meta game-y to rule him out based on that, but it just makes sense. If the theft still happened during Luca’s playthrough, then Sonny’s early involvement shouldn't have changed anything. It’d be weirder if there was some secret obsession with her fuelling it all.

Luca’s stakeout, predictably, has yet to yield any results, so there wasn't much to share with him anyway. Even Luca seems a bit pessimistic about it by now, so the job’s fallen onto a rotating group of underlings, tasked to keep watch from a nearby rooftop.

Again, it doesn't feel good to be proven right. A week of nothing means little when they've got time to spare and so much more when they don't. That’s why he can't let his personal feelings get in the way of their escape, not when they’re running out of time.

“Hey, Luca?” Shu stops in place, waiting for Luca to turn and face him so they can clear the air. “I’m sorry about earlier.” His fingers squeeze the life out of the lining of his pockets. “Last week, um. I got a little too worked up. That doesn't change the fact that I want us to make it, no matter what. So, I'm sorry. For taking it out on you.”

Luca’s breath dissipates, revealing his gentle, sloping smile, and Shu resists the urge to tiptoe a little closer, to get so close that the sight sears into his skin. His gaze snags on the curve of his lips, jumping back there two or three times until he manages to focus on a more neutral spot on Luca’s forehead.

“It’s fine,” he murmurs. “I messed up too.” The smile deepens, flooding into his eyes. “And we’re cool now, right Zaddy?”

Shu takes a step back. A biker cuts through the air, whizzing past his shoulder, and Shu pretends to be blown backwards by it just to make it funny.

“Yeah. We’re cool.”

In general, today has been frighteningly normal, regrets aside. It’s familiar in a way that he doesn't want to contend with. They met in the morning and had a meal that started with a smidge of awkwardness and ended with Luca regaling him with another new story, one that had him laughing so hard that his back started hurting. He had to grab onto Luca’s arm for support, and for a moment, he forgot what the problem was in the first place.

It’s funny though. Sometimes he forgets that Luca is, ostensibly, a somewhat shady sort of guy. He has underlings, for god’s sake! Underlings! And they're out there right now, watching the side door to the theatre like it's the most important thing in the world. It's just easy to forget that sort of thing when he runs around calling everybody ‘Zaddy’ with this giant grin on his face.

Sometimes, he forgets that they’re not invincible.

Maybe that's why he doesn't expect it to matter. He's grown too complacent, too used to the world just accepting whatever he wants from it. 

It doesn't happen like the game or like any moment that he remembers seeing, but it's close enough. One moment, they're walking, now strictly side by side so they can knock into each other’s side whenever either of them says something worth getting dramatic about and the next, there's a rustle of leaves and the glint of steel cutting his breath short. A knife. A litany of threats. A hard shove in the side.

Someone’s shouting, but none of the words have any sort of meaning. All that really sinks in is that parallel moment— him in his bedroom, shrimped in his chair as the gameworld painted his hands an inky sort of midnight. Back then, Luca’s voice dipped low and soft as he turned to Maria and asked her not to look as someone cornered them, and then the screen went dark.

This time, Luca grits his teeth as he stares down the dude that's ranting about how he finally tracked down the boss of the group that fucking ruined his life. This time, his hand’s a steady weight on Shu’s wrist as he says: “I’ve got this,” and though he trusts him, the horrifying image of Luca’s bloodstained shirt won’t dislodge itself from his throat. He can almost hear the words he’d say, the laughter flaking out between coughs as he insists that he’s too cool to let a little cut like this do any lasting damage.

Thankfully, none of that happens.

The stranger clasps the knife with a shaky grip, and Shu watches with bated breath as Luca tries to grapple that arm, ducking under their sweeping strikes as he pulls out a blade of his own. He leads them away from Shu, motioning that he should run if things get real dicey, but his feet won’t cooperate, so all he can do is watch as Luca weighs his options, opting to use his bag as a sling as he lobs it at their assailant.

The knife falls to the ground and scrapes across the pavement as Luca kicks it away, and he finds himself grabbing onto Luca’s hand as they run out of there. Luca momentarily pulls him back as he thinks, opting to double back for both knives before they sprint out of there.

It’s different from how it happened in the game, assuming this is even the same guy. Even if it was him, it's hard to tell what’ll happen next. In Vanta’s route, once he heard about it, he started training with Maria so she’d be prepared in case it happened again. It wasn't so clear what happened with Luca afterwards, but he came back to work all smiles, so it must have been fine… right?

“Shu?” Luca scans the streets as they run and they run. “Are you—”

It's hard to make out exactly what he's saying, but Shu nods nonetheless, squeezing their conjoined hands as they turn the corner and slip into the crowd. The city dissolves into bright wooden walls and the puff of soft jazz as they duck into another half-filled café.

It's a strange mirror to the day they first met. Their hands don't separate until he tries to pull out his wallet and finds that they're still attached. The cashier shakes their head at the sight, hopefully amused.

“Are you okay?”

Luca laughs, miraculously unaffected by it all. He lets Shu grab his arms and run his fingers down the length of them, searching for any sign of anything. “Are you gonna heal me if I’m not?”

The ache in his ribs lessens as he finally pulls away, slumping against the wall. No gaping cuts. The only evidence of the scuffle is a cosmetic tear in Luca’s bag, and even that is hardly visible.

“Who was that? No, actually— I don’t want to know. Is that a common thing for you? Random dudes just, like, threatening you?”

“Not really.”

Shu blinks. It's hard to tell if he's bluffing or not since he sure sounded confident when he insisted that they hide out somewhere public, but he lets it go. It’s fine. He can be mysterious if he wants to.

After a few minutes of sitting and melting into his creaky metal chair, he feels almost normal. He can almost forget the way Luca looked at him, the way he let him see his less polished side as he fought that guy, the way his hand hesitated before unholstering a weapon of its own.

It was different from how it was back then, but maybe, if she was on his route, then he would have let Maririn watch too. It’s reminder enough of what will happen if they run out of options. It’ll be her doing that, if it comes down to it, and he’ll just have to accept it.

So maybe his feelings shouldn't get in the way of their mission, but that doesn't mean he has to feel good about it.

Who wouldn't fall a little in love with Luca, given the chance?

-

Despite the day’s drama, they still manage to have their strategy meeting, and somehow, though he shouldn't really be surprised at this point, he’s grateful that they've managed to land on the same page.

Luca’s jaw sharpens as he insists they should double down on the rizzmaster plan. He hardly waits a minute before saying it, his hand still on the bolt to the door as he says that the best path forward— and the only good option, if you ask Shu— is to hedge their bets on Pio-chan.

“I’m pretty sure they already like each other,” he adds, heading back over to sit in his chair. “All we have to do is give them a little push.”

The only issue is that none of their little pushes have been remotely successful. They either backfire or get misinterpreted or reveal some hidden detail that neither of them anticipated, but that won't happen this time! This time, they’ll get them in the perfect position to go on a date. No third and fourth wheel. No mistaken setups.

It takes at least an hour to decide how it’ll go down— so long, in fact, that it doesn't feel right to kick Luca out, so he refuses to let him trudge through the cold when he’s got a perfectly large and serviceable bed right here. They’ll just spend the night planning. First, it's the method, but once that is settled, they have to hash out how they're going to bring it up and why it’d make sense for them to get involved in the first place.

Jealousy related plans are out. There's too much room for misunderstanding if they try to cozy up to either of them.

“Maybe we can just say that we made a reservation somewhere,” Luca suggests. “And wow, you know, we really wanted to go, but something came up, so someone should still get to enjoy it.”

It’s a good start.

“I don't know if they're really the restaurant type,” Shu argues, because Mari’s vigilance about Doppio’s many, many allergies is obviously the real problem here. Not the fact that going with that means everything will think that they often make dinner reservations together. Not the fact that he secretly takes pleasure in the idea.

“Yeah, but then how else do we get them together?”

“Tickets to another show? Same idea but no food’s involved. Could work.” 

Luca lets out a soft laugh, but it's a little strained, a little different from the casual, jokey sort of laugh he's used to. Sometimes he squeezes the handle of his knife, still a little on edge.

“I guess,” he says, sounding a little unconvinced. Then he looks straight at Shu, eyes shining. “Do you think that’s a good first date?”

“Why not?” They could chat a little during the intermission, forced to get close enough to be heard over the shuffle of a hundred other patrons. If it were him, then… yeah. He’d probably enjoy it. But this is not about him, so he tries to be neutral. “Everything’s fun when you're with good company.”

Planning the date’s all they can really do anyway. Hopefully, the curse will break the moment they confront their long-cultured feelings and go ‘all this time, I’m pretty sure I’ve been half in love with you.’

Luca shrugs, grabbing a pen to scribble his own thoughts beneath Shu’s. 

He’s most at peace during moments like this, him and Luca surrounded by the smell of home, but it's impossible to deny that it’s all coming to a head. The necklace? Lost and found without them. Even if Luca’s right about Sonny, there's nothing they can do about it now. They’ll have to save it for the next loop, assuming they even remember what went wrong.

It’s a little exhausting, but having a clear plan of attack helps. 

Luca is bright and unmistakably dangerous, beneath that smiley veneer. He never stops working, and he’s overconfident about his ability to matchmake. He laughs at random, often pulling Shu into it too, and sometimes he speaks so quickly and enthusiastically that even he can't manage to parse it, though he always tries his best to.

It’s a little selfish, but as they debate the night away, flopping into bed once they’ve finally agreed on something resembling a plan, he thinks that it hasn’t been so bad, getting cursed.

Now, all that’s left is to break it.

-

In the morning, he finally manages to extract himself from the sheets, still more dream than human as he stumbles towards his closet.

They’ve got to look the part, so he blindly pokes around for a cardigan or something equally soft to drape himself in. Luca’s in the bathroom, winking at himself in the mirror as he plays with his hair.

It's probably the most he’s fussed with his appearance in the last month, but he settles on something that's convincingly date-like after what feels like far too long to leave Luca waiting.

The plan’s just about as perfect as it can probably get, knowing them. They even had enough time to get a late breakfast, and his brown paper-plastic-whatever bag makes a pleasant crinkling sound as they sprint towards the theatre.

“Let’s do this!” Luca shouts, sounding more confident than he feels.

It’s fine. What could possibly go wrong?

The tickets burn a hole in his pocket as Shu charges through the door and down the twisting hallways, but the sounds of Luca’s footsteps peter out as he suddenly stops, staring blankly towards one of the prop racks.

He turns, but he doesn't move, and there’s a look of pure horror crystallising on his face as he stays there, silent. His mouth drops open. His unfairly attractive eyebrows furrow together as his hand shoots out, pointing somewhere near the edge of the room.

“Why’d you stop?” Shu whispers, still trying to get a good view.

There are plenty of other questions forming on his lips, chief among them a request that he move a little to the left to give him some space, but his throat goes dry as he finally catches sight of it. 

In the corner, there’s a pair of people half-covered by shadows. One of them bends down an almost comical amount as their noses brush against each other, and he can clock the exact second Doppio notices them. He presses one more kiss on her cheek before straightening up, spine stiff and cheeks bright red as he essentially hides her from view.

So much for a perfect plan.

-

Their job is done, it seems. Good end fully and completely secured. Luca keeps saying it’s like this one meme. Their job is done and yet they didn't do anything.

That's not the weird part. It’s good that Maria didn't need any extra intervention to find her happiness, but that leaves him at a bit of an impasse. Every morning, Shu wakes up, squinting at the force of sunlight that manages to flood through his wrong windows that sit in the wrong corner of the wrong sky, and he either waits for the curse to end or for the curse to send them back to before any of this ever happened, forced to keep trying until they get it right.

He doesn’t really want to entertain any other solutions, but it’s been a whole week. 

Nothing’s changed.

-

Nine whole days of limbo pass, not that he’s counting. Maybe Luca’s right, and it’s actually a sign that they’re too good at their jobs, considering how little they actually needed to do.

“So what should we do next time?” Shu asks one night, mustering up the courage to bring up the elephant in the room. With nothing else to keep them occupied, they've just been living normally— going to work, keeping half an ear open for any news, and meeting up semi-regularly to indulge in the strangeness that only they can understand.

“Stakeout?”

Shu resists the urge to swat at his arm. “You always want to do a stakeout.”

Luca stares at him like the reason’s obvious. “Why not? Doesn't it make you feel like a real detective?”

“Anything other than a stakeout on your mind?” he asks, shaking his head. “If you're still betting on your Sonny theory, maybe we should get someone else to come help us.”

“Like who?”

“MECHATU-A?”

Luca shrugs from his spot on the couch. His feet hover occasionally, propped up on an invisible cushion of air until they eventually crash back down. “If we can't do it, then I doubt a bunch of superheroes can.”

He’s pretty sure Luca still subscribes to the notion that they’re the only ones who can fix anything, considering they’re the ones that are actually cursed. Something, something, the introduction of a new variable into a closed system fundamentally alters the state of it. The logic makes sense, but it’s hard to see how close they ever got to changing anything at all.

Of course, there is still one option they haven’t tried yet.

“You’re not gonna…” Shu pauses, scrubbing his face with his hands. How can he even bring it up without sounding rude? “You and Maririn? What if we have to do that?”

It’s not like he wants to watch that happen, but it could be the answer. They’ve had plenty of time, so surely they’ve confessed to each other already, and yet here they are, still cursed.

“And become a homewrecker?”

“Maybe next time, then. Before anything happens between them.” Shu tries his best to think back to the timeline of this whole mess, staring into the middle distance. He’s not ready to think of the semantics of it yet. “It’s not like we can stay here forever,” he adds, partially for himself.

Of course, he can’t resist temptation for long, so his gaze flicks up after a second, grazing Luca’s face. His mouth is quirked while his head’s angled to stare at whatever spot in the room that Shu was just looking at— a clock on the wall, now running a few minutes slow. Sometimes Luca offers to fix it, but he’s gotten used to the lag by now.

“It hasn’t been that bad,” Luca says. His voice is so gentle that it melts into his skin.

“I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

“Sure. But it’s been kinda fun too.”

The room falls silent for a minute, but it’s a comfortable kind of silence. Luca fiddles with his… whatever he’s doing— it was scrolling on his phone with one of his thumbs, last time Shu snuck a peek— while Shu futzes around the kitchen, drinking a sip of water, waiting a bit, and then pouring some more just so he can do it all over again. It’s not like he’s got anything better to do right now.

“It’ll be fun next time too,” Shu argues. He’s given up on drinking. Water tastes like nothing anyway. As he approaches, Luca shuffles over, making room for him like it’s second nature, and his head lands in Luca’s lap.

“Yeah, I guess so.” His words are positive, but it doesn’t sound like he believes it. “I just— I’m not sure if I can do the whole Maririn thing. Like. It’s different, you know, wooing someone versus helping other people do it.”

For a second, Shu sits, lost for words. Luca is so unequivocally charming that it’s a little hard to imagine how it could ever go wrong. He’s an all-rounder and an ace, and he’s never failed at anything he’s actually tried to do. Hell, he’s certain if he finally meets Petra one day, he’ll be able to con her into believing just about anything. 

“—and it’s not her fault,” Luca says, voice slightly strained. “I mean, she’s great! Anyone would be lucky to love her. I’m just, I’m not sure if I want to.”

It’s almost pathetic how relieving it is to hear that he doesn’t want to do it either. It’s just funny that this is the line that he’ll draw. This is his limit. He’s perfectly happy to dispatch the mafia and fight off strangers with actual, genuine knives, but he draws the line at filling a role that was literally curse-written for him. It’s funny, and it does bad things to his heart.

Still, it’s an easy problem with an easy solution.

“If you don’t want to, then we don’t have to do it.”

Luca nods solemnly, barely cracking a smile as Shu cranes his neck backwards to get a good look at him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever want to,” he says, obviously a little tormented by the whole thing. “So that’s why, I mean if that’s the only way out of here, I just… I’m sorry.”

Shu pauses, taking it all in.

It’s not like it's his fault they’re stuck here. Evidently, there’s a lot they don’t understand about the curse, seeing as it hasn’t been broken yet. In fact, he’s ready to exhaust just about every possible way to reassure him, but the minute Luca opens his mouth, his throat dries up.

“Zaddy. No, wait— Shu. I know this isn’t what you signed up for, but the thing is, I wouldn’t be able to act like that with her because I won’t be able to stop myself from wishing it was you.” Luca frowns. His breath is so deep that it makes Shu jostle around along with it, still glued to his lap. “I think I’ve been pretending like we’re doing things that we’re not, and that’s not your fault. I just wanted to see it that way, so maybe…” Another breath, this one almost audibly rattley. “Maybe I just got carried away. And I’m sorry if learning that makes things awkward between us. I just wanted to say it. I just wanted you to know.”

“Zaddy…” Shu falters, still searching for his words. It feels like everything is so bright it’s blinding. Everything he wants to say is too big to fit into his mouth, so he has to resort to using their shared language to pad it out, swallowing around the consonants with huge, gulping motions.

“Zaddy.”

“Let’s go on a date next time,” he whispers. At first it’s a whisper, but it slowly gets stronger word after word. “Because I, um. Sometimes when I get lonely and miss the real world, I put my hands on my shoulder and imagine that you’re here with me. I do that, and I stack things on my head, and I rewatch the videos you send me. And do you remember that date with Vanta?”

“Yeah, I thought I was gonna die when I found out.”

Shu sucks in a laugh at the memory of it. “It barely took five minutes before he asked about you. And I didn’t know what to say because well, obviously, I knew how I felt. But I had to keep reminding myself like ‘you can’t do that.’ Or that I could feel it, but I shouldn’t want it as much as I do.” As he speaks, he reaches out, his hands wrapping around Luca’s. “So I don’t actually want you to fall for Maria. I just said that because I didn’t want to hold you back anymore.”

Luca’s grip is warm. His thumb presses one of his knuckles as he tries to pull him up towards him, and the world starts to slowly stitch itself back together, gluing his constituent pieces right beside Luca’s, right where they belong.

At that, the last trace of uncertainty slips out his body, and Shu crumples into him. Outside, the stars seem to laugh at him, twinkling as if they knew all along that he was working himself up over nothing.

-

In the morning, Shu’s in his bed, blanket wrinkled and so far to one side that it’s in danger of falling onto the floor. 

There are two things that he realises as he crawls out of bed. The first: that he’s alone, which means that Luca must have carried him here once he passed out last night. The second: that it isn’t morning after all, despite the sudden stream of light assaulting his poor, defenseless eyes.

That gets him out of bed faster than anything else. He got strangely used to getting up with the sun by now, but the clock doesn’t lie. 

It can only mean one thing.

Shu briefly considers changing into more presentable clothes, but his pajamas will just have to do. All he has time for is his phone and a hoodie, which he pulls over his head as he dashes outside.

“Shu? Where are you—” As if he needed any more confirmation, Petra pokes her head out her room, which is exactly where it rightfully belongs. Her eyes hone in on the faded pink game box, clutched tightly in his hand. “Wait! I didn’t even tell you about that one yet!”

He doesn’t even know where to look, but he knows he’s got to find him. If he really made it out, then that means the curse ended, which means—

There’s a knock at the door. A mess of blonde hair and laughter greets him as he throws it open, and his heart skips in his chest. He looks just like he did in the game, just a little lighter, a little less burdened by their unfortunate circumstances.

“I looked up every cursebreaker in the city,” he says, grinning as Shu leaps into his arms. “I guess when it said omega realistic love game, it really meant it.”

“See? I told you they didn’t need to kiss!” he shouts, so giddy that he doesn’t care if Petra overhears. He must have been right about that bit, even if he was wrong about everything else. All they really needed to do was confess and be happy.

“Does that mean you aren’t gonna kiss me?” Luca asks, eyes crinkled and fond as he shakes them around.

Shu grins, head already tilting as he leans in to meet him. 

“I never said that.”

-

Boards >> PC >> has anyone else gotten stuck in this game? [Page 4 of 4]

bananya502 » 5 days ago 

i won c: got the good ending with my persistent love interest !!

the only issue is that he refuses to break up with me for 5 min so we can experience the bad end but it’s fine. i can live with it

67ateNINE » 5 days ago 

What a weird shitpost… After you kept saying you WEREN”T trying to talk to him? And then what. He comes to life? And you’re together? How is that winning?? Or related AT ALL to games?!!!

wowiwa » 5 days ago 

pretty sure there’s no way to lose in this situation 🤪 oh no waiter, my lobster is too buttery and my steak is too juicy

I only see one loser here and it’s you

(you just lost the game)

bananya502 » 5 days ago 

LMAO

Boards >> PC >> has anyone else gotten stuck in this game?

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