Hiro opened his eyes and found himself standing in a dimly lit room, dark grey walls and white carpet illuminated only by the light of a computer sitting on a desk.

Apart from the machine, the room was entirely empty.

"Well," said Zero Two, suddenly standing beside him, "this is strange."

He jumped at the unexpected remark.

"Yeah…I guess this is a dream."

The two walked over to the computer.

"I think someone's writing something on here," said Hiro.

"Yeah," agreed Zero Two, "can you tell what it is?"

"Let's see," answered Hiro, scrolling up the document, "Chapter Two: 'The Old-World Computer.'"

"Hmm. Strange."

"Looks like it's a sequel to another story, 'A Long Awaited (Re)Union.'"

"What a cheesy title."

"Seems to reflect their writing style."

Zero Two attempted to read the name of the author, "Or-row-more-is, Oromoris. What a stupid name."

"I think it's just an alias."

"Couldn't they have picked a better one?"

"Apparently not."

Hiro inspected the document more.

"What's this thing at the top here?"

"It says 'aiming for the same length as the last chapter.'"

The pair looked at each other with quizzical expressions.

"Well, then," continued Zero Two, "how long was the last chapter?"

Hiro navigated the files on the computer until he found the first chapter of the story.

"Holy crap!" He exclaimed, "this chapter's over a hundred pages long!"

"W-wait, how many words is that?"

"It says here just over forty-three thousand."

"How many does the second chapter have right now?"

"Twenty-four thousand five hundred fifteen."

"Oh, so they still have a while."

"Seems so."

Zero Two cupped her chin as she spoke, "I don't know. The way the story seems to be progressing, they might come up a little short."

"Well, they should at least aim for around thirty-five thousand."

"Oh, and they might have to add some scenes here, here, and here, to smooth out the narrative" said Zero Two, while pointing at different parts of the document.

"And that isn't even including all of the editing and proofreading. Plus, they seem to be the type to try and find the best way of phrasing something, so there'll probably be extensive rewriting to do at certain parts."

"Well, they seemed to have missed some of that in this last chapter."

"Seriously."

The two slowly read through the incomplete story.

"Slice of life, slice of life," muttered Hiro, "slice of- oh wow, that got dark very quickly."

"The transition from dark scenes to fluffy romance or slice of life needs to be a little gentler."

"And what's with that M-rating?"

"It seems like the author wants to include gore and violence, but shies away from writing about sex. It looks like they're trying to do a wholesome read, but the story is a little dark."

"I think they only know how to write scenes that are either too sweet, or violent and dark despite their wanting to write slice of life. Looks like they're trying something new compared to last chapter."

"And they take so long just describing snow in this last chapter, maybe that's why the word count is so high."

"Well, it's their first time writing something like this, so they must still be working out their writing style."

Hiro continued to navigate the files and look at the chapter in front of him.

"Hey," he said with earnest, "why do they have an outline for a third chapter when they haven't even finished the second?"

Zero Two looked equally confused, "I don't know, that is pretty strange, I guess."

"Well, by the rate their going, it looks like they'll be done with this second chapter within about thirty days."

"I don't think they should be making any promises though."

Hiro's eyes lit up as he saw something.

"Hey, look! They posted this first chapter already!"

"Ooh, they got positive feedback, look at the reviews!"

Hiro muttered the names of the reviewers as he read through, "uhhnova…sasha…guest…ElyUnknown…"

"These are incredibly touching; I'm sure the author was moved."

"I wonder if they'll be mad that the author was writing this stupid announcement instead of working on the chapter. I can imagine that being notified would be pretty annoying when it's something stupid like this. I'm sure the meta humor also destroys the atmosphere they've created, that the reviewers seemed to like. I guess this only exists to tell the readers to hang in there, the next chapter will be out soon. I'm sure they're going for quality over speed, though."

Zero Two looked at him in shock, "d-darling? What do you mean 'writing this?'"

Hiro began to sweat, "I…I don't know…I just felt compelled to say it, like I was just a character written on a page."

"What?"

"What?"

"…What?" They both inquired in unison.

Hiro awoke on their couch with a start, scaring Zero Two who sat beside him.

"Darling," she said, "are you ok?"

Hiro looked around and let out a sigh of relief.

"Yeah, I just had a dream that gave me some sort of existential crisis."

"…what?"