[Author's Note: Hey, guess who's back for their yearly update? If the stars align there might even be another one before the year is up.]
"There you go, 60 col," I said.
"Thank you, young lady," the NPC farmer gave me a warm smile, swiping closed his own menu screen as the transaction finished
"I'll have Lisa bring the two of you some dinner once it's finished," he said as we parted ways.
"Much obliged, sir"
So, Kayaba was capable of being polite like a normal person, then. When he'd stopped our host on the side of the road and asked him about an inn, the old man had just laughed at us like we were crazy and said ", Maybe if you want to walk thirty miles to Tolbana, son". Kayaba had made a sour expression upon being called "son", but managed to stay courteous then, too. The old man had offered to put us up, meals included, quickly enough and now here we were.
"It's hard to get over the dissonance of e-transferring money with people who are otherwise stuck in the early-modern period," I said, shaking my head as we strolled towards the barn where we'd just secured lodgings for the night.
"You didn't have a problem with it while it was still a game"
"It was easier to suspend my disbelief then"
The inside of the barn smelled strongly horse adjacent, probably because two of them stood in stalls against the left wall. I wrinkled my nose, faintly pleased to see that Kayaba also had a rather unpleasant expression on his face.
"Rustic, isn't it?" My voice was laced with sarcasm.
"There's a reason you don't have to go to the bathroom in most RPGs. Immersive realism and annoying realism is a fine line"
Mercifully, it was mostly masked by the scent of freshly cut straw as we climbed into the hay loft. Golden straw was piled high and illuminated by the last of the evening light streaming in through cracks in the boards. Kayaba had had the good sense to dequip his armor a while ago and I followed suit. It was a – literal – weight off my back. We both took a moment to just collapse into the straw piles. I was physically tired in a way that went down to my bones and mentally tired in a way that went down to my mental bones and I said as much to Kayaba.
"Your mental bones?" He asked in a way that was too innocuous.
"It effectively communicates my point, doesn't it?" I said. It was something I believed then and still believe now, which is why I've included it here. For posterity. And maybe a little pettiness.
He scoffed but didn't say anything else. Some rest was in order after the wild ride that had been today. On that point, we seemed to be in agreement, laying on the hay in mutual silence until we heard the sound of footsteps. I sat up far enough to see into the ground floor. There was a young woman – Lisa presumably? – holding three wooden bowls of steaming hot stew. For some reason, I had been expecting an old, stout farm person – Joseph's wife I guess, but Lisa was basically the opposite of all those things. Her face broke into a grin on catching sight of us.
"I thought the three of us could take supper in the barn if that's alright"
I hadn't felt hungry before, but now that food was in front of me I was distinctly aware of the hole in my stomach and didn't waste any time in clambering down the ladder, Kayaba right behind me. Lisa set the bowls down on one of several wooden stumps in a corner of the barn and pulled spoons out of a pocket in her apron.
"I'm Lisa, Joseph's adoptive daughter," she said, handing us each a wooden spoon.
"Maxwell is fine, and this is Kayaba," I gestured beside me. Kayaba gave a perfunctory greeting.
"He and his wife, Esther, have left the two of you in my care for as long as you're here" She sat down on one of the stumps and took a bowl, beginning to eat. I looked at Kayaba, who gestured as though to say "you first". I narrowed my eyes at him. What did it matter who went first? He shrugged.
"You guys can eat now…"
We both turned to look at Lisa, who had unsurprisingly been watching our entire exchange. She had been halfway to bringing the spoon to her mouth and stayed frozen in that position under our gazes. There was a moment of awkward silence before we both sprung into action, grabbing a bowl and sitting down across from Lisa. This had definitely been Kayaba's fault.
"So…what brings you two to Medai?"
"We have some, uh… business in the woods here, and then we'll be on our way to Tolbana," Kayaba said.
Business in the woods? Way to make us sound sketchy as hell. I wasn't sure what I would have said, though. We're here to intentionally kill a bunch of monsters because it will make us quantitatively stronger? Somehow, I got the impression that NPC's didn't really do that kind of thing.
"I figured you wouldn't be staying that long," Lisa sighed, apparently unbothered by Kayaba's claim of vague activities in the local woods "You adventurers always lead interesting lives. I bet there's some stories you could tell"
I looked at Kayaba and Kayaba looked at me. We in fact had no interesting stories to tell. At least, none that would be believable to her.
"Not really," I laughed in a way that I hoped wasn't nervous, scratching at the back of my head "Our lives are pretty boring too"
"Oh come on, I feel like I just saw a hundred of them pass between you," she said, apparently having misinterpreted our moment of eye contact.
"This soup is really amazing," Kayaba said.
Yes, that really was how he tried to change the subject. Smooth talkers we were (and are) not.
"Well…there was that one time I was part of the city guard," I began, adapting a story from my military service to be early modern period friendly "And some people thought there was a ghost haunting us. They would even sprinkle a tiny bit of salt they stole from meals across the entrance to their quarters. But then it turns out that it was just a cat" I finished lamely.
Smooth talkers we were not.
"Huh," Lisa tried her best to sound engaged.
I put more food in my mouth - it really was delicious and filling. Some kind of hearty meat stew with potatoes and other vegetables – and Kayaba picked up the slack in the conversation.
"So, have you lived in Medai your entire life?"
At least we were back in safe territory now.
"That's right" Lisa said "My parents died when I was very young, but Joseph and Esther were my aunt and uncle, and they took me in and raised me because they didn't have any kids of their own. We've lived here our entire lives. Most of the people in these kinds of towns have. It's a simple life, peaceful mostly, but uneventful" She sighed "Maybe one day I'll run off to Tolbana or the City of Beginnings, though. Find some work and send the money back to Joseph and Esther so they can hire a farmhand and finally get some proper medicine for her joint ache"
"We did say we were heading to Tolbana, and the roads can be dangerous. We could escort you if you like," I offered. I tried to think of a subtle way to ask Kayaba if she had been a quest giver in the original game.
She shook her head ", I'm very grateful for the offer, but you shouldn't entertain my silly fantasies. Joseph needs my help in the coming harvest" she sighed, putting her empty bowl down on the vacant stump.
"If we're ever passing through Medai again, we'll try to remember to bring some medicine for your Grandmother," I said, still trying to fish for a quest hook.
"Wow. That's…uh incredibly kind of you, but I can hardly accept it when we've nothing to give you in return," Lisa said, her eyes widening in surprise.
"It's basic courtesy on our part Miss," I said, looking to Kayaba. The question was evident in my eyes, but he could only shrug.
"What's waiting for you in Tolbana anyways? Joseph said you came from the direction of the City of Beginnings"
"We were hoping to find the entrance to the labyrinth. The one that extends into the sky," I said, stacking my now empty bowl on top of the other two.
Lisa's eyes seemed to become even closer to their resemblance to saucers, if that were possible ", Wow, is that what's on the inside? I've heard stories before that if you climbed all the way to the top you would find yourself in heaven, always thinking they were pretty unbelievable, but maybe not…"
I considered telling Lisa that Kayaba and I actually believed that we were in a floating castle with a hundred floors, and that reaching the top would take us to next one, but that sounded incredulous even to me when I put it so plainly.
"You never know," I laughed, standing up. Kayaba followed suit and it signalled the end to dinner. Lisa gathered all the dished back onto her tray, we exchanged the necessary pleasantries and she was on her way.
Kayaba and I made our way back up into the hay loft. I felt too warm after all the hot stew and climbed up the side of the barn to one of the shuttered windows, flinging it open. A cool breeze played across my face and I sighed in satisfaction. If I stuck my head out, I could see fairly far in all directions. Across our host Joseph's plots, to the uncleared forest one way, and the smudge of another farmhouse the other, all of it bathed in dim blue hour light. Outside of my military service, I had lived in urban areas my entire life and was a little bit awestruck by the simple beauty of it all.
"Hey, move over," Kayaba nudged my foot and I shuffled over so that he could climb up as well. He also let out a small sigh of satisfaction when the breeze hit him, and I smiled a little.
"It's not so bad, is it? The whole trapped in an uncanny recreation of a videogame world, separated from friends and family thing notwithstanding," I said, elbowing him lightly.
Kayaba seemed to think about it for a moment, gaze going to a point beyond the forest, the fields and the deep blue sky that couldn't possibly have been real if this were just the first floor of a hundred "It's not so bad," he echoed, although his tone said there was a qualifier, even if nothing was said aloud. I decided that I was too tired to be prying for now and hopped down, landing with a soft fwump in the hay.
"You know, they're real people now," I said, looking up at Kayaba
He made a noise of assent, understanding that I meant the NPCs ", As real as you or me"
"It makes you wonder, if they all just materialized into existence the moment we were all transported here. Lived experience and everything"
Kayaba clambered down from the window ", I don't know where they would have existed before then. The NPCs all act as though we've been a part of this world the entire time"
"So, either they didn't exist until now, or the players had some kind of stand in for them as a group until this point," I stared up at the ceiling, weighing the two options in my head, wondering which was more likely.
"Something to investigate in the future?" Kayaba asked from where he lay in his own pile of hay "For now, I just want to sleep"
"Something to investigate in the future." I pulled a cloak from my inventory, wrapping it around me as protection from the prickly bits of hay and settling into a comfortable sleeping position.