Aech asks me all the time when I'm going to make things official with Arty. And every time he brings it up, I could happily knock him senseless with a ten-foot lance.
Hey, it's something I've had plenty of practice at. He and I still like to blow off steam with a few rounds of the classics. Now we play them in person, of course, on one of Halliday's meticulously restored and maintained cabinets. Aech won't ever play me at Joust, though. He'll play Art3mis, but not me. He and Arty have been tight since the Basement days, but ever since we got here, they've formed a… what did she call it that time? A mutual admiration society?
My days tend to be full of schedules and meetings and planning, and of all of them, I seem to wind up spending the most time with Shoto. I mean, nothing against my Japanese brother from another mother, but Art3mis he isn't.
Aech still competes as a gladiator on the weekends, and runs his TV channel and also his little secret side-business that i will fully poke fun at here in a minute, but the rest of the time he seems kind of, like the rest of us, at a loss for what to do next.
Arty certainly keeps herself busy. She's doing exactly what she said she would, with Arty's Mission, her little feed-the-world project. (Not so little.) She makes time for fun, though, too. She taught herself how to ride a bicycle solely by watching American Flyers. It looks like fun.
More often than not, by the time I am done with work for the day, I'll go looking for her, to spend some time with her, and she's always off somewhere with Aech.
So, yeah, it turns out that our good friend Aech has a secret hobby even nerdier than anything that Shoto is into. That's saying something, friends.
Aech likes to knit. Not even kidding. He makes hats, and scarves, and things, and sells them in a little OASIS storefront in the mall.
He's been doing it for years! And none of us ever even knew it! Knitting! Well, he outed himself one day not long after the Egg, when he had a big box of yarn and stuff delivered to Og's house.
We heard him in his rig, with the door open, grumbling to someone that he had ordered sport-weight and not this worsted stuff, and proceeded to tear the person on the other end of the line a new one.
By the time he'd joined us in the living room, the gig was up.
"What? It's relaxing," he tells us, all scowly-faced. (Og and I were laughing so hard; I nearly pissed myself.) But Arty was, as always, champion of the underdog. She didn't laugh. She turned around and asked him to teach her how!
So now the two of them sit around and knit together.
Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but I'm getting jealous about how much time they spend together.
I shouldn't be. Right?
I mean, after all, Arty only likes guys. I mean, guys that have male bodies.
As far as I know, anyway.
That came out sounding weird.
But why does Aech keep bringing it up? Asking me about it, being all pesty, asking me whether or not Arty and I are official or whatever.
Why, do you want to ask her out, yourself? is what I'd like to fire back, sometime. But it would hit a little too close to home.