Chapter 250: ALEX?!!#??@!$(#!#88#+#+#??????????!!!!!!

"You're being sarcastic to seem relatable."

"I genuinely have abilities." I thought about how to explain it efficiently.

"Multiple. Weird ones. I have something that locates snacks within about 20 meters something. I have a movement ability that looks like teleport but is actually just fast. I have a separate actual teleportation skill that costs brain energy to use and gives me body ache, nosebleed, paralysis if I overdo it." I paused. "And there's a chat box above my head that I can see but no one else can, where people comment on my life in real time, and I've been ignoring them for days because they're annoying… actually I don't even know if they're human."

I glanced up at the chat.

「Si Hon!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!! We MISS YOU!!!! It's been SO long!!! Let us DOWNNNN!!!!」

「Kewkman: I... I have regret what I have said in the past. It is very boring to just watch and not be able to comment on anything you're doing. I apologize for whatever it was.」

「Please excuse my younger brother, he is a dumb bitch. But also I miss commenting. It is strange to watch someone's story without being able to say anything about it.」

「King Si Hon!!!! Where is MIMI!!! She isn't waking up!!! Is she okay???」

「Its been WEEKS your story is so good but we are losing our MINDS」

「Oh… btw we're #######」

ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ they're, hashtags… I see.

I looked back down.

Alex was staring at the space above my head. "I can't see anything."

"I know. It's only for me." I raised my right hand and showed her the finger.

The ring there— black, slightly iridescent, not metal, because it's a living GOO. "And this is my— my daughter… kind of. She's dormant right now. I didn't expect to say that word in my life but here we are."

Alex looked at the ring for a long moment. "That's a ring."

"It's complicated."

"You have a daughter who is a ring."

"She's more of—" I paused. "It's a long story."

She studied my face, looking for the tell of someone making things up, and apparently didn't find it, because she exhaled and sat back. "Okay," she said. "I believe you. Half of it." Then: "My turn?"

I nodded.

She straightened slightly, which was her version of preparing.

"I can take a person's memory," she said. "Or copy it, more exactly. They keep the original— it stays in their head, they don't lose anything, they don't feel anything. But I get a copy of it in mine. I can do a small piece, a specific moment, or I can do everything. Their whole life, if I wanted to. Every memory they have."

She made a face. "It's hard to explain. It's like— you know how you can copy something? It's like that, expect that copy is a person's experience, and I just... have it afterward."

I took a slow breath. "How does it work? Do you have to touch someone?"

"Contact helps. It doesn't always need to be touch, but touch makes it faster and more complete."

Wait… memory… oh shit, she'll know If she reads my memory she'll know everything— that this is a trial, that she's in it, that she's a character in Jisoo's story. She'll know she's…

I kept my face still and step back even though there's a vine wall behind me. (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠)

"I'm not going to do it to you," Alex said.

I looked at her.

"You stepped back," she said. "Literally one step, against the vine wall. People do that when they hear what I can do."

Her expression was real about it, the way things were matter-of-fact when they'd happened enough times to lose the sting. "I don't take memories without permission. And even if I wanted to, using it costs— nosebleed after, migraine, sometimes temporary blindness, always a headache. And the worst case is I pass out entirely."

She shrugged, water dripping from her hair. "Not worth it for a stranger. I'm telling you so you're not standing there thinking about it."

I sigh in relief.

"Thank you," I said, and meant it.

"Don't thank me. I just didn't want you looking like that." She held up a hand. "High five. We're officially people who have told each other the weird thing about themselves. That gets a high five. Right?"

I looked at her hand.

Then I raised mine and met it.

The second our palms connected, Alex's eyes went blank.

Not— slowly. All at once. Like a light switching, everything that had been present in her expression simply gone, replaced by nothing.

Her body went entirely limp, all the muscle in her posture releasing simultaneously, and she dropped.

I caught her before she hit the water, one arm across her back, and her head fell against my shoulder and stayed there, face slack, blood already running from her left nostril in a thin dark line.

I sat there with her in the blue-lit cave.

"...Fuck," I said.

Outside, the storm continued. The water glowed. Somewhere above us, the jellyfish drifted through the lightning, turning their red cores toward wherever we'd been.

I looked at Alex's unconscious face. At the blood. At my own hand, still raised slightly from where the high five had been.

"...Fuck," I said again, but in truth… I'm actually clenching my Butt right now too!

And… I just stared… for how long you can think… then finally.

"Fu— fuck— what the asfuck—" I scrambled to catch her before she slid off the vine ledge, both arms coming around her on instinct, and her weight settled against me completely limp and unhelpful.

Blood still running from her nose. Eyes closed. Absolutely unconscious and apparently planning to stay that way. "THIS GIRL—"

I adjusted her carefully, got one arm properly under her so she wouldn't slide, her head coming to rest against my shoulder, her legs hanging across my lap.

The cave was actually a bit small and the water below us was right there and I needed both of us to stay on the vine ledge, which meant I was now the structural solution to a problem she had created.

I sat there breathing through the panic for a moment.

Then I started thinking.

And that was worse.

I looked at her unconscious face.

She was going to see everything.

And didn't I died like 70 something… times… or more?! Is her mind gonna be okay?

And she'll see me arriving in this world from somewhere else, getting pulled through by a system that shouldn't exist, reading a comic book about a real person's life before I met her.

She was going to see all of it— the whole story, from the beginning, the Tentacle Hybrid wolf That actually stressed me the most, the Munches, this… etc. oh my gosh… •́⁠ ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠,⁠•̀

She's gonna know.

She was going to know everything.

And she's probably going to tweak out,

The cave glowed blue around us. Outside, the storm continued its rotation. Somewhere above the jellyfish were probably still there, their red cores tracking something.

The water was still and quiet in here, the current outside reduced to a sound rather than a presence.

I shifted slightly to keep my grip on the vine. Alex's breathing was slow and even— unconscious, not hurt, just completely out.

She'd said worst case was passing out. I was choosing to believe this was the worst case and not something worse than that.

I sat there.

And hour passed. Maybe more. The blue light didn't change. The storm didn't stop.

I sat there with Alex asleep against my shoulder in a cave inside a floating vine island in a flooded city in a trial I still hadn't cleared, and thought about what she was going to say when she woke up.

And yea, nothing good, probably.