“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I’m not sure if the fun part reallyisfun.”
“But what is it?”
“Well, you see, Miss Bennet, nothing matters anymore, which is frightfully depressing, of course, but then, if one turns the idea over and over and looks at it from different angles, it also begins to seem freeing, do you see? Because if nothing matters anymore, and nothing means anything at all, then one can do anything. There are things I was curious about, things I wished to try, things that I couldn’t do, and then, I realized I could.”
“Things like asking me to marry you,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “But therein lies the problem, of course, because, well, one can’t simply doanything.”
“Well, you just said that one could.”
“I did, yes, but it… well, I don’t know if I like being a person who doesn’t care about anything or anyone and who will use anyone for my own amusement.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” she said, nodding. “But it does become that way rather quickly, doesn’t it? Since they are always going to reset, it’s as if you can’t really hurt the other people.”
“True,” I said.
“But now, I am with you,” she said. “And I am not going to reset. So, it’s different. You and I can do the fun parts.”
I swallowed, very hard.
“So, let’s see,” she said. “What would be fun to do? What are we prevented from doing all the time that we are now free to do?” She turned to me, smiling brightly.
I shook my head. “Well, if we’re prevented, madam, it’s likely for a good reason.”
She furrowed her brow. “You are confusing me now, I must say.”
Yes, of course, I was confusing her. She was a very innocent young woman whose mind was not going to the positively filthy corners that my own mind was going to, and had I not indicated that I would simply never bring any of this up with her?
Right, Will, think of something you could be doing with this woman that isn’t sexual, for the sake of all that is holy.“Well, maybe therearefun things we could do.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“We could… steal things.”
“Steal things!” She was horrified.
“I mean, it wouldn’t matter, because everything would reset, of course, so—”
“At shops?” Her eyes were bright.
“At shops,” I said, grinning.
“Just walk in, brazenly, and make off with things?” She let out a long, happy giggle.
“We could do exactly that,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
elizabeth
The fun partwasfun.
The first time we waltzed into a shop and began stuffing our pockets full of sweets, I tried to pretend as if I wasn’t getting away with anything so as not to draw attention to myself, but I wasn’t very good at that, and I started laughing straightaway.
At first, people were too horrified to know what to do, so they just stared at us, aghast.
Then the shopkeeper began to yell.
