Page 20 of Our Final Game

“I do not fucking dream about you. So yeah, actually, maybe it’s not a dream after all!” he spits out. “Also…” he starts, looking up my gamer tag.

“What?”

“You’re… Zero?” he says, biting his lip.

“You’re right, it’s not a dream, this is a nightmare,” I say, walking in the direction of the town.

“Yeah, it definitely has to be!”

“No, it is,” I say firmly.

“Wait, did you know who I was this entire time? Are you fucking with me, Tyson?” Rohan asks, pulling me by my arm to face him.

“I didn’t know.”

“Yes, you did!” he snaps. “What are the odds?”

“Listen, I’m not doing this back-and-forth shit with you right now, Chandra.”

“I don’t believe you!” he yells at me.

“Okay, so don’t!” I snap back, returning the same energy. We’re stuck in a fucking game, and he wants to argue with me over bullshit as usual. He’s so stubborn it makes my fucking skin crawl sometimes.

What am I going to do with him?

Shit.

I can’t believe they’re the same people.

I actually only figured out I had been talking to Rohan the entire time after switching to voice chat. There’s no way I would mistake the way he speaks, though I was shocked by how coy he was being, how sweet he was. Maybe I got a little addicted to that side of him. I don’t know. But I can’t tell him that. He’s always had a short fuse with me.

No need to make this all worse than it already is.

Rohan sets off stomping in the other direction, away from me. I don’t even bother trying to stop him. Because, thank God, I won’t have to hear his fucking mouth while I try to understand this. I watch as he hacks his lance through the monsters on the map, but as he gets further away, I notice my HP bar dipping drastically. I’ve never seen this before, and it’s definitely not a feature of the game.

My eyes widen.

“Rohan!” I yell across the field. “Rohan!”

I know he can fucking hear me. He gets a little further away before I start to run after him, quick dashing towards his retreating form. When I get close enough, I grab him and pull him into me.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” he says, thrashing against me and pushing me away.

“I don’t think we can go far from each other without losing HP.”

“What are you talking about? You just made that up!”

“I didn’t. Check your health, dumbass.”

He pauses for a bit before looking at me again, his lip thin as he confirms what I’m trying to tell him.

“This can’t be happening.” He groans, looking at the ground.

“Look, let’s just get back to town so we can figure this out,” I say. “Please. It’s going to get dark soon.”

Rohan looks up at me, he seems so much smaller right now, with me looking down at him. The field is quiet, safe for the monsters grazing a ways from us. He nods silently, and I exhale. Finally, maybe he’ll chill out long enough for me to get us back. The monsters are a lot more difficult to take on at night.

“Did you really not know?” he whispers as we trudge through the map.