Danika tossed and turned beside Shinichi, who had to leave first thing in the morning. After a bit she got up so that she wouldn't inadvertently wake him. She couldn't even explain what was bothering her to herself.

She scrolled through her messages, and decided that she was too lazy to update her filters, despite the number of advertisements that had made it through lately. She rather suspected that some of them weren't lying when they claimed that she'd signed up to receive them, since all it took anymore was a single click on an advertisement somewhere, and the latest trend was for minimalistic designs that could be mistaken for decorations on a page.

There was an inquiry from her grandmother on whether or not she wanted a bed reserved there, when her father and Haru finally chose a date. Danika replied: "Yes, maybe? I don't know if Shinichi will be able to come with me yet. It depends on when papa decides it will be an auspicious time to begin his new life with Haru."

Her thoughts wandered to work, and she let her phone go dark. She kind of wanted to find out how the game structured adventures for those who didn't have a clear goal, but it would have to wait until after the demos were built. Although it was possible that she could find out sooner if that was a part of the game that was being carried forward with Jade.

If you left their relationship out of it, Shinichi's quests since they'd met didn't seem much different than Shrubbery's did to her. They were usually short enough to avoid adding a burden to busy days, and directly related to their character's chosen path. Neither of them had been offered a chance to obtain a world changing position like Kit had, that she knew of, but that was true of most people.

Danika yawned and leaned back in her chair, which she hadn't bothered moving out of. When she looked at it from the adventuring perspective, it seemed like the game was doing its best to make their time spent in it as much fun as possible, in a fairly typical RPG way.

She frowned and considered the relationship that she'd just decided to leave out of her evaluation. Shinichi was convinced that the game led people to those who seemed compatible with them, but she couldn't think of anyone who seemed like they'd been led to Shrubbery, or to most of their other guild mates.

Her lips quirked in amusement as she thought that she couldn't think of anyone who really seemed to have been led to Nao1 either, despite his recently blooming friendship with Tundo. His sharp words about her uncertainty still irked her a little. She didn't feel at all uncertain about her affection for Shinichi, even if she couldn't describe her reasoning clearly. And, she admitted silently to the night, even if she had doubts about how the game assigned roles to people.

Even if the game had introduced them to each other, it had no control over their feelings, and Danika still felt fortunate to have Shinichi in her life. Which reminded her that she was wasting precious minutes that she could spend cuddled beside him before he left.

She moved back into the bedroom and onto the bed beside Shinichi. He relaxed as he wrapped around her, as though she were cozy and comfortable, like a child with a stuffed animal. The thought made her smile. And then she wondered if what had really been bothering her was the way he made it sound like she was a reward that the game had gifted him.

She made faces at herself in the dark. That was a ridiculous thing to hold against a man, even in this day and age. Women had been regarded as prizes to be won for millennia. Men too, if it came to that. Even people in games fell under that stigma. Guilds competed to recruit the best players, the elite, and the wealthy.

Devon Yu might have tried to reduce the importance of levels in 'Living Jade Empire', but the players still judged each other by that rough measurement.

She was jolted out of her thoughts when her phone chimed to announce the arrival of a message. She quickly switched it back to night mode, and then looked at her message.

Her grandmother had replied with surprising promptness, and seriousness: "Danika, your papa isn't starting a new life, he is simply continuing to live, as we all do. No one in the world has the luxury of truly starting over. Those who appear to have managed it have usually paid an unimaginably high price, lost even more than they realize, and will invariably carry the scars of their past forward anyway."

She went on to say that Shinichi was welcome if he could make it, and that she would like it if Danika could bring him to visit eventually, even if her father's wedding wasn't the right time.

Danika responded only: "OK. I will. He wants to meet you too."

She hadn't phrased her first reply regarding her papa with 'begin his new life' with any bad feeling about it. She didn't think that she felt at all abandoned by or unhappy about his remarriage, especially compared to how frustrated she'd felt before when he just wouldn't ever talk to her. Her grandmother's reply made her wonder how difficult moving forward with Haru had been for him though, and she cuddled closer to Shinichi.

As she fell asleep it occurred to her that for Shinichi to consider her as a prize, he had to feel that she was valuable. That thought pleased her more than she expected. It meant that by whatever standards he used to measure a person's worth, she ranked very highly. A slightly irrational surge of affection carried her off to sleep.

--

Danika woke up early to see Shinichi off, which surprised him. He kissed her several dozen times, which she suspected probably delayed him enough to annoy the rest of the band members. They were both grinning as he went out the door though.

She asked her celestial dragon assistant how long she had before she had to leave, and it asked her with confusion, "Are you asking when your reservation starts, or when your first shift outside of 'Living Jade Empire' begins?"

Danika blinked in surprise, as she realized suddenly that as far as her assistant was concerned, she would be leaving. The little dragon resided in the original game and didn't have access to the copy. She wondered uneasily how confusing it was going to be to either have multiple assistants, one for each demo game, or to try to have multiple people working directly with the Jade of each world.

"I'm asking about my reservation," she clarified.