By the time lunch was ready, Felicia almost wept for joy. It felt like she spent an eternity trapped in math… and more math… so much math…

At no point did Darius notice he was boring his companion to death.

When she told him that she needed to use the bathroom, he tried to follow her in! With the book he’d been explaining! When she said that maybe, juuuust maybe, they could look at other books, he seriously told her “I’m not finished with these ones.” and kept going. He didn’t seem to notice when Felicia laid on her back, blatantly not paying attention to anything he was saying or writing.

‘Why didn’t he stop?’ She mentally whined at DARS.

[If the user wants Darius to stop, the user will have to tell him in plain language. Being polite will not work.]

‘Didn’t I do just that?!’

[The user did not and only hinted at an alternative activity. Once again, the user must use plain language. As an example: I don’t want to do math problems anymore. Let’s stop.]

‘But then… how will I get him to like me?’

[It is still better to be honest.] DARS paused. [But when the user is honest, do not belittle. Darius is intelligent—]

‘Clearly!’

[—he will know if the user is insulting him, even if he does not respond to it. He does not tolerate people who insult him and will simply ignore them.]

‘How is that any different then what he’s already doing!?’

[There is a difference. As Darius grows older, it will become more noticable. The user must persist!]

Felicia sighed, feeling that the extra goal DARS had given sounded simple but was actually really hard. She wasn’t a child psychiatrist, she didn’t know how to make a kid like this… normal.

Thinking that way, she couldn’t help asking DARS, ‘Can I really make Darius normal?’

[Why does he need to be normal?]

‘What do you mean why? The extra goal!’

[The user misunderstands. The extra goal is: “Help Darius King to live a balanced private and professional life.” It is not “Help Darius King be normal.”]

‘...oh.’

[As far as I am aware, there is no timeline where Darius King is “normal”. Therefore, it would be impossible to “make Darius normal”. The user should be rest assured, extra goals are never impossible to complete.]

‘That’s… good to know. At least these missions aren’t malicious and setting me up for failure.’

[All missions are designed to correct timeline errors.]

‘Right, right, right…’

Darius ate his lunch almost robotically, not seeming to taste what he was eating. This was a shame, because lunch was really good. Neither Felicia nor her host had tasted anything so delicious. Apparently there was a dedicated, full time chef for the mansion.

When Darius finished, he stood up and announced “I’m done.” and then promptly left.

Felicia watched this with slightly raised eyebrows but seeing that Kim didn’t seem bothered by it, and Mr. King simply gave another sigh, she decided to not say anything. The rest of the meal was spent with Mr. King talking between Kim and Felicia.

After lunch she was shown into her new room by Mr. King. It was horribly pink and filled with ruffles. Even her child-sized desk was pink and white. There was nowhere that the offensive pink color couldn’t be seen.

When Felicia didn’t immediately act excited and thankful, Kim began gushing for her and then stealthy pinched her on her shoulder. Though Felicia was angry at this blatant bullying by the host’s mother, she grit her teeth and acted happy.

After they left she sat on her bed and rubbed the spot she’d been pinched.

That Kim woman was one step away from being abusive. She was for sure negligent. How her host had survived all these years without accidently poisoning herself and sticking her fingers into an electrical socket and electrocuting herself, was a minor miracle.

‘Hey DARS.’

[Yes?]

‘Why is it I can hate pink so much?’ Her host had been wearing pink, frilly things willingly for as long as she could remember. There should be some emotional attachment to the color but there was none.

[The host does not care about color, only about getting attention from her mother. If Mrs. Kim liked it, the host would like it. If Mrs. Kim hated it, the host would hate it. In this way, she made her mother happy and when her mother was happy, the host would not be ignored… as much.]

Felicia’s shoulders droop. What DARS said she could more or less see reflected in her host’s memories. It was really sad. That kind of desperate need for attention usually ended badly.

‘Hey, in that review, why didn’t it mention Darius’ step-sister at all?’

[By the time Janice meets Darius the first time, his step-sister had already committed suicide.]

‘She killed herself?! Why?!”

[The host grew up always trying to please people to feel loved. Mrs. Kim used this personality flaw to her own advantage, warping it to such a degree she could always retain control over the host’s life. Eventually the host made a mistake that could not be forgiven by Mrs. Kim and, rather than be cast aside by her mother, the host decided it was better to die.]

‘What… what was the mistake she made?’

[She got invited to a party by a handsome boy she liked. Mrs. Kim forbade her from going but she snuck out. Unfortunately this was the one time Mrs. Kim was right. Shortly after arriving, the host was pressured into drinking. While drunk, her guard was down and she was drugged. In her drunk, drugged stupor, she was passed around by several young men and raped. They took pictures and videos.] DARS did not finish explaining when he observed Felicia’s face turning various shades of red.

‘Are you saying—’ Felicia hands were in tiny trembling fists. ‘—that Mrs. Kim didn’t feel sorry for her daughter being raped, but instead blamed her for it? And so— so— this— my body— she killed herself?!’

[Correct.]

Felicia wished she had a table to flip. Instead, she could only stomp around in a fury, finding soft stuffed toys and tossing them around the room violently.

‘What the frick! That woman isn’t my mother! I refuse! I won’t accept her! Horrible, awful, terrible woman!!!! GRAAAAAA!!!!!’

[Though Mrs. Kim lacks ethics, morals, and a sense of humanity, she is unfortunately the host’s biological mother.]

‘No, I won’t, I don’t wanna, I—’ Felicia suddenly stopped her rampage. ‘Wait, what about Mr. King?’

[Mr. King was so angry his daughter had suffered so horribly, he had a sudden heart attack and died.]

Felicia's eyes widened, shocked.

[Mrs. Kim blamed the host for that too.]

‘GAAAAAAAAH!’ What followed was a series of words no 6 year old should know.

[If it is any consolation to the user, Darius did not blame the host for his father’s death. Darius knew his step-sister was emotionally unstable, but did not know how to appropriately comfort her. When he tried, he only made the problem worse. When she committed suicide, he was… upset, in his own way. He made those who caused her harm suffer ten times over for their crimes.]

Felicia stoped cursing when she heard this and blinked in surprise.

‘Darius did that?’

[Yes.]

‘For… for his step-sister?’

[Yes.]

‘Did they… get along?’

[Rather than get along, they lived like strangers in the same house. Their personalities were polar opposites and their interests never intersected. They were polite to each other but that was all.]

‘But then why did he bother avenging her?’

[Mr. King liked her and she never insulted Darius or got in his way. To Darius, this was as close as possible to being likable in his eyes as a person could get… before he met Jenny.]

‘What about Jenny is so amazing that a person like Darius went crazy over her?’

[She is not amazing, the attraction between the two is a bug, an error. Just as the obsession Janice has for Darius is also an error.]

“Love as a bug, huh….” She scratched her head, a little amused. ‘Oh wait, since I took over this body then I won’t, uh, ya know, die, right?’

[All living things must die.]

‘...’

‘Don’t be so pedantic.’

[Apologies. The host will not die from suicide due to being drugged at a party.]

She squinted, feeling he was too specific in that explanation. But she had another question she wanted to focus on just then so she let it slide.

‘Right, so, I’m not dying the way this poor girl originally died. Won’t I become a bug in this timeline?’

[Rather than a bug, it is a loophole.]

‘Loophole?’

[For the user to take over the host, that is already something outside of how the timeline originally functioned, correct?]

‘Uh, I’m no expert, but sure.’

[The reason this can be done is because the user is…] DARS suddenly stopped talking. A pixelated question mark appeared on his face and then turned upside down, then rightside up again. This happened several times, to the point that Felicia wondered if he’d “frozen” like a real computer.

DARS finally spoke again, but changed his explanation. [All universes and their associated dimensions have certain loopholes built in. The reason I am here and you are here is because we are taking advantage of that loophole. As long as the user inhabits the host, the host is also part of the loophole. But it is better if the user retains as much of the original host as possible to prevent too many disturbances, which could bleed outside of the loophole, and lead to a new error.]

Felicia gave a slow nod. It’s not that she really understood, it was that she had no other reference to go by in these matters. Until otherwise proven wrong, DARS was basically her gospel to anything related to fixing timelines.

Yes, even though it’d been less than 24 hours… heck, not even 12 hours had passed… Felicia more or less believed everything DARS had said from the moment he met her was true. She was dead and brought back to life with a new body to… fix errors in the multiverse’s timelines.

Or something like that.

She didn’t have a choice but to believe.

This wasn’t like a theoretical argument about multiple timelines and dimensions, she was living all the things DARS was talking about it. As the person going through the ‘impossible’ events, the option of disbelief wasn’t there. In fact, to not believe DARS by this point would make her the crazy one.

Sure, there was a faint possibility this was still all a dream or hallucination or something.

But she wasn’t betting her life, or someone else’s life, on a faint possibility. Too much was at risk for her to be willing to do that.

Also, though she’d never ever admit to it outloud, her first mission fixing a timeline allowed her to live in a frickin’ mansion and eat meals made by a professional chef everyday. This was like winning the lottery! She’d never been a greedy person, but faced with such overwhelming wealth she wasn’t going to turn her nose up either.

Dinner went about the same as lunch. It was delicious, Darius didn’t care. Mr. King was happily speaking to his “new” family members. Though Felicia really enjoyed the meal, she didn’t eat as much as she wanted because sitting across from her was the host’s witch of a mother.

The host had childlike, innocent love and adoration for this horrible snake of a woman and that bothered Felicia immensely. She, Felicia, really really hated Kim, but at the same time she, the host, earnestly and eagerly loved her. The duality of the love-hate emotion was enough to give Felicia a headache and lose her appetite.

If this feeling of love for Kim by her host was this strong, even while it was artificially suppressed like DARS had explained earlier, Felicia couldn’t imagine how overwhelming it was naturally. No wonder it was so easy for Kim to manipulate the host and it was no wonder the host would rather die than be rejected by Kim.

That night, Felicia pondered the love between a parent and child. How much of her host’s love for Kim was natural? And how much was carefully cultivated by Kim? Though Felicia had an adult mind and understanding, all the memories from the host were those of a child, from a child’s perspective.

Felicia had never considered it before, but a person’s perception of an event strongly colored their memory of it. It’s not that the details changed, per say, but the explanation for them could be vastly different from reality and thus the conclusion would be off-center too. So Felicia’s host had a lot of skewed and slanted memories when it came to Kim.

At the end of the day, Felicia felt intensely grateful for her own parents. They weren’t manipulative like Kim. Her Dad had high standards for her, but what she wanted to do in college she still got to decide. Her Mom never forced her own hobbies and interests on her either.

Oh, except for hiking.

Her Mom loved hiking and would drag her along, saying that she stayed inside and studied too much. Getting outside, working some muscle and getting a little sweaty was good for the body and the brain.

When Felicia got to this memory she chuckled a little bit and then started to cry.

‘Will I ever see my parents again?’ She asked DARS through her tears.

DARS was resting on her shoulder, doing that light ‘bounce, bounce’ thing he did when trying to comfort someone. She hadn’t appreciated it the first time he did it, but for some reason this time it felt a little bit comforting.

[It is not beneficial for the user to think along those lines.]

Felicia knew this was DARS tactic way of avoiding the information restrictions he was under and didn’t bother asking him again.

Because he couldn’t tell her and she was feeling miserable, she chose to believe someday she could see them again. DARS’ boss said she couldn’t become alive again, but that wasn’t the same as saying she’d never be able to see them. If the boss could make it so she had a new body, could take over someone else’s body, surely a small thing like seeing her parents was something he could do?

Right?