“Here,” Julius said flatly as they stood in front of what looked like a weed with tiny white flowers. “Chew that up and plaster it on your injuries.”

“Chew it?!” Cillian asked in horror.

“You didn’t seem to have an objection to putting objects in your mouth in less than sterile environments before,” Julius retorted, and Cillian opened his mouth, shut it, and had a brief flashback to raw-dogging raw fish in a puddle of mud.

“Fine,” he muttered and crouched down to pluck the weed out of the ground. For a long moment, he studied it, and then ripped off the root.

“Oh. Yeah,” Julius said and crouched down next to him, pointing at the white, scraggly tendrils dusted in dirt. “It’s in the root.”

“... What?” Cillian asked, and Julius inclined his head.

“The poultice. You need to make it out of the root,” he said, patiently, as if he was explaining something to a child, and Cillian stared back at him.

The root was absolutely full of dirt, but it wasn’t the worst thing he had put in his mouth in the past. He ate it all the time as a kid and didn’t die, after all. Without even thinking twice, Cillian popped it into his mouth and chewed.

“You… you could have knocked the dirt off,” Julius said, sounding almost shocked. Cillian stared at him as the familiar dirt taste filled his mouth, reminding him of hot summer days full of stupid decisions while his babysitter read a book on the porch and idly called to not try and eat bees every so often.

“I could have?” Cillian rejoined, and Julius stared at him, his face inches from his as Cillian chewed and chewed. It was really bitter, but that was par for the course for weeds. Cillian had sampled a lot as a child.

“... I don’t know what else I expected,” Julius said, and Cillian spat the root out into his hand. It was gummy, and a little slimy, but it would work to plaster on his finger, which he was more concerned with than his throat. The second he had it patted down, he snatched up two more, knocked off the dirt since it seemed to bother Julius so much, and bit down.

Silence passed for a few minutes as Cillian chewed up the root, and he became hyper-aware of Julius’s eyes on him. It sent a prickly feeling up his spine, because Julius was looking at him like there was something about him he couldn’t quite figure out.

“What?” Cillian asked as he spat out his poultice and started plastering it on his throat.

“I can’t figure out why you were Selected,” Julius said flatly.

“So?”

“So, it’s bothering me.”

“You didn’t have to request to accompany me.”

“Well, you seemed crazier than most, and I was curious.”

“That’s it?” Cillian asked as he patted down the poultice. “What is the difference in Selected and regular… players? I guess?”

“Selected players are players rated to have high survival rates,” Julius explained, which seemed absolutely hilarious to Cillian, and he coughed on a laugh. “... That was my reaction when I saw you. They’re rated on physical abilities.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I was Selected because I’ve boxed as a hobby since I was a teenager,” Julius said with a half-shrug. “Crossfit, MMA, calisthenics, martial artists, parkour runners, I’ve seen it all, but not a borderline sedentary writer with the only rating being ‘abnormally high luck’.”

“Luck, huh?” Cillian murmured. He wasn’t a lucky person. Skilled as a writer, sure, but that had never taken him too far in life. He could barely afford health insurance, and had to pick that over having a vehicle. “Was there anything else on what sounds like my rating?”

“... A good storyteller,” Julius replied after a long, long pause. “Was trying to figure out what that meant.”

Cillian couldn’t help it. He actually laughed at that. A good storyteller? Good storytellers were proud of the work they did. He was a trained monkey at a typewriter, banging on the keys.

“Nah,” he said and finished patting down the slimy mixture, straightened up. “I’m not a good storyteller.”

His metrics would say otherwise. He knew he was a massively popular writer—in the American webnovel market, no less. It was amazing that he was even able to live on his own without another job. That was practically unheard of. But, no. He wasn’t a good storyteller. He wasn’t the one that wrote his stories. His stories were written by fan demands.

“Anyways, I’m going to…” The sun was now low on the horizon, and he pursed his lips. “I need to find shelter, don’t I?”

They were well outside the city now.

“There’s a cabin,” Julius said and stood up. “Deeper in the forest. I can’t say it’s safer. I stayed here a week and the door eventually got ripped off because I wasn’t working fast enough. But it should be fine for the first four nights.”

“I still haven’t eaten anything,” Cillian muttered, and Julius cracked his neck loudly.

“You don’t have to eat for two days before it starts affecting performance. System quirk,” Julius reported, and Cillian slowly rolled out his shoulders and picked up his hatchet.

“Good to know.”

So, he had a day to go. It should be fine. In the meantime, shelter.

“What I wouldn’t give for a water cup right now,” he muttered under his breath and then turned to Julius.

“I would have thought you had enough of water,” Julius said, completely deadpan, and Cillian stared back at him.

“Where is the cabin?” he asked bluntly and Julius looked at him with an expression Cillian didn’t particularly like. He was seriously tall. It was almost abnormal how tall he was, though Cillian was well aware this was semi-normal in America. Even so…

“East,” Julius replied, and Cillian continued his blank stare.

“I don’t know cardinal directions,” he said. Julius inhaled sharply, like he was trying to keep himself from letting out an explicit word, and Cillian blinked at him, nice, slow, and lazy. “Just say fuck.”

“Right. Sun rises in the east, sets in the west.”

“I know that.” He did not. He knew he would forget it in another seven seconds.

“Then how do you not know cardinal directions?”

“I can’t figure out where north and south are in relation to that.”

“How can you not figure that out?”

“I don’t know. How can you not figure out…” Cillian trailed off as he looked the picture perfect look of Julius up and down. Again, not a hair out of place. Pristine. Expensive. Stinking of wealth and privilege and tax brackets that Cillian could only dream of. “Yeah, I got nothing.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to have such an attitude on you.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to look like you sprang out of the pages of a Korean CEO BL with a toxic, possessive---” Cillian abruptly cut himself off and turned on his heel. “East then.”

“Cillian James, that is west,” Julius snapped. Cillian did an about-face and started on a leisurely stroll even as he heated up inside with white-hot embarrassment.

“Just testing you,” he lied through his teeth and propped his hatchet on his shoulder. “Sun’s going down; let’s go hiking!”

“How are you even alive?” Julius asked as Cillian cut through the tall grass, suddenly hyper aware of the poultice on his neck and the scent of lemongrass and basil. It was getting sticky, and he didn’t like this, but he didn’t have a choice but to ignore it.

“Luck, probably?” he tried for, and then a realization dawned on him.

Talking to another person had him feeling more like a person.

That was… that was uncomfortable. Cillian wasn’t a person. He had his groceries delivered. He didn’t eat out, didn’t make friends, didn’t even have internet friends anymore with the amount he had to write on a daily basis, sometimes even for ten hours straight. The person he spoke to the most was Jeremy, and he thought he was fine like that.

… Well.

It was unfortunate Julius was clearly an ass with a very low impression of him. Why he wanted to accompany him was beyond Cillian---

“What happens to the people that aren’t Selected?” Cillian asked, and Julius was suspiciously silent. “Julius?”

“They find other ways to survive, I assume,” Julius replied after an awkward pause. “Selected only means you have the option of a mentor and a good drop on the first level, and that’s only a thing if you actually accept said drop.”

“You mean nearly getting torn apart by fish trying to get something that’s basically useless?” Cillian asked as he pulled the amulet out of his shirt and watched it swing on the chain.

“Well, my drop worked perfectly fine the first time I used it,” Julius said with a shrug. “Not sure what’s wrong with yours.”

“Maybe it has hyper-specific activation requirements?” Cillian tried for and Julius eyed him.

“You’re shorter than I expected,” Julius said, and Cillian’s brows furrowed together.

“What does that have to do with the amulet?”

“Just an observation. How tall are you? 5’5?”

Cillian resisted the urge to say “5’3”, mainly because he had a feeling it would be a source of mockery.

“Sure,” he settled on.

“... You’re not 5’5.”

“I’m trans, okay? We aren’t known for our height,” Cillian snapped and Julius blinked before his eyes darted to the faded pride flag on Cillian’s wrist that looked more like blue stripes now, the pink and white almost completely disappearing into his skin.

“Oh,” Julius said. “So that was pink.”

“Yes, it’s pink; it just fades really well,” Cillian snarled and Julius glanced at the other wrist.

“And the other one is…?”

“Look it up if you don’t know,” Cillian huffed, and then paused. “Wait. Do you have internet access?”

“Yes. I’m outside.”

“Then how does this…?”

“Work? I fall asleep and come here,” Julius replied and looked up at the sun. “Time passes a bit differently here, and you don’t age. I should be able to stay for another… two-ish days, maybe one-ish before I wake up? That’s how it was with my mentor, but I don’t sleep as much. Then you’ll be on your own for three or so.”

“That’s inefficient,” Cillian muttered and ducked under a low-hanging branch. “So, I have to tell you everything that happened?”

“No. I think I get highlights sent to my phone,” Julius replied and Cillian blinked.

“What happens if a mentor gets their phone hacked?” You didn’t talk about the Tower, right? Nothing had been leaked to his knowledge.

“No idea,” Julius said, and great, that was helpful. “I assume the files self-destruct.”

“Ah,” Cillian muttered, and then wondered if Julius was given background information about who he was. It was always a question on an egotistical writer’s mind: have they read my stuff?

… It would be kind of nice to not be infinityscript for once. He didn’t even like the damned username.

“By the way, you’re going to be hiking for an hour.”

“... I’m sorry, what?”