“Are you not that hungry, Aurora?” Em’s mom asked, looking at my plate. I’d eaten quite a bit, but I’d definitely fallen behind Emma and Ria.

“It’s okay, mom. Auro’s doctor told her to eat a bit slower. It’s better for her health.” Em covered for me.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.” I lied as well. “It also makes me bite my tongue less when I’m eating.”

“Oh.” Em’s mom nodded in understanding. “But do you like the food?”

“It’s great as always.” I smiled, that was not a lie. It was very tasty indeed. “Ria, could you pass the mayo to me, please?”

Ria put another croquette in her mouth and handed mayo over so I could put a bit more on my plate. Homemade mayo was certainly something else entirely.

“Would there be a way to get the recipe for the mayo? I’d like to try to make it myself at home.”

“Definitely. I’ll ask Masie to write her recipe down after we’re done eating.” Em’s mom smiled back. “I think Corelia would also love it if you knew the recipe.”

“I know, that’s why I’m asking.” I smiled smugly, which made Em’s mom chuckle.

“But please come over for dinner more often. We always like your company. We are almost family now, aren’t we?”

“Talking of which. When’s the marriage?” Em’s dad spoke up.

“Daaaad!” Em called out, clearly flustered.

“We are invited to it, right?” Em’s mom giggled.

Em looked like she was going to say something, but the two-pronged assault by her parents just made her completely speechless.

“It’ll not be for quite a while, but we will definitely send you an invite.” I winked.

“Yes!” Ria called out. “We wouldn’t do it without you!” Now that I think about it, Ria probably feels more at home here than she does at her own place. So she must feel about as much parental love from them as I do. Maybe even more so.

Karin just observed our conversation in silence while eating her meal. She looked like she was having fun as well, just in her own quiet way. Smiling in between her little bites of her croquettes. It’s either that or she just really likes croquettes, which is fair too.

After dinner, we put all our plates on the trolley.

“Just give us a sign when the both of you want to leave. We’ll notify Helen to bring you home then. Not that there’s any rush, you can sleep over as well if you want to.” Em’s mom talked to Ria and me.

“I don’t think we will be sleeping over today, but thank you for the offer.” I replied.

Ria nodded. “Mhmm. My parents have asked me to be home before ten.”

“Alright.” She smiled. “We’ll be in the living room if you need us.”

Both of us nodded, and Em’s mom and dad left through one of the doors.

“Want to hang out in my room for a bit?” Em asked.

“Definitely.” I nodded. “Are you going to come with us or are you going to hang out with Karin, Ria-chan?”

“Can I come too?” Karin asked.

“Definitely. We’re friends, aren’t we? Being in a relationship with your sister doesn’t change that.” I smiled at Karin. “And this is your house, after all.”

“Are you not going to do not-safe-for-work things?”

Em immediately turned to her sister, her face bright red. “Wha-aa?”

Karin chuckled. -The cheeky bastard.-

We went to Em’s room after Karin and Ria took a stop in Karin’s room first to get a couple of books. As we entered Em’s sanctuary, it didn’t really look that different from the last time I was there. The pink wallpaper was still mostly covered up with posters, although a couple of them had changed as Em would regularly do to get a change of scenery. I didn’t know what most of the new posters were about, but I did recognize the art style of one particular poster from a piece of art Em had shown me a couple of weeks ago. If I recall correctly, it was a character from the one MMO Em liked playing a lot.

“That’s a commission.” Em had noticed me looking at the poster. “I ordered a frame for it, but that’s going to be delivered next week.“

“That’s from your MMO, right?”

She nodded. “It’s my character.”

“Really?” I looked at it more intently. The brown haired cat girl was wearing a light blue frilly bikini and was smiling over her shoulder into the ‘camera’. The pose was terribly cute. “When are you going to wear a bikini like that?”

Em blushed. “Unbelievable…”

“What?” I smirked.

“Ria, maybe we should go to my room after all.” Karin poked Ria with a book, which made Ria giggle a little.

“It’s pretty good art, though. What other races could you play in the game?”

“I’ll show you.” Em’s blush quickly dissipated, and she walked to her computer. Which was neatly put in the corner of her room. Her desk was wide and left plenty of space for studying if the computer wasn’t in use. In the meantime, Karin and Ria had made their way into the other corner of the room, which had a small reading area with comfy looking chairs.

I took one of the three chairs and put it down next to Em, who was already seated and was turning on her pc. It flipped on in an instant and was on the desktop page in no time.

“Wow, that was fast.”

“It’s the power of SSDs.” She smiled.

“The computers at school always take minutes to boot up.”

Em nodded. “I find it weird that that’s the one thing they save money on, decent pc’s.”

I shrugged. “As long as they don’t save on the food, I guess.”

“That’d be a disaster!” Ria cried out from the other side of the room. Karin just silently nodded along with her friend’s statement.

“Yeah, definitely.’ I chuckled.

Em then opened the MMO’s game launcher and logged in.

“So this game is called Turn of Destiny?”

“Yep, Turn of Destiny Fourteen.” Em nodded as she clicked on the start button. It showed a couple of, what I assume are worlds with character slots added next to them. She proceeded to click on one of them, and lo and behold, the character from the character art showed up on screen. She was wearing some kind of fancy plate armor.

“Nice.” I said.

“Thanks.” She smiled. “I’ll show you the character creator.” Em clicked a couple more buttons, most of them faster than I could process. “A couple of races you only get when you have bought the game.”

“I see, I see.” I let her continue and before I knew it, a brand-new character was staring at me.

“Here you can select which race you want to play. There’s cat girls like the one I showed you. We have beastmen and women, rabbit people, your typical humans, elves, a small potato-like race…” She then clicked a couple more buttons. “And here you can switch body types, select pronouns, stuff like that.

“These potato people look weird.” I commented.

“Karin plays one. They are pretty cute but it does take a while to get used to.”

“It’s my alt.” Karin commented from behind us.

“Her main character is a color swap of mine.” Em smiled. “It’s like we are twins in-game.”

“Sounds cute.” I smiled. “So, an important question. Where’s the boob slider?”

“Auro, please.” Em shook her head. “Obviously you’d ask that.”

“It’s a joke.” I laughed.

“...But it does have one, though.”

I laughed a bit louder before Ria shushed me. “Rora, we’re reading.”

“Oh, right, sorry.” I quieted down and paid attention to what Emma was doing.

Em shook her head again and continued. “What race looks interesting to you?”

“Can I click back to see?”

“Sure.” She handed the mouse to me.

“Uhm…” I clicked through all the options. “Oh, what are these?”

“I forgot to mention, there’s these semi-lizard people too. They are basically humans with scales, and then there’s also these incredibly tall and buff people. That’s the one you’ve selected.”

“She looks cool. I might go with this one if I start playing.”

“Not a lot of people play them, but they are pretty neat, yeah.” Em agreed with a nod. “Would you like to walk around in the world for a bit with my character?”

“Yes, guide me, my noble cat lady.”

She blushed without saying anything and went back to the main menu. Not that long afterwards, we were in the game itself. I’d actually never seen any gameplay of the game before. Everything I knew from it was from Emma passionately telling me during school breaks. Even when I was at her house before, we’d generally do other things like playing card games.

“This is one of the starting areas…” She began to show me around, being very careful not to spoil anything of the story for me. I just looked at her face while she was explaining. Her words were slowly being drowned out as I was being charmed by her enthusiastic mannerisms.

-Girls talking about stuff they love is just… the best thing ever. It’s too darn cute.-