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When Arisu asked Chishiya to help playtest his new game, he hadn't expected his boyfriend to find quite so many creative ways to die.
“Shun,” he groaned, watching Chishiya send his character ragdolling off yet another cliff — the fourth one in a row, and they had only been at this for the past fifteen minutes, “the point is to test the mechanics, not to see how fast you can speedrun death.”
“I'm being thorough,” the older man responded with a shrug, hands already moving his newly respawned character in the opposite direction of the objective marker. “How else are you supposed to know if your death mechanics work properly?”
“By playing the game normally?”
“Too tedious.” His character trotted toward yet another precipice. Of course. “Besides, if I'm going to die anyway, I might as well make it interesting. Speaking of which—” Chishiya paused at the cliff's edge, tilting the camera down. “The fall damage calculation seems inconsistent. This drop killed me instantly earlier, but the one near the forest only took half my health.”
That was, surprisingly, a good point.
Arisu sighed and made a note on his tablet to fix that patch later, glancing between the screen and his boyfriend's face. The man had that particular expression shining in his eyes — one that meant he was genuinely focused but also finding far too much entertainment in being deliberately unhelpful. “Okay, fine. But can you at least try to progress past the tutorial area? I need feedback on the combat system.”
“I gave you feedback. The dodge roll has good responsiveness.” Chishiya's character plummeted off the cliff in a graceful arc. “See? Very smooth animation on the way down.”
“That's not what dodge roll is for!”
“Isn't it?” His boyfriend smirked as the death screen appeared once again. “I'm dodging my responsibilities. Seems accurate to me.”
Arisu dropped his head into his hands. This was going to be a long afternoon.
When the character respawned a few seconds later, Chishiya seemed to be heading toward the first quest marker, and that made him perk up with hope blooming in his chest. Maybe this menace of a man would finally take this game seriously and play it out like he expected him to. Maybe the feedback would be more helpful than whatever commentary he had received so far. Maybe—
The character stopped.
Then turned.
Then walked directly into a campfire.
“SHUN!”
“What?” Chishiya's tone was suspiciously calm for someone who had just died in the most preventable way imaginable. “I'm testing the environmental hazards. Very important. Players need to know what happens if they're careless.” He tilted his head, eyes squinting thoughfully. “The burning animation could use work, though. Too much flailing. Real people tend to go into shock faster.”
“And you know this by…?”
“Medical school. Try to keep up, Ryō.”
Arisu wanted to argue, but his boyfriend wasn't entirely wrong. He made another note, trying to ignore how the older man was now attempting to see if his character could roast marshmallows over his own burning corpse. (The answer was no, but points for creativity anyways. He hadn't even realized that was a thing until Chishiya set out to test it.)
“You know,” he said cautiously, watching his boyfriend position the character on top of a barrel, “most playtesters try to actually survive the game.”
“Most playtesters are boring.” Chishiya's character jumped off the barrel, landed at an odd angle, and proceeded to clip halfway through the ground before the physics engine had a small crisis and launched him into the stratosphere. “Hmm. That's new.”
Arisu scrambled to write that down. “Okay, that one's actually a problem I need to fix.”
“Good to know we're on the same page.” The sarcasm was so dry it could absorb the entire ocean on itself. The older man watched the ragdoll pinwheel across the sky in a manner that violated several laws of nature with an utterly unimpressed stare. “Also, the character shouldn't die like that. Not possible, realistically speaking.”
“That's it,” he announced, reaching over to pause the game. “I'm calling Kuina.”
Chishiya's hand shot out, blocking him from the phone. “Why? I was having fun.”
“Not at the expense of my sanity, baby.” Arisu gestured at the screen, where the respawn counter had just ticked over to twenty-three deaths. Twenty-three. In forty minutes. He was genuinely done. “Seriously, she needs to know what I'm dealing with here. Maybe she can talk some sense into you.”
“Unfortunately for you, Kuina would absolutely take my side on this.” His boyfriend resumed the game with a shrug. “She understands the value of chaos.”
He wasn't wrong. Last week, Kuina had spent an entire hour trying to get a shopping cart to clip through a wall in that new RPG everyone was playing, cackling maniacally the entire time while Usagi looked on with fond exasperation. Still, Arisu had to try something. Chishiya was systematically discovering every possible way to die in a game that was supposed to be about puzzle-solving and exploration, and he really was at his wit's end.
“At least tell me why,” he pleaded, watching his guide the character toward what was obviously a trap. “You're a doctor. Why is killing off your own character your first instinct to literally everything on this map?”
“Because my will to live is the size of a chestnut, and discovering new ways to die sounds more exciting than trying to achieve the objective goals.” Chishiya said as he actively antagonized a beehive nearby. “Like this, for example.”
Arisu stared at him. “That's… concerning on multiple levels.”
“Is it?” His boyfriend glanced over with a smirk on his face. “I'm a children's doctor. My threshold for chaos is significantly higher than yours.”
“That's not—” The character died to bee stings. Death number twenty-four. “—how mental health is supposed to work, Shun.”
“Good thing I'm not a psychiatrist then.” His boyfriend respawned and immediately began searching for the beehive again. “Also, the bees are too aggressive. Real bees would have given up after the first few stings. These are behaving like wasps.”
Despite everything, Arisu wrote that down. Chishiya might be the most frustrating playtester in existence, but he wasn't wrong about the details. It was infuriating how often this man was right while being completely insufferable about it.
“Okay, new rule,” he announced, moving his tablet out of reach before his boyfriend could accidentally knock it off the couch during his next inevitable death sequence. “For every legitimate piece of gameplay you complete, I'll order takeout from that place you like.”
Chishiya's fingers paused mid-controller manipulation. “The one with the katsudon?”
“The very same.”
“Hmm.” His boyfriend actually seemed to consider this, which was more progress than Arisu had made all afternoon. “Define ‘legitimate gameplay.’”
“Completing an objective, fighting an enemy, solving a puzzle — anything the game is actually designed for.” He gestured at the screen where the character was currently stuck in a tree, somehow. “Not… whatever… this is.”
“My strategy is advanced,” Chishiya retorted with the confidence of someone who had died twenty-four times in under an hour, “but fine. I'll attempt your ‘legitimate gameplay.’” The air quotes were audible in his tone. “On one condition, though.”
Arisu should have known there would be a catch. “What condition?”
“You sit closer.” The older man patted the space beside him on the couch without looking away from the screen. “Your stress levels are making me stressed, and I perform better when you're not hovering three feet away looking like I just told you Santa isn't real.”
“I'm not—” He started to protest, then realized he had indeed been perched on the edge of the couch like a bird ready to take flight at the first sign of his game being murdered again. “Alright, I'll sit, but only because I want actual feedback from you, not because you asked.”
“Of course.”
To his surprise, the gameplay continued without any further issues, and Chishiya actually spent time solving the puzzles instead of creating more problems himself, and even engaged with the combat system long enough to provide actual, useful commentary about hit detection and enemy AI patterns.
“The parry window is too forgiving,” his boyfriend noted, executing a perfect counter against a mini-boss. “Players won't learn proper timing if you make it too easy for them.”
Arisu noted that down on his tablet, trying not to look too pleased that the older man was finally playing his game as intended. “Anything else?”
“The boss fight animations are well-designed, clear and to-the-point without being patronizing.” Chishiya paused, squinting his eyes like he was thinking about what to say next, then concluded with “And the environmental storytelling in this area is pretty good. I like it.”
“… Really?” Arisu asked, giddy and warm all over the place. “You think so?”
“Don't make me repeat myself.” His boyfriend's ears were slightly pink, which meant he was more sincere than what his tone showed. “I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.”
They played in comfortable silence afterward, Chishiya actually progressing through the content while Arisu leaned against his shoulder, making occasional notes. It felt nice to stay this way, existing in the same space, enjoying the same thing together, living the dream—
Then the character walked directly into a spike trap, and his lovely vision shattered unceremoniously right in front of his eyes.
“SHUN!”
“What? I already cleared this section.” He shrugged while his character was stabbed to death by all the spikes. “I was testing whether the traps reset after completion. They do, by the way. The reset timing seems inconsistent with the environmental hazards though—”
“You're doing this on purpose now.”
“Obviously.” Chishiya glanced at him, smirking. “You promised katsudon. I met your requirement. Now I return to my natural state.”
Arisu groaned, but couldn't quite suppress his smile. “You're impossible.”
“And yet you keep me around.” His boyfriend guided the respawned character directly toward a cliff edge — a different cliff this time, because apparently variety mattered even in systematic self-destruction. “That suggests either poor judgment on your part or excellent judgment on mine.”
“Both. Definitely both.” He watched the character plummet and resigned himself to this fate of never knowing what peace looked like — especially with how the death counter had gone up to thirty two by now. “At least tell me the spike trap death animation looked good to you?”
“It's adequate.” Chishiya paused at another precipice, considering. “Though if you want it to be realistic, the spikes should—”
“Nope, that's enough for today.” Arisu reached for the controller, but his boyfriend held it just out of reach before finally letting go and slipping an arm around his waist instead, tugging him closer with a smirk.
“Alright,” Chishiya murmured, breath warm and ticklish against his ear. “I'll stop tormenting you for now. The katsudon should be here soon anyway.”
Arisu melted despite himself, his frustration slowly fading into warmth as he pressed a kiss to Chishiya's jaw. The older man hummed, pleased, so he kissed the mole under his left eye too — partly to bribe him into behaving, partly because he just wanted to.
“Thank you,” he murmured with a smile. “Your feedback's really helpful, even when you were being kind of a jerk about it.”
“You're welcome.” His boyfriend's fingers carded through his hair, gentle in a way that always caught Arisu a little off-guard. “Though for the record, I still think the fall-damage calculation is a little off.”
“I know,” he giggled softly. “I wrote it down three times in my notes already. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” Chishiya nodded in approval, hands settling at the small of his back. “Now come closer, won't you?”
Arisu did as told, and his boyfriend closed the last of the distance to kiss him, making the world go soft around the edges.
Somewhere in the background, the death counter ticked upward again, but he really couldn't care much about it.
He had everything he needed right here.