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"That's it, I can't do this anymore!" Fold howled after yet another lap around the absurdly adorable utopian city they'd spent the entire morning combing from top to bottom. "It's a sandbox; there's no hero here!"
This world was useless to them: Syntax agents could only wring their hands while watching the local NPCs live perfectly peaceful, carefree lives, but there was nothing valuable to gain from the game itself. Of course, these ignorant townsfolk weren't in danger of destruction! There was no preset storyline, which meant no hero, no villain for said hero to fight... Hence the verdict: the game was more than stable, and there was no way to speed up its ending.
"Let's get out of here. We're just wasting time..."
"And where exactly are you in such a hurry to get to?" Miss Information suddenly stopped, planting her hands on her hips. For good measure, she glanced around to make sure nobody was bright enough to eavesdrop. "Miss Warrick already?"
"What else is there to do? We go back, report there's no hero, mark the world on the map and—"
"—and they'll immediately dump some other job on us!" she hissed. "Maybe you enjoy getting ridden into the ground by Warrick, but I want a day off! A day. Off."
When the motivation is vengeance, even great villains are still prone to professional burnout. Fold narrowed his eye and shook his head. The desire was perfectly understandable. He wanted a break too… The problem was that unauthorized time off came with a guaranteed ass-kicking!
"And what exactly do you want us to do? Organize a strike or take one of the supporting characters hostage until Syntax revises its labor laws?"
Miss Information smiled. Conspiratorially, very unkindly, which suggested a devious plan had already fully formed in her head. The rest of the day didn't promise anything good. Escape wasn't an option; she'd catch him anyway and rip him a new one.1
"We're going to play dumb—which should be easy for you—and spend another three hours pretending we're searching for the hero." She lifted her chin. Completely insane. "Worlds like this are rare! Think about it: no combat system, huge city, easy to disappear in, NPCs dumb as bricks, and that backpack girl is supposedly stranded on the other side of the universe. Don't you want to relax for once?"
"What's the catch?"
"There isn't a catch!" she rolled her eyes. "The only condition is that we slack off together. We were, like, sent on this mission as a team. If you try going back to the ship alone, oh-h-h, you'll regret it!.."
The world was truly wonderful. They'd want to be born in one like this themselves: towering skyscrapers giving way to low-rise buildings, people walking dogs and riding bikes in parks, children crossing the street and going to school, and all the urban problems being solved within hours by diligent municipal employees. Paradise! Blissful ignorance was one thing, but knowing your game wasn't slated for destruction was even better. The worst that could happen here was a two-day housing crisis or a nasty traffic jam on the main street. Besides, even the fifteen minutes during which miss Information didn't express any desire to pin him to the wall somewhere between a 'courier' job offer and a brothel ad Fold considered an extremely successful pastime. She definitely had a plan... The essence of which remained opaque.
The moment she had his first "yes" (extracted under duress, of course), Miss Information went off to indulge in the sin of gluttony. The galley food, she claimed, was nothing but watery, tasteless slop, and this time she wanted something human. They hit their first snag almost immediately. This was not just a city-planning simulator—it was, first and foremost, a capitalism simulator.
They were surrounded by advertising. Persistent as a fly you just couldn't swat. One thing was the bright, screaming billboards, citylights, and media facades, each one running a timer with less than a day on the clock. Another thing entirely was the crowds of passersby carrying bouquets, people dressed up in nice clothes, oddly behaving couples—Valentine's Day.
The moment he spotted those red flags, Fold should have done something—dug in his heels, yell, bite Miss Information on the hand, anything to avoid imperceptibly transforming into a free drink coupon, a cashback bonus, or a pass to a themed event. That, however, would have required an ordinary, non-paper brain. It also would have required having no particular fondness for her provocations.
"I heard that in honor of the, erm... holiday..." she began, laying on the charm with the cashier at the counter of the first café they'd wandered into, "...you have some new special offers?"
"That's right! We serve all desserts 'two for one' to lovers."
Fold would have let that phrase wash right over him if it weren't for the predatory grip that suddenly clamped onto his shoulder—Miss Information pulled him to her side, leaned her head against him without a shred of embarrassment, and in her smooth, TV-presenter voice simply asked for a double serving of pancakes with some kind of topping.
His heart skipped a beat. That's what predatory animals do, boa constrictors in tropical forests. Or rather, that's what couples do when they're head over heels in love and nearly delirious with how sweet it all is—except that comparison couldn't possibly apply to these two. What was the double message about? What was the second part supposed to be—once they were back and PVP got a little more interesting again, would she layer more meaning onto this uncharacteristic interaction? No, no, there had to be a reason for what she was doing! If not profit, then her own desperate need to inflict pointless suffering on those around her. Miss Information couldn't read his thoughts yet—or at least he thought she couldn't—and could only assess the scale of the short circuit in Fold's head by indirect signs.
"Yeah, sure, please," he choked out through gritted teeth. Something was rising up inside him in protest: his cheeks were just about ready to ignite from the burning urge to push her away and put an end to this idiotic scheme. The only thing keeping it in check was a growing curiosity, the desire to see where the staged scene would end up once Miss Information, with a theatrical delay, paid and collected the dessert.
He also vastly preferred verbal squabble to reassembling himself after being run through a shredder. They both retreated to the terrace to avoid running into anyone else, tucked themselves into the corner, and spoke in low, threatening whispers.
"What is this event even about?!" Fold snapped, grabbing his head in disbelief, rubbing his temples, trying to make sense of the gambit she just pulled. "Fine if they were holding a state funeral, but that?! Are you seriously trying to profit off this?! Cut it out! This is an outrage!!! Why go through all this humiliation, it's so easy to just—"
"Oh, relax. It's just a usual in-game event. Tomorrow everything will be back to normal. Only that we'll be long gone." She tossed his share of the pancakes and crossed her legs. "We should get the most out of it. This world has absolutely insane seasonal discounts and sales. Tell me, how many simoleons did you get after the arrival?"
"...what?"
"Ah. So you're a beggar," she laughed triumphantly, savoring it. Miss Info had finally found the moral high ground. Then she cut herself a piece of pancake soaked in caramel and closed her eyes serenely, tasting it. Hard to say what was better—the food or the sight of Fold drowning in confusion. "When you enter a world like this, you get a personal balance started. Including us, if you know the right trick. Which means yours is at zero right now?" His irritated grimace confirmed her worst suspicions. "So, between the two of us, we only have one person's budget. God, if I ever end up with you again..." She sighed and propped her forehead on her hand.
Oh, this great economic system! Fold was prepared to hold a lot of things against Miss Information, but right now he could only think about one: the mission in that cat game Kit had derailed by going off to visit her non-sentient relatives. That was where this humanoid woman had truly screwed up royally! Miss Information had interpreted the cat economy's tutorial her own way and had ended up broke right along with the entire cat compound. Imagine: Miss Hint had given some really terrible hints! The only things that had saved them were the complete absence of a bad ending in principle and the cats' passionate obsession with playing with paper butterflies on strings.
He really wanted to remind her of that triumph. Main concerns were: acute bruising of her pride, a reaction involving a pained expression, and her having to admit that Fold wasn't always the dead weight on their team.
"Even if I had a hundred million on your precious balance... You're a witch!!!" The flabbergasted look she gave him told him he'd chosen the wrong word. "You don't need to buy things! You can materialize them at the snap of a fingers! With your tablet!!!"
"My pancakes come out absolutely terrible," Miss Information admitted, with clear reluctance. "And honestly all food does. Plus, every materialization takes energy and has cooldown—when here, free money is literally raining from the sky, just grab it while you can!" He had to grant her that one. "Anyway, we're not here to shop. We're here for quality recreation. And if you can't pay for yourself, you'll be contributing in another way! Make yourself useful for once…"
Make himself useful, she said. Why not counterfeit currency? What was wrong with turning himself into a banknote and becoming an endless inflation generator?
She thought in very strange ways. It could be treated as a ride at an amusement park. And frankly, as far as ideas went, they weren't terrible—just a little flamboyant. This kind of nonsense would definitely help take their mind off; they'd never done anything like this on a mission before.
So: finish the pancakes, spend the evening pretending that the sight of Miss Information made his knees weak, in order to successfully exploit seasonal discounts and bonuses. Experience the novel sensation of being completely unhinged: the level couldn't be ruined because there weren't any, abusing the system would have no long-term consequences, and exploiting the backdoors was practically encouraged. Was exploiting an accomplice?..
The pancakes were pretty good, actually.
Fold went searching for the catch—and ended up, proudly, performing the role of a stoic stage prop. It was a genius evil plan! They were essentially hacking a claw machine to pick up a prize every single time. Every scheme went off without a hitch as long as he let Miss Information take his arm: for some reason, the sight of her hooking onto his forearm (escorting a high-risk criminal to his cell, judging by her manners) made vendors absolutely melt, and they happily sold their goods at a markdown. Today was their (or rather, "their") holiday, and the local businesspeople knew their holiday weekend sales tactics cold — on the second attempt someone pushed matching keychains on them, and Fold handed her the one with the fat sleeping cat without a second thought.
Team spirit! After wandering off in search of something more substantial than sickeningly sweet pancakes, they hit the jackpot: some diner was running a contest for "the couple with the most electric chemistry", offering a massive serving of fried cheese to the winner. The things people will do out of competitive spirit!.. Miss Information summoned the brightest mind of the modern era2
"Oh, for the love of—" Fold muttered, turning away and wincing to avoid meeting her eyes. Her protocol: to get her accomplice to face her, she needed to kick him lightly on the shin, then slide her foot around under the table with patient deliberation. If that had insufficient effect, throw her leg across his lap, at which point the startled face of her partner would materialize in front of her in an instant. "That's a foul move!!!"
"Do something," Miss Information said, voice low, eyebrows raised, eyes half-closed, waiting for his suggestion.
"What do you want?!" he shot back, matching her half-whisper, sarcasm dripping. "What am I supposed to do? Start with harassment, or should we spare the waitstaff?"
"I don't know, push my hair back or something, literally anything!" She rolled her eyes, unimpressed by the humor, and leaned forward.
"Your hair's perfectly fine! And then you'll complain it's greasy..." For the first time in a long while, something resembling a pleased expression appeared on Miss Information's face. Slightly gloating, but still happy, judging by the faint crinkles in the corners of her eyes. He combed his fingers through a strand, thinking about where he was supposed to look—at her, or at some third point in the room—then worked his fingers through her hair, and in two smooth motions tucked it behind her ear and left it alone.
Wait—she switched shampoo? Not that Fold paid any close attention to her hygiene routine, but her ponytail usually smelled like one particular terrible synthetic scent, and now it was something different. Probably that purple stuff she'd gotten which was supposed to make her less of a redhead (for the life of him, he had never understood in what sense Miss Information counted as a redhead).
"Is that good enough?" He finished with what he thought was a natural touch—dragging his thumb along her cheek—which made her twitch her lip and barely manage not to burst out laughing. She nodded.
Over the course of the contest, Miss Information had laced her fingers through his at least twenty times, kept hanging off his neck, and at the end, with an exhausted sigh, remarked that it was painfully obvious he came from a game with no romantic component whatsoever. They won the cheese by a landslide. The sun was still high.
She must have a theatre degree somewhere.
The masquerade was starting to take on a strange quality. Fold performed his role without complaint for exactly as long as he was certain it was all a bluff. Part of the job, a clever plan devised by a tandem of tacticians, there wasn't anything difficult about doing things that in normal teamwork would be slightly beyond the pale.
"You know, frankly, you're making me a little uneasy," he finally managed to say, after they'd finished convincing a market vendor that a holster was an excellent Valentine's Day gift for a loved one. "I mean—you've really gotten into character! Haven't you had enough yet?" He gave her a reproachful look, hoping it would work like a vaccine against excessive displays of affection. He exhaled sharply and went on: "I'd like to think you have some kind of script and you just haven't shared it yet! And that eventually all of this will cohere into some kind of narrative arc... I can't believe this—you're using me like an object!" The carefully phrased accusations, which placed no blame on her for anything so gauche as the expressive fondness, were meant to insulate Fold from any future fallout. "The last time something like this was even remotely acceptable was during that mission in the origami-and-rain game. And at least there the setting justified it, but here—"
"Ah, the one where you spent the entire time being completely fixated on that short-haired journalist girl?" Miss Information laughed, as if he'd just reminded her of one of her fondest memories. "Yes, folding skewed paper cranes really did serve the greater good... Here it's even simpler: we're pretending to be who we aren't, for profit. So what are you upset about?"
He wasn't upset!!! Honestly, it was hard to actually be angry when his colleague randomly started tracing the toe of her boot up and down his ankle—all of Fold's dramatic outbursts were now effectively defused by that simple trick, which made him snap to attention and set his heart racing like a hummingbird's. Investigating an in-game crime, finding the killer before the rain reach critical levels, pulling off gymnastic stunts to nail some QTE—that was where he was prepared to see Miss Information in her role as the commanding general who could shut him up. Not in a mobile strategy game with microtransactions!!!
He was starting to notice how everything in him tensed up the moment he thought about this schemer—the urge to facepalm at every jab and provocation was overwhelming, but there were no words to articulate it properly.
Worth running an experiment: maybe she liked this flustered version of him, and if Fold tried playing it cool, Miss Information would come to her senses?
After scoring a free half-litre cocktail and a new cap, she declared that she wanted to ride the monorail. It was going to be closed anyway, she said, so they had to take advantage while they could, and she absolutely needed to get to the other side of the city...3
Trying to figure out what the woman actually wanted, Fold found himself nodding along, surprised by his own willingness, and went with her on this tourist-entertainment excursion.
"Two tickets, please. Are there any special offers for the occasion?" she asked, leaning on the counter at the ticket booth.
Drunk with a sense of impunity, Fold grabbed her by the waist.
"Keep your hands to yourself," Miss Information shushed, still holding a pleasant expression for the cashier, and rapped him on the back of the hand.
What did she want, for once?! Perfect realism, theatrical flair, or did she want her old paper idiot back, the one she could mess with endlessly? He was trying (first and foremost getting a grip and do not letting himself go daft), and no one could appreciate his role of a decorative escort! Fear-stricken Don Juan4 clicked his tongue and folded his hands behind his back.
Thoroughly confused, he gave an irritated headshake and shot her a flummoxed look, mouth half-open in outrage, just as they reached the platform.
"You just— did it without warning! I figured you'd keep staring into space like usual..." Miss Information waved it away, turning aside and lifting her chin. The long metal tube of the monorail pulled into the station.
Maybe he'd thrown her off her prepared course, and now Miss Information would come to her senses, stop harassing him and start actually taking him seriously! For a moment it did seem like she had that sharp look (like she was driving piles5) on her face—but that assumption lasted all of two seconds, just long enough for him to notice his dear partner biting her lip.
Perfume and mists emanating from her, she took a seat near the window6, crossed her legs, folded her arms on his shoulder, and dropped her chin onto them, chattering brightly about their KGB of a workplace7. Fold, as though someone had touched a live wire to him, had one prayer: that she would finally figure out what she actually wanted. Whether he was supposed to keep playing along or not. And why they were playing lovebirds when they'd already passed boarding control. They'd already gotten the senior discount on the tickets—what more could she possibly want?
On one hand, this was humiliating. No, it was humiliating from every possible angle: she was squeezing his hand, leaning her head against him, and he was sitting there unraveling, not knowing where to look. She was saying something sharp about timing and the art of pressing buttons at the right moment. Fold wasn't really listening: Miss Information's fingers were gripping his hand with an unexpected softness, without the usual desire to pop his joints out of place, and the setting sun was threading such beautiful copper lights through her hair, making it genuinely reddish for once, and every thought he had was simply melting away. Any minute now an explosion could occur, dwarfing the nuclear one: the corner of his mouth, twisted with strain, was going to snap and yell something awful, his eye was going to burst blood vessels from sheer aggravation, and the insufferable feeling of mixed-up origin would force itself out as a demand to abandon the mission immediately. No! He had to play furniture until they got off at their stop, and then the whole charade would be over. If Miss Information got even a single hint that these theatrics, however embarrassing, suited him just slightly more than they should—the delicate balance of their dynamic would shatter, and a moment of weakness would become the rocket fuel for her flaming wit.
On the other hand—this feeling. Being useful. Someone actually needed him—even if it was an unhinged Machiavellian who would spend forty minutes walking him arm-in-arm through the market to save two percent, if it gave her an excuse to negotiate harder. Miss Information had stated it directly: he was an integral, one might even say key, part of the operation, and those words he liked to turn over and over in the pauses between "performances", marveling at the frankness his partner had descended to.
And on the third hand... wait, there wasn't one... In sum, Fold was ready to ignite like a match, blow up from the uncertainty, scream like a toddler, "What is this? WHAT IS THIS???" For Miss Information this was all some plan, a five-step scheme with a double false bottom, and in her violet eyes, watching him with such cruel amusement after every new stunt, he saw nothing but cold calculation. She'd pulled bigger cons than this! At first, this economic-strategy world had been just a backdrop for a fun afternoon. Now, however, it seemed that their little act as inseparable shopaholics had become the backdrop for something far less familiar.
This was looking less and less like a day off. Stepping out at their stop, she announced that she needed, hold on, new makeup. This maneuver existed solely to drive him to a nervous breakdown.
"Can we at least meet back here in an hour?!" he pleaded, watching her silhouette retreat inexorably. "What possible sale requires a boyfriend to be present?!"
"A boyfriend? I could've hauled a cardboard cutout around with equal success, shame you can't fit one on the ship!" Miss Information suddenly spun on her heel, jabbed a finger at him, and thumped herself on the collarbone. Fold rolled his eyes and followed her anyway.
A deal was a deal; there was no switching horses midstream, and the thought of actually letting her down made Fold feel a strange pang of something uncomfortably close to guilt. And that scrunched nose, as if he'd somehow grievously offended her. What was going on inside her head? At moments, Miss Information's face would settle into what looked like a bored expression, and it seemed almost as if she was annoyed with herself for yanking his chain. She'd look away, sigh, smile, and come back to the teasing—and what on earth was he supposed to make of that?
Up until now his thoughts had mostly orbited around his own embarrassment; every word and gesture had been evaluated purely in terms of how badly it was affecting him personally. That was the behavior of someone who still had some grip on reality. The moment where the paper whiner would lose it completely was still coming.
Miss Information decided she needed to test a purple lipstick she'd spotted in a shop window. Instead of swatching it on her wrist like a normal human being, checking it in different lighting, or at the very least consulting someone with an opinion, she demonstratively (in front of everyone in the store!)—
—kissed him on the cheek.
The urge to laugh—Fold shorted out completely. Miss Information had invented an entirely new category of spam. Now, every twenty minutes, ten, sometimes five—murmuring "but this is our first holiday together" (which must have worked like hypnosis on the merchants)—she'd lean in close, exhale like she was psyching herself up for some important undertaking, sometimes cup his face in her hands in her best silver-screen fashion, press her lips to her target, tuck her nose into his cheek and linger there for a criminally long moment, then critically assess the lipstick mark—and almost always reach the conclusion that it wasn't her shade.
Absolutely diabolical. They would have hired her at the Stasi; this kind of psychological torture that turns a human heart inside out and drives a person mad slowly, methodically, in the precise way Guinness World Record holders eat airplanes, would have been welcomed with open arms.
The touches left him with a tickling, absurd warmth. Absurd, because they were doing it to barter for a discount. He kept darting his eyes across her face, desperately trying to read what the actress was thinking, and didn't notice how he sometimes forgot to breathe. Every moment lasted so torturously little, and Fold caught himself thinking he hoped she never found a lipstick she actually liked, and just kept conducting her testing on him instead.
"No, I think I'll keep looking..." Miss Information would usually say, wiping her lips with a cotton pad, and Fold would nod dutifully, not trusting himself to say a single word. If he opened his mouth, it would be obvious his voice was shaking. That wasn't normal. It was like striking a chord, as if she'd spent the last several weeks carefully calculating how best to get to him.
What if she had no ulterior motive at all, and Miss Information was simply not in her right mind?
He was hopelessly slow! She'd called him that at least three times; he didn't have the energy to argue, because by that evening (and henceforth) Fold was living from one touch to the next, and didn't know he could start dreading sunsets. The fun was running out, and he, a very complicated mechanism, had been taken apart and all his parts scrambled together; no instruction manual, urgent reassembly required. How could he put himself back together? How could he stop being thrown off by every new move she made? Having swung from extreme agitation and buzzing energy, irritable-but-wired chattiness, Fold now walked around like he'd been running on fumes.
That drive in the way she carried herself, that determination: chin up, composed, saving face no matter what... He'd have compared her to a pistol—for the character, and the aim!8 All the locations in this world were blurring into one big mess, but the origami-and-rain game was surfacing more and more clearly in Fold's memory. If that non-linear nightmare with its four playable characters had ended in a Syntax victory, then Miss Information's plan today was also going to lead them somewhere, wasn't it? Turning himself into a paper crane, would he save the day this time, or would the cold rain flood the cage, and all the trust he'd placed in his colleague's judgment come to nothing?
There probably weren't cheat codes for games like these.
Doing the math, Fold arrived at the conclusion that they were, in reality, steadily sinking deeper into financial ruin: the total discount didn't come close to justifying the time investment, and they were burning too much effort maintaining the credibility of their cover. There were a reason "scam" and "sale" were practically the same word9. The clueless NPCs would have bought into their act anyway, and Miss Information was trying way too hard. They weren't actually profiting.
A psychological experiment??? A polygraph test??? She didn't even flinch anymore when he put his arm around her shoulders. Confirmed in the photo booth, which gave them their photos for free thanks to an attendant who believed the story that the machine printed poorly and they were saving up for a wedding and couldn't afford reprints.
By the end of the day, they completely disappeared up their own fabrications. Fold was testing exactly how much nonsense the locals would swallow, and was outdoing himself on every attempt. He was definitely starting to come unglued.
Miss Information spent more time watching his dazed, bewildered expression than smiling at cashiers. She just laughed louder and louder, savoring her power over him, wearing that breezy, wide-eyed expression like she had no idea what he was going on about. Humming to herself at most, arching her brows in that little concerned way, waiting to see some kind of dawning understanding in his eyes. Inventing new tricks, extracting reactions from him by hook or by crook.
No, but it couldn't all just be... this, could it? She really was a witch (in a way), and she really didn't need to buy things... The con had made Fold hopelessly soft and simultaneously driven him to the edge. More and more often he found himself barking something incoherent at clueless passerby NPCs—things people usually only said between just the two of them—shaking his head and fantasizing about tearing Miss Information's head off. Then immediately wanting to reattach it, so his resourceful colleague could find an excuse to throw her arms around him again. The fact that thoughts like these were occurring repeatedly was beginning to genuinely alarm him.
The utopian city in the blaze of its nighttime lights, though, made him feel something like desolation and despair. He'd spent the whole morning begging the sun to set already so this unbearable day could end; now he was prepared to endure this commercial circus as long as it wanted to run, and would have given anything to visit the sandbox game again.
The duality of it all! Her ridiculous suggestions and her equally ridiculous ideas—he wanted to respond with a cutting remark, say something sharp, cringe at how stupid and saccharine her latest scheme sounded. And then sigh and go along with it anyway, shove the scalding embarrassment somewhere it wouldn't bother him, and bask in the unexpected tenderness coming from his stern, haughty Miss Information.
This endless internal conflict was going to put him in an early grave.
"Okay, enough of this!" Fold whined, completely drained, the moment she opened her mouth about yet another scheme and pointed toward the nearest market. "I've got nothing left! We have to go back!"
"Wow, they only made it to evening?" Miss Information gloated, surveying his wrecked face with satisfaction. Dark out. Even the "closed" signs were hard to read, she probably should have guessed it from his tone. "Fine, let's at least stop by the stationery store, pick you up some glue to fix your hurt feelings—"
"Who do you think you are?! What do you mean by all of this, all your insane little games?!" Instead of going along with her suggestion as he apparently had trained himself to do, he stepped in front of her, blocking her way, and stated flatly: "First you drag me through every humiliation known to man, and then you decide to be tender—what am I supposed to make of that? What was any of that, exactly?"
"You really want to know?" Miss Information stopped and tilted her head. That expression—like she was about to laugh while watching a classic comedy she'd already seen, knowing what was going to happen but watching with the same fascinated interest anyway, jabbing at the screen and going "he was so good when he was young, shame how he turned out."
"Yes! I am so sick of your half-hints!"
"Are you! You've spent half the day staring at my chest until you were basically sweating, and you spent the rest of it trembling because your cheeks were getting wet from all the kisses—" She found the nearest bench and dropped onto it.
"That was for you!" he shot back, wounded, still basically screaming at her like a village idiot. "As we agreed! Backing up your deranged plan! I can't show up in front of Warrick by myself! We're a team, God help me, give us any stupid job and we'll get it done—"
"How generous!" Miss Information threw up her hands. "It sounds like you've actually worked it all out. So, what's with the tantrum?"
"The vendors don't even need convincing! They'd believe anything! All of it was completely unnecessary, the whole performance! Why the show, does it just entertain you that much?!" At this she raised an eyebrow.
"Well, our balance is still in the positive thanks to those 'idiots'—"
"Liar! You don't care about that!" Having caught Miss Information in the lie, Fold burst into smug (and still furious) laughter; it didn't actually make him feel better, and his colleague just rested her chin on her hand and watched her favorite soap opera. "You just want to torment someone! Me, specifically, not just anyone, and in the most absurd way possible. It's becoming an obsession!"
"Won't deny that."
"Let's go on a roller coaster then, shall we?!" He twirled a finger at his temple, indicating the general status of her marbles. "My treat! You clearly love those, all the drops and g-forces—"
"Fold, what specifically don't you like about that idea?"
"Noth— Everything! I mean! It's— This is insane, you're baiting me into reacting so you can laugh! Couldn't you have found literally anyone else for this little play?"
"You think if I'd ended up in a sandbox game with someone else, I'd be going to all this trouble with them?" More to the point: would anyone else have let her get away with it? "Come on, use your head."
"No, of course not! For some reason you've decided the role of the idiot is reserved for me and no one else! Maybe I should just—"
"And what don't you like about it, exactly?! You play it so well! All I had to do was take your hand and you were already losing your mind—"
"Stop that!"
"—got yourself tangled up in some scheme even after you'd figured out it wasn't profitable! Playing the sidekick is your signature move! Why are you looking at me like that? It was all for the event—"
"You fantasist!"
"—it's just that you're not cut out to be the lead, but picking up someone else's cue—that you do beautifully. So relax, for God's sake, and just keep doing what you're doing—"
"In your presence?!"
"—maybe I even kind of like it that way."
"And why should I care about it?!"
"Does the truth sting?"
"This is crossing every line!" Fold spat, the flare of disorientation that hit him shutting down any capacity for rational thought. "I refuse to be your lackey!"
"Oh, this is bad..."
God, he wanted to give her a proper lesson.
"What kind of circus is this?! Why do you have these weird impulses?! You practically sat in my lap—you think he didn't understand what the bit was?!" Fold meant the vendor, obviously, the one who had taken a tidy sum from their budget. "Of course! You like to make sure things are convincing, so you start with the foreplay! Cranking up the absurdity, right?!"
"Ha, I do it to make absolutely certain! I figure everyone in this city is as perceptive as my paper partner, so I make sure to explain things in very small words."
She bared her teeth, the way she always did, the way that made his blood reach a rolling boil. Endlessly infuriating and endlessly familiar! If Fold didn't look away right now, he was going to start foaming at the mouth.
"You're impossible! Acting like we've been married for fifty years—" she blinked twice "—when what we were actually supposed to convince the vendors was that we'd met two weeks ago and were already at the kissing-in-doorways stage! You... You've got—"
Oh, how badly he wanted her to be the one to lose the thread—to flip the frame on her, pull the rug out, get in the last word.
"Convince, then!" Miss Information made a sweeping theatrical gesture, like a master of ceremonies welcoming the audience to a beloved musical. The audience, as it happened, was just one person: someone with a twitching eye who wanted nothing more than for this absurd conversation to end. "Nothing like physical evidence. The whole city will give you a standing ovation!" And she burst out laughing.
She deserved some recklessness.
"What even… You start all of this, and now you—" Fold looked ready to snarl, then took a ragged breath, gathered himself, and yelled at the top of his lungs: "You're trying to bait me?!"
"Took you long enough!"
She's asking for it. She doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't know what she wants.
"Fine then! IDIOT!"
Fold leaned in. Miss Information leaned to meet him.
A smug smile remained on her face, and she kissed him greedily, as if this was all she had been waiting for, but the further this disgrace went on, the more noticeably her victorious self-confidence began to burst at the seams.
Bent forward, he pulled back sharply, just to check... No. Not imagining it. Unawares! He squinted and pressed forward again immediately, heard Miss Information laughing against him, and then felt a hand settle at the back of his head. No cyanide capsules in her mouth—nothing to bite down on, so the mission wasn't suicidal. She was clearly enjoying his final and complete moral collapse. Oh, that warm, quick breath—that ridiculous megalomaniac10, catching herself, gasping slightly, the corners of her lips pulling up…
Fold pulled away in a jerk, with an expression that was somewhere between outraged and pitiful, and dragged the back of his hand across his face, leaving a smeared purple mark. She was still there with her lips parted, not a single sharp comeback presenting itself. Just blank, scanning his face.
Surprised. Pleasantly surprised.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" he pressed on, fully expecting the world to detonate in red and shatter into pieces at any moment.
In reply—enamoured and triumphant11—completely different from the performative peck this morning, different from the calculated sampling earlier, maybe even softly, Miss Information stood up and kissed him again.
Oh.
Oh!
Damn!
The answer was so simple and so obvious that he wanted to contest it purely on principle. The process by which paper is made12is described in precise detail, remembering to add that a whole bucket of pink dye was generously mixed into the wood pulp. He felt especially foolish for his unshakeable conviction that the whole performance had been nothing but an extravagant trolling method. Well, not only that...
With Miss Information, he'd always wanted, above all, to get even; the possibility of becoming the central figure in a mission she'd engineered for them had simply never crossed his mind. Her image had probably been taking up too much space in his head, crowding out her plans entirely, which was why he had no bandwidth left to interpret a fairly straightforward maneuver.
Further deliberation was, as it happened, being blocked by that same image—this time quite real and hovering directly in front of his eye, having condescended to rise from her bench for the sake of this grand development.
"So, given all that—" Fold swallowed and made a vague, conciliatory gesture. His eye darted around; he'd been on top of things for approximately half a second, right up until it became apparent that Miss Information liked surprises. And even more she liked tearing the wrapping paper off them. Under what felt like the pressure of a loaded gun, he blurted out: "What a piece of work you are!"
"Still unhappy," Miss Information said with a tsk, a playful gleam in her eyes. "Say one more word and I'll stop."
"In that case," he said, fighting not to dissolve into a smile, with a performative eye-roll, "I'm saying absolutely nothing."
"You're not even going to ask what this is about?"
/"Dear Miss Information, would you please care to explain why you've been on a tear all day,"/ something like that had been on the tip of his tongue, but Fold heroically suppressed the temptation and just nodded. Why did she always have to take the scenic route when there was a perfectly direct, obvious, explanation-free road right there? What was the point of testing him with greed, desire, and decency, when she knew her paper partner would start absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck the second she brushed against his hand while passing something over?
This absolutely unhinged day in the sandbox game would echo with a whole spectrum of feelings, but first and foremost with an extreme (positively charged!) awkwardness, and with a deep, abiding distaste for economic simulators.
"Was all of that really necessary? Couldn't you just have said what you meant, without all the tricks and the— all of it?!" he said, exhausted, taking a cautious step back on the off chance she decided to revert to form and answer him with conduct unbefitting a good sport. Red card in the referee's hand for the second time tonight. "I nearly lost my mind. I thought I was starting to see meanings where there weren't any..."
"Well, first of all," Miss Information said, smiling that sly smile of hers, clearly savoring how close she'd come to driving her companion into full delirium. "If it had all been that easy, you'd have felt the feeling too early. I couldn't just let you turn to mush right away."