Kaldalis was surprised when he finally got to the fishing deck off the back of the ship. Not only was he not alone, but it was Myrin who had beat him there. He thought she would still be at the prow with the others. As he got out his bamboo rod and stepped up to the railing to cast out his line, she offered him a handful of pale perch, which he happily added to the growing stack in his inventory.

“Surprised to see you here,” Kaldalis said as his line hit the water.

“And I’m surprised to beat you here,” Myrin said with a smirk. “I didn’t think anything could keep you from fishing.”

“Garyung ambushed me,” Kaldalis said, shrugging. “He had some big business to discuss.”

“State secrets? Or can you talk about it?”

“He didn’t say.” Kaldalis sighed. “And I didn’t clarify with him before I fucked off to get here, so I should probably err on the side of caution.”

Myrin grunted in acknowledgement, but said nothing else. While she physically turned her attention to her line in the water, Kaldalis could still sense that she was focused on him. He couldn’t quite figure out why. Was there something in his teeth? His close-cropped hair was starting to grow out, but it was still three or four weeks away from being long enough for him to be able to have a bad hair day.

For a moment, Kaldalis was concerned that she wanted to confront him about Heluna. Myrin was one of the only people who knew he was dating an NPC, and they hadn’t really talked about it. She had given him some good-natured teasing about it, but gentle snark was neither approval nor disapproval. Was she going to tell him off about his unnatural relationship with an AI?

Internally, Kaldalis brought up his defenses. The last thing he wanted was to try and play off his very real feelings like a joke, but his limited social skills screamed at him to sidestep the confrontation in any way possible. If Myrin brought up Heluna, he had to figure there was no way for that conversation to end painlessly, and if it was going to suck either way, he’d be happier with himself if he stood his ground.

“So,” Myrin said at last, once Kaldalis had built up his inner walls. “How are you feeling?”

Kaldalis wasn’t sure how to approach this question from his defensive position. Fortunately, something started to pull on his line and so he allowed it to be a distraction for a minute to let him think. His fishing skill made fishing demonstrably easier as he fished up a sapphire-blue marlin with only a moderate struggle. A larger specimen of the same fish had nearly pulled Aurigeant off the back of the Persimmon on Kaldalis’s first boat trip. With his skill capped at 75, the same fish was barely a challenge.

“What do you mean?” Kaldalis ventured when he threw his line back out. “I’m feeling fine. I'm a bit anxious about the upcoming trial, but that’s what fishing is for, right?”

“I mean that you’ve been through some serious shit,” Myrin said. “I know you haven’t really talked about it, but we did kind of walk in on you in the middle of being attacked by the Jormongumo boss monster before.” She visibly shuddered for a moment. “Given what we know about how they operate, I don’t think I want to hear what you went through.”

Kaldalis grimaced. Myrin was right about that. Ara had ambushed and assaulted him in the most unpleasant manner possible, and having to face her down again was an emotionally damaging experience for him. What was even worse was the possibility that she was still out there somewhere in the jungles around Cotanaku.

No, not a possibility. Certainty. Onirioago’s new ability to cheat death came from the tablets hidden in the Jormongumo’s town. Ara - and possibly all the snake-spider monsters - had that same ability. With the information he had now, he might be able to capture her by locking her corpse up in a cell so that she would respawn in captivity, but they’d killed her and left the body in the jungle. She was going to have at least one more shot at him. He’d only narrowly escaped her coiling clutches twice now. If the third time was the charm…

He tried to imagine the logistics of pulling out the War Weapon he’d taken off of Onirioago and throwing himself down on it, and how well he could execute on that if Ara was actively trying to capture him.

“I just want to make sure you’re dealing with it,” Myrin said, interrupting his train of thought. “I want to make sure you’re not pushing it all down inside.”

“I’m fine,” Kaldalis lied. “This game is a serious mindfuck for a lot of reasons, and one little trauma is pretty far from the worst one.”

“What do you mean?” Myrin asked. She grunted as something caught her line, but it was a small fish, and she reeled it in quickly. Once she had the wedge-shaped herring in hand, she gave him an expectant look.

“I mean…” Kaldalis trailed off. What did he mean? “Who am I?” He asked, though the question was more for himself rather than Myrin. “This game is fucking with my sense of identity. I’ve been called Kaldalis before, but it’s always been a username, not a person. Every day, memories of my real life feel more and more like a TV show I grew up with rather than events I actually lived.”

Myrin stopped herself mid-cast and looked at him with obvious concern.

“I’ve been swept up in events so much lately, it takes an active effort to think of myself as Dylan anymore,” Kaldalis continued. “Especially with how the NPCs in this world are all lowkey racist against PCs. The social constructs here encourage us to roleplay super hard. And we never stop roleplaying, morning, noon, and night. It’s fucked up, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Shit,” Myrin said at last, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t relate. Maybe it’s because my lived experience has always made me have two lives. My home life growing up was always Spanish-speaking and drenched in my parents’ culture, but going to school and college and grad school and work always meant I had to hide that part of me.” She shrugged as she threw her line out into the ocean again. “I’ve always been both Elisa and Elisa,” she continued, the name spoken in a lilting Hispanic accent the first time, and a very blunted American accent the second, “so Myrin is just a third name for me.”

Kaldalis blinked for a minute, momentarily stunned. He didn’t know why he’d thought his experiences were universal.

“It might be that I miss my family, though,” Myrin said when Kaldalis didn’t respond. “I knew I would, but in the quiet moments - like this whole boat trip - I feel like being at summer camp. I’m homesick. When I’m alone, I talk to my stream and wonder if anyone is watching. Like… Hi mom! Are you there? Love you. Hope cousin Eddy is feeling better.” She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant even as her cheeks were visibly flushing pink. “You know. Stuff like that.”

Kaldalis realized that the experiences of his life as Dylan weren’t universal either. He didn’t really talk to his family a lot. He’d talk to his mom once every few months, but not on a regular schedule. He talked to his real-life sister twice a year on birthdays. His social life had always featured his friends more prominently than his family. He knew he’d do anything for his sister - more than he would do for a friend - but keeping regular correspondence wasn’t part of that.

Maybe that was the core of the problem. Myrin - or, rather, Elisa - had her family as a tether to her real self. Dylan didn’t have that. His real social connections - his family - was here. Balrim, Myrin, Reno, and Ess were his social life now. Kaldalis didn’t have anything outside of the game world to tether him to Dylan.

Of course, there was no way to explain that to Myrin now. He’d made a family in this world that he cared so much for that he was losing his sense of the real world. How could he say that without it coming out as sappy anime tropes?

“Maybe that will help,” He said at last. “If I talk to my stream, maybe that’ll help me keep track of myself.”

“Maybe,” Myrin said. Though something caught her line, distracting her. “As long as you’re taking care of yourself, Kal.”

He was happy to let the conversation lie there. He felt good about being able to dodge the heavier conversation about Ara, and he was somewhat hopeful that going another day without a confrontation about Heluna meant that no such attack was coming. Though he found himself wondering about his stream. How was he doing? Was his viewership up? Had other people like Myrin proved to be better streamers than him by talking to their stream more frequently? Had the new people joining the game spread the viewership support thinner?

He found himself suddenly slightly anxious about keeping Ess around, since she was independently famous. If people could watch the legendary SeventyEight without missing any of the crazy adventures that Kaldalis had built his brand around, why would they support him instead? There was no way to find out, though. Not immediately.

“Speaking of the stream,” Kaldalis said, “when is the next payout supposed to happen? I feel like it’s been about a month since last time.”

“Fuck if I know,” Myrin grunted, struggling with another fish. “Ask Reno; she’s probably the one who knows the exact date from the outside. Or Balrim, since he’s better at keeping track of days than I am.”

Kaldalis grunted, but paused between casts. He wanted to run and see if he could find Reno, but more than that, he needed to put a few more Pale Perch into his stack. Ten thousand was a lot of fish, and losing the time to make the progress was going to hurt. Instead, he used the pause to open his pet menu and pull out Ein, the energetic corgi pup who had been his fishing companion for a long time.

The dog promptly started running laps on the fishing deck, wearing himself out as Kaldalis threw his line back into the ocean. Ten more minutes of fishing wouldn’t hurt anything.