The Simulacrum

Summer nights had a certain… atmosphere? Vibe? Je ne sais quoi?

One of those three. At any rate, there was something special in the air, and I wasn't talking about the scent of freshly roasted bacon and marshmallows. The moonlight above and the gently burning flames of the campfire below created a picturesque scene right out of an advertisement booklet.

Come to Whatsitsname Park! Wonder at the beauty of nature! Sleep under the blanket of stars! Wrestle a bear! An unforgettable experience! (Disclaimer: Bear is not included in the basic package. For further information, contact customer support at this and that number.)

Or something like that. In any case, this was one of the rare few occasions when Far Sighting a scene like this made me a bit bummed out, because the gang sitting around the campfire looked really fun and cosy and I was feeling a bit left out.

"It's dark now," the class rep spoke up. She was the only one wrapped in a blanket (and a nice plaid one at that), and she pointed a finger at the sky. "Where are they?"

"They never said how dark," Judy replied glibly, and she even put an unusual amount of emphasis in her response.

It didn't impress Ammy. She let her hand down and glanced over her shoulder.

"I know I'm the one who proposed the plan, but this still feels off. What if we get ambushed?"

"I'm not too worried," Josh spoke nonchalantly, even as he casually soaked the excess fat off a piece of roasted bacon with a slice of bread. He blew on it before extending his skewer over the fire again, then added, "We beat an arch-mage the other day. I think we can deal with anything at this point."

"You say that as if it was easy," the class rep continued to mope and sidled closer to the fire.

"I mean, it wasn't that hard," Josh argued back, only to twitch when Penny chimed in from the other bench.

"Yeah, but if Brother didn't give us guidance, it could've dragged out much longer. Right, Snowy?"

My Abyssal sister blinked in surprise. She probably didn't understand why Penny was looking for her approval, but she eventually nodded along.

"S-Sure. I never would've considered healing the arch-mage to hurt her."

"Me neither!" came the next exclamation from Angie, and after blowing on her marshmallow a few times, she cheerfully added, "It was such a crazy idea! Only Leo could've come up with something like that!" She then paused and brought the marshmallow over to her mouth. "Okay, Grandpa. It's your turn. Make sure you don't burn our tongue this time."

Her eyes abruptly shifted to amber, and then Deus rolled them with a grumpy, "It wasn't my fault," before biting into the treat.

In the meantime, Judy muttered a quiet, "It was rather obvious in retrospect," which then caused the princess sitting next to her to blurt out a surprised, "Was it?"

My dear assistant gestured at her to lean closer, then whispered directly into her ear.

"It's a trope, related to the Puzzle Boss one, where the heroes have to find the loophole in a seemingly invincible enemy's abilities to deal damage to them. It's rather common."

"Is it?"

"Yes. I would've thought of it sooner or later. I think."

"Hey, what are you two whispering about? Is it a secret?" Angie accused them with a skewer aimed at them like a rapier. Thankfully, the distance (and the half-eaten marshmallow still stuck at the end of it) made it less threatening and more comical.

"Kind of?"

Elly's ambivalent response made everyone look at her funny, but then, before things could get awkward, Penny suddenly hammered her palm with her fist and let out a loud, "Ah!" sound.

"W-What?!"

Ammy almost fell off the bench in her surprise, which in turn caused Josh to jump to his feet and hold out his skewer like a sword, eyes scanning the woods around them. There was an awkward silence hanging over the clearing for a few seconds, right until Penny also stood up and showed her palms.

"A-Awawa! W-Wait! I just remembered something! No need to be alarmed!"

"Didn't you say you weren't worried, Boy? No need to be so skittish," Deus spoke up again with a smirk, and made a vague gesture at the edge of the clearing. "Polemos's little sister set up the wards, didn't she? Nobody will sneak up on us without our knowledge!"

After declaring so, she let out a soft huff and then proceeded to eat the other half of the marshmallow, and… was it just me, or have these two been switching on the drop of a hat as of late?

"I'm not skittish," Josh grumbled, but seeing that she was already lost in her own world with the roasted pastry, he sat back down and turned to my still-standing Knightly sister instead. "So? What did you remember? Is it something important?"

"N-No, not really…" Penny fidgeted for a while, but didn't take a seat, and instead she made a gesture towards the campfire. "It's just that… we're camping out right now, right?"

"Until they get here, yes," Judy commented in the affirmative, and my Knightly sister repeatedly nodded.

"Right, right, but we don't know when they'll arrive, so how about we do something fun to pass the time?"

"Aren't we already doing something like that?" Deus asked and pointed at the empty skewer in her hand. "Boy? Do we have more of these white fluffy candies?"

While Josh was checking that, Elly's eyes lit up and she exclaimed, "Oh, oh! Are we telling ghost stories!"

"No!" Penny snapped and crossed her forearms in front of her. "No scary stories! I was thinking about something else!" Seeing that all eyes were on her, she let her hands down and muttered, "Stupid ghosts. They don't even exist."

"They do, actually," Ammy noted absently, but wisely fell silent when my Knightly sister glared at her.

"They don't, and it's final!" Seeing that the class rep didn't argue, she smugly cleared her throat, as if she had just won a difficult academic debate, and began to explain her idea while wildly gesticulating. "Back during training, we used to play this game! It's like… we sit down in a circle, like we do right now, and then someone tells a secret, or something embarrassing, like what they're afraid of. If everyone's satisfied with it, then they pick the next person, and they have to tell an even bigger secret, or a more embarrassing story!"

"So it's essentially truth or dare," Judy stated, and Elly nodded along.

"Just without a dare! Or… what if the group isn't satisfied with what they hear? Is there a punishment?"

"Erm… Back then, the loser had to volunteer for night guard duty."

"Makes sense," Judy mused, though she didn't sound particularly invested in the conversation. "Are we doing that?"

"I sincerely hope they aren't going to be so late we need night guards…" Ammy griped and pulled her blanket tighter around her back.

Snowy inquired, "So it was more of a penalty game?" a tad uncertainly, and my other sister let out a noncommittal hum.

"Kind of. But it also helped build camaraderie! Sharing your deepest secrets with your fellows builds bonds stronger than steel! Or… so I've heard…"

"If you say so." Josh didn't sound especially interested in the game, but after a long beat, his lips curved into a mischievous smirk, and he pointed at my sister. "Okay, you start."

"W-What?" However, after the first reactive shock, Penny suddenly flashed a smug smirk of her own at him and pointed back. "Haha! Sucker! The earlier you go, the easier it is! You just did me a big favour!"

"Sure, sure. So, what's your big secret?"

Josh's insistent question made her smile wither at once, but after a few long seconds, she came up with something.

"So… you see… Back in the orphanage, I used to sleep with Brother every night!" She held her breath and was waiting to see everyone else's reaction… only to blurt out a confused, "What?" when nobody said anything.

"We're waiting for the embarrassing part."

Judy's explanation only made her look more flabbergasted, so Elly also added, "Or the… secret part? Was that a secret?"

"B-But…" Penny was getting steadily redder, clearly not anticipating that her 'embarrassing secret' would earn her no reaction, but after a few short seconds, she steeled herself and turned her forearms into an 'X' again. "Time out! That one didn't count! My real secret is that… um…" She glanced at Snowy, as if looking for inspiration, and her eyes suddenly lit up. "Ah! I got it! When we tested my Stealth Sigil, I went into the living room and made funny faces at Mom and Judy and Brother, and none of you noticed! It was sooo funny!"

"I still don't see how that's embarrassing, but whatever." Josh swept his gaze over the people around the campfire. "How do we decide if we accept it or not? Do we vote?"

Angie exclaimed a happy-go-lucky, "Sounds good!" and threw her hand in the air, followed by Snowy and my girlfriends as well. Seeing the consensus, Ammy also hurriedly poked a hand out of under her blanket, leaving Josh for last.

"Let's just say you started with a low-ball." He also raised his hand and then gestured for Penny to get on with it. "Okay, who's next?"

"Ah, l-let's go with Snowy!" she declared, and when my Abyssal sister looked startled, she hastily added, "I-I told you! The earlier you go, the easier it is!" The source of this content ɪs noveⅼfire.net

Snowy remained quiet for a while, thinking hard, but then she balled up her hands and asked, "So… uuu… It has to be something embarrassing?"

"Or a secret!" Elly chimed in, sounding oddly into the game.

"Or something you're secretly afraid of," Josh amended, and it made my Abyssal sister's brows descend into a troubled frown.

"In that case… um…" She took a deep breath to prepare herself, then admitted, "I'm… afraid of Noir." That was followed by a long beat and shaking her head. "No, I mean… I think I'm more afraid of going back. To how things used to be before. I… like living with Penny, and Leo, and going to school, so what if…?"

"Stop! Say no more!"

Penny didn't wait for her to finish and suddenly gave her a huge bear-hug. Snowy's eyes opened wide like saucers, but before she could fully collect herself, my other sister moved her face so close their noses almost touched, and she declared, "No matter what happens, you can count on us! The Dunning family leaves no one behind!"

That was sweet and all, but I couldn't help but feel that this whole off-brand truth-or-dare thing was going off the rails right from the start. They didn't even vote on whether her 'secret' was acceptable or not. Anyhow, once everyone reassured Snowy, it was her turn to pick the next 'contestant', and after some thinking, she pointed at my dear assistant.

"Me?" Snowy nodded, so Judy sat up straight and put a finger on her chin. "A secret, or something embarrassing…" She mused for quite a while, but just when the others were getting impatient, she told them, "You know how we have our polifidelous relationship with the Chief?"

"Sure, sure," Angie answered confidently, and while the others were less familiar with the terminology, it wasn't hard to figure out what she meant, so they nodded along.

"Yes. What of it?" Josh pressed her, yet she responded in the exact same nonchalantly deadpan tone.

"The truth is that when we started, I was against it, and I only played along due to external circumstances out of our control."

"Really?" Elly sounded like she had a hard time believing her, but then, after some reflection, she muttered, "Now that I think about it, you used to sulk a lot back then."

"I wasn't sulking, and it wasn't a lot, and even if it was, it was completely justified," she snapped at her, then she hurriedly added, "Never mind. My secret is that I only gave our relationship a less-than-three-point-seven-percent chance of working out, so I was prepared for it breaking down and us returning to a love-triangle at any moment. That, of course, included detailed anti-harem counter-measures against Elly, if the need arose."

"No way!" the princess exclaimed and lightly swiped at her shoulder. "You're pulling my leg!"

"I'm not."

"You're just trying to tease me, aren't you?"

"No, I'm entirely serious."

While my girlfriends bantered, Angie let out a tinkling giggle.

"Hehe. You guys are so cute! I'm happy it all worked out for ya!"

Despite her usual happy-go-lucky tone, Judy found her reaction to be inappropriate, because as soon as the vote was over (and in her favour), she pointed at the Celestial girl.

"Angie, your turn."

"Wha? Really?" She put down her empty skewers and crossed her arms. "So it's gotta something silly and embarrassing?"

Josh blurted out, "Where did the 'silly' bit come from?" but he was summarily ignored when Angie snapped her finger.

"Ah, Judy just reminded me of something! You say that you didn't have much faith in your poly-thingie, but I was totally rooting for you guys, and it looked super cute and wholesome from the outside, so it gave me this silly idea, and I asked Leo about how to get in on the action!" Her proclamation was followed by an especially long beat of awkward silence, and only when she noticed Judy's squint did she realise her paux pas and hastily added, "I mean, not with you guys, but with Josh!"

"Wait, what? You wanted to date another guy, too?"

Hearing her boyfriend's incredulous question made her roll her eyes, and she poked his side with a finger.

"No, you silly-weasel! I got that idea because you used to be such a Casanova-wannabe back then!"

"… Me? When?"

"Back then!" she insisted and gave him one last poke with a huff. "Do you have any idea how scared I was that you'd just start dating someone else one day?"

"If you were, you could've just told me you liked me earlier!"

"I did! I bunch of times!"

Before things could escalate into one of their customary lovers' quarrels, Judy raised a hand.

"I vote for accepting Angie's secret."

"A-Aye?" Snowy raised her hand in a hurry with a 'Am I doing this right?' kind of expression, and soon the others followed suit.

"Okay then, who's next?"

The borderline peevish Celestial perked up at once, and her eyes scanned the group. There weren't a whole lot of options left, and when her gaze met the class rep's, she vigorously shook her head and tried to hide under her blanket. It seemed like Angie would pick her anyway, but then she raised a finger at the sky, and as she let her hand down, she ended up pointing at her own nose instead.

"Deus! I choose you!"

Her eyes immediately switched to a deep honey-yellow. Her face slackened for a blink or two, followed by a furious glare at the finger in front of her.

"Girl! I never agreed to play your game!" She must've responded, but we couldn't hear their inner dialogue. I could only imagine the back and forth based on how her expression kept shifting from one extreme to another, until it ultimately settled in a defeated frown accompanied by a sigh. "Fine." She cleared her throat and continued in a more level and diplomatic tone. "Very well. I hold many great secrets of this world, but those are not what you youngsters are looking for. Let me search the recesses of my mind for a fitting confession…" She rubbed her chin and continued to muse for a while, then suddenly pointed at Josh. "Boy!"

"Y-Yes?"

"Listen to me, because I'm only going to tell you this once! Remember what happened that night, back during our leisurely time at the shores of Elysium?"

"… You have to be a bit more specific than that."

Deus's frown deepened, and she strongly emphasised, "I'm talking about that night."

Josh blinked a few times, but then some kind of revelation flickered in his eyes and he exclaimed, "Oh, riiight. I get it now!" followed by a considerably more subdued, "Erm… what of it?"

"It was me," Deus stated flatly, and while she tried to look superior, her face was still a bit flushed. Not as much as Josh's, and he was looking at her as if he had just seen a ghost.

"No way!"

"I told you I'm not going to repeat myself, Boy. That was my secret." She turned to the side, trying to look dignified while just 'coincidentally' avoiding eye contact with the guy. "Take it or leave it."

The awkward silence in the wake of that exchange was shorter than expected, because Snowy raised her hand again and asked, "Um… H-How do we judge that?"

"Yeah!" Penny backed her by bouncing on their bench with indignation. "If you don't share your secret, it doesn't count!"

"I did share it," Deus insisted.

"But we don't get it," Penny argued back and looked at Josh. "What was that about?"

"Nothing!" Josh responded maybe a bit too vehemently. "Let's… Let's just say that it didn't count, because Deus doesn't play, okay? I'll go next!"

"Wait, can you do that? Can you just skip like that?"

Elly's questions fell on deaf ears, especially when Josh desperately searched for a secret to overshadow whatever the heck Deus just said (I had some ideas, but I digress), his gaze ultimately landing on Snowy. The two stared at each other without uttering a single word, but it didn't mean there was no communication going on between the two.

The bend of her mouth said, 'What?'

Josh's eyebrow responded with, 'Can I?'

Snowy's startled eyes screamed, 'Are you serious?'

The guy's shrug answered, 'Might as well.'

Her frown ultimately settled on, 'It may be for the best.'

All of that happened in the span of about five seconds and culminated in Josh exhaling a theatrical sigh and telling everyone, "I had a crush on Lili."

Before he could get a word in, Penny leapt to her feet and stood between the two.

"You beast! Don't you already have a girlfriend!?"

"Had! Had! Past-tense!" the guy defended himself with his palms raised. "Calm down." Penny let out a huff but otherwise didn't move a muscle, so he started over. "As I said, I used to have a crush on Lili."

"Is that the secret?" Judy asked with a tone that said 'We already knew that', but Josh shook his head.

"No. Or, more like half of it." He sucked in a long breath in preparation. "You see, we dated for a while."

Wait, what?

"Wait, what?" Elly perfectly echoed my sentiment, and even Judy looked stunned for a moment.

However, none of that compared to Penny's reaction, who grabbed my other sister's shoulders and wailed, "Snowy, no! How could you!? You're too good for someone like him! How could you let your standards slip so low!?" She then paused and hastily glanced at Angie. "A-Awawa! N-No offence meant!"

The Celestial responded with a cheerful, "Some taken!" and a wide smile that conspicuously didn't touch her eyes. More importantly, Snowy finally managed to shake off my Knightly sister and get a word in.

"We… It wasn't for long. It was only a trial. To see if it could work out."

"Wait, hold your horses!" Ammy chimed in from under her blanket, looking especially flabbergasted. "How come none of us ever noticed?!"

"It's because we kept it a secret," Josh explained a tad sheepishly. "You know? Because of…"

He purposefully didn't finish his sentence, yet the words 'Leo', 'The Chief', and 'Brother' kept echoing around the campfire.

"So it was a tryout," Judy moved on, and she took out her phone at some point and started taking notes. "How long did it last?"

Josh and Snowy shared a glance, and he replied with, "About a week?"

"Six days," my sister clarified.

"Give or take." Josh shrugged again. "It was fun, but it turned out we weren't really compatible, so we decided not to force it and take it slow, and then…" He glanced at his girlfriend, who was still busy giving the stink-eye to Penny, and he awkwardly concluded with, "You know what happened."

"How far have you gone?" Judy continued to drill them with the detached professionalism of an undergrad student collecting data for their statistics thesis, and it made Josh flush again and Snowy fidget.

"We… held hands?" she admitted. "Oh, and we shared an apple pie, too."

"Was that all?" Judy inquired, and when both of them nodded, Penny let out a relieved breath.

"Oh, thank goodness! That's nothing!" She paused to beam at my other sister and exclaimed, "We held hands lots of times and ate lots of apple pies too! No wonder it didn't last! There's nothing romantic about those, right?"

… At times like this, if I squinted hard enough, I could almost understand why Judy's alleged 'shipping circle' saw something between my sisters, but I wanted to believe that Penny was just that socially inept and wasn't actively raising any flags.

More importantly, if Josh's goal was to divert attention away to Deus's 'confession', then he succeeded with flying colours, because the conversation quickly devolved into Judy and Elly questioning him about the whole trial-date business, while Penny and the class rep formed their own little bubble on the other bench, talking about what happened back then. Then there was Angie/Deus in the middle of it all, the unwitting instigator, the agent of chaos… happily roasting her next marshmallow like this had nothing to do with her at all.

To be perfectly honest though, I was also quite surprised by this development. I knew that Josh fancied Snowy, and for a while she seemed to be in the lead of the relationship race, but at one point the flame between those two just died off, and then the whole childhood-friend-romance trope happened, and it was kind of swept under the rug. That said, I did remember Josh mentioning to me that he liked Snowy, but they just 'didn't have enough in common', so maybe that was the result of this trial-relationship thing?

Which brought us back to the main question: just how did I miss that? Judy wasn't even exaggerating when she said it was a common trope; we should've been on the lookout for it! Now, granted, if Josh and Snowy were actively trying to hide it from us, and it only lasted for a week, then it could've flown under the radar, especially if it happened at a time when I was busy dealing with some bloody annoyance or scheming up a storm, but still… What else could I have missed like that?

Anyhow, after the initial buzz died down, it was time to continue the game, but before Josh could point at the mortified class rep…

"Wait." Snowy perked up and looked over her shoulder. "The wards just reacted. Someone's coming."

"Oh, thank Sophia…" She whispered, only to blink and then hurriedly murmur, "No, I wasn't calling you, Grimmy. It's just an idiom."

While that was going on, the rest all focused their attention on one of the roads leading into the clearing, and before long, a lone individual's outline came into view. The tall and slender figure, dressed in jeans and a loose dark blouse, continued to approach them without any guile or apprehension, and it wasn't until the moment the light of the campfire illuminated the newcomer's face that she spoke up.

"Buonasera. I hope I didn't make you wait for long."

The thick faux-Italian accent was a dead giveaway, but to be clear, it was Corbeau Kishar, Abyssal agent, alleged phantom thief, and House Nergal's liaison. That last bit should've raised some alarms, but both she and the gang remained nonchalant. Even weirder was how the beach blonde woman reached into her cleavage and produced a small black case. She flipped it open and casually took out a thin white cigarette.

"Does any of you have a light?"

Before anyone could offer assistance (not that they were champing at the bit to do so, to begin with), Corbeau's whole body exuded a thick red haze. In the blink of an eye, it coalesced into another familiar figure, and she unceremoniously snatched the cigarette out of the other woman's hand and threw it into the fire.

"We don't have time for this," the black-clad lady, her piercing red eyes glowing like a pair of jewels in the firelight, continued to glare at Corbeau until she put her little case of smokes aside, and only then did she turn to the ever-so-slightly flummoxed group on the benches. "My apologies. This is the first time I've shared company with many of you, but I'm afraid proper introductions have to wait. Time is of the essence. Please, follow me."

That was the group's first encounter with Fidèle Basmu Shamash in the flesh, and I couldn't help but wonder where she was taking them in such a hurry. Probably not for some late-night birdwatching, but other than that, all bets were off.