The Simulacrum

"With each passing day, we're one step closer to the end…"

The faux-profound statement coming from my left made me pause and send a skeptical squint at Josh sitting on the bench next to me.

"Where the heck did that come from?"

My friend shrugged his shoulders and made a vague gesture towards the scene in front of us.

"Come on, man. You know what I mean."

I still had no idea what he was getting at, but I decided to play along and look around. It was a rather languid afternoon at the sports field of the school. Despite winter creeping around the corner, today's weather was especially mild. Not exactly t-shirts and shorts kind of mild, but it was balmy enough under the sun that we could have our lunch break on the roof, and it was also great for tennis practice. Or so I was told.

"Hyah!"

'Pak,' goes the ball to the left.

"Ha! Good one! Take… this!"

'Plonk,' goes the ball to the right.

"Too slow!"

'Pik-pak,' goes the ball again.

As always, the princess and Angie gave their one hundred percent when playing on the field, even if it was just friendly practice, and the ball was little more than a yellow blur at times. Still, this wasn't the first, or last, time we've watched them like this, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that would indicate we were closer to the end of… something.

"Sorry, I'm still drawing a blank," I admitted to Josh, much to his visible annoyance.

"I'm talking about the end of our high-school years, obviously," he griped, and while I would've liked to point out that if it was obvious, I wouldn't have had to ask for clarification, it wasn't a hill worth fighting for.

"Sure, sure. I don't see what the big deal is, but…"

Before I could finish saying that, I was interrupted by my sisters coming over to our side. Penny and Snowy were both wearing their winter jackets over their uniforms, with scarves and everything, which made the fact that their legs were only protected by thin leggings feel all the weirder. Didn't girls get cold like that? Was this one of those 'sacrifices for fashion' kind of things?

Anyhow, Snowy came over to the bench and told me, "Um… We're going ahead. Is that okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" I asked back, and since I was still a teensy bit bothered by the whole leggings-situation, I reached into my bag and took out my wallet. "Here, some early pocket money. Go and grab something warm to drink on the way home."

"Wow! Brother, you shouldn't have!" my other sister called out, but she also immediately yanked the twenty Jen bill out of my fingers, so make of that what you will. "Thanks!"

"Mm." Without warning, Snowy stepped closer and hugged my head, with a quiet, "Thank you, b-big bro."

The gesture was fleeting. A moment later, she was already moving away at a hurried pace, while my other sister was still shocked. Not for long, though.

"Hey! That's not fair! Where's my hug?"

She dashed after my Abyssal sister, while Josh shook his head with a wry smile at my side.

"What was that about?"

"A nice sibling bonding moment," I told him firmly, only for a new voice to enter the fray as Judy walked over from the other direction.

"I'm still not sure that turning Neige into a brocon was a good call."

My dear assistant was even more warmly dressed than my sisters… except for the leggings. Seriously, now that I noticed it, I couldn't un-see it. More importantly, though…

"I didn't 'turn' her into anything. We just had a nice heart-to-heart the other day, and she's been a bit less reserved since then. That doesn't make her a brocon."

"I hope not," Judy noted absently while looking at the backs of my horsing sisters. "Otherwise, there would be too much of an archetype overlap with Penelope."

"Aaand I don't understand half what you're saying again," Josh quipped on the side and stretched his back. "In other words, business as usual. I'm almost used to it." I thought that was the end of it, but then he sat up straight and also stared after my sisters with a contemplative, "It was around this time last year that Penelope transferred to the school, right?"

"More or less," Judy confirmed while poking me to make space for her, and once I did, she squeezed in next to me.

"Remember when she first showed up and wanted to beat up Lili for taking her spot? And look at them now!" the guy continued to reminisce with an uncharacteristically wistful expression. "Some things fundamentally change. Others, fundamentally stay the same. Time moves on."

That was followed by a long beat of silence, and then Judy poked my side and asked, "Chief? What is Joshua talking about?"

"I have no earthly clue. Something about high school ending and whatnot."

"Come on, guys! I'm trying to be serious here!" he snapped at us and even went as far as to elbow me in the side. He had a pointy elbow.

"Ow. Hey, no violence."

He dismissed me with a curt, "Whatever," followed by a forlorn sigh. "Seriously, think about it. In a few weeks, we'll have the winter break, then New Year's, and then we'll have to start cramming for the graduation exams, and then it's done. Our school life's over."

"Well, yeah. That's just how life works," I told him, still not seeing the problem, but then any further questions had to be shelved, because the girls on the court decided to take a break.

"Boy! Did you see my twist serve? I finally mastered it!" Deus called out first, only for Angie to take control and add, "Yeah! All our training really paid off, right, Deus?" Then, a moment later, her irises turned gold again and she nodded with a self-assured, "It most certainly did!"

"Mou… It feels like I'm playing against two," Elly grumbled as she put down her tennis racket, but then a moment later she flashed an exceedingly cute smug smirk and added, "I still won, though."

"We weren't counting," Deus objected, followed by Angie saying, "Right! This is practice! There are no winners or losers here!"

My princess ignored their protests and, lacking any space on the bench, decided to take a seat on my lap. The Celestial girl's competitive spirit must've been roused, because she unceremoniously did the same and practically jumped onto Josh's lap.

"Ooof! Hey, careful, silly-chipmunk."

"Boy! Don't call me a chipmunk! Haven't I already told you that if you wish to liken me to a creature in endearment, you should choose a majestic one?" A blink later, Angie countered with, "Chipmunks can be pretty majestic, you know?" followed by a dismissive, "Nonsense! They are small and cute!"

Now, if it were me, I wouldn't have missed the opportunity to tell my girlfriend, 'Hey, you're pretty cute, so it fits,' but Josh was still too out of it to capitalise on the opportunity. In fact, he was so uncharacteristically glum that even his girlfriend stopped arguing with herself to squint at him, looking just a tad concerned.

"Hey, pal? Why's the long face? Are you trying to be a silly-horse?"

Josh didn't respond, so I took it upon myself to let the cat out of the bag and tell her, "He's wrestling with ennui about our school days ending. And no, I don't know why either."

"Oooh?" Angie turned around in Josh's lap and tilted her head to the side. "Is this what we talked about during lunch break?"

Judy prompted her with a seemingly casual yet audibly invested, "Care to elaborate?" and the Celestial girl didn't need to be asked twice.

"We didn't bring our lunchboxes like you guys," she started by pointing at Elly on my lap, then at herself. "So we went to the cafeteria to grab something, and then we ran into Sahi and Pascal, and we talked about how we're going to miss the food once we graduate, and I bet that's what got Josh so grumpy!"

"I'm not grumpy," the guy declared very grumpily, not helping his case at all.

"Oh, don't be like that, silly-horsey." Angie nuzzled up to him by literally rubbing their cheeks together, much to Elly's audible amusement. There was a chance she wanted to follow their example, but then Angie said, "If you're so worried, we're gonna cook for you! We're getting pretty good at it, right, Deus?" Her eyes shifted colour, and for a moment she froze up, cheeks still touching, before she began to start moving again, way more mechanically than before, and stated, "It's just following instructions. It's not that hard. Even the Girl can do it."

"You're not filling me with confidence, but food isn't the only problem," Josh noted, and I wondered if he even realised that he just admitted that pre-emptively missing Blue Cherry High's cafeteria food was at least partially responsible for his glum mood. "Think about it, guys. Last year was crazy, and then just as we finally started settling back into normalcy, everything's gonna change again. We're gonna go to college, live our own lives, grow apart… I don't like it."

I eyed the guy for a moment, and once I was sure he was serious, I allowed myself an exasperated sigh and asked, "The heck do you mean 'grow apart'? Pal, in case you forgot, we're all embedded in the top echelons of both the Abyss, the Elysium, and the Ordo Draconis. Some of us, like yours truly, in all three at the same time! We won't be able to escape each other for the rest of our lives, even if we wanted!"

"Yeah, but that's not the same," Josh continued to gripe, prompting his girlfriend to sit up straight and tilt her head.

"What's not the same?"

"You know? Hanging out, playing games… friend stuff."

This time, Elly spoke my thoughts before I could by saying, "I… don't think those are mutually exclusive. Right?"

Her question was aimed at Judy and me, and we both nodded.

"Right. I mean, if we say we want to have a Mareo Kart party, who's going to stop us?"

"But it's still different," Josh insisted, at this point probably just out of sheer stubbornness. "Here, we meet every day, and just hang out. It's normal, not something you have to plan out, or… You know? It's just normal."

Okay, so Josh was either being uncharacteristically mulish about this, or he was genuinely worried that graduating high school would be a big watershed moment that would completely change up our group dynamic. A worry which was… not entirely unwarranted, actually. I mean, wasn't that how these kinds of things generally happened? If it wasn't, there wouldn’t be all of these coming-of-age stories all ending with the main cast moving on into the great wide world to live their own lives. Chances are, it was going to happen to us as well, sooner or later. Once we establish our own families, with kids and jobs and everything. It's not going to happen tomorrow, or even right after graduation, but it was pretty much inevitable. It's just life. And growing up. And stuff.

Seriously though, after all the crap we went through, 'turning into adults' felt like a rather quaint predicament. Especially to me, with all the Emergent business and potential eternity on the horizon. Maybe that's why I couldn't quite sympathise with Josh in this situation. Was this a dependency problem? After all, we went through all of that crap together, supporting each other every step of the way. The prospect of our little group dissolving after graduation would probably weigh much harder on Josh's shoulders. Not that there was much I could do to fix that; as I said, this was just part of growing up, and…

"I've got an idea!" Elly exclaimed, startling me out of my train of thought.

Judy uttered, "About what?" sounding genuinely confounded by what she meant.

"We're all going to college once we graduate, right?"

"Uuu… Don't remind me…" Angie whined in response, downright despondent. "I studied my butt off, but it's still a fifty-fifty whether I make it into my first pick…"

"Yes, yes, but that's not my point!" Elly gestured wildly, so much so that I had to hold onto her waist to make sure she wouldn't fall off my lap. "If we're all enrolling at the same time, we can just rent an apartment together!"

"Like in a sitcom?" Judy prompted, sounding dismissive, but my princess didn't pick up on it and nodded with a grin.

"Yes! That way, we're still going to be together even after graduation!"

"We're all applying to the Timaeus University of Sciences, right?" I asked.

Angie responded with a plain, "Yeah, obviously. Political Science."

"Since I'm gonna get dragged into politics, I guess I'm applying there as well," Josh noted, suddenly sounding a bit less mopey than before. Just a little though.

"I haven't really thought about it, but I'm sure I can get a scholarship," Elly declared with gusto. "Or maybe a business degree?"

"I'm aiming for a master's in Literature Studies," Judy noted next to me, leaving me last.

"Honestly, I didn't really think much about it," I admitted a touch awkwardly. "I mean, I'm content with being a political figurehead, and I'm not that interested in running a business either, so maybe I'll apply to something more esoteric. Getting a degree in philosophy might be funny."

"Funny?" Angie blurted out, so I elaborated.

"Yeah. I mean, it's almost like a flex. It's like saying, 'Hey, look. I'm so confident in my position, I'm going to study philosophy and ponder things all day, and nobody's going to be able to stop me'. Or something like that."

In fact, considering all the mind- and time-bending Emergent shenanigans I could sense in my future, a degree in philosophy might even be practical. We'll see.

"I've heard Amelia is planning to go into civil engineering," my dear assistant commented, drawing everyone's attention to her. "She said applying modern theories and practices could help her optimize the Mana Well Networks."

"Speaking of her, where is she?' Josh piped up, as if just realising that she wasn't here with us, and his girlfriend frankly told him, "She's on a date with Mike."

"Oh, oh!" Elly raised a hand over her head and said, "Actually, they could live with us, too! We could all live together in one big apartment! Then we can hang out all the time!"

"That sounds pretty nice, actually," Josh said, sounding convinced, and as much as I hated to be a wet blanket, someone had to point out the obvious.

"The university is in the city center, right?" I asked, as a setup, and Josh absently nodded.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because that's like fifteen minutes on the bus from here. If we can commute there from home, do we even need to rent an apartment together?"

"Hush, Chief," my dear assistant of all people chided me, phone already in hand. "The question isn't what we need, but what we want." She paused and turned the screen towards my other girlfriend. "Look, I found one. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an indoor pool, and only at a ten-minute walk from the university campus."

If the photos on the screen didn't scream 'luxury apartment', the monthly rent price at the bottom certainly did. There were way too many digits there... though again, with the Dracis family's wealth at our fingertips, it wasn't exactly prohibitively expensive, and that indoor pool sounded neat, and–

Ack!

Dammit, I almost got sucked into their rhythm!

"Girls, girls? How about we discuss this after we—?"

My words fell on deaf ears, especially when Josh also leaned over to take a look at the screen and asked, "Do they have any decent restaurants nearby?"

"Boo! I told you I'm gonna cook for us!" Angie insisted and bonked the guy on the head, but he took it like a champ.

"Just in case, just in case," he insisted, and I couldn't help but feel that if I let them get any more invested in this, we might really just end up graduating into a comedy sitcom. Geez, I could really use a distraction right about now…

…

I said, I could really use a distra—

"Sol. How much longer are you planning to make me wait?" a certain white-haired Emergent asked out of the blue, showing up behind the bench and poking me in the back of my shoulder with his forefinger.

…

Eh, I'll take it.

"Whaaa? Who's that?" Angie called out in surprise, while the girl on my lap nearly climbed over me in her excitement.

"Benny! Hi!"

She tried to reach out to pat him on the head, but Benjamin deftly avoided her hand and blandly stated, "I'm here for Sol. He told me he would assist me."

"Yes, and I also told you that I'm busy, and we'll get back to it later."

"You don't appear busy," he said, while still dodging Elly's hand, but then another girl joined the fray when Angie literally jumped over the bench.

"Wow! Leo, where do you keep finding these cute kids? Is he one of Ollies's friends? Or another distant cousin?" She didn't wait for me to respond and squatted down to be on eye level with him. "Hi! I'm Angie! Who are you?"

Distracted by the Celestial girl, he finally fell victim to the princess's head pat, and he eventually responded with a morose, "I… allow you to refer to me by the name Benjamin."

"Aw! You're so cute!"

"No, I'm not."

Angie reached out and pinched his cheek, while Elly practically balanced on top of my head to keep rubbing his noggin with a delighted, "He is, isn't he?"

"I said, I'm not."

Was this one of those Monkey's Paw situations, I wondered. I hoped for a distraction, and the universal rules of timing (or Id-me, though I was pretty sure he couldn't influence Emergents) served Benjamin of all people up on my plate.

"Seriously, dude. You're like a magnet for odd children," Josh noted on the side, and as he looked at Benjamin being pestered, even he was smiling a bit, and… and Elly's boobs were getting pushed into my face, which normally wasn't a bad thing, but it was distracting, so I gently guided her to climb over the bench. As soon as she did, she caught Benjamin in a hug, much to his visible chagrin.

"Unhand me. I told you, I only have business with Sol."

"Don't be like that, Benny! We haven't seen each other in days!"

"Hey, Benny? Do you want half my emergency caramel-peanut chocolate bar?" Angie asked, holding out a popular treat, and the little eldritch abomination took it without apprehension.

"I haven't tasted this one, so I accept your tribute. Also, don't call me Benny."

"Hehe! You're so funny!"

Rolling my eyes, I turned to my dear assistant, only to reel back when I saw that she looked at Benjamin with just a hint of a smidgen of a trace of fondness.

"Come on, Dormouse! Not you too!" I hissed. "You know who he is! Seriously, why is everyone letting their guard down around him?"

In return, my dear assistant ever-so-slightly narrowed her eyes and responded with a deadpan whisper.

"Chief. You said you specifically Defined him as cute and non-threatening as possible." That was literally the point, to humiliate the Predator Moon, so I nodded in the affirmative. "And an Emergent's Definition doesn't just affect their name and appearance, but how they are fundamentally perceived by other Emergents." That… also wasn't incorrect, so I nodded again. "Q.E.D., Benjamin is now fundamentally cute and non-threatening, and everyone's treating him accordingly."

"Yes, but… I mean… uh…" In the end, I couldn't refute any of that, so I just buried my face in my palm and muttered, "Bloody hindsight, strikes again."

"Aaand we're back to me not understanding a word of what you guys are talking about," Josh commented on the side, then shrugged. "I guess I would miss that, too."

Then he turned away from us and started rummaging through his bag, probably looking for a snack of his own to give to the incognito predatory cosmic horror planet.

I really needed to start thinking my actions through, because the unforeseen consequences were getting weirder by the day…