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His Host was sneaking through the ship. Ira observed carefully as his Host sneakily walked through the long, dark hallways. His Host was dressed to blend in, the uniform clearly made for stealth, as he slowly approached his goal. His steps were silent, so silent that Ira was almost impressed. It was rare that he had a Host that could actually do things. Still, Ira wasn't going to get his hopes up.

It was stupidly sneaky of him to go out when it was in the middle of the night and nobody else was awake. Well, nobody but Ira. Ira was wide awake and snug, surrounded in his sleep by Silas. He had fallen asleep six hours ago and woken up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. Not that he even tried, he was too distracted by what his Host was up to. Aside from talking a lot with other people, his Host hadn't tried to do a lot of things so far on this mission. So, now that he was finally taking action, Ira was curious.

Ira's eyes were closed and he burrowed deeply into Silas's embrace. Even while asleep, Silas's grip on him was tight and unrelenting. Ira didn't mind. It was comforting.

He zoomed in further on his Host. Looking over his shoulder with a determined expression, his Host reached a door. In his hands, he had a small blowtorch. Ira raised an eyebrow as he watched his Host cut through the lock and enter through the doorway. He appeared deathly focused on keeping silent. 

Silas moved in his sleep, his arms and legs were thrown over Ira and keeping him locked in. Ira responded by dragging the covers up further over himself and trying to ignore the urge to go back to sleep. He focused on his Host and what he was up to. It wasn't terribly interesting, nothing in comparison to the mess that Silas had made in the cafeteria earlier, but it wasn't mind-numbingly dull either. Ira continued to watch in silence and wonder what his Host was doing. There wasn't anything terribly interesting in that room.

But his Host obviously disagreed. Humming to himself, Ira waited. He saw his Host creep through the room silently, his boots striking the ground with nary a sound. The room was dark — his Host hadn't turned on the lights. When Ira concentrated, he could faintly hear the sound of a live wire sparking. 

"Where is it?" his host muttered to himself. Ira looked around the room, trying to spot something interesting. But it was just a room like any other, bigger than most of the rooms on the ship but was also full to the brim with even more crates.

Not exactly the most riveting view.

Ira laid his arms around Silas and squeezed. He shoved his leg between Silas's and pushed himself as close to the man as he could. He thought that it was unfair how warm and comfortable Silas was. The only thing that really bothered him was how muscly Silas was; it meant that he wasn't very cushy.

While Ira was distracted, his Host seemed to have found what he was looking for. Ira focused back on him again and saw that he was holding something in his hands, staring at it with wide eyes. He zoomed in.

It was a USB drive.

Frowning a little, Ira zoomed back out and waited to see what his Host was going to do with it. His Host twisted it in his hands, a glint in his eyes that Ira recognized. It wasn't one that he liked.

"System?" his host asked the air.

Ira blinked and sent a message back, "What?"

"Can you analyze the contents of this drive?"

"No," Ira said plainly. Well, he could. He just didn't want to.

His Host frowned. But it didn't seem like he had taken the rejection badly as he simply pocketed the USB drive and left the room. Seeing as he had broken the lock when he broke in, it was stupidly clear that the room had been broken into. His Host didn't seem to worry about this as he didn't even bother to close the door behind him when he left. He continued to sneak through the ship back to his room without making a sound.

Ira zoomed back out, no longer interested. He was sure that his Host was up to something, but it would be funnier if it didn't have any idea what it was. That way he could be shocked and surprised when his Host took action.

Silas grumbled something in his sleep and hugged Ira even tighter. Ira hadn't thought that was possible, but he wasn't going to argue with this. Instead, he kept his eyes closed and slowed his breathing to a gentle rhythm. As he slowly fell back asleep, he was struck by the thought that his experiment was closing in on success. He had found Silas in six consecutive worlds. Sure, souls traveled to and fro and were reincarnated again and again and again. Going to completely different worlds and finding familiar souls, that wasn't anything strange. But six worlds in a row? The odds of that were infinitesimal. 

Ira woke up the next morning from the cold. He blinked as he awoke and stared at the grey metal wall in front of him. Turning around on the bed, he stared out at the room and frowned. Silas wasn't anywhere to be found.

He sat up on the bed and dragged a hand through his unruly hair. It knotted around his fingers and he frowned at the spikes of pain it caused in his scalp. It took a couple of minutes to disentangle his hand and then he decided that he might as well just brush his hair before it got stuck on something else. Looking around the room, he couldn't see a comb or brush. He narrowed his eyes and stood up from the bed, the cloth that Silas had given him falling around his body down to his feet. It shimmered slightly in the lights of the alarm.

Red alarm meant that something had gone wrong again, right?

Before he went to find out what happened this time, he needed to fix his hair so that he wouldn't be tempted to just cut it off. There were lots of characters, some of them his favorite characters, that had long hair in his manga. When it swished in the wind and they shook their head and their hair just fell around them like a curtain, it always looked so cool. So he wanted to give his long hair a chance before he cut it off.

He scoured the room for something to brush his hair with. Finding it after nearly 10 minutes of frustrating searching, Ira sat down on the bed again and carefully brushed his hair, piece by piece. He flinched when he pulled too hard and grimaced.

By the time he was done, Ira wanted to hurl the brush far away from him.

The alarms were still blaring, and if he wasn't mistaken they were actually getting louder. The red light above the door flashed nonstop and was on the edge of giving this body a headache. Ira simply turned down his pain receiver in response. The loud alarms blared at him and he frowned in thought. When he was awake in the middle of the night, it had been quiet. Almost disturbingly quiet. There had been no hints that something was about to go wrong.

Then again, this was a survival story. Something always went wrong.

He pulled his utility belt around his waist and clasped it together. It caused the swishing fabric to lie still against his body and he forced his hair into a bun at the top of his head. That way, it wouldn't tangle and get knotted again.

Ira then decided to go see what all the fuss was about. He hummed a little under his breath as he left his room behind him. His map showed that Silas was nowhere around him, Indeed, he was very far away on the other side of the ship. Ira was curious about what he was doing, but he also decided that it didn't matter as long as it had nothing to do with him. Silas would return. He always did.

He hummed louder as he left the room and walked through the corridors, his voice echoing in the dark and narrow spaces. The alarms were still disturbingly loud and when the noise interacted with his humming, it resulted in a disharmonious mess that was painful on the ear.

Ira frowned and stopped humming. When he approached the cargo hold that had become the headquarters of the crew and their efforts to survive, he put away his stray thoughts and decided to put in some actual effort in this. If he thought of it as a performance, his motivation would shoot right up.

He entered through the doors and came face to face with the Captain, "What happened?"

"There was an incident," the Captain said and frowned at him. "I need to verify your location last night."

Ira tilted his head and stated, "I was in my room sleeping."

Look at that, he wasn't even lying.

Honesty for the win.

"Lying to me would be a bad idea," the Captain said. "I have access to security footage and the sensors and I can easily verify your location. It would be no use lying to me."

Ira felt like the man was repeating himself but he nodded in understanding and said, "I am telling the truth."

For the first time in like 15 years.

When he saw Silas again, he was going to tell him all about this. He was doing a good thing! And unlike the stupid Hosts he had had when he was young who constantly belittled him and screwed him over, he was sure that Silas would praise him. And Ira wasn't immune to praise, he had never claimed to be. It was simply that, well, his Hosts never bothered to. They were assholes like that.

Ira scowled at the route his thoughts had taken. The Captain had narrowed his eyes at him, but he didn't seem to have any intention of arguing any further with Ira. It wasn't hard to understand that the incident that had occurred that resulted in the Captain's frowny face was probably related to what his Host had been doing in the middle of the night.

Ignoring it had been the right call. He was very surprised right now. This meant that when he went over to a wall and stood leaning against it, staring at everyone around him and wondering what they were thinking, nobody questioned him. He looked forward to seeing how the show would go.

Silas was moving again. Ira split his attention, half was focused on what was going on around him and the other half on where Silas was going. He was moving away from the ship now and he was being joined by two other aliens. There were still plenty of gross monsters roaming the ship in search of people to eat because they were starving, but they proved no hindrance to the aliens. Dots went dark one after another.

His Host was on the other side of the cargo hold. His hand was in his pocket and if Ira wasn't mistaken, the USB drive that he had stolen was there as well. Seeing the fuss being made about its disappearance, Ira found a spark of curiosity was lit within him.

He wondered what the big deal was. Why would his Host go out of his way to steal it? Why would the Captain be so mad that it was gone? And also, why had Silas disappeared without saying anything?

It wasn't like Ira would have objected to the fact that he had other things to do. Ira was not a fool and he understood the fact that people had duties and they had things to do that didn't necessarily involve other people, even if they felt things for those people. Silas claimed to love him, but this did not mean that his whole life should revolve around Ira.

Still, he was a little upset that he had woken up to find himself alone.

Hello, lovelies! I have created a Patreon. This Patreon of mine, with a variety of different tiers that all have access to the exact same thing (so you don’t have to worry if you don’t have a lot of money!) will allow you to support me directly. The lowest tier is €2/month ($2,50/month), which means that… being a patron for a whole year is actually cheaper than buying 1 copy of my book. Huh. And I’ll get a bigger cut, too. So a win all around!

What you get by becoming a Patron: Everything. We all know how bad I am at regular updates, so I’m not even gonna try that. Instead, I will throw literally everything I have up there. Advance chapters, extras, short stories, early access novels, deleted scenes… anything I can think of. (Recently, I found 2 chapters of an old novel on Wattpad that I have literally NO memory of.)

I sincerely hope that there is someone out there who is willing to spend less money than it costs to buy a cup of coffee on me. I know that’s greedy of me, but I don’t think I’ve ever lied about how much money matters to me. I have both rheumatism and autism, and I’ve never had a job in my life. I’m 5 years into a 3-year program. I don’t foresee a life of great wealth waiting for me. My government support (that I did get again this year, so that’s 1 win!) has only been approved until October next year. That’s a monthly income of €600. Not even enough to pay rent. And once I graduate from my program, I won’t even be eligible anymore. (I still live with my parents though, so don’t worry too much. I’m currently saving as much as I can.) 

What I’m saying is; your support matters. It matters a lot. If you like what I do and want me to be able to keep doing it, please consider becoming a patron of mine: https://www.patreon.com/fantasydeath 

Current early access novel:

Our Sweet Days

Summary: With his fiancé having been stolen by his (supposedly) kind-hearted and merciful younger brother, Sun Fang decides to take the high road. (To the surprise of everyone who's ever known him.) Instead of fighting to get his cheating fiancé back, Sun Fang sets out to fully enjoy the wealth of his family. After all, he's no longer the heir (his younger brother took that too) which means that he has no responsibilities. Ah, the life of a worry-free rich young master is really the best!

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