“Wait, you didn’t bring any iron?” Paisley asked, amused.

“The book says it needs to be ‘iron from the earth’, whatever that means,” I explained, not at all amused. I didn’t realise how much of a problem this would be. How was I so good at planning out a fight, but non-combat forethought was a completely foreign concept?

Giggling, she stepped close and punched me gently on the shoulder. “You’re so lucky I’m here."

Rubbing my shoulder, I asked, "Why do you say that?"

Her eyes twinkled with an inner flame of mischief and mirth, and she leaned forward until our noses were almost touching. "Because," she said, her voice a teasing whisper that seemed to suck the breath right out of my lungs, "I just so happen to have a resource map of the area in my inventory."

The urge to kiss her hit me like a truck, and I flew backwards out of reach. "Oh my god, that's awesome! Thanks!" I said, giggling nervously.

What the hell had that been? I mean yeah, I'd always thought she was pretty, and she was obviously just as beautiful inside, too. That didn't mean… it wasn't a… why would I suddenly want to kiss her, though? Especially after all this time.

Her mischievous smile softened, and she pulled the map from her inventory and held it out for me. It was a small stone about the size of a large marble, and not at all map-shaped. That was how Rell did things, though.

By default, the user interface button for the map was grayed out. To gain access to it, you needed to find, loot, or buy a map stone, which would then serve as a starting point for your cartographical adventures.

When I used this one, I gained a small area of visibility where I currently stood. That was the game automatically taking down my location and everything I could see. It wasn't the real magic of the stone, though. That came when resource icons began to flash into existence on the holographic map in front of me. The actual terrain was grayed out, but I didn’t need that, I just needed my current position and the position of the nearest iron node.

“Thank you so much, Pay,” I said, looking up from the map to meet her wonderful brown eyes. “You’ve saved me so much time.”

She grinned, but that smile quickly fell from her face and she swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I had a friend who used to call me that.”

My heart sank in the same moment it leapt up into my throat. “Is it the one I helped you find?”

“Yes,” she nodded, scuffing the dirt with her foot. “Do you mind if I stay here and type out a message to him? You probably don’t need me to get the ore anyway, right?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” I said. She looked so sad, and all over me. Did I even deserve her friendship? I mean yeah, Marlon sure as shit didn’t deserve it either, but… 

Her hug caught me off guard, and I let out a little squeak of surprise. “Thank you,” she mumbled, then quickly released me. “Thanks for helping me.”

“No problem,” I said, my voice coming out as more of a sigh. Time to get that iron and try not to freak out when she messages Rosco. God, that name felt so strange to me now. It had been like, three weeks and he already felt alien to me, like he was a different person, or dead, or something.

****

The last of the iron ore disappeared into my inventory when Paisley’s message finally came in. The notification almost gave me a heart attack, and the following blizzard of anxiety in my stomach threatened to finish the job. Clicking on that notification was… one of the hardest things I’ve done in life.

Paisley Munro: "Hey there Rascal. Is it okay if I still call you that? I know things are not great between us right now, and I just wanted to say that I am so so sorry I didn’t reach out to you sooner. You deserved so much better, even if you did block me ingame. You deserved to tell your side, you… I was your friend, and I was too scared to stand up for you.

As for why I'm finally messaging you… It’s pretty embarrassing, but I actually couldn’t remember how to spell your Japanese last name. I know. I'm a bimbo, but um, that's why it’s taken so long to reach out to you. Anyway, uh… I wanted to ask for your side of the story. What Marlon told us was pretty bad, but it just didn’t seem like something you would do. Like, ever. I remember how you loved teasing Ethan about how in love he was. Homophobes don't do that.

Recently I also… I found out that Marlon might not be all that good of a friend, or a boyfriend. I know he can always be abrasive, but someone told me something. Accused him of cheating on Ethan. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I miss the days when it was just me, you, Ethan, Marlon, and the others. Just a bunch of friends hanging out, none of this toxic stuff."

I took a shuddering breath and sat heavily on the ground. She’d doubted whatever Marlon told her! Right from the start, she’d doubted! That raised the question, though, what had he told them? She had still voted to kick me, all those months ago. I pulled up a keyboard and began to type.

Rosco Kajii: "You can still call me that. I honestly don’t really know what to say about your reason for ghosting me all this time, but it’s very… you. Except, I didn’t block you? Oh, shit… I totally did block you! Unfriending automatically blocks the person by default. God damn it. Fuck. Okay, um, I also have to ask, though, if you had doubts about Marlon’s story, why did you vote to kick me?"

Paisley Munro: "What? I didn’t vote to kick you. Marlon just booted you all on his own and told us… well, he told us that you said a lot of nasty things. He said you called him the F slur, he said you stole money from the vault back at the guild castle. He said he caught you spying on us for the ChaosClaws, and that you were going to tell them about our strats for the Hungry Maze Raid. Aquila said he was there too, he backed up Marlon’s story."

Tears welled up, and I wiped absently at my eyes with a sleeve as I read what she’d said. Me? Working with those homophobic, racist, trolling assholes? People actually believed that? I hated that guild so much. Hell, I think I hated them more than half the queer folks in Silver Ridge did, and that was before I was a girl sleeping with another girl. God, what a fucking mess. If only I’d held my tongue, if only I’d waiting to confront that fucking snake in front of everyone else.

Rosco Kajii: "Pay… that’s complete bullshit. The only thing in that mountain of lies that’s true is that word. I did call him the F slur, and yeah, there’s no excuse for that. What he did was so much worse, though.

Here’s what actually happened. He gave the Iridescent Hummingbird pet to Aquilla instead of me, even though I rolled for it and spent my stupid guild points on it. I went to confront him about it in his rooms, and when I walked in, he was balls deep in Aquilla’s butthole. I freaked out. I’m not proud of it, but the sight of his hairy buttcheeks pumping away was not something I wanted to see. The shock of that, and some latent MLM homophobia, caused me to say, “You cheating F*. I can see why you gave the Hummingbird to him now.”

We argued. I was so upset, so confused… I turned to leave the room, to tell you all, but then he blocked me in the room. He used the guild zone safety features to blind me and hold me still while he contacted you all. I was like that for… I don’t know, hours? It was a long time, but I didn’t get hungry or need to pee or anything.

Anyway, he unbound me and told me about the vote, then kicked me from the guild. It ejected me from the castle instantly and put me in the main temple in Ardgour. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone had apparently voted to kick me, and it was my word against them. I just… I was so upset, I just unfriended everyone and walked off into the wilderness. I think the unfriending was a form of self harm, to be honest, because I felt really guilty over the nasty, rancid part of my mind that the confrontation had revealed. I wanted to punish myself, make it harder for my friends to contact me and ask my side of the story. I’m not sure, I’m still unpacking it."

Her reply took a long time to come in, but when it did, my heart did something strange with its rhythm.

Paisley Munro: "I believe you. I believe you completely. I don’t know what to say now. Our guild was everything to you, since your accident. I can’t even imagine…"

Rosco Kajii: "I started throwing myself into dungeons on my own. I wanted the pain that came from failure, from death. I hated myself for that hidden homophobia, and like… god, in my mind, the whole thing became twisted. I started to believe that I was an awful person, that Marlon had been right to kick me. It wasn’t a good time in my life, that’s for sure."

Paisley Munro: "I wish I could hug you. I’m so sorry, Rascal. I miss you. What do we do now? I want to see you again. I want to… I want to be your friend again. I want to help you fix things with the guild, or at least, I don’t know, hang out with you again. Please?"

Rosco Kajii: "I’m sorry, Pay. I wish I could hug you too, but I don’t want to go back. It was too much pain, too much loss. I’ve started a new character, anyway, and I’m happy now. I’ve made new friends, and even found some old ones. I don’t want to go back."

Paisley Munro: "No… please, Rascal, please. Please come back. I miss you so much. What’s your new character’s name? We can still hang out. I’ve made friends too, there’s this really cute fairy girl. I think you’d like her. We could even just ditch the guild, play together as a friend group. You know I cared more about friends than leaderboard rankings."

Rosco Kajii: "I don’t think that’s a good idea, Pay. Sorry. I’ll go my way, you stay friends with everyone."

Paisley Munro: I" don’t want that! I want… I want to get Ethan out of his nasty relationship and bring him to you, we can be best buds again, like the old days. Please, Rascal, please…"

Rosco Kajii: "No, Pay. Just let it drop, okay?"

Paisley Munro: "I’ll find you. I’ll… I’ll find you and convince you. Can I at least see you?"

I began to type out another rebuff, but my hands slowed on the keyboard. My new character was already friends with her. Me, Keiko, was friends with her. She already had what she was looking for, even if she didn’t realise it. I wasn’t going to tell her, though. I couldn’t, not really. Something about the very idea of revealing who I used to be, it felt wrong, gross even, and yet… I needed to give her some hope.

Rosco Kajii: "This is probably a bad idea, but if you… if you see me, if you find me and recognise me, or guess it’s me… well, I won’t lie. I’ll tell you. Who knows, maybe you’ll see me when the new expansion drops. Is that okay? Otherwise, I’m going to keep living my new life, with my new friends, and I’m not going to look back for a long, long time."

Her reply was a long time coming, but when it did, I knew how I was going to find her when I got back to the tree. She was going to need all the hugs my little fairy arms could give her.

Paisley Munro: "I hate this. I hate all of this. I’m going to make him regret this. Somehow, sometime, I will. I’ll… I’ll keep a lookout for you, too. Maybe one day we can hang out again?"

Rosco Kajii: "We’ll see, little Pay. We’ll see."