Chapter 42

42 Mirror Mirror, Pt After their trip to the arcade, Eva retired back to her pad to chill out and to do a little research. Except every time she tried to get into something, Miko’s words came bounding into her head.

She wondered why Miko said she was beautiful. Was it a joke? Was she trying to give her confidence or something?

Eva had never believed herself to be attractive, and so couldn’t really believe anyone when they told her she was “pretty” or “cute” or “beautiful”.

But to hear Miko say it so resolutely shook her a little.

I’m not beautiful at all! What the hell?!

In this universe, mirrors were a thing of the past. It was simply because their DI’s could mirror their faces for them. So Eva had her DI recreate her face perfectly so she could see it in her mind’s eye.

And she was well and truly beautiful, with light skin, dark hair, and soft features. The kind that made people turn their heads and gawk. The kind that made people run into poles as they walked by. The kind that started or stopped wars.

It wasn’t just her looks that made her attractive, it was also her newfound self confidence, and her indomitable inner strength.

The sum of it all made her peerless.

.....

And oddly enough, she just didn’t see the beauty in herself. All she saw were her flaws – the things she didn’t like about herself. It was always her nose, eyes, ears, lips, you name it.

And now that she had a full 360-degree view of her head, she only found even more “flaws” about herself. Her neck wasn’t as slim, or her jawline was too high, or her hair wasn’t wavy enough...

All her complaints about herself were utterly ridiculous!

She sighed and deactivated her face as a frown formed on her real one.

To think someone like Eva could still have body dysmorphic disorder, even considering how absolutely amazing she had become in her new life.

But somehow she found reasons to put herself down physically, no matter how ridiculous or unrealistic or idiotic. The unfortunate truth of it was that body dysmorphia was way more common than society realized, or wanted to admit.

Perhaps because it was society that inflicted it in the first place.

~

Over the next few cycles, Eva met up with Miko and did a few simple jobs. They all held some degree of danger, but weren’t too overwhelming.

They took on a variety of them, too, such as escorting traders, hunting down bounties, patrolling bases, and so on. They had even met up with Chengli and performed a simple op with his clan.

Sometimes they met with a little resistance, but it wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle with their D-ranked fighters.

They honestly weren’t bad gigs, and they earned around 10k each. Easy jobs, easy money. Of course, those little amounts barely put a dent on their overall goal of a million.

But in truth, they really were just playing around so they could get the hang of the whole streaming thing, and purposefully took lower intensity jobs. It was good, clean fun.

Although they had turned their streams on, nothing really happened. More specifically, they didn’t know where they were streaming to. The settings only let them set their output to “home”, but that only confused them further.

Their terminals back at their refugee quarters were pretty simple interfaces that worked like fixed datapads. They certainly didn’t show or even record their activities.

Eva spent some time and dug a little more into the whole streaming thing. She was more than curious about it, and was determined to figure it all out.

It dawned on her when she went into her stream message log and read what was there.

Someone had sent her at least a half dozen messages! But when she looked closer, they were all sent by the same person.

Her heart dropped when she opened the first one and read it. Then she went through all the others and just shook her head in utter disbelief.

—

Mack: hi you probably don’t want to hear from me but i just want to say im sorry

Mack: its cool to see you alive you were gone for so long

Mack: are you really in the game? thats so cool! ??

Mack: i wonder if youll be able to come back..... do you?

Mack: its ok if your ignoring me i kinda deserve it

Mack: just stay safe, ok?

—

Mack was her ex from her old life, and a flurry of questions flooded her thoughts while a flurry of emotions flooded her heart.

What the hell? How did he get my stream?

Does “home” mean him? No way! No. Fucking. Way.

Or does “home” mean my rig back in my actual apartment?

Did he fucking steal my badass supercomputer?

Wait! Can I talk to my grandparents?!

Her heart thumped at the possibilities! She could talk to her grandparents again! She could see how they were doing! Of all the people she missed from back home, it was those two.

Eva immediately started a stream and opened up comms. She was determined to talk to them, even if she had to deal with Mack along the way.

A video chat immediately opened up when she went to the messages screen, and she saw Mack’s head down on the desk, snoring softly.

“Hey,” she said out loud. “Can you hear me?”

Mack was startled awake and looked around groggily for a second. But his eyes went wide when he looked at the monitor and saw Eva.

“Eva! It’s actually you!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! And you look incredible! You’re like a whole different person, almost!”

She observed him a little bit and noticed that he had barely changed. He was rather tall and a bit skinnyfat. He had brown hair, muted blue eyes, and was oval faced. He had a tanned complexion even though he never really left his house.

His hair was always a bit of a mess and slightly oily from not showering everyday. He had bags under his eyes, presumably from gaming all day and night. He suffered from insomnia, just like Eva used to, too.

Despite his overall shabbiness, he was rather good looking, even if he wasn’t exactly her type.

She wasn’t really happy to see him, a stark contrast to him being ecstatic to see her. But he was her only link to her old life, and she wanted to expand that. Not only did she want to talk to her grandparents, but she had a lot of questions about Bellum Aeterna, and wondered if she could talk to its developers.

A little insight into their systems couldn’t hurt, right?

“Yeah Mack,” she said. “I can hear ya.”

He immediately became ecstatic at her reply, and grinned widely.

“It really is good to see you! You don’t even know! Like you just disappeared one day, and everyone was all whhaaaaat? Crazy.”

Eva didn’t feel the same way – she didn’t feel good seeing him again. He had wrecked her emotions really hard the last time she saw him and... She put it out of her mind.

I didn’t come here to think about him, she tried to convince herself.

“How long has it been since I... disappeared?”

“A bit over three months,” he replied.

She had spent a hundred days at boot camp, which sort of lined up. She wasn’t exactly counting. But it looked like time advanced the same amount between the both of them.

Games usually had day/night cycles that were far faster than in real life. Bellum Aeterna in particular had four in-game days to each day in real life.

Eva was glad that time wasn’t compressed or otherwise changed. A second was still a second.

“Tell me more about who else disappeared,” she said.

He grew a little morose at the thought. So many people had disappeared so suddenly. It shocked the rest of the world, truth be told.

Some people even claimed that it was a religious thing, that those people had been “chosen by God” or some such nonsense.

“A few million,” he replied. “I found out some disappeared before you, and then some disappeared after you. Different times, places. Sometimes by a month, sometimes by a few minutes.”

Her face scrunched up as she thought about it. People had been disappearing for a month prior to her, and no-one really talked about it. That was kind of crazy to her.

Then again, people had disappeared all the time, of course. Kidnapped or murdered or fell off a cliff or whatever. They had no reason to suspect it was otherwise for any single one of them.

She supposed that it must have taken thousands of disappearances before people started to take notice, and that must have been after she disappeared herself.

“Every single one who disappeared played Bellum Aeterna,” he continued. “When people put two and two together, the game basically shut down and went under, but people kept disappearing anyway... I kinda wish I played it with you. Maybe I’d be with you there, now.”

It was tough for Eva to talk to Mack. Even just looking at him ate away at her. They spent a lot of time together, and for a good chunk of that, he was emotionally abusive towards her. Even though he didn’t do it intentionally, it still hurt beyond comparison.

Mack had problems similar to Grizz, but that effusing self-centeredness was different with him. Although he wasn’t a full-blooded gets-my-friends-killed sort of narcissist, he had very narcissistic tendencies. And they were equally damaging, albeit in a more insidious way.

He suffered from Peter Pan Syndrome, and even though it wasn’t officially recognized as a mental illness, it was devastating nonetheless. Not just to himself, but to everyone around him.

Mack was emotionally childish, purposefully distant, and avoided responsibility of all kinds. He absolutely refused to see reality as it was, and even erased and rewrote his own memories to support the reality he wanted to see.

It was a little heartbreaking to her.

Not only did he not take any responsibility for his own actions, he always blamed other people for his own failures. Most of the time, he only thought to fulfil his own pleasure, and never cared about anyone else’s lives or desires beyond that.

He literally treated everyone like they were NPCs, and he was the only real person around.

She thought back to all the times he had mistreated her and caused her serious emotional damage.

There were times when she had tried to get closer to him only to get pushed away. There were times when she tried to take care of him, guide him, pull him out of his misery. But instead he dragged her in with him. And every single time, it felt as though he had stabbed her right in the heart.

He always talked about taking her out to watch the stars, but he never did.

.....

He told her that he wanted to paint her portrait, but he never did.

He promised that he was there for her, but he never, ever was.

She truly cared for him, but all he cared about was himself.

He just liked the attention that she gave him, nothing more. She made him feel validated, and he made her feel used.

The memories poured back into her mind, and she couldn’t help but feel her heart tighten. It was as though someone had reached into her chest and started squeezing the blood out of it.

She felt it beat roughly, like it wanted to fight back. But it was already bruised and battered and beaten and couldn’t go on.

The Mighty Freya, defeated by a common wastrel.

While he was going on and on about the disappearing players and how great it was she was still alive and how much he wanted to be with her, the anger bubbled up from beneath her. She saw how carefree he was being, as though his past faults and her hurt meant nothing.

He couldn’t even apologize in person! Even now, he avoided taking any responsibility!

Her eyes turned bloodshot as her throat tightened up. The pressure built inside her: years and months and weeks and days spent with her heart twisted up... It all threatened to spill over right then and there.

When she couldn’t take it any longer, she exploded.

“Why weren’t you ever there for me when I needed you?! Don’t you know how much I actually loved you? Hell, do you even know what the fuck love is?!”