Dinner was a win.

  Dinner also did not make any sense.

  Monica brought out freshly baked focaccia and French onion soup, the kind of meal you only got in fancy restaurants where someone judged your shoes, and you felt underdressed no matter what you wore. She set them down like it was nothing.

  Then came the main course. A slow-roasted rack of lamb, still glossy with marinade, the meat so tender it practically fell apart as she sliced it. The smell alone was criminal.

  It was delicious.

  It was also impossible.

  I knew from personal experience that light, airy focaccia took time. Half a day if you rushed it. A full day if you wanted it proper, with the proofing and folding and that slow rise that made it worth eating.

  The soup was not as bad as the bread, but it still took work. You did not caramelize onions like that in twenty minutes unless you wanted bitter, burnt sadness in a bowl. It was constant stirring, low heat, patience. The kind of cooking that required you to actually be present.

  Monica had been home for what. An hour? Maybe less.

  I glanced around the table. Everyone was happily distracted by the food, except Shawn, who was staring at the focaccia like it had personally offended his understanding of time.

  We caught each other’s eyes.

  We faked a normal question.

  “Monica,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “Do you have, uh… condiments? Pepper? Chili flakes? Something?”

  She smiled. “Of course.” Then she glided back toward the kitchen.

  The moment she was out of earshot, Jess lifted her hand and cast [Purify] over the spread, quick and quiet, like someone wiping a table clean.

  Just in case.

  At my request, Jess and Shawn kept the conversation pointed with the kind of questions you asked on a first meeting through a mutual friend.

  Monica told us where she went to school. She said she was not a great student, but she did okay. The way she said it was light, almost self-deprecating, with a slight laugh like she was embarrassed but not really. I think she actually blushed.

  Waitressing, she said, was temporary. She was still figuring out what she wanted to do with her life.

  Then she mentioned her parents.

  “They died in an accident,” she said, matter-of-factly, stirring her soup. “Holiday trip. One moment they were there, and then… they weren’t.”

  Shawn reacted. Just a small shift in his posture. A tightening around his eyes.

  I remembered Shen’s projection of Shawn’s childhood. The glimpse we had gotten of him before the world broke. I remembered that he had lost his whole family overseas too.

  He took a breath like he was bracing himself, then he told Monica what happened to him.

  I already knew the story. I had known it for a while now.

  But hearing Shawn say it out loud, in this clean house, over warm bread and soup that should not exist, hit different. It made it real in a way that the System never managed to.

  For a moment, the table went quiet.

  Monica got up without asking and walked around to him. She wrapped her arms around Shawn and held him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Shawn went stiff at first, then slowly exhaled. When she finally let go, he looked… quieter. Not better. Just quieter.

  After that, Monica started asking about us.

  Where were we from? How long had we been in The Bay? What were we doing here? How long were we staying?

  We did what we always did.

  We lied, gently.

  We gave vague answers. We floated half-truths that sounded reasonable. We kept our words soft and our details blurry. And every time Monica got a little too close to the real questions, Jess or Shawn nudged the conversation sideways again.

  Back to her. Back to The Bay. Back to this world.

  Because the truth was, the more Monica talked, the more I realized something.

  This place felt lived in.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Or at least… it pretended to be.

  This went on throughout dinner. We kept learning little bits about Monica, and we kept dodging anything that might lead back to the real truth. By the time we finished eating, Monica no longer felt like a landlord but a friend.

  After that, we helped clean up. Dishes, wiping down the table, putting plates and cutlery away, even while Monica protested and told us we did not have to. It felt good, doing simple household chores.

  Monica eventually excused herself and headed to her room.

  Once the house settled into quiet, we went upstairs and ended up in Shawn and Siva’s room, mostly because it had bunk beds and the most floor space. Shawn sat on the lower bunk while Siva claimed the top like it was a watchtower. Jess dropped down cross-legged on the floor and looked at me like she was waiting for me to do the responsible thing.

  So, I settled on the floor beside Jess and pulled up the scavenger hunt folder.

  We finally started talking about the list properly.

  We read the items out loud, then read them again, debating some of its meaning or intent. At some point it became obvious that a straight list was useless. Some of these were grab-and-go. Some needed planning. Some were… insane.

  And we did what we always do when the world got stupid.

  We organized it.

  We opened a shared notepad and split the hunt into three buckets: Simple, Needs Some Work, and What the Fuck Is This? We agreed we would move items around once we learnt the actual conditions.

  After shuffling a few entries back and forth, this was what we ended up with:

  The items we had dumped under Simple were meant to be exactly that. Things we could just buy outright or steal if we had to.

  It was the Needs Some Work column that made my skin itch.

  Because the more I stared at it, the more I could feel a hand behind it. The GM’s hand. This was getting personal.

  I used to be a pro-wrestling fan back when it was chaos and chair shots and the Attitude Era felt like the only thing worth staying up late for. I had not followed as closely in years, but that did not matter. SPW World Heavyweight Championship still hit a very specific part of my brain.

  And then there was the thermodynamics book.

  Applied Thermodynamics for Engineering Technologists. Eastop and McConkey. Fifth edition.

  That was not just some “lol textbook” joke. That was my textbook. The one I used back in school when I was studying marine engineering.

  Add my Blackpink problem on top of that, with the Lightstick, and the pattern stopped being subtle.

  This was not only personalized.

  It was targeted.

  We spent a bit of time poking at the last column too, the What the Fuck Is This? pile, but we kept circling back to the same conclusion.

  We did not have enough information yet.

  An Aasimar. That sounded like a race option from D&D. Something celestial. Something born from a god’s bloodline. Which, in this world, could mean anything from “rare class evolution” to “someone’s going to turn into a walking miracle.”

  And Estes.

  Who the hell was Estes?

  We stared at the names until our eyes started to cross, then finally agreed to shelve the worst of it for now. Not because it was safer.

  Because we did not know where to even begin.

  But before we called it an early night, we locked in a plan.

  Tomorrow, Shawn and Siva would hit The Bay’s shopping belt and sweep the Simple column. Buy what was easy. Steal what was necessary and try not to get hustled by a bird-armadillo in a fez.

  Jess and I would do the other half. Find information. Find a ring. Reinsert ourselves into the mad little world of pro-wrestling.

  Because I already knew what SPW stood for.

  Singapore Pro Wrestling. A tiny indie scene. The kind of shows that happened in community halls and small venues, where the crowd was close enough to smell your sweat and the scene kept itself alive on passion, bruises, and audiences who showed up because they loved it, not because it was famous.

  And I’ll be honest.

  Even with the System breathing down our necks, a part of me was stupidly excited.