#aiyusamonth

Week 1: Sept. 1 - 7  💜 I dreamed of you (and it scared me)  💙 You and me against the digital world  💜 Comfortable silence  💙 Error (system and heart)

Week 2: Sept. 8 - 14  💜 Bug hunters in an MMORPG  💙 Cyber café  💜 University setting: Reluctant project partners  💙 Android with emotions & the human who repairs him

Week 3: Sept. 15 - 21 💜 “If only you’d been human…"  💙 Last conversation before goodbye  💜 Remembering you hurts, but forgetting would destroy me  💙 A ‘love you’ never said

   Yusaku rolled his eyes. Date, schmate. He had only met Ai today and yet, when Ai looked at him, yes, it was with a gaze full of love but something else too. Something miserable. It made Yusaku feel like he wasn't truly being looked at bit rather through, like he wasn't there despite having all of Ai's attention and adoration.

    See? Even at his rudeness of rolling his eyes, Ai didn't admonish Yusaku. Instead, he continued to sit and stare and sigh, like a fool in love.

   “Well?” Yusaku prompted Ai through his reverie. “How do we finish this date then?”

   “Well, we need to talk some more.” Ai said.

   “About what?” Yusaku asked.

   “About whatever we like.” Ai trumpeted, getting loud all of a sudden and shaking Yusaku's nerves like a tree. “And we need to exchange gifts! Two each. Then,” Ai turned quiet again, fidgeting cutely, “we get to kiss.”

   Yusaku sighed. Anything to get this over and done with. He had places to go and people to see. He wanted to go home. He needed to clear his name to Queen and slay the Jabberwock and none of those things were going to happen if he was tied to a chair by a madman.

   “Okay, what do you want to give me?” Yusaku asked. “If we are on a date, then I want my presents now.”

   “Oh my, so bold, but of course I would pamper my lover. I have just what you need: some freshly brewed tea.” Ai said.

   He produced a pot of tea, seemingly from thin air, and theatrically poured it. Steam wafted off the rivers and into a chipped, ceramic tea cup with wisteria emblems printed on it. The tea smelt rancid, it wrinkled Yusaku's nose and his dissatisfaction with it only worsened when Ai scootched the cup closer to him.

   He waited, sharp and expectant.

   Yusaku pointedly didn't say anything.

   Ai blinked, batted his lashes.

   Yusaku didn't even move a muscle in reaction.

   “Er, well, drink up, Yusaku-chan.” Ai attempted to encourage Yusaku.

   “How?” Yusaku asked, snapping. “I can't reach it when I'm tied up.”

   “Oops, silly me! Your second gift from moi.” Ai said.

   He bonked his head apologetically with the palm of his hand, poking his tongue out, too. It was an utter farce of being genuine but maybe he was. Yusaku couldn't tell as Ai adjusted his hat, then his waistcoat, and then produced his next gift for Yusaku.

   “Tada!” he announced ever so sing-song. “A silly straw. Although, since this is Wonderland, it is a normal straw to us silly geese, tee-hee.” 

   The silly straw in question was long and winding, a translucent purple with a Kink in about the middle of which was heart-shaped. Ai put the bottom of it in the tea cup and supported the other end of it so Yusaku could use it.

   “Bottoms up, beloved.” Ai sing-songed.

   Yusaku huffed but accepted. He latched on and sucked hard enough to-blegh! It didn't even taste like tea. It was more akin to boiled grape ramune despite the deceptively earl grey colour it had in the teacup.

   “Ugh, yuck.” Yusaku complained.

   Ai, unfazed, changed the topic of conversation immediately, “Now what about my gift?” he said. “What did you bring me, your lover boy?”

   “I didn't bring you anything. I only met you today. You are not my lover boy.” Yusaku said and repeating Ai's self annoyed pet name for himself soured his mouth worse than the tea.

   “Well,” Ai said, uppity, “guess that means you are here forever then! Oopsie-daisies.”

   “What, no?!” Yusaku exclaimed, firing back. “I need to go, Ai, I need to go home!”

   “I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Yusaku-chan.” Ai tutted, closing his eyes as he fidgeted with his fingers again.

   “Why not? I need to go home, I need to slay the Jabberwock so Queen clears my name and then I can go home but I can't if I'm stuck here playing dolls with you.” Yusaku snarled.

   “Too bad, rules are rules. You would know that better than anyone else, Mister I Barely Escaped with My Head.” Ai taunted him.

  Yusaku huffed.

   Ai cautiously opened one eye, “I told you already. We are on a date. To have a successful date and leave, we need to talk twice. Check, check. I need to give you two gifts. Check and check. But you also need to give me two gifts so we can then kiss afterwards and leave our date. But if you can't, well, you. Are. Stuck.”

   “Says who?” Yusaku snapped, incredulous.

   “The game designer, that's who.” Ai said.

   “Wait, what? Pause.” Yusaku, in disbelief, scrunched up his face then turned to the camera, “Can you believe this?”

   Ai blinked, “Who are you talking to? This is a written text, there can't be any cameras.”

   Yusaku looked again and Ai was right. There were no cameras. Just the droning of a keyboard as the next word was written after the other, a narration added one by one until it became a third person omniscient perspective intrinsic to the diegetic noises of the scene. The birds singing, the foliage swaying, etcetera.

   But that couldn’t be right either, Yusaku realised.

   His skin began to crawl. The keys on the keyboard continued to clack as he put one and one together.

   “We’re not speaking like it's 1856.” Yusaku said.

   “Well, yeah, ‘cause, like… You know, duh, because it’s… I’m crazy, I’m Looney Tunes, you know. We’re all mad here.” Ai rambled.

   The anachronistic reference only further cemented in Yusaku’s mind that something was very wrong.

   “We,” he said, “are in a fanfiction.”

   “What, no…? That can’t be right.” Ai replied.

   “By an author who hasn’t even read the original book she is creating this pastiche from. She’s barely seen the Disney version!”

   AN: The Care Bears version was my jam as a kid tho. 

   If you haven’t seen that, get out of here! XD

   “See?!” Yusaku exclaimed.

   Ai groaned and thingz 0nly w3nt w0rz3 and d0wn h1ll fr0m d0wn th3r3.

   Mostly because Yusaku died.

   Oops.

   Yusaku simply vanished from existence. Right in front of Ai’s eyes for the… fiftieth time by Ai’s count. There was just no escaping fate. Yusaku had to clear his name by slaying the Jabberwocky. Except, it was usually the Jabberwocky who killed him. Or Queen. And there was one incident with the Walrus. And another with the Caterpillar and his hookah machine. 

   For Yusaku, dying was as easy as breathing. He didn’t have a chance to process. He just disappeared as the world around him folded like a castle of playing cards. He was just returned to the beginning of the book, the beginning of the level, back to when he was falling down the rabbit hole that he could never escape from because darling dearest Wonderland wanted to keep him so bad and the only way he could stay was if he died.

   Its a shame he never remembered.

   But Ai did.

   Their first meeting, the first time they shared in laughter and jokes, crying as Yusaku seemingly got so close to the finishing line before… chomp. He was gone. Decapitated.

   This wasn’t one of this gorier deaths, Ai had to admit but that was hardly a balm for his soul. Not when he wanted to keep Yusaku, all to himself, it's a shame he had to share him with a larger than life story but hey. Just because ropes didn’t work this time, didn’t mean they woulodn’t work next time or he could try something else, like a glue trap or a reverse bear trap or something but at the end of the purple prose run on sentence, deep down, he knew.

   There was nothing Ai could do to keep his beloved protagonist safe from the ending of the… the whatever it was and look? Not much space between here and the last words of the text. Just three… two… one…