'This is bad...'
Doug's face looked serious. He was trying to contain his feelings, but through my Appraisal, I could see his body was tense and his fists clenched.
He was angry, not just a little, but very angry.
I was shocked to see him like that.
In the original, Doug only had a few scenes; he wasn’t a recurring character. Like Priyanka, he was soone you wouldn’t even rember the na of unless you were the type of fan who scoured the character wiki.
Not everyone would go to such lengths to learn the details of a children’s cartoon. And I was no different.
Steven Universe was a series I liked, but I wasn’t obsessed with it. I could only sing a few songs and recall the main events. I even skipped episodes that felt like filler or just plain boring.
And even though it was a good story, the beginning was painful to watch. The logic was so absurd, how could the protagonist fight a giant monster with cookies and an ice cream freezer?
Even as a kid, I frowned at that.
If it hadn’t been sothing Grandma put on the TV, I would’ve ignored it entirely. I only watched because she went out of her way to buy cable just for , despite our financial situation.
As the episodes went on, though, I finally managed to wrap my head around the story and empathize with the characters.
I wondered how different and simple my life would have been if people in the real world thought the way they did in that world.
And for a mont, I wished I could live it.
I longed for a simple world, free from the suffocating pain of reality.
But when I entered this world, I quickly realized the people around weren’t just idiotic characters.
Priyanka was a doctor with strong ethics and principles; she had her own pains and anxieties, like anyone else. Connie faced her own family dramas and worries, and as a child, she struggled to make sense of the adult world.
These people had depth. They couldn’t simply be labeled good or bad like fictional characters. This reality was just as complex as my own, even with its absurdities.
And Doug was proof of that. He had barely appeared in the story, and in the scenes he did, he didn’t seem like a well-rounded or complex character.
But could soone without thoughts make such expressions and display such raw emotions?
In that mont, there was no doubt. This wasn’t just a cartoon world.
It was a real world, where even side characters like Doug could act beyond their scripts.
I looked at Doug, whose twitching eyes seed to be saying sothing.
I didn’t want him to notice . I didn’t want to see him as a real person.
Because if this world were truly complex and realistic, then "fate" didn’t exist.
If I didn’t act, if I didn’t put things back on track, everything could simply fall apart.
[It’s a misunderstanding.]
I had to resolve this situation.
[Forget what I said.]
I couldn’t believe such a simple slip of the tongue had caused this ss.
[Don’t be angry.]
But I wondered if those words could fix anything when the milk had already been spilled.
And as if to prove my thoughts true, Doug’s expression grew even angrier at my words.
I had clearly told him it was a misunderstanding and asked him not to be angry. So why was he angrier now?
I couldn’t understand how people in this world thought, or what Doug saw when he looked at .
Was it in this family’s blood to always misunderstand ? Even the smallest mistake seed to cause a catastrophe.
It was so unfair. I had been doing my best these days to avoid saying anything unnecessary. I even explained myself when sothing could be misunderstood, yet they still treated as if I were lying.
The well was already so deep that no matter what I did, I just kept falling.
While I was lost in regret, Doug looked at and reached his hand toward my head.
Panic surged through . Ti seed to stop as my mind raced, analyzing every detail of his hand coming closer.
They weren’t rough, scarred hands, but neat and well-kept, with a few calluses in certain spots. It was a sign that Doug had once gone through so kind of systematic training.
Yet in a strange way, even these very different hands, shaped by different lives, seed to overlap with others I rembered.
As his hand drew nearer, I felt my gem becoming unstable. Everything was happening so quickly, yet my thoughts spun in less than a second.
I had to do sothing. Refusing Doug’s touch now would be suicidal.
What would happen if, after all this, I still pushed him away? That would only create more pointless misunderstandings.
And I had worked so hard to build a good atmosphere. What if Doug grew to dislike because of my resistance?
In a panic, I tried to rember the techniques I had practiced. I needed to stay rational.
I tried to push away the uncomfortable images by focusing on how different Doug was from them.
But those forced thoughts were nothing compared to the weight of what my Gem was processing.
While my Gem’s mory system had so order, my human mories were just a chaotic ss.
His harmless smile twisted into a sneer. His kind posture beca threatening.
The more I tried to separate Doug from those images, the more they clung to him.
I gave up on that approach and instead focused on simply watching my thoughts.
'I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this.'
'Don’t touch . Please don’t touch . I can’t handle it.'
'Stay away. Stay away from . Don’t touch !'
A simple word could describe my state: chaotic.
This wasn’t sothing I could handle by re observation. The thoughts only grew, second after second.
I was out of options. Everything I had learned took ti, and ti was gone.
How could I lessen the weight of this trauma?
With no better choice, I fell back on the only thing that ever worked for .
I forced the thoughts down.
'Shut up!'
The harsh, rciless voice rang through my mind.
Unlike the thods I'd tried before, this thod was far too brusque in comparison.
I simply suppressed any thoughts of going further than I should have, like soone holding the reins of an out-of-control horse.
It took ti to ta this horse, but until that ti arrived, I would have to learn to ride it, no matter how wild it was.
It wasn't ideal, much less sothing I could use all the ti. Willpower wasn't infinite, and my mind was in a constant state of fatigue.
But at least for now, it was enough.
Doug's hand moved closer and closer to my body, and with every inch or milliter of distance I felt, the more rigid my body, which I couldn't even really feel, beca.
The hand that had been a certain distance away was now a few inches away from my head. Just like Doug did before we got in the car.
I had already unconsciously simplified Doug's entire body to a vision of simple shapes, but his hands beca increasingly clear, as if my mind wouldn't allow to simplify that particular part.
And eventually, his hand touched my head.
As usual, I couldn't feel any sensation in my body. My heart didn't beat faster, his touch held no warmth, and my breathing didn't quicken, but even without any of these natural senses, the effects of his touch could be felt.
My mind had frozen, in a way I hadn't even known was possible.
At that mont, the only thing I could keep active was my human disguise, as if my last thread of reason forced to keep it functioning.
But all other senses had been cut off. My heart wasn't beating, my breathing wasn't working, and I could barely maintain my posture without the support of the chair.
It was as if my mind was shutting down in real ti.
His touch didn't last long, maybe 3 to 5 seconds at most. But in my mind, it felt like an eternity.
It was as if maggots were crawling all over my body and trying to get into my orifices. It was disgusting, uncomfortable, and repulsive.
I wanted to pull that hand away as quickly as possible and run away. But I kept suppressing those instincts until the very end.
I couldn't see Doug's expression behind that touch; I could barely hold on to my senses.
But I hoped it was enough.
The mont his hand left my body, all the energy left . I struggled not to fall to the ground and cause a scene in a public place, but even that seed like a huge challenge.
But it was sothing I had to do, so I kept trying for who knows how long to stay operational.
At so point, my control returned, and I was able to stabilize myself and regain so of my senses. All my outside vision had been blocked, and I had no idea what had happened.
I focused on resuming my breathing and heartbeat one by one. These were simple processes to maintain, and it didn't take long to repair the interrupted energy flow.
And when everything was finally as it should be, I expanded the Appraisal energy, sowhat reluctantly.
The dark energy cautiously enveloped Doug's body from the tips of his toes to the middle of his torso, and finally to his face.
Although several chaotic events were happening simultaneously within , to outsiders, I must have simply stopped moving, completely expressionless for a few seconds.
There was nothing overly abnormal about this, since my body was already quite expressionless.
But Doug's expression showed no happiness or satisfaction that I had accepted his touch.
There was a complex set of feelings.
A rage of unknown origin that stemd from his earlier misunderstanding.
A faint trace of sadness, as if he were looking at sothing pitiful.
And also a feeling of contempt, as if he deeply regretted his actions.
So many emotions in a single expression that even a professional actor would have difficulty replicating.
For these feelings were purely genuine.
Amidst all that turbulent situation, a small figure appeared in the background with a smile.
"I think I found the book!"
"......"
If this were fiction, Connie would have appeared at the most opportune mont before Doug even touched my head.
But reality was the most disappointing show of all.
Judging by Doug's expression, I don't think my acceptance of his touch was convincing.
The future was pitch black, in contrast to Connie's bright smile.
I felt an irrational sense of resentnt toward that smiling expression.
'Why the hell did you show up so late?'
I could only think about it with remorse.
"I think I found the book!"
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