“Let’s get the agreement with Qingguang in writing,” Zan Xinyi says. “I don’t like ambiguity.”

  “But I don’t think Qingqing can read?” Jiang Jin says. She’s still playing around with the vines, poking a small tendril and watching it curl and uncurl in response. The minute she decides the plant wasn’t dangerous, she’s suddenly completely fine with it. Even though she still can’t communicate with it.

  Jiang Jin laughs as the plant pokes her back, pushing it away from her sling.

  They’ve moved the meeting into Qingguang’s living room, congregating in the living room-turned-solarium where only the family portraits on the wall and the large windows remain unclaimed by the wild growth.

  The greenery actually reminds her in an odd way of Wei Shengyuan’s ground floor apartment, when she’d been taking some of his stuff upstairs. He’d had fake flowers in every room. She hates that kind of thing-- that much plastic smells weird. It’s better to just buy real flowers from the store.

  “No, it’s better to write it down,” Wei Shengyuan says. “Otherwise, Zan Xinyi might remember her side of the bargain wrongly.”

  He’s still mad about the fact she finished the game level before going after him.

  She’ll tackle that in a second.

  “In exchange for the plant known as Qingguang defending the building and purifying the air within it, we will seek out more information on its three kids’ current whereabouts, which is likely within the military base. We will also attempt to bring a cutting of the plant to them, and we are willing to offer to escort them back here once we make contact.”

  Should she add in a time limit for her end of the bargain? No. It’s enough that she said she’ll work on it. She has no idea how difficult it will be to gain entry to the military base, let alone find specific kids in it.

  And maybe they are all dead or lost already.

  Instead of using paper, Wei Shengyuan gestures for Qingguang to clear some space and then carves the agreement directly onto the walls with his water blades.

  At the bottom, he hesitates for a second and then adds something unfamiliar in place of a signature.

  “Is that an hourglass?” Zan Xinyi asks.

  “No. It’s a ‘Z’ with an ‘X’ overlaid on top of it. It just looks like an hourglass.”

  Look at him, showing off that he’s multilingual on top of everything else. Zan Xinyi squints, the English lettering now seeming a bit more familiar. It’s been a long time since she took a foreign language class.

  “Signing my name instead of your own.”

  “It’s not your name either. It’s a logo.” He points at it. “That would be the simplified version, and then for a more standard logo, it would have the symbol on top--maybe the Z in green and the X in black-- and then the words ‘game studio’ underneath, with maybe a motto underneath that for large banner marketing concepts...”

  He falters in his explanation as Zan Xinyi kneels down beside him, trying to get a better look. She traces the lettering with her finger, feeling the raw edge in the wood. Then she shoves herself around so she’s looking up at Wei Shengyuan.

  Both sides of his lips have split open from pressure from when he’d been unable to speak, and his throat is purple from bruises that go all the way around. A leaf is still stuck in one of his gills, and he flinches as she reaches up to pull it free.

  “I did come as fast as I could,” she says. “Even though I was only one hall away.”

  “Don’t ask me to believe in you, Zan Xinyi,” Wei Shengyuan says quietly. “It’s more painful than listening to that horn music while I suffocated. Just take the logo.”

  She looks back at the logo.

  Hers. It’s her name, it’s her game, it’s her studio. Every stupid inch of it.

  Made for her by Wei Shengyuan.

  “I’ve always wanted something that was only mine,” she says, finally. “Ah, it looks like I still don’t have it.”

  “Instead, you’ve got us!” Jiang Jin says. “And Qingqing!”

  “That’s right.”

  Zan Xinyi pushes herself up to her feet.

  She finished the game and got the reward-- well. Not the spins, she hasn’t had a moment to use the actual gacha--, but it still needs to be playtested and reviewed before they can move on to the next requirements that have been shoved in her lap. She hasn’t even read through them yet; everything was relegated to the side the minute she attached the new music files and slammed in a temporary button that, when clicked, gave a dialogue box announcing that one of two champions had been summoned.

  Now, it’s not technically true, because she didn’t design a backend that would register that as having happened anywhere, nor would it affect gameplay since the player had access to both of the characters during the first level no matter what.

  But there was a button, and you could press it, so it counted.

  She supposes there’s one major benefit to having a musician and an artist instead of any fellow coders.

  There’s no one there to call her on her bullshit where the system can hear.

  “We’ve got to do another gameplay review,” she says. “The schedule’s moved up due to some unanticipated last minute crunch on my part. Wei Shengyuan--”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” Wei Shengyuan sighs. He places his hand back on the newly freed wheels, and attempts to move them.

  As the wheels turn, they shake.

  “That sounds worse than my rhubarb sound!” Jiang Jin says. Zan Xinyi notes that she doesn’t say it’s worse than the music she was designing when she thought Wei Shengyian was dying. Jiang Jin had really...cried silently, for someone so optimistic.

  Actually, it was like when she was digging for Jiang Jin under the rubble, too. For someone with such control over sound, clearly there are things she prefers no one hears.

  “Wei Shengyuan, why is your wheelchair falling apart already?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Do you need some help?” Jiang Jin says simultaneously.

  “No, thank you,” Wei Shengyuan says to Jiang Jin before clicking his tongue at Zan Xinyi. “I wonder why,” he says. “Maybe if you’d been a little faster...”

  So now it’s alright to joke about it.

  “If that breaks, I guess there’s no choice but to princess carry you everywhere until we head back to Wet Dog Post,” Zan Xinyi says. “Oh, dear.”

  “Oh dear,” Jiang Jin echoes, far more sincerely. “Yiyi, you shouldn’t have to go through all that effort. Maybe Qingqing can help!”

  Zan Xinyi crosses her arms.

  “The plant is going to help,” she says skeptically. “Well, that’s not part of any deal I’m making.”

  “No one was asking you,” Wei Shengyuan says.

  He conjures up a ball of water and offers it to the plant like a treat.

  “Do you think you could grow enough that you could sprout all up and down the elevator shaft, Qingguang?” he asks softly.

  Now that would guarantee that they are never getting the elevator back online.

  “If you do that, you could carry me up and down different floors,” Wei Shengyuan says. “Look, and I’ll keep feeding you my specially conjured water. It tastes even better than the faucet in Zan Xinyi’s room.”

  “Hey!” Zan Xinyi says. “Then only you get to skip the stairs!”

  Wei Shengyuan looks over at her.

  “I thought it wasn’t part of the deal you were making. And what can you offer it?”

  “Probably blood,” Jiang Jin says. “It was drinking up Wei Shengyuan’s blood like crazy, he still looks so pale and corpse-like.”

  “Thank you, Jiang Jin.” Wei Shengyuan says unhappily.

  “I’m not offering the plant my blood,” Zan Xinyi says, losing interest in the negotiations. “Skip the stairs on your own time, everyone. It’s time to--”

  Ah, wait. Since Wei Shengyuan even told it to keep growing over all the building.

  “Qingguang. This is a mutually beneficial warning. You can grow anywhere, but do not damage the structural integrity, alright. Be careful. I’m calling off the deal if the building collapses. Though I probably won’t be able to call off the deal at that point, because I will be dead.”

  Her broom has begun to dim the longer that she hangs around and talks-- apparently the ‘sparkles’ don’t stay stored forever.

  Inconvenient.

  Also, no one else has remarked on the broom glowing, so she’s unsure if that’s part of the hallucination or if they just had other things on their mind.

  “She means she wants to work together for a long time, Qingqing!” Jiang Jin says as Zan Xinyi exits. “It would be bad if your pictures got damaged.”

  Once back in her own apartment, Zan Xinyi settles back down on her couch.

  Her spins have been waiting for her.

  Wow, the system is so optimistic.

  “I’d like to sacrifice them for more It Will Work tags,” Zan Xinyi says. “There’s four spins remaining, right? Two tags.”

  >Error: one of your remaining spins is a GUARANTEED THREE STAR. Are you sure you would like to make this trade for two one star items?

  Zan Xinyi hesitates. Well, she doesn’t have an immediate purpose in mind for wanting more of the tags, they're just the most important part of maintaining her quality of life.

  Except for the fact that Jiang Jin is going to need her studio set up, and if Wei Shengyuan’s wheelchair breaks she’ll need to slap one on until they get a new one.

  Speaking of Wei Shengyuan, she just gave him a purification tag, but she didn’t see it on him.

  Her tags...she’s never once lost track of them.

  But she doesn’t know where on earth Wei Shengyuan put his purification tag. Has he used it already? Is he that fragile? Is he like a goldfish who dies after one shake of the plastic bag?

  “No, I take it back,” Zan Xinyi sighs. “I’m not doing that trade.”

  >Understood. Would you like to spin now?

  “Instead, I’ll do a different one. Sacrifice three so I can get another 1 use purification tag.”

  At the same time that she gets her new purification tag and tucks it away, the system already begins to spin for her guaranteed three star.

  Ah, it really dislikes the trades.

  But she really dislikes the system.

  So what can it do?

  >You have received: [Purification Tag (x1 use)][It Will Bind Tag (x1)]

  “What the hell does ‘it will bind’ do, and why is it so much higher stars than--”

  “Are you still talking to Qingqing?” Jiang Jin asks, opening the door and ducking inside.

  Zan Xinyi opens her mouth to say no, realizes that would make her sound much crazier, and gives up.

  “It’s not important,” she says instead. “Speaking of that, you’re doing a lot of talking to a plant that you can’t actually hear speak back.”

  “But once I know it’s trying to communicate, then understanding it just means paying attention to its cues,” Jiang Jin says. “Music doesn’t need a language to be understood, either.”

  She settles into the couch next to Zan Xinyi, shifting around and fluffing her feathers to avoid sitting on them.

  “Also, you know those two pieces of music I made earlier?”

  The ones she’d made that’d made Zan Xinyi’s ears bleed while she stared directly at her like some kind of possessed ghost. Yes, Zan Xinyi knows about them.

  “Yes.”

  “I named them! We were in too much of a hurry earlier, so I just sent the files to you as field music 1 and summon music 1, but they actually have names!”

  “And what are they,” Zan Xinyi says, deciding to play along with the pretense that her participation in this conversation is necessary for it to proceed.

  “No, open up the game. I’ll explain as it goes. I put a lot of thought into this.”

  “Get Wei Shengyuan over here if you want me to open up the game for our final review before I figure out what needs to be done next.”

  The system had held off on the spins, but it hadn’t held off on that. As soon as she checks the requirements, she needs to spread the misery.

  “Wei Shengyuan was right behind me!”

  “I’m here, I’m here,” Wei Shengyuan sighs as he maneuvers in. “What’s the point in me seeing this again? I saw it last time.”

  “There’s new music.”

  “There’s a new problem for you,” Zan Xinyi says, and finally she smiles, opening up the game and showing them all the new button that appears under certain conditions.

  “This is the ‘Loss’ button," she says. “It appears when you lose a fight.”

  “It looks like the Door to Night,” Wei Shengyuan says warily.

  “It does! And when you click it, you are transported to the most important screen in a gacha game-- the summoning menu!”

  When she clicks it, the game screen goes completely black. A horrific horn sound plays, and then the screen says CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE SUMMONED THE WITCH!

  Then the normal level screen turns back on, bringing you back to the start of the level. Mechanically, nothing has happened.

  “All of that is going to need to be scrapped, redesigned, and redrawn,” Wei Shengyuan says, horrified.

  “Except for the music,” Jiang Jin says happily. “I’m calling it Desperate Wishes.”

  Wei Shengyuan goes quiet.

  “It’s a good name for gacha game summoning music, I suppose,” he says eventually “Though the sound....doesn’t really sound like a wish?”

  “Desperation is an ugly sound,” Jiang Jin says.

  It’s an ugly everything, and it sounds about right-- like your father stealing all your money and losing it in a single night of Mahjong.

  But still, for a long time, it was all she had.

  1 review away from another bonus chapter coming out next Monday as well! Scary. Thank you for 290 follows, and thank you to my beautiful supporters!