NOVEL NEXT Chapter 20: A Pet Girl
The Red-Haired Girl was an emaciated waif of a thing who looked to be somewhere between 14 and 30 years-old. She wore a tattered, stained white t-shirt that sat just above her knees, and that was it.
She had no scars or blemishes on her fair skin, and her body was scrape-free despite their struggle with the elves, besides some reddening on the cheek she'd smacked into the ground with.
Nikola observed her with her baby blues, her gaze drifting up and down her frail silhouette. She lay there motionless, eyes half-open but hidden under her wrist, still in the same position she had placed her in.
The more she stared at her and willed herself to come up with why she had saved her, the fewer answers presented themselves. Why had she pulled this girl from the depths, especially when she hadn't saved any of her own people from their watery fates? What made her any different than them, or any of the other prisoners she had left to rot in the Flapnap dungeon?
Luke was watching Nikola expectantly, fidgeting more as the seconds passed without a response. He was taken with playing with one of the metal loops on his backpack, clinking at it with a fingernail and tracing it with his thumb.
"She was a prisoner in the elven city where I, too, was imprisoned," Nikola eked out slowly, almost shyly. Somewhere deep down, she knew rescuing the girl had been a poor use of her time and energy, but...
"So you two were prisoners together."
"Yes."
"Okay... and why is she here with us now? Do you realize what she is, Nikola?"
Nikola's eyebrows knitted together, and she checked the red-haired girl's ears. They weren't pointed, and she didn't have any horns, and she wasn't covered in fur... so what could he possibly mean? As far as she could tell, the red-haired girl was human.
"A human."
Luke sighed, his shoulders sagging as the air passed his lips. "Yes, she's human, but she's also an NPC. I'm convinced now that you're somehow thinking for yourself, but she..."
His eyes crinkled at the edges as he tried to puzzle out how to explain his thoughts. "She's not awakened like you, I guess you could say. I've been to that prison in Flapnap before, back when I used to play. She's... just decoration, Nikola. She has four or five lines of dialogue and that's it, and otherwise her entire existence is laying there in that cell."
Decoration? Nikola scoffed at the concept, her visage darkening. "Just decoration?" She spat the words out like they tasted bad.
Luke shrunk back in his seat, nudging himself into the opposite corner of the carriage to be as far away from the pissed off 'Awakened' NPC as possible. "I know it sounds like I'm being one hell of a jerk right now, but yeah. She's like... a mannequin. You know how a mannequin is made to display clothes? She was made with a purpose, too, and it was just to make the Flapnap prison seem less empty if a player ever got trapped in it. She's there to populate the area, and that's it. There are tons of others like her in your world."
"So is that why she continues to react as if she has not left Flapnap?"
"Exactly," Luke breathed, letting himself relax and shimmy out of the corner a little.
"... does that mean she'll never say anything else?"
Luke's shoulders sagged a little.
"Yeah, probably. Sorry."
He looked between Nikola and the horizontal female a couple times.
"But hey, you're talking and thinking now, so maybe she'll be capable of talking and learning one day. It would be very peculiar, almost impossible - but then, here you are, being peculiar and impossible."
Nikola sighed at the news, staring gravely at the 'mannequin' on the opposite side of the carriage. So she had a set number of responses, and that was all she would ever say. Nikola herself remembered having sets of responses that she could 'choose' from, but it was hardly ever a choice, since she had never had the free will to enable her to truly pick anything.
The blue-haired man chortled. "So she's your pet now?"
Nikola thought on that for a moment. She'd had to oversee her since plucking her from her natural habitat, and she would be feeding her as soon as they arrived in the Copper Citadel, so... "Yes, I suppose she is."
Luke sputtered at her matter-of-fact retort. "N-Nikola!" He had been joking around, but removing an NPC from where they were supposed to be could have serious repercussions on how the game ran. "We can't just remove an NPC from where they're supposed to be in the game, no matter how attached to her you are. It might break something."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "So you would have me simply return her to prison?"
"Well, no, but--"
"That is exactly what you are proposing, Luke. Prison is where I found her, so that is where she is 'supposed to be'."
Luke backpedaled in response to the NPC's mounting annoyance, trying to think about how he could explain this to her in a way she would understand.
"Nikola, the prison guards deliver food to the prisoners every 3 days. What happens if she isn't there to eat her portion for two weeks in a row?"
"What does that have to do with anything? They can simply not serve her the food, considering she is no longer there."
"But they're NPCs with purposes too. They're there to serve her food, and maybe prepare her food, and that's it. They'll put the food on the floor over and over again until there's a huge pile of uneaten food, and if the game isn't equipped to handle that, it could break."
"This game sounds very fragile," Nikola growled.
"It is, in some ways. In others, it's quite robust - it's one of the highest rated Life Simulators in the world."
Nikola sighed. "I don't know what that means, but I am not returning her to the elven prison simply because of plates. I'm keeping her."
Luke shrugged. He really wasn't all that attached to the idea of not having her around, he just didn't relish all the meals that would be wasted putting them down her gullet. "Okay. I guess you're keeping her."
And that was how Nikola got herself a pet girl.