Before I went back, though! Came something else.
A bell chimed and the door swung open.
"Welcomnya~ Ah. It's you, Mr. Playboy."
"Shut it, lady," I hissed at the receptionist with cat ears and a twirling tail. In the Sachertorte Faction, the one establishment that wasn't broken down yet was the cat cafe that was personally being run by Billy. Who was, by some surprise, the secretary of this faction?
I was fairly shocked by that revelation but kept that feeling of being shocked to myself. He had said that he had started this establishment in the first place because I was walking around with a cat a lot and that once it was gone I had become a little distant.
Hah.
At my behest, though I had never voiced this demand myself, he negotiated with the faction and kept the cafe running in the part-time. The school faculty allowed it too since it was a good place to keep stray cats at.
"The price is the same as before?"
"It's ten gold more now."
What a rip-off.
What a total rip-off.
I handed over the cash to the lady and went inside the divider that separated me from the many little tiny floofballs that continued wiggling around.
With a bright smile, I dived right onto them and played around with the cats.
An hour was a short time.
***
I returned to the faction not long after, and everyone else had returned too.
We decided to meet up again in one hour after taking a small break and soon we were all in the glass outhouse that Albert had created.
"Man, Marissa really didn't let me go."
"Did you promise to bring her into the faction then?"
"Nope, I pushed it all on the principal."
The blue lights shone above while the place near the couches was lit up by a dim flame. On the bar counter were cups and glasses along with bottles of different wines and whiskeys, one of which, a Johnny Sprinter was kept on the table in front of us.
"For an eroge, they really didn't hold back on the plagiarism."
Johnny Runner was completely ripped off here.
"Eroge?"
Noa asked.
Albert looked at me and nodded.
We had decided it was time to tell these guys about things.
We had hidden it enough. And now, that seeming gaps in our knowledge had popped up, it seemed something worse would happen.
Lethe already knew I was from another world, but this matter was something different that I, unfortunately, couldn't tell her first.
Because there was something we had to verify with people that were directly involved in things.
"There is a thing called an Eroge in the old world that we used to live in."
Noa and Luka leaned back.
We were talking about the old world for the first time, and it seemed that they had noticed the urgency of the matter.
A silent lull took over the air as the flames crackled.
"I really don't wanna talk about eroges man."
"On you, you little fuck."
"Should I start with games first? Should I take it all the way from Atari to explain this deviancy?"
"Just. Just get to it, dude."
Talking about an Eroge in another world with its main characters was something strikingly scary.
I was almost sure that Albert would be slugged by Luka if he mentioned how bad it could get. He should have just called it a game, but I could understand how shaken one would have to be to lie on the fly like that.
"So basically, there are things called games alright?"
"We know games, idiot."
"What kind of world was it? Did you really drive as many bikes as you want."
"Noa—"
"Bikes? How do you know about bikes?"
I hadn't told this bastard about the sick antique bike I had!
Albert looked at me. In a completely useless time, his mind ran a hundred meters per second and he figured out the right conclusion.
"You made a bike!"
Not the right one maybe.
"Well… I didn't make one."
I said, stomping Noa's foot under the table.
"We found one when we were in hell. It's magic operated so couldn't be someone from another world creating them. It seemed pretty natural for the place, the mechanics were all over the place."
"Is that so?" Albert hummed. "Take me to hell next time, I want to sit on a bike after long."
"Yeah, the way it swam on the ground was awesome."
Albert flinched.
"On the ground!?"
I looked away and nodded.
"Motherfucker, you found an antique bike and you never told me!? I thought us friends!!!"
"I-I am sorry—"
Albert said a lot of stuff that would need to be censored. After finally calming down, he sat and nodded.
"You better get hell under your palms and get me a bike."
"Bet."
We were going to do that, and do that together that is.
Albert sighed and leaned back on his chair. He poured the sprinter into everyone's glasses and downed a large sip.
"Alright, so here's the deal. While you two and your buddies returned from a devastated future, that was not the case with us."
"Right, you're simply someone from another world."
Albert nodded at Luka's words.
"But we still know a lot about this world right?"
"I've always found it suspicious that you do, but I never pointed things out."
Albert nodded once more.
And so did I.
It was clear to both of us that Luka was suspect but trusted us to tell him.
"Here's the thing. You remember that video projection that we see form the principal?"
"Or if you've ever seen the Deep Down Town in your old life, it's what they display the first Deep Down Dive with."
"Oh, I know that one," said Noa.
"I understand it, but I never saw the Deep Down Dive. We did use similar technology during war."
"That's right, we did that."
"We called that a TV screen. And instead of only recordings, we could see whatever we wanted on that stuff."
"Is that so…?"
"Basically even things that didn't exist in our world. Or monsters like none other. As long as you could think of it, you could animate it, create and display it."
"I guess… I get it?" Noa said and Luka nodded.
"We used to play story-based games on it."
Albert took in another breath.
"And the story of this entire world, is what I know from a game."
