Danika was still chuckling over MatchlessMinion's attempt at explaining what a concubine was to the little flying pig in front of the beautiful elven bard when she logged out, but she sobered a little and took a deep breath before submitting her search.
"You asked for this," she reminded herself as she sorted through the results for candid and behind the scenes photos of Aichi Shinichi working on the new VR film. She'd been avoiding the entire subject, knowing that there would be plenty of pictures of him with the pretty stars that they'd seen in the shows they'd watched together, but his cuddling and his request for verification that she still wanted to marry him made her feel like something was wrong.
She wasn't even really sure what she was looking for. There were actually fewer shots of him in close contact with his co-star than she'd expected, and most of the shots of them kissing seemed to be of the same VR scene from different angles.
"She doesn't even look like she's really enjoying it, at least act like you're enjoying it, isn't that your job?" Danika criticized.
After a bit she expanded her search, and discovered how concise Naoki's summaries of recent articles actually were. She'd been assuming that he was leaving out a lot of information, but from the bits she read, she could see that she already knew more about the plot and cast than any of the official releases told.
She still wasn't sure why Naoki had been making a point of summarizing every article that talked about how well the cast members were getting along, and the lasting relationships that were being formed, to her whether she wanted to know or not. She was pretty sure that he wasn't actually testing her resolve anymore though, because he always added little, "but they never mentioned," incidents. She still hadn't quite decided if this was his way of making her feel included or if he was innocculating her against the stories.
She skimmed an article from two days ago, that claimed to be mostly 'speculation', and decided that it had to have been written by someone who had access to at least one cast member like she did. Its summary of how the characters met during their vacation, how the lifelong enemies supposedly bonded over the coincidence of having chosen the same song as their ringtone, and how one of the characters played by the members of Underneath was actually going to die, fit too well with the fragments of what she knew. Especially since the guys had made a point of assuring her that any rumors she heard about one of them leaving the band after the movie was released, could be totally ignored.
A comment on one of the officially released VR scenes, where the two main characters were actually making out, caught her eye and she gazed at it a little judgmentally. It read: "This looks so fake, he always has his hands lower than that when he's really kissing someone."
After a moment she sighed and asked the empty air, "Encyclopedic fan or girl you've kissed? Because they've obviously either kissed you or watched you kissing somebody."
Her assistant dragon spoke up from it's app an hour later and reminded her, "You are scheduled to begin your shift in less than eight hours."
"Okay," Danika replied and closed the screen. She hadn't found anything that the public knew of that might make Shinichi suddenly feel clingy. The expressions of the members of Underneath tended toward their warm public smiles in their most recent snapshots, but the rest of them just looked like the guys being themselves.
She held her phone for a minute before messaging Shinichi simply: "I love you."
She still didn't say so very often, and it seemed to be the core of what he'd wanted to know, regardless of what was actually stressing him right now.
--
Shinichi reached for his phone when the message notification from Danika sounded without opening his eyes. She didn't usually message him this late, since he'd taken the time to set up a calendar that held both of their schedules and made sure that her work assistant could access it.
He cracked open one eye and peeked at the message, which was short enough that he didn't even have to open it up to see the whole thing. A smile spread across his face as he closed his eyes again, but a frown replaced it after a few moments. He was worried that she was feeling anxious. There were too many things that he could think of that might be making her feel anxious too.
She was meeting up with her future stepmother for some reason on Saturday. She'd told him that her cousin had been turned down for a spot on the beta testing team for the demo they'd just finished. She could be fretting about his long absence, or about starting on the new demo game in the morning.
He opened his eyes and wrote back: "I love you too. Don't worry about the future tonight, just get some sleep. We've both got a long day tomorrow, but I'll definitely spend some time cuddling with you in VR tomorrow night."
Her reply arrived almost before he finished closing his eyes again: "Yeah. Sorry, I expected you to be asleep and thought you'd get that in the morning."
His breath huffed in a silent laugh, and he replied teasingly: "I'm never going to be sorry about waking up to hear that you love me."
She didn't reply again but he fell asleep with a smile still curling the corners of his mouth.
--
Danika slept restlessly. She wondered what part of the future was worrying Shinichi. She decided that she really needed to try to say that she loved him more often, but she really didn't want it to become something that was just a habit some day.
When she woke up, she thought about that again and wondered when she decided that having the habit of telling your loved ones that you loved them was a bad thing.
She could remember her mother telling her father that she loved him often enough. Usually while laughing happily. Shinichi was usually laughing happily when he said it to her too. An image of Shinichi humming while he sorted something overlapped with an image of her mother humming while she cleaned and she laughed.
When Danika logged in to the new Demo server, she was dressed in a featureless white coverall outfit. She didn't have long to examine herself before she was met by a softly glowing ball of light about the width of her hands that announced, "Welcome to StarCraft technologies game developer Danika Belova. I am the personal assistant assigned to you by the system core. Your personal settings have already been imported. When you are ready, please allow me to guide you to the meeting room."
"Ah, thanks," Danika replied a little uncertainly. The ball hovered politely in front of her until she added, "I'm ready."
The wall opened up, and the ball floated down a short white corridor that opened up into a wide white room, with lots of windows that looked out at a blue sky dotted with white clouds. In the center of the room a much larger ball of light hovered over a raised pool that appeared to be filled with liquid silver.
Lin Hao stood in front of that glowing orb with dozens of transparent screens outlined around him. He was dressed in the same white coverall that she was, with no visual indication that he outranked her.
Danika drifted over to him and asked, "We're starting out a bit differently?"
He replied without looking at her, "Yeah. The main difference is that I stripped out all of the old game records this time. But your assistant has updated libraries and records combined from both of your previous ones."
"Greetings Danika Belova," the large glowing sphere said cheerfully in a familiar voice.