“It’s . . .” Lucas didn’t feel like explaining. He didn’t even know how to begin explaining to her the bizarre truth. Well, you see, there is an NPC that looks just like your dead sister, and I got put on the starting island with her, and I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her or see her die again, and even though I finally did start the quest, that same inability to watch her die has now put me on some grand quest to become a villain, and that has delayed me getting a class even more. Yup, that’s about the reason. Yeah, I can’t tell her that. “It’s complicated.”

“Can’t be too complicated,” Liu replied. “Do you like casting spells or hitting stuff? Do you wanna attune to an element or be more generalized? Do you like sneaking up or blasting in? Class selection shouldn’t be that hard. Just have fun, and if you don’t like your class, remake. It’s not like it takes a long time to hit the end of that game. Just get a friend to hold on to your gear when you re-roll.” She grabbed one of the bottles and drank straight from it as she walked over to the machine and put a hand on it. “Games are supposed to be fun like that, when lecherous creeps aren’t ruining them.” Her mood seemed to even out after the first drink. She wasn’t nearly as nervous as before, even though the last line was clearly stabbing at a can of worms Lucas wasn’t sure he wanted to open. He already knew exactly how lascivious and invasive some players could be. He didn’t need her to explain further.

“You play?” he asked.

“Not really. I wish I could just goof off and do my own thing, explore the world as I want, but I’m stuck in the noob world with stupid assignments usually,” she lamented, taking another swig of the wine and passing the bottle to Lucas. “So, you do drink, right? I know it was Yu Hua’s thing, so I understand if it wasn’t yours and that you used to just drink it cause of her, but I just . . . You do like wine, right? You couldn’t have been married to her and not.”

I didn’t really, Lucas thought as he took the bottle. Not back then. Socially drinking had been his wife’s grace more than his own since he had always been working, and alcohol slowed the brain, but that had changed drastically of late. “Yeah, I do,” he said. He took a quick swig from the bottle before grabbing two of the red cups.