Bugz felt a small sharp pain to the heart. My face, but not my body, right? Feng carried on talking. She studied his face for a reaction. Nothing. She played up her pained expression a bit more. Still nothing. He blabbed away, looking at her ’Versona through his phone without making eye contact or noticing her body language. Bugz often tried to convey her feelings to people she knew with thoughts instead of words. Quite often, like at this moment, the practice left her disappointed.

“Honestly, I thought you were just pretending not to know who I was just to make a good impression,” Bugz said. She wondered if he was just trying to befriend her to gather intel for Clan:LESS. She eyed the main doors of the school down the hallway.

“I had no idea.” Feng shook his head with a grin. “When I first met you, I didn’t pull out my phone to check out your ’Versona. Thought it’d make me look too presumptuous.” The automatic translator on Feng’s phone hadn’t quite chosen the right word.

“Well, most people who are nice to me either want to get a selfie together or ask to borrow some money,” Bugz said. She raised her phone and noted how similar the real-world Feng looked to the Floraverse Feng. His chest and arms were thicker in the ’Verse; otherwise, his face was the same, his hair was the same, and his waist was the same size. Her eyes found his again. “Wait, you’re not going to ask me for money, are you?” Bugz smiled at her own joke. “Because I don’t have any. My parents make me leave most of it in the Floraverse for when I turn eighteen in a few years.”

“Wait, what? Are you serious?” Feng followed Bugz to their classroom. “If I had the money you do in the Floraverse, I would cash out and do school on a beach in Macau or something.”

“You sure you’re not trying to ask for money?” Bugz couldn’t shake Feng’s earlier offhand remark from her head. He probably wasn’t even thinking about my weight, she tried to remind herself. She thought again of Clan:LESS and felt forced to take a deep breath.

As they rounded a corner, they bumped into Chalice and Stormy, both of whom were using their phones as mirrors to check their makeup before class. Feng knocked Chalice’s phone to the ground and a thousand spiderweb cracks exploded across its surface.

“Sorry,” Feng muttered quickly. A worried look overtook his face as he picked up the broken phone.

“Gimme that!” Chalice snatched the device from Feng’s hands. She looked at him as though he’d just dropped a baby on the ground. Feng said nothing. She looked to him and asked, “What the hell?”

Feng paused. “Sorry. It was an accident. I’m…I’m sorry.”