"Earth to Ilyua, come in!" she laughed, tilting her head slightly.
"Huh? Yeah, I'm here… just got lost in thought about something," I replied, trying to hide my thoughts.
The girl simply leaned towards me and showed me the remote, as if explaining the simplest mechanism to a child.
"Here, look."
Click – on, click – off. Couldn't be simpler. It seems, why would you need an external AC unit, right? It works, so what questions could there be?
"And the TV, what does it show? How many channels?" I asked, curious about the logic of this world.
"None," she answered with a smile, as if it were the most obvious fact.
"I don't understand?"
"Silly," Mita lightly poked my shoulder with her finger. "The Internet – I have everything that exists. Any movie, any series, any music…"
"But how is that poss—" she gave me a disapproving look, which immediately cut off my question.
"Right, right, magic. Got it," I sighed.
So the state of logic, it turns out, is this: here there's a pulse, but over there is a long-stinking corpse.
"By the way, you know what?.. Hold on…" she turned on the TV with the remote, and a strange picture appeared of one juice carton beating up another juice carton. After a second, one carton defeated the other in hand-to-hand combat, violently spilling its contents down into… the glass standing on the table in the picture.
Mita smiled at me and, as if hiding something, reached her hand behind the television, pulling out that very glass of juice the next moment.
"More tricks?"
"Yep, go on and drink, skeptic," the glass was held out to me.
"Juice from a juice corpse… sounds kinda iffy… could I get an Okhota Krepkoye instead?" I asked purely out of curiosity, testing her abilities and teasing her a little.
"Wow, you lush("
Mita shook her head reproachfully, but nevertheless, the finger snap that followed turned the juice in front of me into Okhota Krepkoye. The hoppy smell immediately hit my nose. In disbelief, I sniffed the drink – it really was Okhota… Krepkoye.
And yes, Jesus turned water into wine, and yes, the thirst of the suffering was quenched.
"By any chance, would you marry me?" I asked with a nervous laugh and unconcealed joy in my eyes, not understanding why I'd blurted it out myself.
She grimaced and even moved slightly away from me.
"Is beer the main criterion for you?" the girl put her hands on her hips.
Great, a misunderstanding… I should have chosen my words more carefully.
I involuntarily found myself staring at her, admiring her.
"Stop looking at me like that, you're embarrassing me!" her cheeks reddened slightly, betraying her embarrassment.
Cuteness! But I need to fix the situation urgently.
"No, no, it's just… okay, forget the beer – I won't drink anymore, no need to. My back doesn't hurt anymore anyway."
But I drank the beer anyway. In one gulp. Why let it go to waste? Got charged up, so to speak, and now that's it, I don't need it.
A strained smile appeared on her face, as if she didn't quite believe me. Right, said one thing, did another… got it. Sigh, what an unreliable guy I am…
Some kind of window popped up before my eyes, like from a computer game… but this is reality, isn't it? I already checked!
Achievement Unlocked: "Dead Juice"
"Oh, I got some kind of achievement. There's some window hanging right in front of my eyes," I told her, pointing into the air.
"Achievement?" she tilted her head, uncomprehending, as if I were talking about something out of this world.
"Yeah, right here, don't you see? It says…"
"Nope," she replied, blinking.
"Oh… I'm getting really confused," I sighed, scratching the back of my head. "Maybe I'm going crazy?"
Mita adjusted her glasses and smiled encouragingly.
"Probably, just like I can be God, you can get achievements. I just don't have any other explanation)"
"So, I can do something in the game too… some hidden abilities? Superpowers?"
"Yep, and soon I'll be getting achievements for you too)))"
"Huh?"
"Joke)"
"Oh… right," I drawled doubtfully. But I didn't get the joke.
Sighing, I looked again at Mita, who was practically glowing with amusement. Need to change the subject.
"So what do you usually do, anyway?" I asked her.
Of course, she reads books, I've seen that already, but what else? I just see her so happy right now, and it seems to me she must be terribly bored here alone. I want to know more about her.
"You know, various little books, TV, computer, I cook, clean, stuff like that… basically, just like everyone else," Mita listed, shrugging.
And indeed, there are things to keep busy with. Even in a game, you can't escape routine.
Nodding, I continued looking around, trying not to miss a single detail. I wanted to understand what in this world was familiar to me, and what was new.
Near a flowerpot, I noticed something purple peeking out from behind the leaves. I got curious.
I went closer and noticed something strange for a normally tidy apartment.
An empty purple can of… I leaned down and picked up the object, studying the design on the label… grape juice. There were some kind of… hieroglyphs or something on the can? Where did this come from?
My gaze involuntarily shifted towards Mita, who was now covering her mouth with her hands in embarrassment, like a little girl. Her hair was messy, and she looked cute and guilty.
I looked further – another can was visible near a pot in the distance. And another one…
"Mita, why are there juice cans behind the pots?" I asked, confused.
She lowered her gaze.
"Well, it's… you know, sometimes I'm too lazy to throw them out, and I just leave them wherever. You know, it happens," she mumbled. "Hold on…"
The girl raised her hand and snapped her fingers. Magic again.
All the cans I had seen earlier disappeared, as if they had never been there. Only a faint smell of grapes lingered in the air.
"That's better, I should have prepared better for your visit," she said, smiling guiltily.
"Sorry if I embarrassed you, don't nitpick, I'm a good hostess)"
But why call it nitpicking? It's not normal to keep empty cans just anywhere. I started to suspect she was lazy.
No, well, people have told me all sorts of things, of course, like how you can toss already-used tea bags in the most unexpected places in the apartment and then brew them again after some time, only that person was later genuinely surprised why his roommate developed a nervous eye twitch after just a month of living together.
Everyone has their own cockroaches in their head, always crawling and crawling… brr!
Okay then, just one weird thing, this bad habit – 'I'll fix her,' I thought, setting myself to a positive mood, and returned my thoughts to reality, realizing I'd been staring into empty space for a long time.