"I can't really advise you there, my life plan is 'apply for tenure track positions and pray'." Last week he would have added "and I don't believe in prayer" but he has occasionally had powerful alien beings respond directly to his thoughts so uh.

A gust of wind blows in a piece of newspaper; out of the corner of his eye Bruce catches the phrase YOU'RE WELCOME.

"I'll just go into industry."

He sounds distinctly unthrilled by this prospect.

That newspaper thing was weird and having someone sane to talk to about this shit is going to be such a relief.

"I feel like, maybe, if you try something risky it might suck, but if you commit to something you hate it will definitely suck. But it's your life. Listen, do you want to come back to my dorm? There's something I want to show you."

"Sure!" he says. 

+1 SED for accidentally successfully propositioning someone. 

Oh, did Lev-or-whatever-his-name-is just agree to make out with him? Thank you, Erogame, for pointing that out, he would have totally missed it and that would have been mega awkward. Now he will instead get to make out with Lev! If Lev doesn't decide he's insane, and if he's still interested after learning about the Erogame, both of which are pretty big ifs. Still, he smiles and stands up from the table.

Lev-or-whatever-his-name-is is smiling at him and gingerly reaches out to take his hand as they walk back. 

Lev's hands are very very soft.

Eeee handholding! Bruce adjusts his stride length so they can hold hands more easily. They get back to his building pretty soon.

Lev smiles at him when they're back at his room.

"You're really cute."

"Thanks! So are you, I've been admiring your taste in jewelry. . . . But I need to explain some stuff before we do anything else. And before I lose my nerve."

Bruce bites his lip, trying to figure out what order to say stuff in. Possibly he is also trying to remember where he put his nerve.

"So should I, probably," Lev says.

"I guarantee you mine is weirder. I promise I have evidence of what I'm about to say, please don't write me off as insane and run away before I can show you."

Deep breath.

"Magic exists, in the form of, my life has turned into, somesortofvirtualrealitysexgame." He gets more mumblesome over the course of that sentence but stays mostly intelligible.

"...okay. I am not going to write you off as insane and run away but I really want to see the evidence."

"Definitely. You might want to get your phone out and record this so we have more than just our memories to go on." He starts recording video on his own phone, and props it up on his desk so it's pointing at his face and torso.

He does!

All of Lev's complicated feelings about this have been replaced with curiosity.

And Bruce faces both cameras, looks Lev in the eyes, and puts five of his twenty unspent stat points into BOD.

And he shifts to become approximately 25 percentile points more attractive.

"What the fuck."

"Oh thank fuck you can see it too I'm not totally losing my mind. I have no, okay I have some idea what the fuck but not, like, an actual explanation, just a bunch of data and some variously hard-to-test hypotheses."

"I--" and he cuts himself off.

"Do you have a hypothesis? I wanna hear it before I say anything else, you might come up with something I missed."

"No, I don't have anything, sorry. Hyperadvanced aliens? But that's not really a hypothesis, it doesn't have moving parts, it's just saying 'magic' in a way that makes me feel less like I'm in a YA novel."

"Yeah, my mind also went straight to aliens. It actually fits the data better than you'd think--I've got these, these text boxes, that only I can see, that tell me the game rules and give me quests to do things. Actually I should see if you can see them now that you know." He pulls up his stat screen, careful not to disturb the "Find out all Lev's secrets" quest from the corner of his vision where it's tucked itself away awaiting an answer. "Does this," he gestures at the relevant chunk of air, "look like anything?"

"I can't see anything. --I guess if you're the player of the game it only changes your physical form, right?"