"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?"

"Mine is the only one I can change for now, but some of the quests I've gotten are seriously epic. I've gotten a quest to end death, and another one to turn an animal into a person, I just bet there's a way to get other people shapeshifting powers if the aliens or whatever cooperate. They didn't stop me from telling you, so that's probably a good sign."

That is a facial expression of outright longing. 

"...my thing seems pretty dumb now, I was just going to tell you I'm straight."

"Oh. Okay, um, sorry for misreading your signals. The game was trying really hard to convince me you were into me but thinking back it could have been telling technical truths and I was just wishful thinking. Sorry." He really wants that eidetic memory right now, so he could look back at all those pop-ups and see how much the game was misleading him and how much was his crush on Lev deluding him even before he was aware of it.

"--uh, no, I mean, I'm straight, I'm only attracted to women, but I uh kindofkinkonhavingsexwithmen."

He's blushing.

"So does that mean you don't want to sleep with me, or you want to sleep with me but not date me?" He is pretty sure having no-strings sex with someone you've just realized you have a crush on is a bad plan, but the alternative doesn't seem very appealing either."

"I want to sleep with you but not date you?"

"So, uh, I'm fine with that but you should know that I have a crush on you and sex will probably not help me get rid of it and also the game wants me to find out all your secrets for some reason, I haven't told it yes but I haven't told it no either but I assume you want me to?"

"...I would rather you not find out all my secrets, yes."

"Unsurprising! Want me to read you the quest text before I delete it?"

"Uh, I guess."

Quest available: Deep and Dark. Learn all of question mark question mark question mark Aaron's deepest and most shameful secrets. Success, +7,500 xp, 'Good Listener' status effect, +1 lust, +2 perv,'--those are stats I have, I can explain those next--and some more question marks. Then 'Failure: +2 ero, reduced relations with question mark question mark question mark.' I don't know why your name is question marks, my best guess is that you're secretly a superhero or something and the game wants me to find your other identity because it has no manners. . . . If you are secretly a superhero I promise to give you alibis and not tell anyone."

Wow, Lev looks profoundly uncomfortable.

"I'm not a superhero."