"I honestly have no idea. The numbers absolutely don't add up, graveyards do exist with very ancient dates but—I guess maybe if reproduction is at very far below replacement rates—that's not entirely ruled out by the people I've met over the past while, hmm."

"Is anybody disappearing?"

"Not anyone I've kept track of but I wouldn't rule it out in principle."

She nods. "Maybe if we make friends at the real estate places we can find out who's selling houses. Or building them, I guess."

"Yeah, not a bad idea. Although we might need to manually keep track of people ourselves in case the realtors' very records get edited when someone disappears... except maybe ours would too... but at that point the paranoia stops being useful and just becomes paralysing."

"...yeah. I suppose we could get jobs at the realtors."

"I feel like I want to wait a year on that because if I do get promoted it'll be a pretty hefty pay rise and I wanna save up. ...on the other hand I could stop being cowardly about it and just figure out ways to make money out of nothing. I wonder if NPCs have a way of detecting magical counterfeits or if I could sell my potion surplus and literally make money out of nowhere."

"...I don't think your potion surplus would be counterfeit? You said they work."

"...well, yes, not false. My brain is screaming at me something like 'if that could be done why has no one done it before' but we know the answer to that. Maybe not that potion, they sell a vial of it for §5, but I bet NPCs at the Realm of Magic would be willing to pay a pretty penny for one of the more powerful ones. Assuming I don't crash the market, that would be funny."

"It'd be very surprising if you could crash the market. Though you might be able to just sell so many that nobody wants any more."

"Honestly, this place runs on video game logic by enough that I wouldn't be surprised if that were just not at all a consideration."

"...huh, video game logic, you're - not wrong, yeah."

"Yeah, so, maybe people who run shops just have infinite money to buy things off you and that never has a causal effect on supply."

"That's going to make the economy news interesting to write."

"Honestly, what would you even report on?"

"Things happen! There are sometimes natural disasters and elections and so on. But... it will not be as interesting as I would have expected in a world of people."

"Are there elections, actually? I have vague memories to their effect but I can't... think of who I'd be voting for and what offices are available to... be filled."

"...I have heard someone mention the election cycle in the office. It's possible that it never actually arrives."

"—I should check the internet before I freak out about video game logic again."

Good thing he has a phone.

She'll check too. Back issues of her company's newspaper.

The most recent one does not seem to have a section for politics nor even mention the existence of any political offices or their actions. Nor does the previous one. Or the one before that. Or the one before that.

"Okay, so we are meant to have a mayor... though I can't seem to find their name..."

...aaaaand the next issue she looks at now has a politics section and does mention the mayor's office as a thing that exists and takes actions.

"- a politics section started existing between these two issues..." Does the previous issue have one retroactively now.

It sure does!

"Hmm? What like the section got removed from the paper at some point or like they only recently added it?"

"Like the newspaper retroactively changed. Here's the politics section from the first Wednesday, which didn't have one before I re-checked just now."

"...did we just cause a newspaper section to—what—how?"