AAAah why is she what did - Harper, that was her name - what did Harper do - in what fuckening circumstance did Harper do it -

There is a sort of mental button she can push, appears in response to that question. 

She will push that button but she's also gonna, like, literally look at her physical surroundings.

Her physical surroundings are a fairly ordinary college dorm room. On "her" side are a variety of art prints; on the other side are some music posters. 

The "button" provides, as though through ordinary recollection, the information that Harper has been low-key suicidal since the age of twelve but seriously squicked out by all mundane forms of suicide, and gave the Erogame a serious go as the solution to her problem but ultimately decided that giving her life to someone who wanted to live more would be a positive action. 

And the Erogame is -

- okay, she can find lots of info on this thing. How the heck did it decide to bestow itself on Harper and not give her like. A cure for depression or whatever her problem was. Like, thanks, Harper, being alive is keen, but, what.

Who is her - Harper's - herper's? - no - who is music posters roommate.

(The Erogame did, in fact, solve Harper's immediate-term problems, but she just did not believe that the cure would stick, and was terrified of the permanence that came with "by the way, you're definitely not going to die of old age now.")

The roommate's name is Abigail Schmitt, she's seriously into gothic lolita fashion, she and Harper were definitely sleeping together. 

Well that's going to be awkward now that Bella has inadvertently bodysnatched Abigail's fuckbuddy!!!! Does she have like. Class tomorrow. Is she a college student now.

She is a college student, but she kept all of Harper's Erogame stuff, and that includes her starting perk: But She Was Such A Good Student. She should, like, make sure to learn things, but that's not going to be hard. She has class tomorrow but if she skips it's fine. 

Con...venient?

Who else was Harper sleeping with, she needs to figure out how to navigate that and it seems more time-critical than figuring out how to tell her poor parents -

Does she want: 

A) Only people Harper has an established ongoing arrangement of some kind with

B) People whom Harper has slept with in the past and would have been likely to sleep with again

C) Everyone Harper has banged

.....let's start with A and particularly imminent members of B?

Group A: 

-Her roommate, Abigail 
-A shy slightly overweight boy named Trevor from her Calculus I class
-An English Lit professor whose class she's auditing under a false identity
-Madison, the countergirl at her favorite froyo place

Particularly Imminent Group Bs:
-Rhonda and Ryan, a pair that Harper had a threesome with after a particularly spectacular demonstration they put on for the MMA club
-Savannah, a girl that Harper met while Harper was doing a quest that involved Guerrilla Landscaping; has a kickass plot in the community garden on West street. 
-This guy Evan who has picked Harper up on three separate occasions while she was hitchhiking

What is with Harper's taste in partners. Bella supposes that at least makes the question of whether to try to carry on as Harper with any of these people really straightforward: no thanks, none of them really sparkle to her as people.

Why was she auditing the English Lit class under a false identity.

Because the professor was hot. 

Couldn't you just sleep with professors without, simultaneously, assuming false identities under which to -

- not the point.

Okay. What is the family situation like, they deserve to know.

Harper's mother is a phlebotomist at a hospital in Harper's hometown, which is not this one. Her father is a wedding planner. Harper hadn't seen them in person since the Erogame started, although they had texted. No siblings

Harper considered it one of the great benefits of this perk as a method of suicide (besides the obvious appeal of, uh, not risking horrible not-death things happening if she fucked up, her mother had lots of stories from the hospital about people who attempted suicide, failed, and had horrible things happen to them) was that her parents didn't have to know! Whoever Isabella was could, presumably, just slot neatly into her relationship with her parents, which was loving but not that emotionally close; Harper wasn't in the habit of telling them about her problems. Keeping her parents from realizing that their daughter was gone shouldn't be too hard, and then she would be absolved of the crime of making them suffer like the parents of teenagers who died in her mother's hospital suffered!

Isabella is not remotely sure she wants to be a party to this but she isn't going to insist on calling them up right this very second.

Okay. Erogame. How does it work.

The Erogame is a sex videogame, basically, except instead of playing it on a computer you play it in real life. Harper was--and thus Isabella now is--level three, with seven unspent stat points. Harper had two perks--her But She's Such A Good Student starter perk, and the From Harp to Bell perk that she bought with a perk point she received from a quest. 

(The quest involved getting therapy. Harper went to a therapist under an assumed identity--a different one from the one she seduced a professor with--and lied her ass off. The quest success flavor text did a very good job of conveying I Guess.JPEG energy for not consisting of anything but text.)

Dammit, Harper!

Did Isabella get her magic sex game skills, too, were all these assumed identities part of that or did she just bullshit for that purpose -

She got...some of Harper's sex game skills. 

Her BOD and ERO are the same as Harper's were, 21 and 29 respectively. Her SED and PRV are much lower, lower than Harper's were when she first started the Erogame, 7 and 8 respectively. And her LST and FUK are higher than Harper's were when she started but lower than they were when she took the perk, at 14 and 15 respectively. 

The skills that Harper acquired by practice--Ero Environmental Resistance (+Cute Cold Resistance, +Sexy Snow Resistance), The Nectar (none active), High Heels, (High-Heeled Runway, High-Heeled Fancy Footwork), Flirty Falling, My Boobs Are Down Here, Bondage (Nipple Clamps), Wardrobe Malfunction, and Let's You And Him Fuck--are all fully functional. 

Which do what?

Ero Environmental Resistance makes her more resilient towards inhospitable environmental conditions, while wearing sexy outfits, than she would have been if she wore more appropriate clothing. Cute Cold Resistance further boosts this with regards to (negative) temperature, and Sexy Snow Resistance helps prevent snow from getting into places it logically should, in that outfit, or melt and make things soggy, etc. 

The Nectar is a skill that gives her temporary bonuses and powers as a result of consuming other people's sexual fluids. 

High Heels makes it easier to maneuver in high heels! Easier to maneuver in high heels than in regular shoes, even. Harper was dangerously uncoordinated except when using this skill. "High Heeled Runway" gives an extra bonus to sexy strutting in high heels, and High Heeled Fancy Footwork gives an extra bonus to dealing with treacherous terrain in high heels. 

Flirty Falling makes it so when you fall--falling down stairs, falling from a height, or just tripping and falling--you're less likely to get seriously hurt and more likely to have something ERO happen, whether it's being caught by someone attractive, landing in an unintentionally provocative pose, or getting an injury just serious for sexy passersby to show concern without risking post-concussion syndrome. Harper slowed way down in leveling this skill when she got High Heels. 

My Boobs Are Down Here has two forms, passive and active. The passive form makes it more likely for someone to randomly glance at your chest; the active version can forcibly redirect someone's attention to them. 

Bondage is a skill for safely using bondage equipment! (Or, rather, exactly as safely as you want.) Nipple clamps is a subskill for operating those specifically. 

Wardrobe Malfunction is also a skill with passive and active forms. The passive form increases the chance of a wardrobe malfunction happening if any chance exists; the active form causes one to happen on the spot. 

Let's You And Him Fuck lets you apply a percentage of your SED to persuading someone to have sex with someone who is not you. 

Dammit Harper.

Okay. Is she wearing anything literally right now or should she, like, get dressed and set about figuring out how to face the day. Actually what time is it. What date is it.

She is wearing literally anything! She is wearing a barely-there scrap of a sleeveless blue dress with a neckline that reaches almost to her navel and a hem that reaches to mid-thigh if she tugs it down a bit. It is 11:45am, Sunday, April 2, 2023.

...she kind of hates it. She doesn't feel like she has a lot of clothing opinions but apparently she has the clothing opinion that she should not wear this, specific, stupid, dress, making its stupid modern art shape on her person. What else does Harper have. It might all be weird sexy clothes but there's presumably variety in the space. Or maybe she didn't ditch everything she owned before! How long had she even been erogaming anyway.

She had been Erogaming for about a week! By the calendar, anyway, it's possible there was some time dilation involved with some bits of it. 

Harper had not gotten around to getting rid of all her old clothes, but they mostly don't fit anymore, and haven't since Harper started grinding BOD. There are, however, other sexy clothes. Would she like to wear a strapless black dress that goes from a couple inches down from the top of her cleavage almost to her knees? Possibly paired with this tasteful silvery bolero jacket? 

Yeah, a little black dress is fine, Bella will rock the little black dress and matching heels. ...where did Harper encounter snow in April, did she go on a sexy ski trip?

Just a freak out-of-season snowfall, they happen occasionally. It's not, like, normal, but it's a climate change kind of not normal, not an erogame kind of not normal. 

Okay. Did Harper have anything scheduled that slipped her mind before she committed sexy bloodless suicide.

Nope, Harper was in fact conscientious enough to pick a time for her suicide and deliberately not schedule anything beyond that! ...Besides, like, quasi-optional classes, and stuff. 

Based on everything else about Harper maybe she was taking only extremely boring classes but, let's check the mental file on that?

Harper was taking Calculus and Biology and Figure Drawing and Mandarin and Spanish and Intro Computer Science and Russian Lit and intro Econ and Gender Studies. 

Huh. That's a lot of classes and they are not in fact boring. Can Bella... speak Mandarin and/or Spanish. And/or Russian.

She knows, like, "da" and "spasibo," in Russian, and not a lick of Cyrillic; the class uses translated materials. She's reasonably functional in Spanish--not fluent, necessarily, but certainly conversational; Harper took it all through high school. Mandarin is new. She speaks, like, some, but less than a year's worth of college classes. 

Okay, solid. Maybe if she picks up multilingual lovers she will get to count it as a sexy skill. - Is Bella in fact an Erogamer at all, or just a holdover from one, is she playing the game or just playing with Harper's leftover toys?

Isabella is absolutely now the Erogamer. 

Okay. She isn't sure where she wants to put her stat points yet. Honestly none of the stats seem that... good? In D&D some of them make you smarter and stuff. Maybe she'll need FUK or SED at some point, or just dump everything in BOD, or maybe she can trade a sufficiently large bundle of them in for a perk point if she includes six Kellogg brand box tops, whatever.

The game's been very quiet. Did Harper leave it on do not disturb?

Yes she did. 

When Bella turns it off, several quest windows pop up. 

Dammit, Harper

Harper Lebedev lived an impressively concerning life, in which she made Decisions and also Choices. Dig her out of wherever people go when they die and explain this to her. 

Success: 5,000,000xp, the most satisfying telling-off yet
Failure: RIP Harper Lebedev

Your ERO is too low to start this quest. Minimum ERO: 40

As the Bell Rings 

Your name is Isabella. Your personality is Isabella. 

Deal with the lingering plot threads Harper left behind. 

Success: 10,000xp, the knowledge that weird plot elements are no longer hanging, Sword of Damocles-like, over your head
Bonus Objective 1: ???
Bonus Objective 2: ???
Bonus Objective 3: ???

Accept: Y/N

This Isn't The Erogamer You're Looking For

Break things off with Abigail Schmitt without hurting her feelings

Success: 500xp
Failure: Abigail gains the "Yandere" status effect

Accept: Y/N

...huh.

- What are the plot threads Harper left. What was her relationship with Abigail like.

Unfortunately, the Harper's Memory Wiki is organized by how Harper thought of things, and she was less organized than Isabella; "ongoing plot threads" results a handful more things from Group B (a childhood friend who she hooked up with when he came to visit her at college, day-before-yesterday sidereal, a girl she had an Epic Rap Battle style figure-skate-off and then spent some time grinding cute cold resistance with, Nipple Clamps Guy), and some ongoing quests (she's supposed to get Martial Arts Ryan together with his TA, and investigate what might be a perfectly normal strip club, or might be a human trafficking ring) but she doesn't have a comprehensive Rolodex of Things That Might Matter Later. 

Okay, well, the alternative to dealing with the things is presumably not dealing with them and the Erogame doesn't seem likely to just whisk them out of her path if she doesn't take the quest. She'll yes that one.

Abigail? What is the deal with Abigail?

So Harper did not pick up on this at all but a quick review of Harper's memories of Abigail suggests that she has a serious abandonment complex, was getting a lot more attached to Harper than Harper was (letting herself) get attached back, and had feelings that were on a vector firmly outside the "Friends With Benefits, No Strings Attached" territory. 

Bella is here running into the problem that she does not actually want to pretend to be Harper. She would love to be able to just say "Hi, Abigail, Harper abruptly needed a mental health break so I, her identical twin she doesn't talk about much, am making sure her tuition doesn't go to waste, don't tell the RA" but will the game let her? Did Harper tell anyone about it?

The Erogame is actively obstructive of attempts to tell people about the Erogame, but trying to tell people about things that happened because of the Erogame is fine. People won't necessarily believe you, but the higher the ERO stat, the more weird things are plausible. 

...okay. How thoroughly has Harper previously contradicted the suggestion that she has an identical twin who was previously on a gap year.

Harper doesn't tend to talk a lot about herself, and by extension her family. The closest she's come since coming to college to outright contradicting it is telling a guy during an Erogame encounter that he would have to look elsewhere for a twin threesome fantasy. 

The childhood friend definitely knows she's an only child, though. 

Assuming said childhood friend has no plans to visit again any time soon she will cross that bridge by talking very fast when she comes to it!

Can Bella imitate Harper's handwriting.

While looking in Harper's purse for a pen, she comes across Harper's driver's license, which now reads, "Isabella Maria Lebedev." 

WHAT.

- user account on Harper's computer? School ID? Phone? Has anybody been writing Harper cute love notes that would have had "Harper" on them?

User account on Harper’s computer thinks her name is Isabella. School ID claims to be issued to Isabella Lebedev. Phone doesn’t seem to immediately have any name opinions, but several texts that memories indicate were previously addressed to “harp” now say “bella.”

DAMMIT, HARPER!!!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BREAK UP WITH YOUR ROOMMATE FOR YOU???

- okay. Time to take some deep breaths and assess all her memories about Abigail.

Abigail is pretty shy, and spends a lot of time in the arts building, using the sewing machines. Mostly for her own clothing, which is skillfully elaborate in its frilliness, but also she has a side hustle doing commissions, mostly for the theater kids but not exclusively; several of the more tasteful of the newer items in Harper's wardrobe came from her. 

Harper mostly decided to seduce her because when her life turned into a game about sleeping with people, the person she had been sleeping adjacent to for the past several months seemed like an obvious choice. 

Abigail fairly blossomed under even a little positive attention, initiating most of their trysts after the first one, but never quite reaching a level of confidence high enough to actually initiate a conversation about Feelings. 

It's pretty obvious if you're not Harper that Abigail had moved into a Pining stage. 

And this is enough to yandere her if Bella fucks it up? Wow. - is the little black dress one of Abigail's.

It sure is!

What is the least stupid outfit that is not one of Abigail's.

This dark green dress that's pretty much skintight but has, like, actual sleeves, and the skirt is tight enough that it's not hard not to flash someone if she's careful? 

She's going to stick with the little black dress for the moment and assess Harper's finances.

Harper has been acquiring irregular chunks of money from the Erogame over the past week and spending, like, some of it, on Erogame-related stuff, but most of it has been going to pay off her student loans. 

But Bella can go to a thrift store or something? - can she drive, does she have a car, are the buses any good around here -

She doesn't have a car, and the buses are sort of meh, but the subway is fine and there's a subway card in her wallet. She has a couple hundred dollars of cash in there for Emergency Ero purposes, which should be fine for a thrift store. 

Okay. She is going to go to a Goodwill or something and get some normal damn outfits that were not made by a girl she is about to dump. (Does she know when to expect Abigail home?)

Probably sometime late-ish in the evening, around eleven or so. 

The most convenient thrift store is a Thrifty Shopper, which offers further discounts on items whose tags are The Colors Of The Day. 

Somehow, all such items that would fit Isabella are just that liiiiiittle bit sexier than the ones that aren't so discounted. 

Par for the course! But she can be sexy in jeans that have artful tears up a bit higher than most, or a T-shirt with the neck ripped up so it's falling off at least one shoulder at all times, or shorts that say SMARTASS on the butt, or in a cap-sleeve that is basically normal except for having a boob window, which is stupid but is at least not going to make it extra awkward to dump Abigail.

Abigail is embroidering something quietly in their room when Bella returns. 

Bella's wearing the jeans and the boob window shirt home.

"- hi," she says.

She looks up and smiles. "Hi, Bella!"

"- hey."

Bella sits down heavily on her bed. "You ever - wake up one morning feeling like a completely different person?"

She puts her embroidery in her lap, tips her head back, and thinks. 

"Not...exactly? I've realized abruptly that I had changed a lot, but the change happened over a period of years and the realization was in the middle of something else." 

"Well. I woke up feeling like a completely different person. It's probably even weirder than you'd imagine from that description. I kind of want to rethink my... entire... life. I'm only probably not going to drop out of school in the next month, I prefer pants now, that kind of thing."

"Oh. Huh. --Are you, uh, okay?" 

She asks this in a tone of someone who was familiar with Harper, who was not, objectively, okay. 

"Honestly, I think I'll be better off than I was before. I'm just going to have a weird week or two. Adjusting."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"It'd help a lot if you, uh, responded really well to the fact that I think I wanna stop sleeping with literally everyone I have been sleeping with."

She opens her mouth. 

She closes her mouth. 

She says, "That's...fair. Do you, uh, want a platonic hug?" 

"Yeah. I'd like that."

She gets up, setting her embroidery aside, and crosses over to Bella and hugs her. 

The frills of her dress add extra softness to the hug, and her perfume is subtle and not too sweet. She doesn't belie her stated platonic intentions. It's a good hug. 

Quest Complete: This Isn't The Erogamer You're Looking For

+500xp

Oh good.

Hug.

After a little bit of hug, she leans back and says, "So if you've decided you're into pants, now, does that mean you don't want me to finish the beetle dress?" 

- beetle dress, memories of?

The Beetle Dress is a floor-length dress made of a soft matte black fabric, with long sleeves that bring to mind the shape of an insect's leg and a round panel of iridescent fabric extending down from the waistline in back. 

"I'm not exclusively pants forever now. You are by no means obliged to finish the beetle dress but if you do I will wear it."

"Oh, excellent, it's going to look great on you." If she can't kiss Bella then dressing her in beautiful things is no mean consolation prize. 

"I know it will."

Eventually Abigail unhugs herself to go do things to go do other things and Bella is left alone with the erogame. 

Well. She should break up with everyone else now too. The "woke up feeling like a new person" explanation worked pretty well. Does she have all their email addresses?

She has email addresses for: 
-Trevor
-The English professor 
-Rhonda
-Ryan

She does not have email addresses for: 
-Savannah
-Evan
-Madison

Okay. She will email all four the people she can email - and clarify to the English professor that she is super not trying to get him in professional trouble.

Where can she find the other three?

Madison can be found at the froyo place, Savannah can be found inconsistently at the community garden, and Evan can be found on the road when one is attempting to hitchhike. 

Well, she has no immediate hitchhiking related needs but she could go for some froyo about now, it's been a stressful few hours. She'll go the long way to swing by the garden en route.

Savannah is not at the garden but Madison is at the counter at the froyo place! She waves cheerfully when she sees Bella. 

"Heeeeey. Uh, weird question, did you ever wake up one morning feeling like a different person?"

"...No?"

"Yeah, nobody I've asked that has said yes so far. But I woke up feeling like a different person this morning. Hence the jeans and stuff and - I am breaking off all my friends with benefits arrangements, sorry."

"--Uh. Okay. Do you want to buy something?" 

"Yeah, turns out being a new person unexpectedly is stressful. Can I get a small raspberry with rainbow sprinkles please."

"Sure." She procures and sprinkles the froyo. 

She does not apply her employee discount, which she had been doing for Harper. 

Totally fair.

She walks back by way of the gardens, eating her froyo.

Savannah still isn't there. 

Annoying. Can she derive her email from her name and the school name scheme, or Facebook, or something?

Unfortunately, Harper and Savannah never swapped last names. She can try to look up Savannahs on facebook. 

The third suggested Savannah on the list is a Savannah Sanders, with a picture that matches the second-hand memory. 

Okay, so now can she backform Savannah's email?

The school emails include projected graduation year; she'll have to guess whether Savannah is a freshman (like her), a sophomore, a junior, or a senior. 

Well does her fucking Facebook say???

Her facebook has nothing about school on it whatsoever! And she seems to be a local. 

After a bit of digging it gives her age, which suggests sophomore unless she was held back or advanced ahead. 

Okay, she's going to just send a friend request rather than continue to play guess the email.

While she's in her email, she gets a notification from a student activity feed that Harper set up in order to give the Erogame a convenient way to deliver suggested content. 

Oh, and what content does the Erogame want to deliver?

-The gaming club has a promotional code to download a new erogame for PC. 

-The Fourth Wave Feminism group is doing a kissing booth for Relay For Life and would like volunteers. 

-The writing club is doing an anonymous erotic literature swap. 

That sure looks like erogame content. What is Relay for Life? Does the erogame look like it's any good?

Relay for Life is an annual fund-raising event done at colleges all across the country to raise money for cancer research; different teams set up spots in a big indoor track field, with some of the space for people to sleep in shifts and keep their stuff, and some of the space for whatever their team is doing to raise money, be it selling things, doing raffles, holding games, etcetera. Generally people on a given team will take turns manning their attraction versus wandering around spending money at other people's, plus people show up to spend money who aren't on a team. The event takes place over two days, including overnight, so teams also tend to sleep in shifts where they don't just pull all-nighters, so that somebody can be running the attraction at all times. 

The erogame is new enough that it doesn't have a lot of reviews--hence the promotional code--but the basic synopsis is that you play as the princess of a high-fantasy kingdom who has to balance political concerns, personal compatibility, and competence in assembling a harem of consorts to help her rule the kingdom. 

Okay that game actually sounds potentially fun. She'll start it downloading. How long of a time commitment is the kissing booth?

Shifts in the kissing booth are twenty minutes apiece, you can decide how many or how few you want to do after you've tried it the once. 

Savannah has accepted her friend request on facebook. 

Hey, Savannah, sorry for the inopportune friend request + news combination but I didn't have your number. I am breaking up with Literally Everyone, but I am going to be at the Relay for Life kissing booth starting in half an hour if you want a smooch goodbye.

A reply shows up a little less than five minutes later: 

Are you okay??? I didn't think we were really on needing-to-break-up terms but, like, breaking up with everyone sounds like a lot?

I am totally fine, arguably better than ever, but woke up this morning feeling like most of my life choices were retroactively incomprehensible and have decided to make different ones instead.

wow okay that definitely sounds like a lot tho

It is so much but mostly because I have to break up with what now seems to me like kind of a weird number of people.

how many people do you have to break up with???

too many! what was I thinking! I have a full courseload!

damn 

shame that happened to someone who was going to wake up one morning like wtf tho I would love a harem lol :P

ofc for related reasons I do not have a full load of college courses

You might like the froyo place employee who is now presumably rebounding from the loss of my overwhelming charm, or perhaps I flatter myself.

ooh, is she cute?

She's adorable. Wrinkles her nose when she smiles.

aww! I will definitely check her out, then, thanks 👉👉

👍

She shows up about five minutes before the end of the previous girl's shift; there are actually three kissing booths, one with a girl, one with a boy, and one with an aggressively androgynous person with neon-green hair. Each booth has a short-ish actual line in front of it, along with a sort of looser queue milling around in the general vicinity of all three of them. 

(Isabella may or may not suspect the touch of the Erogame in the fact that none of the potential patrons look creepy or undergroomed or otherwise objectionable in any outwardly visible particular.)

She was kind of expecting the Erogame would handle that, and she is glad to see that it has! She was not really expecting there to be a line but she can roll with that. She'll wave at the girl she's relieving and listen to the milling-around chatter for the next five minutes before taking her seat in the booth.

A couple of nervous-looking probably-freshmen are admitting to each other that they've never kissed anyone before and this seemed like the least embarrassing way to go about changing that! 

A girl wearing a swishy hippie skirt and a flower crown is earnestly telling a pair of identical boys and one other girl about her second cousin who survived lip cancer but now has no lips. 

A boy with long blond hair and a button-down shirt with a butterfly embroidered on the breast pocket is standing a little ways back from the queue, looking at everyone else critically. Not judgmentally, more like an entomologist examining a tray of beetles to see if one might be an as-yet undiscovered species. 

Lip cancer??

Anyway, yeah, fair, butterfly-pocket boy, this is a pretty weird collection of specimens.

Time to smooch people. She, too, has never kissed anyone before, though she can't exactly talk about that to anyone who ever met Harper, can she!!!

Lip cancer girl goes for the androgynous guy; one of the never-been-kissed specimens comes over to her booth. 

People's lips are soft, generally. Some of them are a little bit chapped; there are a range of firmnesses and sizes. 

This is all information she had from Harper already but it's different, to experience it. 

There isn't a line at all times; the number of interested people ebbs and flows, although generally there are at least a few people lingering at the fringes, giggling to themselves and glancing shyly at the booths. 

"What makes someone decide to do this?" butterfly pocket boy asks during a lull, having gradually wandered closer over the space of several minutes. 

She thinks she likes kisses, though she's not super into them all by themselves, it's sort of like going flower-picking and getting lots of individual petals that are soft and don't look bad or anything but clearly aren't the complete picture. Let alone a live houseplant that will bloom again one day.

"What, to staff the booth or to patronize it?"

"Staff a booth. Kissing one person seems--doable? Kissing a lot of people sounds like talking to a lot of people, which is to say, terrible." 

"I too am an introvert but I'm not exactly making small talk about the weather, here. It seemed like it'd be an interesting experience. And it's for charity, of course."

"There is that. --I'm Kanimir," he adds belatedly. 

"Bella. Lovely to meet you."

"What does wanting to kiss someone feel like? I've asked my sister, but she's an extrovert." 

"Hmm... it's like the grownup version of, when you're a kid in a museum and there's something cool, behind the glass or the velvet ropes, and you can see it fine, but you want to touch it, something is just not enough about looking."

"...Huh." 

Someone comes up to the booth, then, so he doesn't say anything else. 

But he does go to the end of the forming line. 

Cute. He gets an extra generous helping of smooch.

His lips are soft, and tentative in a completely different way from most people who have never kissed anyone--exploratory, experimental, testing, not nervous. 

After they part, he touches his lips, says, "hm," nods respectfully to her, and leaves. 

Cute.

She carries on with the rest of her kissing booth shift.

She is relieved at the end of her shift by a girl in a tube top with tattoos of wings across her shoulderblades. 

"Nice tats!"

What is the actual relay like?

There are lots of groups hocking goods and lots of groups hocking services. This one is a facepainting station; that one is a photography booth, with props; that one has pie tins and cans of whipped cream and offers to let people pie the vendors in the face for five dollars. That one over there is selling baked goods; over there someone is raffling off several prize packages; that table over there is covered in jewelry of various sorts. 

Ooh she's going to buy a brownie and browse jewelry and then get a butterfly on her face.

The jewelry table contains a lot of intricately-welded metal jewelry, most of it with some kind of iridescent anodization over its surface. There are chunky pieces and lacy pieces and pieces that look extremely experimental and pieces that might, technically, be illegal on account of being made of pennies, and a couple of pieces are enameled but only a couple. 

The girl standing behind the table is a tall brunette with her hair in a tight braid, wearing leggings and a turtleneck that clings to her figure from where it begins at the turtleneck collar to where it ends just below her hips. 

Munch munch brownie. She only ogles the girl a little, she meant to browse jewelry. "Do you make these?"

"My sister does! Isn't she talented?"

"Yeah! I love the color on these ones -" She waves at the shiny anodized kind. "How is that done?"

"It involves water, dangerous chemicals, and electricity. I tend to stay out of the way." 

"Fair enough." How pricey is this stuff. Some unusual expenditure is to be expected on waking up a new person one day but jewelry is not an emergency.

All of the welded and/or anodized stuff is pricey. There are some affordable wire-and-beads things. 

"Are you here with a group or just by yourself?" 

"Just me. Did a shift at the kissing booth and now I'm seeing what else there is."

"--Huh, I didn't know those were still, like, a thing." 

"I'd never seen one before, but it sounded fun."

"I figured it was one of those things like bobbing for apples that nobody did anymore because people care about hygiene now. And I don't think there's a kissing booth version of the thing where you bob for apples in vodka ostensibly for sanitary reasons." 

"I think if I were kissing people for noncharitable purposes nobody's first objection would really be hygiene."

She flaps a hand dismissively. "Not nobody. Not that you're wrong that there'd be social censure."

"Anyway, as far as I know none of those people had mono and nor have I."

"--I mean, you can catch, like, the flu, from kissing. Not that I'm judging you, just, it's not exclusively mono." 

"Mono was metonymy, yeah."

"Anyway, what do you do besides charity?"

"I am in a completely reevaluating everything about my life phase at the moment, actually, but I expect to pop out of it liking to read and do good in the world."

"--Well, I'm sorry for whatever made you feel like you needed to re-evaluate your entire life, but reading and altruism are generally good!"

"It has been on the whole a confusing but not unambiguously negative experience!"

"That's good. If I had to re-evaluate my whole life my first guess for why would be that I had learned that I'd been lied to about something really important and load-bearing."

"Nope. Just woke up feeling like a different person who did not really understand why I had been previously living my life in a way that did not make sense to New Me."

"Well, I'm glad you like New You." That sounds differently upsetting, honestly, but not necessarily in a way where it's now and not then that had something wrong with it! 

"Thanks. Anyway, I don't think we've met in either incarnation, I'm Bella."

"I'm Edie! I also like reading and altruism. I'm a sophomore majoring in political science." 

"Fortunately I had my identity crisis while still an undeclared freshman!"

"Seems convenient. Possibly depending on how your prior identity felt about reading and altruism? I can think of worse things than, uh, I guess a Lit degree isn't super easy to get a job with actually but." 

"Oh, I do like literature but admit I do not expect to find a career in the field. Maybe I'll major in development economics or premed or something. Prior identity was not particularly into either thing."

"Oh, development economics, that's neat! --Not that pre-med isn't also neat, it's just--less a kind of neat that it seems like it would require actual thoughtfulness to have come up."

"Sometimes obvious solutions are good ones, but who knows, maybe I am very special."

"Sometimes obvious solutions are good ones! The thing development economics is better than pre-med for isn't actually getting picked as your major, it's impressing me, in this conversation." 

"Oh, do I get a prize?"

"--You know what, sure, why not," she snorts, and rummages in her satchel, and pulls out a lightly anodized bangle and hands it to her. 

"- oh, score, I was totally ogling that section of the display." Bangle! Wrist!

"Oh, excellent, I love giving people well-matched presents." 

"A good thing at which to have a talent."

"I'm not normally brilliant at it with strangers, honestly. Or new acquaintances. People I haven't had time to get to know really well." 

"Well, you managed with it just now! And I don't think we've met."

"Yeah, I just don't want to give the impression that I'm usually Gifts Wizard." 

"All right, what's your usual shtick then?"

"Tutoring, usually, in terms of doing nice things for people. In general, malcontentment and being smart." 

"Ooh, what are you most saliently malcontent about?"