At least Bejeweled doesn't suck.

They are having all four kinds of cereal for lunch.

Cereal is terrible. Even by the standards of foods.

It feels like some kind of additional problem that Atsinni doesn't like him being miserable about that, and can't get away from it, and... constantly hurting Atsinni does not make him happy. But he doesn't have to care. His ambitions have already, without him quite ever explicitly noticing it, shrunk from destroying Hell to being tolerable company, and they can shrink further, they can wither and die entirely.

<Aww, you're not so bad. Way better than nothing. It's just nice having company even if you're weird about food.>

There was a time (actually almost the entire time he's existed) when he would have been ecstatic to be called "not so bad". Between regretting everything else he can remember being praised for and not being sure he wants to want things anymore, it's sort of bittersweet now. But it's still nice.

<Thank you, I'm glad. Let me know if there's anything you want. Maybe. I don't know if I'll do it or just start panicking about how to figure out whether I should do anything.>

<Yeah, I think you've got some things to process, but no big deal, it's not going to interfere with anything except trying to be nice to you.>

He's not really sure what to make of that; the idea of someone having being nice to him as a goal is hard to engage with.

<I'm glad it's no big deal.>

<Lots of hosts are actively trying to be inconvenient and this basically doesn't work at all!>

Why bother. Well, maybe if you really resent all of the... stuff...

Yeah, that's maybe also something he shouldn't think about. It's annoyingly hard not to think about all sorts of interesting and important things when he's recently slept and eaten. Well, there's always... math? He kind of wants to understand why the quadratic formula is what it is, that seems like a reasonable default thing to try to fill his thoughts with. If he'd been any good at algebra he might've caught on to being in Hell centuries ago - well, there are a lot of things that could have helped if he'd been any good at them but this one is interesting and not fraught to think about right now.

Oh good. Maybe Atsinni will give him math problems when he's having issues in the future.

They have an afternoon to kill, which Atsinni fills with some more shopping to make their place a little less boring - including a TV, on which they are now going to watch, let's see, probably kids' movies don't require too much cultural context, Lion King it is.

Weird. Is that what lions look like? Do they really have societies like that? None of the characters are especially likable except Nala whom he's trying not to have opinions about. But mostly it's - it's colorful, it's nice, there's music. It's vastly better than most experiences he can recall having.

<I hope you end up wanting to watch more of these.>

<I like it! And it's pretty low energy, you still get tired even if you heal and we're going to be walking around a lot at work.>

<What exactly is your work?> He totally theoretically observed an email about it but it was not written to make sense to him and also he wasn't really up for being curious about his surroundings.

<Wandering around the mall to keep an eye out and be on hand in case anything threatens the Pool.>

<That sounds fun. What's the Pool?>

<Yeerks can't stay in hosts forever. Three days. That's how often I need to take a little break, go soak up some rays in a pool - we're aquatic - and then get back in for another three days. They're a little expensive to build, especially if you need to do it in secret, which we currently need to do, so they have a lot of security on 'em.>

Thaaaaaaat means he might have an opportunity to escape and that means Atsinni doesn't actually have literally no motive to ever lie to him and THAT MEANS HE CAN'T TRUST OR BELIEVE ANYTHING AT ALL.

<No, look, they don't let hosts escape, they lock them up for us while we're in the Pool. You'll see for yourself, on the way in before I get out of you, okay. The only thing I need from you is to not tell anyone who'll listen, while I'm out, that you have magical powers, 'cause those are weird and they'll want to figure that out and that isn't going to look like you hanging out all day in the mall being undercover security.>

That isn't trustworthy, though, that's obviously something Atsinni could be saying to keep him. Not that he should be thinking about this now, he shouldn't think about it until he's at the Pool, right now he should think about math instead.

Right. They can just postpone this till they get to the Pool.

They are having deli turkey and sliced cheese for dinner and then they are putting on the first episode of Steven Universe and then they are going to sleep, in the bed, which has sheets now.

By which time he's gotten to the point of sort of groping toward the idea of calculus.

He hates Steven Universe.

Wow, okay, next time they can try that one about the kids with classical element themed powers, that looked cool.

Sleep!

Sleep! Definitely the most convenient thing about this whole situation, that. He has more nightmares.

Atsinni doesn't comment on that in the morning. He has potato chips for breakfast and hops in the shower. <Are you going to be cranky about it if I jerk off?>

The potato chips... don't suck??? False, the potato chips suck, but he keeps unexpectedly not actually being nauseated whenever Atsinni eats anything and it's sort of serving to wear away some associations and the potato chips are very predictable after the first one and don't taste like memories and after multiple days of being sort of adequately taken care of he's emotionally stable enough to just dismiss the idea of feeling guilty about it. If his sense of what counts as okay had not just been dramatically recalibrated by watching The Lion King, he would maybe consider classifying this as an experience that doesn't suck. Very much. Mostly.

Will he be cranky? In the sense that it'll bring back horrible memories, yes, there aren't really any cheap pleasures that don't. In the sense of being on net worse than anything else they might do, not really. He probably should not attempt to have any kind of take on the morality of it because all his moral opinions are thoroughly pessimized. (If he did then obviously his take would be that it's wrong.) <I'm not complaining.>