"Huh?"
Blake blinked at the message, certain he'd misread it the first time. He pushed himself upright from the bed, shoulders stiff, and read it again, slower this time, as if the words might rearrange into something less absurd.
They didn't.
"Spoon," he called, voice already tight with disbelief, "what does that mean?"
Silence.
A beat passed. Then another.
His fingers curled into his sheets.
"Spoon!"
The response came, as impersonal as ever.
[ Dear Host, it means you will be forcibly kept away from Myles. ]
"…What?"
For a second, he genuinely thought his brain had short-circuited. The words didn't register as reality. They hovered somewhere outside of it, like a bad joke that hadn't landed.
Then it sank in.
And his stomach dropped.
"That's..." He swallowed hard, horror creeping into his voice. "That's too much."
He stood abruptly, pacing once, twice, like a caged animal trying to find an opening.
"I'd rather take physical pain. Anything else. Just… don't do this."
