Chapter 21: The Deal on the Stairs
Two days.
I avoided the basement for two days, circling the house like a planet afraid to fall into a particular gravity well. Colin's words echoed every time I passed the basement door. Performing for cameras that don't exist. Sixty-forty in favor of performance.
He knew. Not everything — not the system, not the transmigration — but enough. Enough to destroy me if he chose.
On the third day, I stopped avoiding.
The basement stairs creaked under my feet.
Colin's space had evolved since his regeneration. What had been a nursery was now a study — Laszlo's old diaries stacked on a desk, reference books shelved in rough alphabetical order, a comfortable chair positioned under the single good light. He'd built himself an academic's lair in the two months since his rebirth.
He was reading when I arrived. Didn't look up.
"I wondered how long you'd wait."
"Two days."
"Shorter than I expected." He closed the book — something about medieval grain taxation. "Sit."
I sat on the stairs. Not quite entering his space, not quite retreating from it.
"You said I perform for cameras that don't exist." No point dancing around it. "What do you want?"
Colin tilted his head, the ancient intelligence behind teenage eyes calculating something I couldn't read.
"What makes you think I want something?"
"Everyone wants something. You didn't expose me to the household when you had the chance. That means either you want leverage, or you want something else."
[+8 VEP: Direct Confrontation]
"Leverage is boring." He set down his book. "I could drain more energy from blackmail than from whatever deal we'd strike. The fear, the desperation, the constant anxiety — premium content for someone like me."
My stomach turned.
"But I don't want that," he continued. "Because your performance is giving me indigestion."
"My... what?"
"Performance." He made a face like someone who'd bitten into a fake apple. "Energy vampires feed on emotional content. Genuine emotion is nourishing. Manufactured emotion is... artificial sweetener. It fills the stomach but doesn't satisfy. And you—" He pointed at me. "You are sixty percent artificial sweetener walking around in a human suit."
[+6 VEP: Character Insight — Colin's Perspective]
"So what do you want?"
"I want you to stop."
I blinked. "Stop performing?"
"Not entirely. I understand you can't. But around me? One hour a week. No performance, no system-gaming, no optimized charm. Just... real conversation."
"Why?"
"Because genuine emotion feeds better. Because I'm curious what you're like underneath the act. And because—" He paused, and for a moment he looked almost young. "Because I died and came back and everyone in this house has forgotten what I was like before. They talk to the new Colin like he's a stranger wearing old Colin's face."
The words hit somewhere I hadn't expected.
"I know what that's like," I said quietly.
"I know you do." His eyes were steady. "That's why I'm asking you instead of just draining you until you crack."
[+10 VEP: Unexpected Vulnerability — Both Characters]
The deal was simple.
Colin wouldn't tell anyone about the "cameras that don't exist." In exchange, I'd give him one honest hour every week — no performance, no optimization, no playing to an audience. Just two people who understood what it meant to wear the wrong face talking to each other.
We shook hands on the basement stairs.
His grip was firm, his palm dry, his ancient eyes surprisingly warm.
"First honest conversation," he said. "Starting now. Tell me something real."
I thought about it. The system, which I couldn't mention. The transmigration, which I couldn't explain. The meta-knowledge that was slowly becoming less reliable.
"I'm afraid," I said finally. "All the time. Not of dying — I've already done that. I'm afraid of being found out. Of losing everything I've built here. Of becoming someone I don't recognize."
[+12 VEP: Authentic Confession]
Colin nodded slowly.
"That's better," he said. "That actually tasted like food."
I laughed — surprised, genuine, the first real laugh I'd had in days.
"You're a strange person, Colin Robinson."
"I'm a hundred-year-old energy vampire in a teenager's body who just negotiated a friendship based on culinary preferences." He smiled. "Strange is relative."
I climbed the basement stairs feeling lighter than I had in weeks.
One person knew something. One person had chosen alliance instead of exposure. One relationship in this house was built on something like honesty instead of performance.
It's not much, I thought. But it's something.
The door to the basement opened onto the main hallway.
Nandor was waiting.
Arms crossed. The Djinn's lamp in his hands. His expression was the careful neutrality of someone who'd been thinking for two days and reached a decision.
"We need to talk about the wishes," he said.
[+8 VEP: Cliffhanger — Unresolved Conflict Resumed]
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