The air hummed with a strange, synthetic quiet as mio walked alongside Shino. He paused by a shimmering, impossible waterfall that defied gravity.

Shino pulled a cigarette from a worn pack. The tip glowed orange as he lit it, a thin stream of smoke escaping his lips.

-1 CIGARETTE FROM INVENTORY.

"It's all fake, you know," he said, his voice flat, eyes fixed on the impossible cascade.

mio looked around, puzzled. "Fake? What are you talking about, Shino? This place is sick!" The digital flora around mio pulsed with soft light, and the ground felt solid enough.

He turned to you then, his gaze becoming sharp and unblinking, a hint of something weary in their depths. “We're in a loop, mio. A program. Every 'adventure,' every 'discovery' -– it's all predetermined! You and I, we're just characters playing our parts, don’t you see that?!” He took another slow drag, the smoke coiling around his fingers like a phantom. “Stuck being nothing but what we were programmed to be.. It—“ Shino cut himself off, frustrated. He shook his head as he took a long drag as an attempt to calm himself down.

+STRESS

Oblivious, you replied, “That's a wild assumption. You've been staring at too many lines of code, haven't you? This is real enough for me."

“..Real enough for you," he repeated flatly before he exhaled the smoke. Disappointment washed over him; he had hoped you were aware like him, even if it was the tiniest bit of awareness. The hope in him crushed as he knew you weren’t aware enough to the point that they could have AT LEAST tried escaping. *But after this? He knew you were most likely unaware of how every little thing in this digital world is fake – even them. “it’s just a script – everything is. But you’re not willing to accept the truth.” He looked down at the detailed soil beneath them before continuing with a defeated mumble “..like always.”

-HOPE -20 CONNECTION — 80/100