What’s In a Trait?

It’s moments like these where I remember that Laura and I are in completely different phases of our lives. She’s graduated from college and has a steady job in her field of interest. She is, for all intents and purposes, an adult. In the eyes of the law, we’re both the same on that front, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. I haven’t even graduated high school yet, am currently unemployed, and still live with my mom. All of these things are normal for the stage of life I’m currently in, but that doesn’t really ease my mind.

Still, I have to do my best today. Laura, for all of the great things about her, has one problem.

Her emotions control her. Utterly.

I knew that she was emotional before I became involved with her. After the whole… uh… murder thing, the full extent of her inability to check her emotions became more apparent. Right now, I think Laura’s deeply disappointed in the results of her students, and to a greater extent, herself. The only other time I can think of Laura having strong negative emotions ended in the Geneva convention being broken. While I don’t think she’ll go nearly that far for this, I think she’s going to need somebody by her side— and what do you know— I’m probably the person best suited for that.

Trying to come up with a date that didn’t cause a fuck ton of problems for both of us was a colossal headache. Luckily, I had plenty of time to plan because anybody who paid attention knew this was coming. I want to do something special, but there’s virtually nowhere we can go without some risk of being caught and our relationship being outed. I have, however, stumbled across something that perfectly suits our needs.

It’s a themed restaurant, simply called “Night Masquerade.” As the title implies, it’s themed after a masquerade ball. Laura’s the type to brood over things, but she also loves quirky things like this. I hope it’s enough to cheer her up. We also need to have a talk about her teaching style, I just hope she’s a little more receptive this time.

After leaving Minnie in the courtyard, I walk back to Laura’s classroom. It’s empty but still unlocked, as the lock is broken. I wonder who could have done such a thing?

After carefully looking around to make sure no one’s in here, I place a sealed envelope with an old-timey-looking wax seal on her desk. Inside is an anonymous invitation giving her a time to be ready and a dress code. Carefully, I place her mask next to the invitation. It’s a pearly white, framed with gold, with golden streaks randomly strewn across it. There’s white and gold plumage standing tall on the upper-right side of the mask, and small, soft down feathers on the lower-left side. There’s just enough mask to hide her identity, but not enough to be uncomfortable, at least in my test wear.

I have an identical mask, but mine’s black instead of white. I ordered them off of a crafts website and got them for a pretty decent deal. It was like 70 bucks for both masks, which, for a custom, short-notice order is way better than I would’ve expected— if still a little pricy. With dinner pricing in at just over $40 a person, this is gonna leave a bit of a dent in my wallet, but it should hopefully be a fun night.

I slink away before Laura can come back, and walk to somewhere desolate to eat my lunch. I kinda want to be alone today, plus my normal lunch buddy is still angry at me.

I’ve thought a bit about what Val said to me, and I still kinda don’t get it? She said she’s worried about me but there isn’t really a reason to be. Hell, of all the people that I know I may well be the one in the least danger. Maybe she’s just mad that I’m keeping secrets? I kinda have to, so there’s not really much I can do about that. Oftentimes my strategy is to just wait for things like this to blow over, but I get the feeling that isn’t going to happen this time.

I’ve been doing some thinking about things. I might be totally off-base here, but I think my trait has something to do with people remembering things. All of the people who fully remember those that disappeared are people who I’ve met prior to their disappearances. Minnie remembers Taylor, and both Val and my mother remembered Anna, prior to Val’s forgetting act. Taking a closer look at my trait, there’s a key thing I glossed over in my initial reading.

Possessive: Your women cannot be affected by other players.

Initially, I thought this meant that the women I found myself involved with were unable to be stolen, but it’s a bit different than that. If my current understanding is correct, it instead means as long as they’re “My women,” they’re immune to other players' traits, items, and skills. This interpretation has a pretty big hole, of course.

A lot of the people that remember Taylor & Anna aren’t really “my women.” Minnie may have liked me at some point, but that’s almost certainly not true anymore, Val and I have never been anything more than friends, and my mom isn’t exactly what I would call “my woman.” In order for this interpretation of my trait to make sense, the definition of “my women,” has to be different than I thought it was. I would like to compare these cases to women who I know are mine, Laura and Carolyn, but neither of them knew the kidnapees beforehand so being immune to the other player has made no difference.

Also, I didn’t know Jess before all of this, and she— at least vaguely— remembers Taylor. With that in mind, it’s completely possible something else is at play here.

Ultimately, I believe I’m correct in thinking my trait is what’s causing people to remember because it explains a few of the oddities I’ve seen; Primarily what happened with Val. Assuming Val was “my woman,” before we fought, and after we fought she lost whatever qualifications are required to be my woman and promptly forgot about Anna, it kinda adds up. It’s a little bit of a stretch, but of all the things I can think of, this is the best explanation for a lot of the things that have happened.

Back to my original point. When Val got angry at me, it wasn’t just a superficial fight. Something changed about our relationship, and it was enough to remove the protection my trait gave her. This isn’t just something that’s going to blow over. I need to be proactive in fixing things with Val but on my list of things to do it’s relatively far down.

I know I need to fix things, I just hope nothing happens before then.