The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

He woke up and she was still there.

Not the white place. Her looking at the same nothingness she’d been looking at when he closed his eyes.

He didn’t sit up right away. His head was in someone’s lap. She hadn’t moved him off it.

"You were crying," she said.

"I know."

"You did not notice."

He didn’t answer.

"You are not from here," she said.

"No."

"Where."

"Somewhere with a colored sky," he said.

She looked down at him.

"I am Veyra."

He told her his name. She repeated it once, quietly, and said nothing else about it.

"Strange name," she added.

"You can talk."

Then the loop reset.

They were back at the beginning white place, tree, nothing. She was standing where she’d been when he first arrived.

He looked at her.

"How long has it been doing this," he said.

"Always."

He sat up and looked around at the nothing.

"Great," he said. "Love it here."

He stopped tracking the loops somewhere in the early period.

She told him about her story.

"Sounds like a department meeting," he said.

"What is a department meeting."

"A room full of people who outrank you, deciding things that affect you, while pretending to ask your opinion."

"...Yes," she said slowly. "It was exactly that."

She told him about the windows the strangers, the hands finding each other, the mother humming tuneless.

He told her about Yui. The corridor he’d sat in.

"And then there was Pain," he said.

"The what."

"Long story. Bad story. Luna’s idea."

"Who is Luna."

"Someone who thinks dignity is optional."

She laughed. Short. Abrupt.

She laughed more after that. Not at everything.

The system notifications stopped somewhere in the middle period.

"They’re gone," he said.

"What is gone."

"Nothing important."

The higher beings hadn’t given him this. The door hadn’t been a quest.

"Four thousand loops," he said, mostly to himself.

"Mm."

"That’s insane. That’s an insane number of loops."

"I am aware."

He picked at the bark.

"How long is a loop, even."

"Long enough that the notches disappear before I turn back around."

He cut a notch in the tree right then, just to see. When the loop reset, it was gone.

"Told you," she said.

He cut it again. Gone again.

"Stubborn," she said.

"I prefer ’thorough.’"

He cut it a third time and sat back against the tree.

"It will not stay," she said.

"I know."

"I tried for a long time."

"I know." He poked the spot where the notch had been. "I am not trying to make it stay. I just wanted to do it."

She sat beside him, arms around her knees, until the loop took it.

"Pointless," she said.

"Most things are."

One loop, he said something that landed badly. He knew it before he finished saying it. She didn’t change expression — just sat down further from the tree than she usually did and stayed there for the rest of that loop without explaining why.

When the reset came, he was glad of it.

The next loop he was more careful. The white had taught him that much: the reset didn’t take everything. Just the marks.

The loop reset.

He woke. She was sitting beneath the tree.

"You waited."

"You say that every loop."

"Because every loop, you’re still here."

"I live here."

"Technicality."

He stood.

The loop reset.

He sat beneath the tree.

A few minutes later, Veyra sat beside him.

Neither spoke.

Their shoulders touched.

"This place is terrible."

She said nothing.

"The scenery is repetitive."

"Mm."

"The company is tolerable."

She turned toward him.

"Tolerable?"

"On good days."

"There are no days here."

"You know what I mean."

She looked away.

A moment later, the corner of a smile. Gone before he could comment on it.