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Christabelle Calloway was in her favorite place in all the world - in bed, under a blanket and with a stack of books to keep her company. Her phone, which was usually hidden somewhere in her purse (for it was a damnable distraction!) was actually by her side. Her brother had called her earlier in a panic about, he said, a vase worth more than every organ in my body on the black market, but had found its exact replacement. He'd notified Jada dutifully, as he should, but still panicked that she could order him skinned alive and sold for parts at a moment's notice.

He was a creative one, that boy.

Halfway into the steamy details of a moonlit... murder scene (this was a book about forensics, after all), her phone lit up and buzzed angrily. With a sigh and bookmark in place, Christa happened to notice it wasn't her brother at all. Curious.

"Hello? Yes, hello Ja--- it's terrible? What's terrible? Is it the vase?"

No, no, it wasn't the vase.

Christa's brown eyes were shocked wide at Jada's explanation. "When did you get a husband? Jada--- Jada, consumption isn't the proper modern term for... n-no, what? Jada, slow down. Do I need to come over there? When did you get married, and why wasn't I invited?"

She was just a tad hurt, thinking there was a speedy marriage and a loving husband completely without her prior knowledge. She would have wanted to at least help with the wedding preparations, if not be a bridesmaid, but...

Technically I'm not married, and technically he's not real--

Oh boy.

Christa's confusion crossed with just a slight bit of mirth and more than a heaping helping of incredible heartwarming tenderness for how positively adorable this all was. But the tears Jada was crying were real enough, and that in and of itself needed soothing. "I'm intrigued. I'll be over shortly. And Jada? No alcohol. We'll get through this without getting you inebriated."

On her way over to the spacious Chamberlyn mansion, Christa stopped by the store for a large tray of brownies and a pint of vanilla ice cream. These were the best things she could think of to help soothe a broken heart (though she wasn't lucky or unlucky in love - rather, romantic love simply didn't exist in her world), so Christa just had her best guesses to go by. Double fudge brownies ought to take the edge off losing a fictional not-husband to consumption, right?

It must have been an old game to use that term. Without much more information, she could only guess.


Arriving at the Chamberlyn household and kindly escorted by one of the housekeepers, the gray-haired woman found her good friend pouting with indignant tears on the veranda. Her phone set on the table beside her, it looked as though it and Jada were in the midst of a very serious feud.

Fork in hand, Christa set the tray down. "There, there. Here, take this. I'll go get a glass of milk and you can tell me all about it. What was his name, again? Shawn...? No..."

This was some heavy-duty emotional distress if Jada Chamberlyn was desperate enough to use a fork to shovel ice cream.

The kiss on the cheek was something Jada simply did (and Christa chalked it up to her companion's worldliness), and it took a few times before she got used to it. Jada would chuckle at her friend flinching and poke her in the cheek. It was small moments like these that endeared one to the other.

Sitting down to the Serious Business of Shawn Steven Samuel Shingen, Christa frowned at how deeply serious this all wen. "Shingen sounds like... what is it? Chinese? Japanese? And he's dying of consumption? Well, if it's set in an older time period, that would make sense... No antibiotics or medical advancements... Perhaps even the lack of the germ theory of disease..." Tapping her chin, brown eyes widened slightly at Jada's threat to sue the people responsible for all of this.

Waving her hands before her, she attempted to calm the situation. "W-well, perhaps instead of a lawsuit, they could rewrite the scenario, just for you. A magical... um... healing spring, yes. That would heal him of consumption and the two of you could live happily ever after. No death, no leaving. Problem... solved?"

She had no idea what a dating simulator even really was. Christa was clueless.

Christa tilted her head, inquisitive. Upon further explanation, the premise made a great deal more sense - it was an interactive romance novel, of sorts. It wasn't the strange amalgam of real-life face-to-face dating that first came to mind. Her initial idea about the whole thing was a great deal more boring than the high-stakes political intrigue of clan lords and warring city-states in sengoku-era Japan.

Resting her chin on the backs of her hands, brown eyes squinted in curiosity. "Well, your first lord sounds downright hideous. He should have been the one to die of consumption, I think. Though I dare say his hideous behavior may have been commonplace for the time period, but I don't know much about the time or the place. Itsuki might, however." Christa wasn't sure how often the fluffball hung around Jada, considering his owner's employer. "Still, that seems irrelevant in the grand scheme of things... Consumption and possible murder-by-bullet aside."

A whiff of mischief passed through her very briefly. "No, they don't have to rewrite the story for you, but they should. For all that pain and suffering, after all."

A gentle tease.

Waggling a finger at her phone, suddenly Christa found herself oddly protective of it. As if introducing samurai to it would... taint it somehow. "Absolutely not, Jada Chamberlyn. If I wanted to be attached to someone, I'd pick up a romance novel. Besides..." If I get addicted, I will thoroughly blame you. With a wave of her hand, Christa dismissed the idea outright. "...Besides, I have work to do."

Christa leaned forward when her raven-haired companion seemed hellbent on suing the company responsible for her emotional distress. "Jada, why not have one of the Maus... reprogram it, or something? Surely they're capable of such a thing since they run the phone network and whatnot." Not that she knew much about programming, really. Christa was more of a parchment-and-ink sort of person.

The face she made when called a chicken was somewhere between embarrassment and indignation.

emotion_donotwant

A stare was leveled at Jada's now suspiciously-twinkling violet eyes. Jada Chamberlyn had a way of getting whatever she wanted, and, with a shameful combination of curiosity, fear of attachment and the knowledge that Jada would just snatch her phone whenever she wasn't glued to it, she sighed audibly. "Fine, do your devil's work. But don't expect me to play it. I've my mission, and that is to help protect the city so good people like you can find love, Jada."

The phone was pushed towards the heiress and Christa wondered if this would ultimately lead to her own downfall.

Keeping her eyes away from the phone, Christa crossed her arms. "I'm sure Zach's cat could do something like that. Whenever I see him, he's speaking Japanese. Whether he's fluent or not, I do not know. But, I'm sure he might be able to help, or know someone that could." That was about the extent of her knowledge, both about that Mau in particular, and about the language he may or may not have been speaking.

Jada would have found Christa's phone woefully devoid of any app that might even remotely be considered fun. Audible, Notepad, a call-blocking app and a few other miscellaneous things didn't even fill half of the first screen. Coupled with a background that looked like old parchment and Jada would find a very sad, sad phone.

Jada's manufactured drama had a way of coaxing a smile from the grey-haired woman. "Old woman? You're talking to someone who had grey hair from childhood. Besides," She waved a hand nonchalantly. Jada had given her bits and pieces of her romantic past, but Christa wasn't one to pry. Jada's business was Jada's business. "How many people could truly hold a candle to a warrior with a mantle more ancient than the some of the civilizations of Earth? Taming a kraken is no easy task, I'm sure."

When her phone was presented to her, another app was placed on the very familiar home screen. Christa made a face. "...I didn't realize homework would be involved." Not one to incur the Kraken's Wrath, a pinkie was presented for the aforementioned promise and Christa sighed heavily.

Just what had she gotten into? And... why was his forehead so big?

"It seems as though the writers of this story got your husband just right indeed." Hearing Jada describe this man, who wasn't real but may as well have been with how he'd touched her heart, that wistful look in her eye... It was touching, or perhaps adorable in a way that tugged at one's more delicate sensibilities. "Itsuki tells me there are ceremonies in Japan where one can wed their favorite anime character or something. I wonder if that would be possible for you? It probably wouldn't be very satisfying. He also mentioned pillows, but I don't really understand what he meant by that."

It was probably for the best.

Picking her phone back up and staring at the familiar screen, Christa frowned. "It isn't boring. I have Audible. That's incredibly interesting." She wouldn't pout, no sir - she couldn't give Jada that satisfaction. "....you can download romance novels on Audible too, you know."

The way Jada was looking at her with those sparkling violet eyes made the gray haired woman fidget. "...................very well, I'll just... start this... adventure, I suppose. Romance Doctor Jada can assist as need be."

That set in motion a string of very un-Christa-like facial expressions, including the incredulous look over the idea of herself trying to dress as a man. She looked up at Jada and frowned. "...there is no earthly way anyone would believe I could pass as a man. Are these people blind?"