"Heya~" I exclaim. I do a little pirouette before striking a cute pose, "I'm here!"

  "This never gets old, I love how you do this every time you come here, please do it more." She says with a strained smile.

  "Huh? I thought you hated that?"

  "If you're doing it because it annoys me, then maybe you'll stop if I pretend to like it."

  Despite her sarcastic response, I can tell she's somewhat happy to see me, if only because it distracts her from her duties for a little while. The throne room she spends all her time in is full of the white mist, which makes it hard to appreciate the fact that this place is actually quite well decorated. Red carpet, colored walls, and a chandelier hanging on the roof. It's a far cry from the drab, rusty one room pipe home I live in.

  "Anyway, are you okay?" I ask.

  "Urgh, you're reminding me of him." she says. Massaging her temples.

  "What? It's a normal thing to ask."

  "Yeah, he used to say that too, and trust me, it's not a normal thing to ask. Wish it was, though." Her gaze wanders somewhere else before continuing. "As for the "I'm okay" part, do you mean in general or recently?"

  "In general," I answer.

  "It feels like every time I make progress, something else falls apart. I've been doing this for 20 years and yet it still feels like nothing's changed."

  She pulls out her menu.

  "I can estimate the way things will go very easily, people obey me without questions, I can even control the mist to some extent, but..." She taps her bright pink menu a few times before it disappears. "Even with all of that, it feels like I can't force people to change for the better without turning into a tyrant, it's frustrating." She takes another one of her usual deep breath, this time inhaling the white mist, although she doesn't exhale anything back. "Sometimes I wonder if he would've done a better job than me. Maybe we could've worked together, maybe..."

  "But it was his decision too!" I exclaim, "I don't think it's fair to assume you were the only one to make this choice. In a way, you both agreed that this is what needed to be done at the time. If this was the right decision or not? Only time will tell!"

  "Right..." She says. She scratches her cheek, waiting for me to elaborate. When she sees I'm not about to say anything, she asks something else. "So why are you here? You usually show up at the end of the month."

  "That's because I'm leaving! You're probably not going to see me again, and I just thought it'd be rude to go away without saying goodbye!" I answer.

  She doesn't say anything for a couple of seconds, still staring off into the distance.

  "Never going to see you again, huh? I hate to admit it, but it'll be annoying to have no one I can relate to anymore." her eyes lock unto mine. "Say, how do you manage to stay happy with that much power anyway?"

  "That's the best part! I don't!" I exclaim. "Some days I'll be nostalgic about a time long gone, some days I'll be happy to see something new, some days I'll get bored out of my mind, and some days I'll get a special connection with someone only for it to all disappear in the end!" I do another pirouette before striking another cute pose. "Because all I can do is keep going! So keep going, I will!"

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She lets out a surprisingly cute laugh before doing a pirouette and striking a cute pose of her own. "Keep going is what I will do then." The white mist in the room suddenly pushes me into her, and she pulls me into a tight hug.

  "Take care, alright?" She whispers into my ears. For some reason, my cheeks get a little red.

  "Is that an order?" I ask.

  "From the white mist itself" She answers before letting go of me.

  Right before I leave the room, I shout, "Don't forget to have fun every now and then!" and run out of the palace.

  Change notes? [Y/N]

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  I die

  Admittedly I was a little bit scared at first, people reading my stuff means I feel some sort of expectations, when I really wrote this as a way to train my writing without caring about it being perfect. Which is why I didn't share it with anyone. However, I realized that writing nothing at all is worse than writing something bad. I'll improve eventually and I can't just stop doing things out of the fear of disappointing people.

  The white mist universe :

  Characters :

  There were only three main characters in this universe, A for antagonist and P for protagonist, these aren't their real names, and we will never learn their names. As we are unfortunately in the POV of someone who dislikes names. They are okay with nicknames though.

  I really like A as a character, I could've made A as a simple Stoic girlboss that acts like an unstoppable force of nature. But instead she's very much emotional, but she doesn't let her emotion stop her from doing things. She'll cry if she's sad, and she'll get visibly pissed off when she's angry. She's not afraid of being herself because she believes the stoicism and apathy that everyone else has in the system is what fucks everybody over. Which is probably why she took a liking to the surprising empathy of P.

  P is very much subservient to the system and content with his life, which is why he doesn't actually do that much in the story. And we don't get enough of a feel of the culture to see that he's actually very much a weirdo compared to the rest. His empathy, differentiating him from people that would simply ignore someone in need. He'll still obey an order from a higher up, but he still helps someone that has put them in a very dangerous situation like the MC. He's not as naive as he first seems, but he is also often afraid of doing something that might make everything worst.

  There was supposed to be another POV from someone that was very high in the hierarchy, trying to investigate the menu fuckery produced by the main characters. Unfortunately, I never found the right moment to introduce them and ended up scrapping them.

  Plot :