Yemon really had been worried - in fact, he'd been jittering his way through the house ever since he'd received that text from earlier. It had been lodged in his head, even though Nao had responded after, and kept responding. Nothing could supercede the concern he felt in the exact moment he read the words "incident at work".

It wouldn't have done either of them better if he made a huge whopping deal out of it, and Nao had surely been sufficiently shaken up even without Yemon adding his own anxiety into the mix.

So he'd persevered.

The hug that Nao bestowed upon him may not have been intended as a reward for his impressive resilience in the face of worry, but he would silently take it as one, either way. Of course, he'd wrapped his arms around Nao in return, giving him a nice, tight squeeze - not too tight, he wasn't trying to crack his ribs, but the kind of tight hug that you'd give a cushion or a blanket while thinking about your currently-absent significant other.

Yemon sneaked a quick kiss on the lips before Nao pulled himself away, trying to ignore his own stomach's discontent rumble.

"Yeah, uh. About that. Want to guess which idiot waited for you before having dinner?" Yemon reached around to poke Nao on the other cold cheek - really, the cold back of his trousers, as far as his finger was concerned.

"It's not your fault I'm a big dumb moron, though. I'll get myself something real quick while you're eating."

It wasn't entirely on brand for Yemon to cook for Nao while forgetting that he, himself, was a living person who needed actual human food to sustain himself, but then, they had, thus far, usually never put dinner off until this late, and when they did, it was usually because they'd been out on a late date.

Where a "late date" translated to wandering around the city eating street food or hitching a train ride to another city to sightsee like impulsive teenagers.

While Nao was settling in to eat, Yemon had hurried over to the stove to arrange for yet another late snack. He could've just gone for one of the many freezer meals he still had from before Nao moved in (he was pretty sure they hadn't expired), but he wasn't feeling it.

Grilled cheese sandwiches seemed way more adequate. And it gave him an excuse to pile even more food onto Nao's side of the table - a couple sandwiches would surely not go amiss if his stomach was grumbling this loudly, right?

"If you wait just a little bit, I'll handfeed you! You could move to the living room, if you'd like."

It might've been an appealing idea, moving to the sofa or, perhaps, that armchair they bought together, but from where Nao currently sat, he could see Yemon's back.

Or, more specifically, what he was wearing on his bottom half. True to his form and brand, Yemon was not being normal about anything he wore at home. Encouraging him to wear anything but hoodies and sweatpants at home had consequences, and right then and there, the consequences shone in bright rhinestones on his buttcheeks.

Yemon had finally put on the jorts with "BITE ME" bedazzled on the back.

"We can talk during, if it doesn't rip your appetite to pieces. It probably won't do anything to mine - I've filled my jitter quota, and I'm coming down from the nervous high. I am hollow, and the void inside me craves cheese toasties. I'll be there real soon!"

Yemon was ever a man of his word, and not long after Nao had shuffled off to the living room - unsurprisingly Western in layout, given his parents' tastes in home design and decor, and his own lack of interest in remodeling it into a more stereotypically Japanese design - Yemon had made his own appearance. The apron had been left in the kitchen, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, no doubt, but the jorts were inescapable.

Even though the rhinestones weren't visible from all angles, the knowledge that they existed could never be scrubbed from the minds of anyone who's seen them before.

(Nothing supernatural about it, it's just... have you tried to forget seeing "BITE ME" bedazzled on a guy's butt in giant pink rhinestones?)

Fortunately, the platter of delicious grilled cheese sandwiches Yemon was carrying was a suitable distraction from the preternaturally haunting knowledge of the +10 Bedazzled Jorts of Charming. He'd see where Nao decided to settle before parking his own decorated butt - if he'd opted for the huge armchair, he'd wedge himself into the space right beside him, but should he opt for the sofa, he'd allow him a little more room. Graciously.

Fiance proximity - comfy, but elbow space - also comfy.

"I don't think I want you to handfeed me unless I'm lying down in a recliner and you are feeding me bunches of potato chips from the bag, like a weird gross take on a painting of a Roman fatass being fed grapes. I'm joking, by the way. You're fully within your right to shove food into my open gob if I forget to eat."

Ah, but sharing a plush armchair with his husband-to-be truly was the most relaxing part of his day so far, considering he'd been having a relatively rotten week prior to this point. It hadn't been the worst of days, it hadn't been the best of days, but any day where he got to curl up next to Nao and feed him something or other was a successful day, as far as he was concerned.

In other words, Yemon's bar for a reasonably successful day was pretty low. For a man who complained about everyone's choices in life, fashion, and personal hygiene, he was fairly easily satisfied. It was only when Yemon got to listen to Nao talk about things - any things, when he got to look him in the face and hear his voice like the most lovestruck dolt in the history of Earth, that he really understood how easy to please he really was.

Not that he wasn't actually listening to him. While Nao's voice was ever pleasing to his ears, Yemon wasn't going to miss a single word. His eyebrows creased further and further as Nao went on, his expression only smoothing a little whenever Yemon got to feed him another forkful of omelette.

"... I see," he said, finally. That's all he'd say for the next couple minutes as he shoved an entire grilled cheese sandwich in his mouth, having almost forgotten to feed himself during Nao's obligatory exposition monologue.

Yemon only spoke again when he was done chewing through all that.

"I see," he repeated himself with a nod. "Well, I've got a couple theories about what went on in there, and none of them are all that great for us. I suspect he was either trying to digitize your coworker's consciousness, or, ah... upload another consciousness in the place of his. I'm leaning more towards the former than the latter, but it's hard to know for sure. It sounds like you've encountered an actual, non-fictional mad scientist. You're lucky you got out of it with all your marbles in your marble case."

And so, the turner becomes the tabled. Now Yemon was the one being fed, and he accepted his inevitable fate with grace belonging not to a feeble nerd who'd lost a battle of who-feeds-who with his fiance, but to a warrior ready to be executed by a rival after a honorable duel in the arena. The consequences of this loss were quite minor, though, in comparison.

He just had to eat. Cutely ingest nutrients for Nao's viewing pleasure.

To be fair, he had been warned in advance about what would happen if he forgot to eat, and Nao, too, was nothing if not a man of his word. They were very similar in that way.

After a decent amount of sandwich-chewing, Yemon would finally lean away, pressing himself into the back of the armchair. He needed to speak. Or, well, he wanted to, which was as good as needing to.

"It shouldn't be possible, but this is the game that is rumored to cause people to drop unconscious. I still don't understand the mechanism by which it should be possible - a FMD doesn't hook into your head, I don't think any of the models have that capability. They only called the first mass-produced version the "Neuro Goggles" 'cause it sounded cool, from all the research I've done on the topic. And yet..."

Yemon reached down to rub his ankle, remembering his encounter with Sid. How was it possible for someone to feel game pain in real life? Was this how his AI friends felt in battle, every time? Was every Vak Don to the face like a screaming-hot poker to his own?

How did they come to exist in the first place?

"I'll teach you anything you want to know, Nao. I'm... not happy this happened, but if you begin seeing this game in the same light I do, even close to it, I'll sleep a little easier."

It had to come to this eventually, and Yemon had been mentally rehearsing this conversation for some time. How was he supposed to broach this subject without making Nao worry in excess? Without making him want to quit his job? Without putting him in even more danger, if it came to that?

He'd come to the conclusion that it wasn't possible to calculate all the risks and avoid them, in this situation. Keeping Nao completely uninformed carried far more danger than trying to keep him in the dark, and he was compelled to reciprocate Nao's own honesty, besides.

So he would.

"I will tell you," Yemon finally said, "but it's not going to be too illuminating. Back when I was hunting for ingredients for Cook's dishes in that cave, alongside Wren, we got ambushed by an unusual AI. When we'd fought, uh---he attacked Wren, first, and he reacted weird and got a bunch of abnormal statuses, so I got myself involved, and, like... the AI grazed me on the leg, and I felt actual pain. In real life."

He rubbed his ankle again, gentler.

"Right here. There wasn't a wound, though. After that, I figured why Wren'd reacted the way he did. He got hit way harder, I can't imagine how it felt. Uh. Anyway, that situation mostly resolved itself, but I'm still a little freaked about it. I have no idea how the game made me feel actual pain. I have no idea how any of that's supposed to make sense. I just know it..."

Yemon inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly through his nose.

"It happened. I'm not insane. The game can affect your real life consciousness under the right circumstances, as you've just found out, yourself. Your situation was arguably more concerning than mine, though, given you were never in physical contact with the entity that caused this."

After a pause, he added, "I think it's all connected to this Xiang."

Of course it has to be. Midboss Whatchamacallit mentioned Sid. Both of them most likely worked for the damn guy.

Of course it has to be connected. Of course they all have to be dealing with different facets of the same stellated dodecahedron of hell.

"There's no lingering stuff from the fight, yeah. Don't put yourself in too much danger by digging your nose in things it would be unwelcome in," Yemon advised him. "I'm not saying you shouldn't dig around, but I'm saying that you should do it after preparing thoroughly. If you want to get anything on it, you're going to have to keep your credentials and your job. I can almost guarantee you that it's a long-term affair, finding anything on this stuff."

Nao had asked him a question, then, that would've made his ears perk up if he really did look like Ornery the lizard. But he was Yemon. He had human ears. Still, he was startled into looking a lot more lively - of course he knew about Harald Hoerwick! He'd read his thesis! The man was a genius! And then he'd... disappeared.

"Hoerwick? Like Harald Hoerwick? I know that name, yeah." Yemon pressed himself up against Nao, allowing himself to simply lean on his fiance and breathe in the now-dilute scent of laundry detergent. He'd laundered that vest for him personally and ironed his clothes before Nao had left for his work trip, helped him with his tie. It was all fresh, back then.

Not so much now, after all that.

"I think I still have a copy of his thesis, somewhere. "The Future of Mankind, Distributive Processing, and AI" is what it was titled. Man's a genius! A true blue genius! I think he was also the guy behind what would eventually become The World R:1... Fragment, they called it. My mom beta tested that thing. I don't think either of my parents ever met him personally, unfortunately, and... I mean, no one's heard from him in years. Why?"