"You mean she spaced out, so you spaced out too?" Grandpa Lu asked blankly from the other end of the call.
"Yep," Soap answered honestly. "You never told me what to do in a situation like this."
"I—" Grandpa Lu nearly choked and couldn't help complaining, "Do you need me to teach you everything? Do you want me to guide you step by step when you're doing it later?"
"No need for that." Soap chuckled. "There's a tutorial for it in the system. Three T's."
Grandpa Lu: ""
"Come to think of it, you never seemed this enthusiastic about this sort of thing before. You never showed any interest in the elf girls at our base either, did you?"
"It's different this time." Soap shook his head. "Before, I thought it was a game, so I always figured those gorgeous elf players might be hiding all sorts of things behind the screen. What if one of them was a balding, foot-scratching old man even bigger than you? I've never believed in online relationships."
"Later on, even after I confirmed they were really Gene Bodies, those deeply ingrained beliefs had already been burned into my heart. Every time I saw those elf players, I hypnotized myself: They're fake. They're fake. They're foot-scratching old men. They're foot-scratching old men."
Grandpa Lu: ""
"Besides, you know what our status was like at the base. We were always treated like monkeys. How could I develop feelings for anyone?"
"Uh." Grandpa Lu immediately snapped, "You? When was I ever treated like a monkey?"
"Heh." Soap gave a cold laugh. "Your entire evolutionary process, from Poop to Braised Egg, is now the most-viewed growth record of an Xenomorph player on the forums. If you weren't a monkey, what were you?"
"That's called popularity. What the hell