She glanced away, doing the count in her head without much enthusiasm. Eight years. Maybe nine. She was not entirely certain — the number had blurred somewhere along the way, the same way a lot of things had blurred. From the moment she had begun preparing Samuel in earnest, transferring responsibility piece by piece, teaching him how to read a room and read a document and read a person, the system had simply gone quiet. Vanished, more or less completely. The few times it had surfaced since were so brief and so unremarkable that she could not have described the circumstances if asked.

Eight years of silence, and it had chosen now to reappear.

She looked at it again.

"You have terrible timing," she said.

Elara walked back to her chair and sat down, pulling the stack of documents toward her without ceremony. The system’s presence materialized beside her — that familiar cloud-like shape, hovering just at the edge of her peripheral vision the way it always had, as though it had never been gone at all.

She did not acknowledge it immediately. She was already reading.

"No matter how many years pass," the system said, looking at the documents spread across the table, "you never change, do you. Still working."

He looked at the stack more closely.

"I feel tired just looking at that."

"Then don’t look," Elara said, without glancing up. "Who called you here?"

The system made a sound that might have been a sigh. "Nobody called me. You know how it is. I just — I could not leave you completely alone. So I came."

Elara picked up her pen. "What, did your other host die?"

Silence.

She kept writing.

"...No," the system said, slowly. "They did not die. They just — decided to settle in that world. The mission was complete, so I thought I would come here, check in, see how things were going—" He stopped.

Then, in an entirely different tone:

"Wait."

She heard him turn toward her.

"What did you just say?"

Elara signed the bottom of the page and set it aside. Picked up the next one.

"I asked if your other host died."

"How," the system said, with the careful enunciation of someone trying very hard to stay calm, "do you know I have other hosts?"

Elara read a line, made a small note in the margin, and said without looking up:

"Common knowledge."

"This is *not* common knowledge." The system’s voice pitched upward slightly. "That is — this is not something that gets printed in newspapers, Elara, this is not — wait, wait, wait." She could feel him staring at her. "How did you figure that out? *How?*"

She finished the document. Placed it on the completed pile. Picked up the next.

"You talk in your sleep," she said.

A pause.

"...I do not sleep."

"You mumble dramatically while entering standby mode, then."

"I have *never* done that."

"You absolutely have."

She turned a page.

"The first time was years ago. You had thrown some mission at me and then disappeared for nearly six months. When you finally came back you were complaining — at length, and apparently without realizing I could hear you — about another host who had nearly destroyed an entire empire because he fell in love with a villainess."

The silence that followed was complete.

She could feel the precise moment he understood the full implications of what she was saying.

"That," he said, very quietly, "was classified."

"You were also half-conscious while saying it," Elara replied. "Frankly, I was more preoccupied with why a supernatural system apparently suffers from exhaustion."

The system covered his face with both hands.

"Oh my god."

"After that it happened occasionally," she continued, with the same tone she used when reading financial reports. "Small things. References to places I had never heard of. Complaints about situations that had nothing to do with me. Once you called me by another name entirely."

"...I did not."

"You did."

A long pause.

"...Did I at least apologize?"

"No. You vanished for two years immediately afterward."

She heard something that sounded profoundly like an entity wishing it could cease to exist. She kept reading.

"Besides," she added, setting down her pen briefly, "it was the logical conclusion regardless. There are countless worlds. Countless people apparently chosen by goddesses, fates, destinies, systems, or whatever the current preferred terminology is. It would be stranger if you only had one host. The math does not support it."

She leaned back slightly, glancing at him for the first time since sitting down.

"You are a system. Not a particularly devoted companion animal."

The system lowered his hands slowly and looked at her with an expression that was difficult to categorize.

"...Sometimes I forget," he said, "that you used to run a company."

"And sometimes," Elara replied, turning back to her documents, "I forget you are supposed to be an all-knowing supernatural existence."

He glared at her. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

She did not notice, or pretended not to.

"I liked you better," he muttered, after a moment, "when you were newly transmigrated and had no idea what was happening."

"And I liked you better," Elara said pleasantly, picking up her pen again, "when you appeared more than twice a decade."

She signed another page and moved it to the pile.

The system sat in aggrieved silence beside her.

Outside, somewhere, the afternoon was continuing without particular interest in either of them.

After the pleasantries were over, Elara looked at the system and asked, "So why are you here right now?"

Hearing that, it shrugged and said, "Well, the God of All is literally angry at you. She said you changed her story, and she was quite upset. Then she threw me into this world to keep an eye on you again."

Elara stared at it flatly, then sighed. "And who told her that all stories have to go the same way?"

The system looked at her, then continued, "But really, don’t you think that after being reborn as the princess, your goal should be to become an emperor, find the perfect grooms, marry them, have children, and live happily ever after?"

Elara looked at it like it had lost its mind.

"Do you even know how much work goes into becoming an emperor?" she said. "And as for marriage and all that—it’s not some simple fantasy."

Her expression remained flat as she continued, almost as if she were reciting a report.

"For seven years, I was already an emperor. I’m tired enough as it is. Second, this is not some story where I can cry in the arms of a prince charming. I have work to do, and that work puts food on the tables of thousands of people."

She paused.

"Third, Samuel is a good king. Better than I ever expected. When petitions came in about one problem or another, I always had to prioritize rationally. That does not work well with human nature. Do you think I can just go on a stage and give some emotional speech? For seven or eight years, I was there, and I could barely even give a proper speech. Every speech I gave was written by my administrators. I was just reading from a page."