Deposit ain′t hit the account yet, shit ain't verified like my check

While Nick was busy taking photos of Morgana and Carly, going back in time about an hour or so, there was a conversation happening in the halls of the hotel that he might have wished he was there to hear, given the circumstances.

“…Do you think… you’re a good person, Vivian?”

Silence hung in the air for a long while as Vivian stared at Kim. Her mouth was open in shock and her eyes were wide. Octavia stood off to the side without a reaction, her focus aimed directly at Vivian almost as if she was watching to see how the other woman would react.

As for Kim herself…

She was almost as shocked as Vivian.

That… what did I just ask? She almost couldn’t believe she’d said that.

“Wait, that… that came out wrong!” Kim waved her hands frantically. “Vivian, I didn’t mean to make it sound so… accusatory like that.”

It was only after she heard the question spoken out loud that she realized that it sounded like she was accusing Vivian of not being a good person. But that hadn’t been her intention in the slightest!

Judging by the look on Vivian’s face, however, that was certainly how the heiress was taking it. She looked utterly stunned by the question Kim had posed her.

And the more Kim looked at that face of hers, the guiltier she felt.

That really… really wasn’t how I intended her to take it… I’m the worst!

Finally, Vivian took a deep breath. “Then… what did you mean?”

Kim looked away. How could she even answer that?

“It… it’s just… I…”

“I’m trying to be a good person, Kim,” Vivian said, placing her hand over her chest. “Please, believe me when I say that. But as for whether or not I am a good person, that’s…”

Vivian bit the inside of her cheek. Of course Vivian would have trouble answering that question. To Kim, of all people?

It would be stranger if she answered it without a second thought.

“Vivian…”

“I… I just don’t…”

Kim stepped forward and gave the heiress a sharp look. It made Vivian jump. Had she done something to make Kim angry? …Yeah, of course, she probably had, knowing her. That was just the way she did things, after all, messing things up for people, getting them upset with her…

Even when she meant well, it was like she just couldn’t avoid it! And that made her feel…

No wonder Kim was giving her such a serious look. Vivian felt like the absolute worst person on the island.

“…Sometimes I wonder if I’m a good person, myself.”

“Wh-what?” Vivian looked at Kim in shock. She could tell in an instant that the other girl wasn’t just telling her that to mollify her or because she felt sorry for her. That wasn’t something Kim would do. No, that serious look in her eye, she meant every word she said.

Which made Vivian only that much more confused as she looked at the other woman and tried to make sense of what she’d heard.

“…Kim?”

“I think it’s natural for everyone to have those kinds of thoughts,” Kim said, scratching her head. “Honestly… even me. I mean, like you said, I try to be a good person, but at the same time, I’ve had bad thoughts, too. Who hasn’t?”

Well… Vivian could agree with that. She nodded slowly, kind of getting what Kim meant. Kim looked at her again, and sighed.

“It’s… I’m a mess, is what it is,” she muttered, scratching her head again. “Let me tell you something. A while back, before you came on the show, there was this challenge, right? And we all got these guns that would inflict a transformation on whoever we shot with them.”

Vivian’s eyes widened. “No way, seriously? Like, you had to shoot each other with them? That sounds pretty…”

“No, we didn’t shoot each other with the guns,” Kim corrected her. She shook her head. “No, we each got a target, back on earth, that we had to shoot with our gun and give them a transformation… then the audience voted on which transformations they liked best…”

Vivian looked horrified. “That’s terrible!” She couldn’t believe someone would go through with a challenge like that. Or that the girls would actually do it!

It just sounded so…

Oh… no wonder she has doubts, then. Vivian realized what Kim was trying to say.

Kim looked up at her. “As for me, I-”

“No, it’s fine!” Vivian blurted out. She held up her hand to stop Kim. Hopefully if she didn’t ask her directly to stop, then Kim’s punishment transformation wouldn’t take it as an order and she wouldn’t have an orgasm.

Considering that Kim stopped talking but didn’t orgasm, it seemed like Vivian’s hopes had been vindicated. She sighed in relief.

As for Kim, she looked confused more than anything. “Vivian, what…?”

“You don’t need to tell me something private like that,” Vivian said, shaking her head. “I get it, okay? Having to do something difficult like that… it must have been tough. But you didn’t have a choice, right? It was for a challenge, so-”

“No, I wanted to do it.”

The look in Kim’s eye when she corrected Vivian like that sent a shiver down the heiress’s spine. She’d never seen a look like that from Kim before.

That hatred in her eyes… she’s never looked at me like that, no matter how angry she was at me. What the heck even happened? Vivian didn’t want to know. But at this point, it didn’t matter.

Kim had been carrying this weight with her for quite a while, looking for a place to unload it. Even though the others knew what had happened, she still felt like it was putting a pressure on her.

Might as well tell someone who she already didn’t like that much, right?

“My target was… the bastard who called himself my father,” Kim spat.

If Vivian thought that the hatred she’d seen on Kim’s face had been the darkest her heart could go, she was dead wrong. It turned out that Kim could hate a lot more than that!

“He wasn’t that much of a father… or a human being, for that matter,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Even when he was around, he was always working. We didn’t make much, but… back in those days… I was happy.”

That was the hardest thing. The part she hated most.

Because, as much as Kim wanted to deny it, she had happy memories of the bastard who abandoned her. There weren’t many. A hug here, a bedtime story there, the occasional piggyback ride, or ice cream treat on the way home from school… little things that, once upon a time, she’d treasured as memories with her father like any daughter should have.

“…Do you have any siblings, Vivian?” Kim asked quietly.

“Huh? Uh… siblings?” Vivian shook her head. “No, I… I don’t. I always wanted them, though. A little brother, or a little sister… or even a big brother or big sister… it didn’t matter, really… if I’m being honest…”

Anything was better than the lonely house she’d grown up in.

“…My mother’s body wouldn’t have been able to handle it, though.” Vivian looked down at the ground. “After I was born… she got really sick. She still spends most of her time in the hospital. It’s not, like, a terminal disease or anything, but the illness did a lot of damage to her body before it ran its course. And as a result, she has a weak constitution, so I hardly get to spend any time with her… wait, what am I saying?!”

She shook her head, feeling her face burn. Kim didn’t want to hear about any of this stuff! Not when she was going through her own issues!

Vivian snuck a peek at Kim’s face, but to her surprise, the tomboy looked ambivalent to her story, instead of upset that Vivian was trying to make it all about her.

In fact, if Vivian didn’t know any better, she might have thought that was sympathy she saw in the other woman’s eyes.

“…I have two siblings,” Kim said finally. “Twins. A little brother and a little sister. Really young, I mean, they’re not even middle schoolers yet.”

“Wow… that’s a big difference in age,” Vivian couldn’t help but note.

Kim bit her lip and nodded. “They were an accident. My parents weren’t trying to have more kids, not when we were so poor. And they certainly weren’t prepared for twins.”

That was when the financial woes of the Lewis household had seriously taken a turn for the worse. Between the costs of the pregnancy and raising two newborns, the bills just kept piling up and piling up until eventually…

“…My father left not long after that.”

Vivian flinched when Kim said the word “father”. It sounded like a curse, coming out of her mouth.

“Oh… Kim… that’s so…”

“What? Sad?” Kim turned her cold gaze towards the other girl. “What’s sad about it? The bastard fled to the other side of the country saying it was for a work promotion, then he sent my mom divorce papers in the mail. You think I’m sad that a piece of shit is gone from my life forever?”

Well… okay, Kim had a point there.

“You’re right, but… I’m still sorry that happened to you,” Vivian said. She was trying to be caring towards Kim, she really was. But with how sensitive of a subject this was and how prone Vivian was to sticking her foot in her mouth and making everything worse, she felt like she was trapped and unsure of how to progress.

Why couldn’t things be easier than this?

Vivian sighed and looked down at the ground.

“I just wish I could say something to support you,” she confessed.

Kim shook her head again. “There’s nothing to support,” she replied. “That’s all done now. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how my life went after that. Or do I?”

The goading question was obvious. She was insinuating that Vivian couldn’t imagine in a million years what it was like to live in Kim’s shoes, to have two younger siblings and a mom with a massive gap in her work experience struggling to make ends meet.

She wasn’t wrong to think that way. Vivian had never experienced anything like Kim’s situation, and she never would.

But did that mean she was incapable of comprehending how hard it must have been for her?

Vivian liked to think that she understood. But she couldn’t say that. Because she knew how rude and condescending that sounded.

No wonder Kim doesn’t like me. My first impulse, even if it’s trying to help, is to look down on her… I’m the worst.

Vivian felt a tug on her heart, and it made her want to smack herself across the face.

“…Needless to say, when I found out that bastard was my target, I didn’t even hesitate,” Kim muttered. She played the scene over again and again in her mind. “I made him pay for what he did. And I loved every second of it.”

And yet, thinking back on that moment brought her little joy. It sat in her gut like bile, making her feel sick to her stomach.

“Am I a bad person, Vivian?” Kim asked the heiress sincerely. “Does the fact that I don’t regret what I did, and that I did it gladly, make me a bad person?”

Vivian honestly had no idea how to answer that. “…I don’t know,” she replied sincerely. “I’m sorry, Kim… I really don’t know. I wish I could say something that would make you feel better, but… I don’t know if there’s anything I can say that wouldn’t just make you feel worse.”

Kim was surprised to hear such an introspective statement from Vivian. Looking into her eyes and seeing the concern welling up in them, it gave her a funny feeling.

Almost like she was glad to hear that coming from the other girl.

“…I have a half-sister, too,” Kim said. “Just a little kid. Because that bastard, well… …It’s not like he’ll be able to do it again, anyway. I made sure of that. He’s not going to abandon my half-sister like he abandoned us.”

Vivian bit the inside of her cheek. There were so many questions she had for Kim right now. What was her sister’s name? Was she going to seek her out again when they returned to earth after the show ended? Did she plan to have a relationship with her when that happened?

But those were questions a friend would ask. Not ones that she had any business with.

“…That challenge… that one, I just… it really shook me up,” Kim said. She bit her lip. “Before that, I never really thought about it, you know?”

Vivian shook her head. “Thought about what?” She asked hesitantly. “About your father? Or-”

“About whether or not I was a good person.”

It had just never occurred to her until then. Before coming onto this show, Kim had never been in the proper headspace to properly judge morality, especially not as it applied to her. She’d always had more important things to deal with.

Like trying to keep a roof over her family’s heads.

“I didn’t really think about whether or not I was a good person… but after that challenge, I started grappling with it… and I just don’t know. It’s… not an easy thing to think about.”

She raised her head and looked at Vivian directly again. “…That challenge really messed with my head,” she confessed. “In a bad way. And the thing is… that was when you and Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin and the others came onto the show.”

“Wait, what?” Vivian looked at Kim in surprise. “So… we were brought on the show right after you guys finished that messed up challenge?”

No wonder things had been so tense.

Kim bit her lip. “And Mary had just been eliminated. Well… kind of eliminated, I guess you could say… haaaah…”

It was a little more complicated than that.

“…Okay…” Vivian wasn’t sure where Kim was going with this. It was obvious though that things had been pretty tough for her up to this point.

“So with all those dark thoughts in my head… and then you came along, acting all cool and suave, like you owned the place, with your huge fucking ego…” Kim clenched her fist and grimaced. Just remembering the way Vivian had swaggered onto the scene without a care in the world made her blood boil.

Vivian winced. “…Not the best first impression, huh?”

Kim just leered at her.

“…We got off on the wrong foot because of a bunch of other shit,” Kim said. “I can admit that maybe… I was harsher on you than I needed to be, due to what I was going through at the time. But that doesn’t mean you’re vindicated.”

Vivian had still messed up plenty. Kim had lots of valid reasons to hold a grudge against the spoiled heiress.

Even if Vivian was trying to change herself.

To her credit, it seemed like Vivian understood that as well.

“I mean… yeah. Like I said… I’ve really messed up, too,” Vivian said. She let out a bitter laugh. “I do owe you an apology for that, don’t I?”

Kim just kept staring at her.

Anything else she had to say seemed to be underselling her situation. Drastically.

“I know you’re trying to do better, Vivian, I do. And I appreciate that. But… that’s why I wanted to know how you felt about yourself,” Kim said.

Was Vivian just trying to be a better person so that people would like her? Was that all this was? Had her compulsive need to not make enemies and her overwhelming desire for friends influenced her behavior for the better?

That would be a good thing if it were true. Commendable, even! From a purely results-based perspective, Kim could applaud the decision.

But as a person?

Kim couldn’t ever be friends with someone like that. Someone who only did the right thing so they would be perceived as moral, or so that people would like them.

Superficial stuff like that didn’t matter to her. It reminded her too much of that bastard old man of hers, who had made excuse after excuse to try and paint his horrible treatment of them as reasonable and understandable, when it was anything but.

That’s why she’d asked Vivian if she thought she was a good person or not. If this was just some play on the heiress’s part, if she was just trying to do the right thing so she could reinforce her mental image of herself as being a good person, then Kim would tolerate her presence, but would still view her actions with contempt.

And she didn’t have any qualms about doing so, either.

But the waters had been muddied now. Vivian herself seemed to be going through the same dilemma that Kim had.

So what was she supposed to think about that?

“To tell you the truth…”

Vivian looked down at the ground and sighed. “I want to be a good person. I know I’ve messed up… but I’m trying my best! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

That was the closest to an answer Kim was probably going to get. But it didn’t address her actual concern.

“Why are you trying so hard, then?” She asked. “Is it just because you want people to like you? Because you want to make friends?”

Vivian bit her lip. “Of course I want to make friends… But that’s not… at least… I don’t think it’s about… um…”

Her heart pounded anxiously in her chest. Honestly, Vivian had never thought about this sort of thing before. She knew that if she was nice to others, then they would like her. That was basic grade-schooler stuff.

But was Kim right? Was the only reason she was being nice to people and trying to be a better person so that they would like her?

If that was the case, then what did it say about her, when you really stopped and thought about it?

It sounded really fucking low to Kim’s ears, that’s what it sounded like.

“I honestly just… I just want to be a good person,” Vivian admitted. Beyond that, any deeper thoughts were out of her reach.

Kim bit her lip. She didn’t have her answer. But Vivian had given her a lot to think about.

“…Don’t go crazy worrying about it or anything,” she muttered, shaking her head and deciding to let Vivian off the hook. “Just, uh… just keep working to do your best, I guess. Or whatever.”

Right now, that was the most Kim could hope for where Vivian was concerned.