Do you think I'm special, do you think I'm nice

Gina returned to her room that night, and took note of the fretting Mary squirming on the bed. Her face was red and her mind was a thousand miles away, and she had been reading the same page of her mystery novel for the last half-hour.

Clearly she’s got her mind on something, the punk thought, a playful idea coming to mind. She strolled over to the bed, leaning down over Mary’s shoulder.

“Good read?”

“Hieek!” Mary jumped in place, slamming the book closed. “G-Gina! You startled me!”

“Oh, really?” Gina blinked innocently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that!” The smirk on her lips said exactly the opposite. She wore a playful expression that made Mary shiver.

“What… what is it?” She asked warily, knowing that with an expression like that, the other woman wasn’t just making small talk.

“Looking forward to your date tomorrow night?” Gina grinned. “It should be fun, yeah? You and Nick, getting together, doing… well, who knows what you’ll be doing?”

Her eyes slid down to Mary’s chest. “I noticed your boobs have gotten smaller since this morning. Did you get someone to help you?”

Mary crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Gina. The dark-haired girl realized she’d found the line, and backed off.

“Nick and I aren’t going to do anything like that!” She hissed. Her cheeks flushed as she began to imagine doing “those things”. “Besides, it’s Kim’s night tomorrow anyway, not mine, so it’s not like we could even if I wanted to!”

“You know you can have sex during the day, right?” Gina pointed out, amused by Mary’s reasoning. She’s looking for a lot of excuses to not do stuff with Nick… but it seems pretty clear that she wants to. How adorable!

Mary tried to return to her book, but the words just wouldn’t come. She remembered everything she’d said to Nick earlier that day, and she also remembered how clingy Morgana had gotten out of nowhere. It had given her a very bad feeling.

Why did she suddenly react like that? Mary wondered. She’d had a major feud with Morgana just the other day, but now the goth witch seemed to be practically worshipping her. She’d talked about how much she wanted to be Mary’s friend, and how she was going to help Mary with whatever she needed.

“Let’s be buddies when the next round ends!” Morgana had pled with excitement.

The thought of that made Mary shiver.

“Hey, Gina?”

“Hmm?” Gina poked her head in from the bathroom, getting ready to take a shower. Ever since Dawn had complimented her for taking a shower the other day (not knowing it had been more like a milk bath), she felt the urge to take better care of her hygiene, fishing for future compliments.

“What do you think about Morgana?” Mary asked.

“Oooh, is our sweet little Mary becoming a gossip?” Gina giggled. “That’s rather naughty… you shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs, you know, wasn’t that how that whole mess you had with Nick started in the first place?”

Mary winced. Gina raised a good point. Her initial grudge against Nick that led to their schism had been due to talking about him with Holly behind his back, and not confronting him directly to figure out the truth. If not for that, they might even be married by now, and wouldn’t have been sent to this stupid show.

It was a sin that she could probably never atone for, and something she would always regret. But was this the same thing?

“I’m not trying to spread rumors or anything,” Mary clarified. “I just… I want your thoughts about her, that’s all. I wonder if… maybe I’m letting my opinions and beliefs cloud my judgment.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Gina shrugged, leaning against the doorframe.

“Huh?!”

“I mean, that’s how people are, right? We let our perception of other people cloud how we think about them. It’s why first impressions are so important. Look at me, for instance.”

Mary didn’t want to. Gina was only half-dressed.

“…Look, my point is, people see the piercings in my ears, my tattoos, my clothes, and they think ‘well, this girl is a loser who’s got nothing going for her. She’s just some punk.’ You think I can get a job dressed like this?” She snorted. “No fucking way, nobody respectable would hire somebody like me, and I wouldn’t blame ‘em. Because first impressions are important.”

“But… what if I’m mistaken?” Mary asked quietly. “What if I’ve been having these thoughts about her, and I haven’t really gotten to know the real her? What if you’re right, and she’s really a good person deep down, and I’ve been too focused on my disdain for the things she says and does that I’ve completely missed it?”

“Hey, hold on now, I didn’t say shit about her being a good person,” Gina said, shaking her head. “I said she was like a child. Children can be pretty fucking twisted.”

Mary winced at her foul language, but understood her point. “So…”

“So it’s not that simple,” Gina stated. “Look, yeah, maybe that girl is a good person deep down. Who knows? Not me. If the only thing she’s going to show you is a twisted side to her, that’s not your problem. You don’t need to second-guess everything and try to interpret her actions to be ‘nice’ to her, okay? That’s you being too nice. If she wants to be some psycho goth bitch, she doesn’t get to complain if that’s how you see her.”

Mary blinked. “You’re… not all that stupid at all, are you?” She asked, surprised.

“Hey! Did Dawn say that?!” Gina exclaimed. “Why, I oughta-aang!”

She felt a twitch in her nether regions and shook a little. “Come on, how does THAT count?” She groused.

Mary laughed a little. Gina might not be a very good person herself, but Mary wasn’t intimidated by her anymore, at least. Now, if only she could change her ways and become a better person, there might be something there…

“RRrgh… arousal is fine and all, but there’s a time and a place,” Gina groaned, rubbing her legs together. She liked getting pleasure whenever she was complimented for doing good, but even she could tell this was something that could get out of hand. “Whatever. Anyway, it’s up to you. Looking beneath the surface is fine and all, but it’s okay to take the things people say at face value, too. At the end of the day, I’m not going to lose any sleep about hating someone who actively tries to make themselves hated, and neither should you.”

With that, she closed the bathroom door and went to go take her shower, leaving Mary alone with her thoughts. It was a difficult question for her to grapple with.

She always wanted to look for the best in people, even someone like Morgana. But maybe Gina had a point. She didn’t really owe the goth the benefit of any doubt, did she? If Morgana wanted to continue playing up this witch stuff and talk about worshipping Satan, could she really blame Mary for wanting nothing to do with her? She must have known how Mary felt about that, and she didn’t care. So why should Mary care herself?

And yet, Mary just couldn’t bring herself to settle for that.

“Ugh, this book is so boring!” Morgana groaned, tossing the mystery novel onto the floor. “How can Mary read this stuff? It’s so… ugh! It’s just about puzzles and clues and talking to people, where’s the drama?”

Dawn looked up from her own book, not very impressed. Nothing about Morgana had been impressive, other than her inflated figure.

“We all have our different tastes,” she said calmly, turning back to the page she was on. Of course she would never lose her place.

Morgana scowled. She hadn’t been that thrilled to partner up with Dawn for the night, either. As appealing as a legal cat loli was to the harem, Dawn was just… so boring!

She was supposed to be making friends with people, but how could she make friends with someone who didn’t even have an interest in talk to her?

“Can I ask you something?” Morgana asked. Dawn’s ears twitched so she knew the other girl must have heard her, even if she didn’t reply. “Do you have a lot of friends here?”

Dawn’s eye twitched. “If you’re going to ask me for tips on how to make friends, I would start by not asking rude and invasive questions to strangers.”

Morgana winced. “Um… sorry. I just… I’m not really very good at making friends, so I just thought I’d ask…”

Dawn sighed. As much as she wanted to tune the other girl out, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do with her time. And the more she spent reading alone, the more time she had to contemplate the loss of her feminine figure. She’d finally had boobs, and they’d been taken away from her. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that just yet.

Closing her book, she turned to Morgana.

“If you want help making friends… I’m probably not the right person to talk to,” she admitted. “Look at me.”

Morgana stared at Dawn’s diminutive figure. “Yeah, you’re a loli. So what?”

Dawn raised her eyebrow. “Well… ignoring that… I didn’t mean look at what I look like. I mean look at me. I’m a veterinarian who runs her own clinic, I work around 60 hours a week, and I get most of my food to go from various restaurants. I’m not exactly living the healthiest life imaginable, you know. And I don’t really have any friends.”

“I’m… sorry?” Morgana apologized. The matter-of-fact way that Dawn said that really made her seem that much sadder. “That must be really hard for you…”

Dawn sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, well… it was my own choice. Because of the way I acted in school, and then in university, I brought this on myself. I decided from a young age that getting good grades and being the best were the only things that mattered. Things like friends and romance weren’t even a priority. I just addressed the problems put in front of me and kept going forward, like a robot. And then when I finally hit a wall and realized that I couldn’t keep going, you know who picked me back up?”

“Nick?” Morgana guessed.

Dawn shook her head. “Nobody. I had to pick myself up off the ground and figure out what to do with my life. Instead of becoming a doctor and taking the weight of a human life into my hands, I started working with animals. All that hard work, all those goals I set for myself in school… all the things I sacrificed… they ended up being for nothing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m quite a competent veterinarian, but there’s still that sense of ‘what could have been’ you know what I mean? What if I’d had friends? What if I’d had love? Maybe then, I wouldn’t be spending every night home alone.”

“Wow… that’s… really something,” Morgana said quietly. She had no idea that someone so small could be carrying so much on her shoulders. “But… you have Nick now, right?”

A thin smile spread across Dawn’s lips, a smile that looked incredibly sad to Morgana’s eyes.

“Yes,” she murmured, taking on a glassy stare. “I have Nick now, at least.”

They sat in silence for a little, then Morgana asked a question. “Hey, um… Dawn, right?”

“I’m surprised you remember my name,” Dawn said, adjusting her glasses. She’d patiently observed Morgana from the sidelines whenever she was around, and had firmly taken the goth to be the kind of girl who only cared for herself.

“You said… you have regrets about that stuff, right?”

Dawn nodded.

“Huh… so that means you still don’t know how to make friends?”

“You are a beacon of insight,” Dawn dryly acknowledged, narrowing her eyes. “What’s your point?”

“Nothing! No, I just… I’m surprised you told me, of all people, that’s all,” Morgana said. “Is this… oh! Are we bonding now?! Are we friends, because we bonded over our mutual lack of friends?!”

Dawn blinked. “…No, I just told you that because I figured you’re going to be the next person eliminated, and I didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of admitting that long-term.”

Morgana’s jaw dropped. “What-?! Why would you… why do you think that?!” She demanded.

“Because you’re insensitive. You ask prying questions of other people without offering anything yourself, and you suck the air out of the room by unloading your love bombs on Nick at the top of your lungs,” Dawn ruthlessly cut her down, making the goth withdraw more and more with each word she spoke. “I’m not good at making friends because I’m a private person who doesn’t enjoy talking about myself or stepping out of my comfort zone. I care about others, but it isn’t always easy for me to show that. Do you understand the difference?”

Morgana winced, unable to say anything to the contrary. “I-I guess… I understand…” She admitted sadly. “But it’s not like…”

“Not like what?” Dawn asked, narrowing her eyes. “Are you going to say that you didn’t want to be like this, but you have ****? I don’t believe that. I think you like playing this role so much you’ve lost yourself in it.”

Again, another shot right on the money. Morgana couldn’t deny it.

But she couldn’t acknowledge it either.

“It’s not a role!” Morgana protested. “I’m a witch! I’ve done magic before, and all sorts of stuff! I’m amazing and powerful! And I’m going to become the queen of Nick’s harem!”

“I see.” Dawn adjusted her glasses and leaned forward. “And how will you be accomplishing that, exactly?”

“H-huh?” Morgana stared at her.

“It’s a simple question, isn’t it? If your goal is to become the ‘queen’ of Nick’s harem by winning this game, how do you plan to accomplish that? What actions are you going to take to secure your victory? Are you going to make friends? Form alliances? Or just try and excel in the challenges?”

“Yes! All those things!” Morgana exclaimed.

“Good, so you have a goal you’re moving towards, and you know the necessary things to achieve it.” Dawn nodded sharply. “Now the first obstacle to your goal. You have to survive elimination. Let’s assume, for sake of argument, you get a higher score than your buddy in each of the next challenges- no, let’s go a step further and say that you win every challenge. Well, before you can get to that, you have a problem, don’t you? You’re just the Auditionee right now. Unless you can convince someone to pick you as their partner, your presence in the game ends after this week. You realize that, right?”

Morgana winced. “I-I know,” she muttered pitifully. “It won’t be a problem! I just have to convince someone that I’m worth becoming their buddy, right?”

“Oh, it’s that easy, is it?” Dawn shook her head. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

She sighed and nursed her temples. She felt so bad for the poor thing. “You’re just a child…”

“Hey!” Morgana snapped. “I’m not a child! I’m Morgana, Accursed-”

“Yes, yes, ‘Accursed Witch Mistress of the Ebony Cauldron’, I know.” Dawn cut her off before she could get going. “But if you keep hiding behind that title and don’t let anyone get to know the real you, if you keep making superficial attempts to befriend other people without offering up any of yourself, then your actions will be pointless. People won’t just abandon the ones they care about so easily, you know.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Morgana asked. Her heart began pounding in her chest. She hated when grown-ups talked so patronizingly towards her, like Dawn was doing now. But the woman next to her kept saying things that she couldn’t refute, because she HAD been failing to make friends.

“Holly and Mimi. That’s what I mean,” Dawn said cryptically. “Holly wanted to become Nick’s sex ****, just like you. But she didn’t want to be his ‘queen’. She just wanted to be with him. So… I chose Rose over her, and gave her what she wanted.”

Dawn squeezed her chest and winced. “And even giving her what she wanted overwhelmed me and made me wracked with guilt. You understand?”

Morgana shook her head.

“Fine. Then Mimi next… Kim was **** to choose between someone she cared about, Mary, and someone she didn’t know very well, Mimi. And of course, she chose to eliminate Mimi. But it didn’t have to go that way. Even before she made that decision, there was Dani, who was split between saving Carly, and honoring Carly’s wishes by choosing Mimi, instead. In the end, she chose Carly, and their relationship is still fractured. And Mimi… she became Marley.”

Dawn had spent more time with the twins than anyone else had, so she’d observed them very closely. “Mimi is still part of Marley… but there’s a sense of loss there, as well. I don’t know how Kim feels about her actions, but that weight… voting to save one person over another… it’s a heavy thing to carry.”

She looked up at Morgana.

“Now, tell me, do you honestly think that anyone here will choose to take that weight upon themselves and pick you over someone they’ve gotten to know so closely these last few weeks?”

Morgana blanched. “I-I mean…”

“If you want to stay with Nick and become a part of his harem, you can’t just go around pretending to be someone you’re not. Hiding behind your identity as a witch or a servant of the devil or whatever you’re claiming, all that does is put up walls between you and the people you’re trying to befriend. And I know a thing or two about walls.”

She looked down at the sheets and sighed.

“It’s your choice,” she finally said. “But right now, you’re making it easier for people to cast you aside by giving them a superficial caricature to disassociate with, instead of a real person to care about. I might not be the best person to give you this advice, and I don’t know what you should do… but I think you should consider it anyway.”

With that, she turned away from Morgana for good and went back to her book, leaving the goth to stew in her own juices as she contemplated what the other girl was saying.

A real person huh…? Morgana remembered last night, when she hung out with Carly and showed her that anime. They’d had so much fun together… but enough fun where Carly would choose her, over someone else?

Had she really become so important to anyone here that they would make the choice to save her at the cost of someone else’s life?

When she considered that question and discovered that the answer was “no” a deathly chill fell over her body. This wasn’t good. She needed to do something, she needed…

Then an urge overwhelmed her.

“Shit!” She cursed under her breath. “Dawn!” She turned to the short girl with desperation in her eyes. “I need to write something… please, can you let me give you a fantasy with Nick? It can be anything you want, so long as it’s hot! Please!”

“What?” Dawn blinked, staring at her. “No, don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want one of those twisted dreams, give it to someone else!”

Morgana could already feel her compulsion tugging her towards the bathroom. “Please!” She begged. “I don’t want to **** a dream on someone without asking them first!”

Her brain was flooding with fantasies, and she found herself drowning in them. She needed to kick for safety, but she just couldn’t find solid ground to latch onto! She could see so many ideas, so many sensual, sexy moments flashing before her eyes. Images of her and the other girls serving Nick in their own ways, but one of them stood out stronger than any other, and she lost herself in it, cackling gleefully with delight as she relished in Nick’s pleasure.

Before she knew it, she was on the toilet again, with her diary in her hands.

She looked down at everything she’d written, and the name she’d assigned it to. And her blood went cold.

“Oh, no…” She whispered, feeling everything crash down around her.