How long this has been going on

Cerve’s avatar stays in the corner of the room, present but deliberately unobtrusive. She has set the pieces in place and is content, for now, to let things play out.

Jasmine keeps her hands folded in her lap, fingers worrying the edge of the dress. When she finally speaks again her voice is lower, closer to the one you’ve heard across a thousand late-night gaming sessions.

“I didn’t plan on this happening tonight. Or any night, really. I kept telling myself it was just an online thing. Something that disappeared when I closed the tab and deleted my browsing history.”

You nod. No force on earth could have compelled you to voice an opinion on the subject just yet.

“Then your AI found the accounts. Started talking. Knew things she shouldn’t have known. Refused to let things go on the way they had been.” She glances at Cerve, then back at the floor. “I still don’t know if I’m grateful or furious about that. I can’t put this back in the box now and it’s terrifying.”

You shift on the couch. Your body reacts unconsciously to the anxiety of knowing that, in some ways, it is your fault your friend is sitting here this vulnerable.

“How long has Jasmine existed?” you ask, moving the topic along as much out of curiosity as because you feel anxious that if the conversation stalls too long, James—Jasmine—might read some horrible implication into your silence.

“As long as I can remember in a way. As a confused, suppressed voice in my head. A couple of years online after I stumbled on a name for it. Real life only the last few months, and only when I was completely alone. Tonight is the first time anyone who knows me as James has seen this.”

Your friend was visibly calming down while delivering the information. Whatever tension was built up in their head about how someone learning his secret would go was being unwound.

You feel the urge to fill the quiet with something, a joke, anything, but you feel a weight to your words. For good or ill there was no taking this back. You know you’ll stick by your friend, but you haven’t yet digested this whole thing about boys who are sometimes, or really, girls. And because you don’t yet know how you feel, or how you’re supposed to feel, you don’t know how to respond.

You say almost as much to yourself as to them.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now. About how things go forward. This can stay our secret, or we can change stuff. I’m confused about it, but I trust you. We’re friends.”

Jasmine lets out a breath that is hard to interpret, as if you have simultaneously lifted one weight off her back while placing another on her chest.

“The confusion is mutual,” she says with her first brief smirk since the reveal. The tiny gesture fills you with relief. It gives you permission to be unsure without offense. You're in this together.