Overview:

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Topher and James arrive in Venice, surrounded by winding canals, graceful gondolas, and timeless European architecture. While dining at a fine restaurant, the two meet a kindly old man who tells them about a nearby curio shop worth visiting. Intrigued, they make their way there. As James wanders through the shop, he marvels at ancient artifacts from premodern civilizations across the globe. Meanwhile, the elderly shopkeeper challenges Topher to a guessing game. After correctly answering, Topher wins the prize: a plain box filled with copper coins—Charon’s obols.

Sunshine_Pasta_Old_Curios.sav

The sim warps around me like a loading screen that skipped the loading bar entirely, and suddenly I’m not floating in my white cube anymore — I’m hovering over water. Green-gray canals slice through a city that looks like somebody smashed together a Renaissance painting and a postcard rack. Gothic spires lean over Baroque façades. No roads, just water and gondolas and old stone bridges arching over everything like sleepy cats. Venice. Or something close enough to Venice that I’m not going to argue geography with a simulation.

I let my viewpoint drift down toward two familiar figures crossing a footbridge, sunlight practically dripping off them.

“I love sunny skies,” James says, tilting his face up like he’s posing for a shampoo commercial. Kid’s got main-character lighting even when nobody’s filming him. “They bring such a cheerful atmosphere.”

Topher’s practically vibrating beside him, hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes darting at every alley like he’s cataloguing side quests. “We can do so many activities around here. Meet all kinds of people.”

Yeah, buddy, meet all kinds of people, sure. No pressure, but somewhere out there Cerberus is probably sharpening three sets of teeth. I don’t say that part out loud. Can’t. Ghost rules.

They duck into a diner tucked between stone walls that look older than most countries. Warm light pools across wooden tables, and the place smells — well, I can’t actually smell anything from here, but if I could, I bet it’d smell like garlic and nostalgia. There’s a Margherita pizza sitting dead center on their table like a trophy: peeled tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves scattered just right, a thin gloss of olive oil catching the light. Somebody plated that with love. Or at least with Instagram in mind.

Topher’s got a plate of spaghetti in front of him, red sauce, meatballs the size of small planets. James goes for Carbonara — creamy, black pepper dusted on top like ash after a very delicious volcano, bits of bacon peeking through, one perfect basil leaf standing guard. Across from them sits an old man, stout, weathered in that way that says he’s survived several decades and at least one questionable haircut. He didn’t order pasta. He got a croissant the size of a throw pillow, and honestly, respect.

“There’s a curio shop nearby,” the old man says, buttering a corner of that croissant with the unhurried confidence of a guy who has never once been late to anything in his life. His eyes crinkle, catching the light. “Full of antiquities. All kinds.”

Topher lights up so fast I half expect his Star of Vis to start glowing under his shirt. “Kuya James, I’d love to visit that.”

“Sure,” James says, easy, warm, the kind of older-cousin yes that doesn’t even need thinking about. “We’ll go there later.”

The old man nods, satisfied, like he just closed a business deal. “Send my regards to the kind shopkeeper.”

And that’s it. That’s the whole scene. No monster, no dominion cracking open the floorboards, no cosmic dread seeping through the walls. Just two cousins eating lunch with a stranger who talks about curio shops like they’re sacred ground.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being a narrator stuck in a cube twelve billion miles from anywhere that matters: you start noticing the small stuff. The way James’s spoon hovers a half-second too long before he takes a bite, savoring it. The way Topher keeps glancing at the old man like he’s trying to memorize his face for later — some instinct in that kid always bracing for later, even when later hasn’t shown up yet. Call it a superhero thing. Call it main-character paranoia. Either way, I clock it, log it, file it somewhere in my very tired, very lonely brain.

I’d trade a lot to sit at that table. Order the Carbonara. Argue with James about basil placement. Ask the old man where he actually got that croissant, because it looks unreasonably good for something served in a diner tucked into fifteenth-century stonework.

Instead I just watch. Sunlight on stone. Laughter over red sauce. A quiet, ordinary lunch that means everything precisely because nothing’s trying to kill anyone in it — yet.

The sim hums faintly, patient, already sketching the edges of wherever this story drags them next. Somewhere out there, three heads are waiting. I know it. They don’t. Not yet.

So close, yet so far. Story of my life. Or, well — story of my un-life, technically, but let’s not get into the semantics of ghost narrators right now.

For now: pizza’s getting cold, the old man’s still talking, and the sun keeps shining like it doesn’t know a single thing about what’s coming.

Lucky sun.

Charons_Obols_Free_Loot_Get.sav

The sim doesn’t warp this time so much as it just… leans, tilting my whole point of view sideways like somebody grabbed the camera rig and shoved it through a door. One second I’m watching sunlight bounce off canal water, next second I’m swallowed by shadow and dust and the specific smell I imagine old paper makes when nobody’s read it in two hundred years. Except I can’t smell it. Ghost, remember? Zero interaction, zero impact, zero nostrils. Story of my un-life.

The curio shop is the kind of place that shouldn’t exist outside of a point-and-click adventure game, and yet here it is, real as anything, crammed floor to ceiling with the loot table of several dead empires. Greco-Roman busts stare blankly from a shelf. A cracked Egyptian sarcophagus panel leans against the wall like it’s waiting for a bus. Persian pottery, chipped and glazed in colors that have survived longer than most nations. Somewhere in the back, half-buried under a moth-eaten tapestry, I spot what might be a genuine Assyrian cylinder seal, and if I had hands right now I’d be losing my mind trying to pick it up.

Topher doesn’t know he’s standing in a museum’s fever dream. He’s twelve and unstoppable, weaving between display tables with his hands practically vibrating at his sides, that gamer-brain of his scanning every surface for loot. He stops at a small ornate box, dark wood with faded gilt edges, and pries it open like it’s a chest in some dungeon corridor.

“Wow, amazing!”

Inside: a fistful of dull copper coins, worn smooth, the kind of unglamorous find that would get skipped past in ninety percent of RPGs. Not gold. Not even shiny. Topher, though, looks at them like he just cracked open a legendary drop.

James drifts along the opposite wall, hands tucked behind his back, eyeing everything with the casual cool of someone who’s already decided he’s too mature to touch stuff in an antique shop. Which, fair. Last time somebody let a Pangilinan touch ancient artifacts unsupervised, we got a labyrinth and a decapitated Minotaur out of it.

The shopkeeper materializes from behind a shelf like she’s been there the whole time, just waiting for her cue. Elderly, small, wrapped in a cardigan the color of dried lavender, silver hair pinned up in a way that says she’s been doing this exact hairstyle since before television existed. Her eyes land on the box in Topher’s hands, and something in her expression sharpens.

“You have a good eye, young man,” she says, voice creaky but warm, like a violin that’s been well-loved.

Topher wanders over to her desk, drawn in the way moths get drawn toward literally anything glowing. Kid’s got zero chill, but it’s an endearing kind of zero chill.

“Do you know what those copper coins are for?”

“Honestly, Ma’am, I don’t.”

“Those are Charon’s obols.”

I feel my nonexistent eyebrows go up. Okay. Okay, I see where this is going, and I already love it, because mythology nerd brain just kicked into overdrive. Charon. The ferryman. Guy’s basically the Underworld’s DMV clerk, except instead of paperwork he wants exact change.

“Oh, really? That’s cool!” Topher tilts his head, genuinely delighted, before his face scrunches into a small frown. “But wouldn’t gold or silver — or at least bronze — be more fitting for Charon?”

The shopkeeper’s smile deepens into something almost fond, like she’s heard this exact question from every curious kid who’s ever wandered in here. “Gold and silver may hold great value to us mortals. But to the ferryman of the Underworld, those humble coins are the fare for souls crossing the rivers Styx and Acheron.”

She leans forward slightly, lowering her voice like she’s letting Topher in on a secret older than most civilizations. “Long ago, after the proper rites, loved ones would place these obols inside the mouth, or upon it, ensuring safe passage for the departed. A toll paid in the smallest currency for the largest journey anyone can take.”

I don’t say anything — obviously, I never do — but internally I’m filing this away with a mental sticky note: irony detected. These kids have been dodging actual death gods and monsters for weeks now, and here’s a sweet old lady casually handing over lore about paying your way into the afterlife like it’s a museum pamphlet. If I had a face right now, it’d be doing that flat, unimpressed stare people give the camera in mockumentaries.

James wanders over at this point, curiosity finally winning against his too-cool-for-antiques routine. He plants himself beside Topher, arms crossing loosely, eyebrow arched.

“Alright, little man,” the shopkeeper says, suddenly brightening, clapping her hands together like she’s flipping a switch from historian to game show host. “I have a minigame for you. Guess the exact number of obols in that box, and it’s yours. Free of charge.”

Free loot. In any universe, in any genre, free loot is objectively the best kind of loot, and James knows it.

“Go for it, Topher! Free stuff is always a win.”

Topher runs a thumb gently across the lid before easing it open again, slower this time, more deliberate. The coins catch what little light filters through the shop’s dusty window, glowing a soft, warm auburn, almost amber, almost alive. The shopkeeper watches him with an intensity that doesn’t quite match “cute grandma running a curio shop.” There’s something old in her gaze. Something that’s seen a few things.

And here’s where I clock it — because I always clock it — a faint shimmer, barely there, wraps around Topher’s shoulders. White. Soft. The kind of glow you’d only catch if you were looking with the right eyes, which, lucky me, apparently I am. Divine static electricity, basically. The universe’s way of going psst, this one’s mine.

Topher squints at the coins, doing actual math in his head, lips moving slightly.

“There are exactly forty-eight coins.”

The shopkeeper’s face lights up like she just watched someone land a twenty on a natural roll. “Well! Looks like our little gentleman just won a precious item.”

“Lady Luck’s on your side,” James says, grinning, clapping a hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

Yeah. Lady Luck, sure. Or maybe it’s something bigger than luck, something with a Star pulsing quietly under his shirt, humming along to whatever cosmic frequency it runs on. Either way, forty-eight obols. Forty-eight rivers not needing to be crossed today.

They step back out into the sunlight, Topher clutching his new prize like it’s a rare card pulled from a booster pack. The shopkeeper follows them to the door, waving with the easy warmth of someone who’s said goodbye to a thousand travelers and meant it every single time.

“Bon voyage!”

The door creaks shut behind them, and just like that, the shop swallows itself back into shadow and dust and secrets nobody’s asked about yet.

I linger a second longer than I need to, staring at that closed door, turning over her words in my head. Fare for souls crossing rivers.

Cute detail for the multiverse’s world-building. Except something about the way she said it doesn’t sit right, and I’ve watched enough foreshadowing unfold in real time to know exactly what that itch means.

So close, yet so far. But hey — free coins, sunny skies, good vibes. I’ll take the win while it lasts.