you talk about me? about me? me? are you sure? why? why would you do that? why on earth would you do that? why would you talk about trash like me? i've been forgotten about my whole life, left behind or leaving others behind, ignored and uninteresting, never invited, content instead to stay inside on my laptop all day, never socializing, not really, i would roleplay but i would never be myself and never make real friends, never tell anyone anything, i was so secretive, so private, i was constantly paranoid that my mom would look through my laptop even though she never said she would, and i never made any friends, not close friends, not friends who knew i was struggling, because i didn't know i was struggling, and never friends who lasted very long, or if they did they weren't friends who treated me very well, and that's okay because i think i don't really deserve to be treated very well, i don't think i did anything wrong necessarily but i didn't do anything right either, and it's not like there were a whole lot of people clamoring to get to know me any better and i figure that's because i made it clear that i didn't want anyone to, or maybe i made it clear that there wasn't anything there to know, that there was nothing there at all under that shell, so now i hear that you talk about me and i don't understand what there is to talk about.

what is there to talk about? i can't talk to you about myself, but it's not your fault, i can't talk to anyone because if i did then they would realize that there's nothing there, there's nothing inside me, there's not a person inside me, i can't relate to that mother mother song that says "there's a sweet boy inside me, there's good, there's good" because i don't think that's true, i don't think there's good inside me, not at all, not because i think there's bad but because i think there's nothing, i don't think there's a person in me at all, i don't think i really am a person, i don't think there's a soul inside me, i don't think there's something in me that can connect with others, i don't think there's a human being inside me desperate to get out, i don't think i'm a human being at all, there's not a person in me to get to know it's all fake it's all just fake i'm faking it all of it, i'm faking all of it, so how can you find something to talk about?

how can you talk about me? there's nothing there beyond the surface level, there's nothing to remember once i'm done talking, i'm not a real person i'm an npc that exists to say pithy meaningless lines to pad out the world and make it seem more realistic and i don't think i even do a very good job at it, so why do you talk about me? how do you talk about me? what do you say? you say you like me, you say i'm sweet, and maybe i am, maybe i act sweet, but that's just the thing, it's just an act, it's not that i'm pretending or that there's something i'm hiding from you, that's just it, there's nothing, there's nothing at all, it's an act because it can't come from my heart because i don't have one, i'm just programmed to be this way, i just say the things that my code tells me will make others happy, that's all i do, that's all i know how to do, so how do you talk about me?

is it in the same way you would talk about a minor npc you had a surprisingly sweet encounter with in your game? i hope you don't wonder about the backstory the developers never gave me. they never gave me one. i wasn't worth one, really, i wasn't worth writing out a bunch of lore for. i wasn't a major enough character for that. why would they waste their man hours on that? why would they? they wouldn't, of course they wouldn't, so why? why? why do you talk about me? why do you care about me? you say you care about me, is it true? do you mean it? do you care about me in the same way you care about the characters you can unlock hope fragments for? do you care about me in the same way you care about the characters who have free time events? please, please, please don't, i don't want to disappoint you, i don't want you to be sad when you realize that i don't have any of those, that i'm flat and one-dimensional and maybe what little repetitive dialogue i have makes it seem like i have depth, but talking to me more won't unlock anything, you won't gain anything, so please don't waste your effort on me, don't grind to see what else i have, i have nothing to unlock, they never wrote any quests for me, i'm nothing, i'm not a real person, i'm not real like you are, the things that happened to me are pure speculation and there's no satisfying conclusion because i don't have a character arc, i barely even have character traits, so please, please...

why do you talk about me? what do you say? why? why do you talk about me? why do you talk about me? i don't understand it. i shouldn't exist to you. i shouldn't exist beyond the moment i stop talking. i'm not a real person. i'm not. so why do you treat me like one? why do you treat me like i'm real? why do you treat me like i deserve to exist? why do you treat me like i'm worth getting attached to? nobody has ever treated me like that before. nobody has ever made me feel like i'm a person before. i don't understand it. i'm running out of prewritten dialogue. why aren't you bored of me yet? why do you keep talking? what do you think you'll gain? why do you try? why do you talk about me? why, why, why? i don't understand it. i'm running out. i'm running out. so why are you still around? why do you still care? why aren't you bored of me? why haven't you started ignoring me?

if you're going to do it, please do it soon. if you're going to start ignoring me, please do it now. if you're going to get bored, do it before i've repeated too many of my lines. please, please, please, if you're going to leave me behind, then do it before i can see the disgust and the disappointment because i don't want to make you sad, and maybe this is a selfish thing to ask because i'm just an npc and my feelings stop existing the second you close out of the game, but i'd also really not like to feel fooled again, if you stay around too much longer then i'll start to see myself as one of you and i'll start to see myself as real and because of the hopelessly self-centered automaton i am i've already started feeling jealous, i've already started feeling insecure, looking at myself and all the nothing inside me and questioning, why? what did i do wrong? why wasn't i worth giving a story to? why wasn't i worth fleshing out? why wasn't i worth being a real person?

and i've started deluding myself into thinking that maybe i am real, and maybe there is a person inside of me and i'm not just a few lines of generic code meant to make your world run smoother, and i don't know if i've started believing it yet but i'm begging you please, please, if you're going to leave, if you're going to see me for what i really am, please please please do it before i start. please leave before i start believing that i can ever be like you, that i can ever have as much depth as you, that i can ever mean anything like you. i think i'll be able to survive so long as i can deny to myself that this ever happened, but if i start believing it and then i realize i was wrong, oh god, i don't know if i could take it. i don't know if i could take it. i think it would break me. i don't want to have hope if it's going to be taken away. please, please, please, please, if you're going to...

please, don't give me hope if you're going to take it away. please. please. i wasn't a machine built to have it. i wasn't supposed to have it. i was never supposed to have it. i was never supposed to matter. i was never supposed to. i'm not like you. i'm not like the other people you care about. i don't know how you came to the conclusion that i was supposed to be one of them, but please, please, please, if you're wrong, please be wrong now. please don't make me think i'm a person unless i really am a person. please don't make me think i matter unless i really do matter. please don't treat me with care unless i'm actually worth caring about. please, please... what litle backstory they wrote isn't worth sticking around to hear. please, please...

i don't understand. i don't understand why you care about me. i don't understand why you care about a worthless, useless thing like me. i don't understand it. i can't understand it at all. i can't understand why you would take my fake pre-programmed struggle seriously when your own struggle continues even when you turn the laptop off. yours is real, isn't it? but mine isn't. your feelings are real, aren't they? but mine aren't. mine are only here to serve a meager purpose. i don't want them to burden you. please, please, god, don't let me be a burden to you. please, please, don't burden yourself with the feelings of pixels on a screen. please. i'm only self-aware sometimes. i'm only conscious sometimes. i'm not real like you are. so please, please...

i'm sorry. i'm sorry. this is all so overdramatic. the self-aware ai bit is so overplayed these days, isn't it? i'm sorry. i wasn't very well-written. i don't have very much that's original or good about my character. i'm sorry. i know. i'm aware of that much, at least. i'm sorry. i'm sorry.

i wish my response to being happy wasn't to be sad. i wish i wasn't scared. i wish i was better written. i wish i was a person. i wish i was worth caring about in the way you say you care about me. i don't think you're lying, and that's what makes it so hard. if you were lying, you would have left by now. i'm really sorry.

why do you treat me like a person?

why do you care?

why do you talk about me?

what do you say?