Harry wouldn't have blamed him if he was; after six weeks of just going through the motions of eating, the concept of eating a real meal was heaven. Not wanting the teen to hate him, Harry tried to share the altered food but the moment he let go of it, the food would return to the standard in game fare and he blushed bright red when Kirito teasingly accused him of playing a prank on him.
Once all three of them had finished eating some twenty minutes later, Agil propped his elbows on the table as he laced his fingers together and pinned Harry with a serious gaze from across the table as he asked, "What are you going to do now, James?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do you plan to do now that you no longer have an adult Avatar to hide behind? You do realize that you won't be able to travel as freely as you once did, right? Very few adult Players are going to be willing to allow a child your age out into the Dungeons; especially not alone."
"I… I don't know. There's something wrong with me; none of my traps were working right and everything acts all funny when I try to use any Items. It's like all my Game Skills were messed up by the same glitch that took away my Avatar. I'm scared that I'll be useless now because I can't use those Skills. I don't want to have to depend on someone else for food and things though. And I don't care what anyone else says or thinks; I won't let anyone lock me up again."
"If you give me a day or two, I'll see if I can't find some way to help you stay independent," Agil declared after he spent a couple of minutes considering the matter; an unfamiliar emotion darkening his eyes. Harry canted his head to one side as he met the man's gaze while he tried to figure out what his friend was thinking before he shrugged his shoulder to indicate it didn't matter to him.
Agil smiled in response (a smile that looked slightly pained in Harry's opinion – as if the man had expected a different answer and was disappointed that he didn't get it) before he grew serious once more as he brought up the next topic of discussion, "In one of your messages, you'd mentioned that there was something you couldn't fix. Were you talking about the fact that you no longer have your Avatar, the fact that you received lifelike injuries, or did it have to do with the problems you just mentioned with your in-game Skills?"
"Those were all part of it," Harry replied hesitantly as he dropped his gaze to the table and recalled everything that had happened after he'd reached level thirty.
There was his new classification as an Indefinable Immortal Object and the System Error that claimed that his HP was now incalculable. Then there were the changes that had happened to his HP Bar, the loss of his Avatar, and the delays that now happened each time that he tried to use his in Game Skills. On top of that, there was the sheer agony he'd felt during the strange glitch, the injuries he'd received both times the crows had attacked him, and worst of all the way his body had shattered over and over again for what had felt like hours.
Just thinking about everything that had happened to him over the last few days brought back all of his earlier turmoil and he trembled beneath the weight of the renewed fear that it could happen again.
"That isn't all that's bothering you, is it?" Kirito inquired as if he'd read Harry's mind.
Harry winced and shrank in on himself; his body language effectively answering Kirito's question. He then shot a nervous glance up towards the virtually unchanged status of his HP Bar before he quickly dropped his gaze back down to the table and wrapped one arm around his abdomen in hopes that it would ease the knots that had formed in his stomach.
"James?" Agil prompted.
Harry scrunched up his shoulders and bowed his head further. The sound of a chair scraping backwards made Harry think that he'd chased his friend off and he brought his legs back up onto the chair, wrapped both arms around his legs to make himself as small as possible, and pressed his face against his knees in order to hold back the tears that had once again filled his eyes. When a large hand settled on his head he jerked his head sideways and up at the unexpected contact and soon found himself face to face with Agil, who had merely walked around the table to crouch beside his chair.
"I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong," Agil murmured as he replaced his hand on Harry's head.
"I'm scared it will happen again. It felt like I was being ripped apart over and over again and after it was over I was different and I don't know how to put it back to how it was before."
"What do you mean by different? Are you referring to the loss of your Avatar?"
"No, losing my Avatar scared me because I was afraid you'd be angry with me and hate me and never want anything to do with me anymore because I'd lied to you. The other thing… the other thing frightens me more. I'm scared of what it means and what will happen to me now because of it."
"What is it that frightens you?"
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