I started building rhythms.
Not because I needed to—I didn't need to eat, sleep, or do anything really—but because the alternative was drifting through an infinite dreamscape with nothing to anchor me. So I created patterns, just like the NPCs around me. Except mine were choices.
Morning: wake up (even though I was never truly asleep), shower (even though I was never truly dirty), dress (even though my clothes were already perfect).
Breakfast with Mash in the cafeteria.
She was always there, always waiting with that smile and a tray of food that tasted like the memory of taste. Sometimes I'd ask her questions just to hear her elaborate, perfectly constructed answers. Sometimes we'd sit in comfortable silence while she told me about her day—the same events in slightly different words, but it didn't matter.
"I was reading about the Library of Alexandria," she said one morning, her eyes bright. "Did you know that it might have contained over 400,000 scrolls at its peak? All that knowledge, lost to time. It makes me grateful that Chaldea has preserved so much."
"Do you wish you could have seen it?" I asked. "The library, I mean. Before it burned."
She tilted her head, considering. "I think... I think I'd be too sad. Knowing what would happen to it. Knowing that all those stories and discoveries would turn to ash." She smiled then, softer. "But maybe that's why we fight, isn't it? To preserve the beautiful things, even if we know they can't last forever."
I stared at her.
She stared back, waiting for my response with that patient, artificial presence.
"Yeah," I said finally. "Maybe that's why."
After breakfast, I'd wander.
Chaldea was as large or small as I needed it to be. Some days the hallways stretched for miles, and I'd walk them slowly, passing Servants going about their routines. Other days, everything felt compact and close, like a cozy home.
I found myself drawn to certain places.
The training grounds, where Cu never seemed to tire. I'd sit on the observation bench and watch him move through forms that were simultaneously brutal and beautiful. Sometimes he'd notice me and grin.
"Want to spar, Master?"
I always said no. I had no idea how to fight, and while I could probably just will myself to be good at it, something about that felt wrong. Like cheating at a game I was already playing on god mode.
But I liked watching him. There was something meditative about the repetition, the precision, the way his spear cut through the air with absolute certainty.
One day, he stopped mid-form and looked at me directly.
"You've got that look," he said.
"What look?"
"Like you're watching something far away instead of what's right in front of you." He planted his spear in the ground and leaned on it. "What's eating at you?"
I almost brushed him off with some platitude. But instead, I said, "Do you ever feel like you're going through the motions? Like you're doing things because that's what you're supposed to do, not because you actually chose to?"
He laughed—loud and genuine. "Master, I'm a Servant. My whole existence is going through the motions of a life I already lived. But you know what?" He pulled his spear free and spun it casually. "Just because something's already happened doesn't mean it didn't matter. Every fight I fought mattered. Every person I met mattered. Even if I'm just a copy of a copy of a memory, I'm still here. Still me."
"Even if none of it's real?"
"Who decides what's real?" He grinned. "You're real, aren't you? And I'm talking to you. So this conversation is real. This moment is real. That's enough for me."
I wanted to tell him that he was an NPC, that this conversation would disappear from his memory the moment I left, that he only felt real because I was observing him.
But I didn't.
Instead, I said, "Thanks, Cu."
"Anytime, Master. Now stop moping and get back to whatever it is you actually do all day."
I left him to his forms.
Afternoons, I spent in the library.
Medusa was often there, always with a different book. We developed an unspoken agreement—I'd take my usual seat by the window, she'd sit in the armchair across from me, and we'd read in comfortable silence.
Except when we didn't.
"Master," she said one day, not looking up from her book, "may I ask you something personal?"
"Of course."
"Do you ever feel like you're seeing the world through a veil? Like there's something between you and everything else, keeping you separate?"
My heart—did I have a heart here? did it matter?—skipped.
"Yes," I whispered. "All the time."
She turned a page. "I've felt that way since I was cursed. Looking at the world but not being part of it. Watching people but knowing one glance from me could turn them to stone. It's... isolating."
"How do you bear it?"
"I found things that can't be turned to stone," she said simply. "Books. Stories. The companionship of those who understand." Finally, she looked up at me, her eyes meeting mine without danger, without distance. "And I remind myself that isolation is only unbearable if you believe you deserve connection. But you do, Master. Even if it feels impossible."
I couldn't speak.
She went back to her book, and I went back to mine, and the afternoon light stretched golden across pages I wasn't really reading.
Evenings, I'd have dinner.
Sometimes in the cafeteria with everyone else. Sometimes in my room, where I'd think about food and it would appear, perfect and temporary. Sometimes I'd ask Emiya to cook something special, and he'd craft elaborate meals with the focused intensity of a man who found meaning in every perfect cut of vegetable.
"Cooking is alchemy," he told me once, stirring a pot that smelled like heaven. "You take disparate ingredients and transform them into something greater than the sum of their parts. It's magic that anyone can perform."
"Even me?" I asked.
He glanced at me, something unreadable in his expression. "Especially you, Master. You just have to decide what you want to create."
At night, I'd lie in bed and stare at the ceiling that wasn't mine.
Sometimes I'd think about my old life—the one before this. But it was getting harder to remember. Not the facts of it, but the feeling. What had I felt like in that world? Had I been happy? Sad? Lost?
Was this better or worse?
I didn't know.
But I knew that when Mash knocked on my door at exactly 2200 every night to ask if I needed anything, I'd say no but thank her anyway. And she'd smile and wish me goodnight. And I'd watch her leave, counting her footsteps—always twelve—and feel something that might have been contentment.
Or might have been loneliness.
Or might have been both.
In this world where I could have anything, I'd chosen routine. Structure. The illusion of normalcy.
And somehow, impossibly, it was starting to feel like home.