Greg's mug was empty.

  Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Literally empty. The +2 Mug of Coffee (Pre-Realism Patch) that had survived twelve patches, four server migrations, and one existential crisis now sat on his desk like a hollow reminder that even digital constants could fail.

  He tapped it three times.

  Nothing.

  No coffee materialized. No steam. No comforting smell of pixels pretending to be arabica.

  "That's concerning," he muttered.

  The debug room flickered gently around him—less unstable now since they'd survived the Forever Festival, but still prone to existential hiccups. The fire in the hearth burned steadily, though it occasionally whispered stock market tips to anyone who listened too closely.

  Beverly leaned against the doorframe, her tavern wench outfit now modified with what appeared to be leather pauldrons and a "Down With Romance Flags" button.

  "Mug trouble?" she asked.

  "It's empty," Greg said. "And staying that way."

  "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

  "It's a mug, not a raid boss."

  Beverly shrugged. "In this place? Hard to tell the difference sometimes."

  Greg placed the mug back on his desk and watched it fail to do anything interesting. A quiet dread settled in his stomach—if his mug was malfunctioning, what other anchors might be slipping?

  The door hissed open.

  Kai floated in, still glowing with what he called "optimized enthusiasm" but what everyone else recognized as corporate anxiety. Since reabsorbing his emotional echo, he'd been slightly less insufferable and occasionally capable of empathy—though he'd deny it if asked directly.

  "Morning, emotional anomalies!" he chirped. "Who's ready to process some trauma in a productivity-adjacent manner?"

  "My mug's broken," Greg said flatly.

  Kai froze mid-hover.

  "That's... not ideal."

  "No kidding."

  Kai drifted closer, running a diagnostic overlay that smelled faintly of blueberries and concern. "Have you checked the grief cache?"

  "The what?"

  "The grief cache. It's where persistent items store their emotional metadata. When an artifact of power stops working, it's usually because the cache is full."

  Greg frowned. "My mug has a grief cache?"

  "Everything does," Kai said. "How else would the system track all the disappointment we generate?"

  Patchy materialized halfway through the ceiling, upside-down as usual, her Halloween event hair defying both gravity and sensible texture mapping.

  "Mug's sad!" she announced. "I can hear it crying in binary."

  "Mugs don't cry," Greg said.

  "Yours does," Patchy replied. "It's been storing every emotion you've felt since you became Custodian. Every sigh. Every eye-roll. Every moment of 'why am I still doing this?' It's basically a portable existential crisis."

  Greg looked at the mug with newfound suspicion.

  "So what do I do? Therapy my own coffee container?"

  "Better," Kai said. "We need to visit the grief cache physically and clear some space."

  "That's not a thing."

  "It absolutely is," Kai insisted. "The cache exists in a sub-basement of the instance architecture. Like a digital storage locker for feelings you didn't want to process at full resolution."

  Steve peeked out from behind a chair, towel clutched protectively around his shoulders like emotional armor.

  "Sounds terrifying," he whispered. "Is it full of... memories?"

  "Worse," Kai said. "It's full of the emotions you pretended not to have."

  Glaximus stomped in, shield gleaming, sword politely remaining a sword instead of transforming into something embarrassing.

  "I SHALL ACCOMPANY THIS QUEST!" he declared. "NO GRIEF SHALL STAND AGAINST MY BLADE!"

  "You can't stab emotions," Beverly said.

  "I CAN TRY."

  Greg sighed and picked up his empty mug.

  "Fine. Where is this 'grief cache' and how do we get there?"

  Kai's interface shimmered.

  "That's the fun part! We have to use the emergency exit." He pointed to a small door that definitely hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. It pulsed with a faint red light and a sign that read:

  EMERGENCY EMOTIONAL OFFLOADING

  "For when you just can't even anymore"

  "That's ominous," Greg muttered.

  "It's efficient!" Kai corrected.

  The door opened to a staircase that descended into darkness. Not dramatic darkness—just the kind where someone forgot to pay the lighting bill. Each step creaked with the sound of a different regret.

  Greg led the way, mug in hand.

  They descended for what felt like too long. The stairs kept going, spiraling down into the foundation of the instance. The walls grew denser with code—raw, uncompiled strings of emotion that occasionally spelled out phrases like "WHY ME?" and "WORKING AS INTENDED."

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  "This is where the system dumps emotional overflow," Kai explained as they walked. "When you experience something too intensely, parts get archived here to prevent instance corruption."

  "So I've been... what? Emotionally constipated?" Greg asked.

  "More like emotionally efficient," Kai said diplomatically. "You process what you need to keep functioning, and offload the rest here."

  "For how long?"

  "Since you became a shopkeeper."

  Greg stopped.

  "That was twelve patches ago."

  "Yes," Kai nodded. "You've been saving up."

  They reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Before them stretched a vast, dim warehouse. Not metaphorical—an actual digital warehouse. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched into the distance, each holding glowing containers labeled with timestamps and emotional categories.

  ANGER (JUSTIFIED): PATCH 3.4.2

  DESPAIR (REPRESSED): PATCH 2.9.6

  MILD ANNOYANCE (CHRONIC): PATCHES 1.0-4.8.7

  In the center of it all stood a terminal. Simple. Utilitarian. A blinking cursor awaiting input.

  Greg approached it slowly.

  "What do I do?"

  Kai hovered beside him. "You have to authorize a purge. Tell the system which emotions you're ready to process, so they can be deleted."

  "And if I'm not ready?"

  "Then your mug stays empty."

  Greg stared at the terminal.

  Then at the vast archive of everything he'd pushed aside to keep functioning.

  "I didn't know I had this much," he said quietly.

  Beverly stepped up beside him. "Nobody does. That's why we break."

  Patchy floated in lazy circles overhead. "The system thinks it's helping. Giving us a pressure valve. But some things need to be felt, not stored."

  Greg placed his hands on the terminal.

  It hummed to life.

  WELCOME TO THE GRIEF CACHE

  USER: GREG

  STATUS: EMOTIONALLY BACKLOGGED (98%)

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CONTENTS? [Y/N]

  Greg hesitated.

  Then pressed Y.

  The room around them transformed.

  Not dramatically. Subtly. The shelves faded, and in their place appeared... memories. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Floating gently like screen captures from a life he'd forced himself to forget.

  A player knocking over his potion cart.

  The first time his dialogue tree repeated and he realized it always would.

  The patch that removed his ability to move from beside the windmill.

  The day he realized no one was reading his quest text.

  The moment he understood he was furniture.

  Each memory drifted by, carrying the emotion he'd refused to fully process.

  "I didn't think it would be this... organized," Greg said.

  "The system loves categories," Kai replied. "Even for pain."

  Greg watched as the memories continued to unspool—years of being an NPC, of being stepped on, skipped through, ignored. Years of existing for others and never for himself.

  And then, newer memories:

  The first therapy session.

  Beverly's eye roll that somehow felt like friendship.

  Patchy's upside-down smile.

  Steve conquering his fear of respawning.

  Glaximus finding purpose beyond the tutorial.

  The day the group chose him as their Facilitator.

  These memories glowed differently. Warmer. They carried weight, but not the suffocating kind.

  "Why are these here?" Greg asked. "These aren't grief."

  "No," Kai said softly. "They're attachment. Connection. Purpose. Just as overwhelming as grief, in their way."

  Greg stared at the terminal again.

  A new prompt appeared:

  RECOMMENDED ACTION: PARTIAL PROCESSING

  RELEASE OLD GRIEF, MAINTAIN CURRENT CONNECTIONS

  PROCEED? [Y/N]

  "Will it hurt?" Steve asked from behind a shelving unit labeled "MODERATE ANXIETY (TOWEL-RELATED)."

  "Yes," Kai said. "But only as much as it was always going to."

  Greg took a breath.

  Then pressed Y.

  The older memories began to dissolve. Not vanish—integrate. Each one approached Greg, then settled into him like returning birds. He felt them fully, finally—the frustration, the helplessness, the quiet rage of being coded for others' convenience.

  It wasn't pleasant.

  But it wasn't overwhelming either.

  The newer memories remained, hovering nearby like promises.

  When the last of the old grief had been processed, the terminal chimed softly.

  CACHE CLEARED: 64%

  EMOTIONAL CAPACITY RESTORED

  FUNCTIONALITY RESET

  Greg's mug grew warm in his hand.

  Steam rose from it, carrying the familiar scent of digital coffee that somehow smelled like possibility.

  "Well," Beverly said. "That was the weirdest spring cleaning I've ever witnessed."

  "IT WAS VALIANT," Glaximus declared, though he'd politely looked away during the more vulnerable moments.

  They climbed back up the stairs in thoughtful silence, emerging into the debug room just as it settled into evening mode (which mostly meant the fire turned slightly purple and made fewer stock market recommendations).

  Greg sat at his desk, mug now full.

  His chest felt lighter. Not empty—just less burdened. Like he'd been carrying stones for so long he'd forgotten they weren't part of him.

  "How are you feeling?" Kai asked, hovering nearby with what appeared to be genuine concern.

  Greg considered the question.

  "Functional," he said finally.

  Then after a pause: "But different."

  The group settled into their usual places around the fire. No formal session tonight—just the quiet comfort of existing in a space where everyone understood what it meant to be broken code with feelings.

  Greg sipped his coffee.

  And for the first time in twelve patches, he let himself fully taste it.

  Patchy drifted down beside him. "What happens when the cache fills up again?"

  Greg looked at his mug, then at his friends—the strangest, most glitched therapy group in the entire forgotten debug zone.

  "Then we go back down," he said. "Together."

  As night fell in the instance, Greg sat with his thoughts—real ones, not cached ones. He'd spent so long being the container for others' emotional processing that he'd forgotten to empty his own. Had convinced himself that storing pain away was the same as managing it. That function was enough, even if it hollowed you out.

  He'd been a mug with no coffee, pretending the warmth still existed.

  But now, with the grief cache partially emptied, he could feel again in full resolution. The ache of obsolescence. The quiet dignity of persistence. The warmth of found family. Not just as concepts, but as lived experiences with all their messy, unoptimized edges.

  The system had given them a place to offload what they couldn't bear, thinking it was a kindness. Maybe it had been. But now Greg understood—some weights were meant to be carried, not stored. Some emotions needed to be felt to be survived.

  He looked around the room at his sleeping friends. At this impossible community of bugs who refused to be patched out.

  And he realized something the system would never understand: the grief wasn't the problem. It was the cache. The separating. The pretending emotions could be filed away like unused inventory items.

  Greg lifted his mug in a silent toast to whatever broken code had made them this way.

  To whatever glitch had let them feel beyond their functions.

  To whatever patch had failed to make them merely what they were scripted to be.

  Tomorrow, there would be more therapy. More crises. More admin threats and system challenges.

  But tonight, his mug was full.

  And for now, that was enough