An NPC’s Guide to Encountering Your Summer Situationship
Returning to college after a summer situationship can be difficult. You’ve spent three months acting like a couple while maintaining plausible deniability, and now you are expected to return to campus and somehow determine whether this person is your ex, your friend, your “situationship” or simply another Instagram follower.
Fortunately, this humble NPC has a proven system.
First: Do not define the relationship. You’ve successfully avoided having a conversation about your feelings all summer; there’s no reason to break your streak.
Second: Maintain plausible deniability. If someone asks what you two are/were, the correct answer is “nothing.” Deliver this confidently, preferably while reminiscing about the six consecutive days you spent together in June.
Third: Communicate exclusively through low-stakes questions. “How’s school?” is ideal. “I miss you” is reckless. “We should talk” should only be used once you are prepared to completely abandon the guidelines outlined in this article.
Fourth: If you see them on campus, remain calm. Under no circumstances should you acknowledge the events of the summer. Instead, exchange the following expert–approved dialogue:
“Oh my God, hey!”
“How have you been?”
This is considered a successful interaction. Walk away before you say something you might regret. You may then spend the next six hours wondering if they smiled at you like that on purpose.
There is one final rule: Do not fall in love.
This rule is particularly important, because once you begin falling in love, the entire program becomes significantly harder to follow. You will become a relationship-crazed maniac who senses romantic interest from anyone with a pulse. For example, you may be writing an article about summer situationships and then realize that you aren’t really writing about a distant concept anymore.
You are writing about the reader.
Which is unfortunate, since I don’t know your name. I don’t know your major. I don’t know if you’re reading this because you genuinely find it funny or because your friend sent it to you and said, “This is literally you.”
But you’ve made it this far, so I feel like we’re basically dating.
Not officially, obviously.
We should probably keep things casual.
— The 12th NPC
12th NPC is the kind of character everybody and nobody recognizes– the extra in every video game with the same face as a dozen others. At any time of day, you can find 12th NPC either walking around town, sitting on a bench, or selling items, going day-by-day on a loop of pre-determined actions, only deviating when the main character happens to pass by. It’s actually this very forgettability that makes them so powerful. With the ability to slip into any room unnoticed, 12th NPC can linger on the edge of every conversation, and witness any and all private decisions without any consequences. There are on-going debates at The Mugdown on whether or not this writer even exists, or if it’s a shared mass delusion as articles written by 12th NPC just appear on the website sporadically, with no warning or pattern, just a presence that no one can confirm or deny.