“Good boy Mao! Good boy! Mao… Mao, sit!” The dog sat elatedly in response to her command. “Wow!! Oh my god, good boy! Mao, stand!” He got on his hind legs. “You’re such a good boy!”

Once inside the familiar room, I was greeted by the sight of Zoey, seated on the bed, playing around with her dog Mao. The room looked far different in the daylight, I had to admit. It didn’t have quite the sinister look I recalled from my dreams. Another thing I noticed was that the familiar scent of cinnamon filled the entirety of the room. It was such a joyous feeling to be overwhelmed by her smell in that way that it almost felt like I was trespassing in some holy place of worship.

“Sorry about my mom. She’s always like that. Oh, have a seat.” She gestured at the chair next to her study desk.

“Uh… always like that?” I asked as I spun the office chair around and took a seat.

“She’s really hands off. I pretty much had to raise myself since I was like 5. Well, no. What I should say is that the internet pretty much raised me on its own.”

When she said the internet, I had to pause for a moment to collect myself.

“But… what about your dad?”

“Oh, him? He helps out financially with bills and the mortgage, but he’s rarely home. Maybe twice a month. He has business all over the country so he’s usually off attending to that stuff.”

“I see...”

She redirected her attention back to Mao. “Good boy! Good boy, Mao. Shake!”

She held her palm out, and Mao immediately reached out to meet it with his paw. The scene playing out before me didn’t have the weight of any supernatural powers or popular kid political games. It was just the heartwarming view of a girl having fun with her dog. It’s a sight that allowed me to forget all of my anxieties and troubles.

“Why did you name him Mao, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s related to China’s great leap forward. The long and short of it is it’s because he’s an idiot, but I love him too much to tell him to his face.”

I wasn’t sure why she decided to bad mouth Mao Zedong like that, but she was the one who paid attention in world history class, so I decided to take her word for it. If only I were more knowledgeable about topics like that, maybe then we could have a real conversation.

I was disappointed in myself. I couldn’t engage with her at all. It had already been about ten minutes since I entered her house, but everything still felt far too tense. I was just going along with whatever she said. Benjamin mentioned that I was a nice guy, and looking at it from the outside, this must have been what he was talking about. I’m just a boring guy who goes wherever the flow takes him, with nothing remotely interesting to add.

So the question I began grappling with at that time was, how should I get myself out of this situation?

“You look a little lonely over there. Do you want to play with him too?” Zoey asked while holding Mao up to me.

Suddenly, I remembered his words from earlier today. He said to make fun of them a little, didn’t he? It was all coming back to me. That was how he spoke to Gwen when they were dating, so it must work.

Taking a deep breath, I looked her dead in the eyes with as much determination as I could muster. “I don’t want to play with your ugly dog, bitch.”

I could tell that the words would hang in the air the second I let them out. She sat in place silently, like a statue, without reacting to my response. I quickly began to catch on to the fact that I really shouldn’t have said that. It was as if, through taking Benjamin’s advice, I had unleashed some great force of evil onto myself.

And as suddenly as my sentence ended, that room filled with Zoey’s laughs and Mao’s playful barking suddenly went deathly quiet. She released him from her grasp, and he landed paws first onto the ground and scampered off.

A dark shadow was hanging over her face, masking her previously bright and cheery expression.

“Stand up.”

“H-huh?”

“Stand up.”

Her voice was as calm as ever. But I was certain that something dark was brewing underneath that cool exterior. Without fighting back, I rose to my feet. She followed me by also lifting herself, still staring down at the carpeted floor as quiet as ever.

I wanted to scream. This was supposed to be the day I asked her to the dance, and yet I blew it so hard that it would be a miracle if she even spoke to me after today. All the blood was rushing to my head like a volcano on the verge of erupting. However, I decided to suck it up and try to fix it.

“Hey, listen. About what I just said…”

She held her hand up to shush me before I could say anything else. I tried to claw myself out of the awkward silence, but she immediately dragged me back in. She clearly had no intention of letting me talk my way out of it. The situation was so nerve-wracking that I started fidgeting in place anxiously.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Listen,” she said, finally putting an end to the quiet. “I’m going to pretend that your comment was just a bad joke.” She paused once more, possibly to let me stew in the ambiguity for a bit longer. “And that’s only because, other than this single transgression, you’ve conducted yourself respectably around me. However…”

She gazed into my eyes, and what I saw there terrified me. None of Zoey’s usual, playful expression was present at all on her face.

No.

It was a look of scorn and disgust that raised every single hair on my body. She was a completely different person.

“I don’t appreciate distasteful jokes like that. Not about myself, and especially not about Mao. Do you understand me?”

I nodded my head as if my life depended on it.

It was like I was face to face with the devil herself. The stark contrast between her normal self and whatever it was that was standing before me made it hard to believe that this was the same girl that was so kind to everyone at school.

At that moment, it felt like Zoey Brahm was capable of destroying my entire identity, everything I stood for, in just a single sentence. The power she held over me in that moment, standing up to me with that cold gaze, was all-encompassing.

However, like a switch, her face eased into a smile.

Yes, that smile.

The one I fell so hopelessly in love with. It was such a soothing smile that I had already forgotten about the terror of moments ago.

“Good.”

I learned my lesson. Don’t take advice on women from guys like Ben. She went back to sitting on the bed, and I followed her cue and returned to sitting on the office chair at her study desk.

“Don’t take it personally. I just think an important part of relationships is setting boundaries for yourself.”

Relationships…

That was the word she used. I understood her intended meaning, but it still made me happy to be considered a friend of hers.

“Why did you say that to me?” she asked while sitting up.

“’Why’? Well, uhm…” I racked my brains for possible ways to avoid the question, but I decided that I had already blundered so hard that it would be best to come clean. “When Ben came over to grill me today, he… gave me advice on talking to girls.”

“Oooh.” She grinned. “Ben did, huh? What did he say?”

“No, I can’t mention it. It’s embarrassing.”

“Really? More embarrassing than calling me a bitch?” I grimaced. I know Ben said that I should do it, but why did I ever think that that was a good idea?

I sighed. “He said that I’m a boring person. That I’m like, a weasel-y ‘nice guy’.”

“Hmmm.” Her eyes focused on the ceiling for a moment. It was as if the response to what I’d just said was written up there. Then after a moment, she turned to face me.

“So you’re saying that instead of being nice, you should be someone like Ben.”

“Someone like Ben?”

“Yeah. Inconsiderate, obsessive, and self-absorbed. That’s the kind of person Ben is. There’s no doubt that he was decently popular at school before the rumors about him and Gwen came out, so maybe it works, but think about it. Is that the kind of person you want to be if it means that girls will talk to you?”

“Well no, but…”

“I don’t think I’d want to live in a world where being nice is seen as a bad thing. Would you?”

At her words, my heart thumped in my chest. “Well, no, but… what if I really am boring? Like, what about someone like Lawrence? He’s nice too. Shouldn’t I try to be more like him?”

“Well, he can be nice sometimes. But he’s someone who’s sneakier about how awful they are.”

“Awful? You mean how he gets around with girls at school?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I?”

“Tell me? About what?”

She reached over and grabbed her laptop computer from near the head of her bed. Then, once she opened it up, she smiled at me and tapped the empty space to her left on the bed.

“Bring my glasses too.”

“H-huh? Uh, sure.”

The sudden invitation had left me flustered, but I quickly shook it off and grabbed the glasses case then brought it over to her.

Though I couldn’t help but wonder what she might have had on her computer that would explain Lawrence’s womanizing habits, I was much more concerned with the fact that the two of us were sitting almost shoulder to shoulder on her bed. I thought that I had blown it earlier, but somehow things were even better now than they were before.

“Okay,” she said. “Now hold this.”

After putting the glasses on, she placed the computer on my lap then stood up. “Okay, sure. But what am I…” I stared down at the computer screen and…

And I was greeted by a shocking revelation.

“Wait, seriously?”

Staring back at me on the screen was a video of myself, seated on the bed of Zoey’s room. The composition was so accurate to the current situation that it felt like a live video. I looked up and found Zoey wearing a smug grin while staring down at me.

Her eyes were leveled at exactly where this supposed camera would be. Just to make sure, I lifted my arm then stared down at the video. And sure enough, the ‘me’ on the camera mimicked my action.

It made sense at last. How she got those pictures of me, it all finally made sense in that moment.

“Those were… spy glasses?”

“Aren’t they just the coolest?”

She fell back onto the bed with a satisfied look on her face, folding her arms proudly. After examining them more closely now that she was next to me, I could see lenses disguised as screws on the front of the frame.

“Is that legal?”

“Dunno, it probably is. I think everyone would be mad if they knew, though. But you know what? It’s fine. You gave up your secret so it’s only fair that I return the favor, right?”

Spy glasses and secret holes in the wall. It appeared to me as if Zoey was a super voyeur. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but I decided to wait until she was done explaining everything to form an opinion.

“So anyway, about Lawrence…”

She took the computer from me and began navigating through the directory until she got to a folder titled “Lawrence Y.”

There, we found a large archive of videos of Lawrence taken by Zoey. It was a collection so vast that it sent shivers down my spine. The fact that everyone at school was under surveillance without their knowledge was something I had difficulty accepting.

“Hmmm, I think it was this one.”

She opened one of the videos, this one titled: “Lawrence’s True Face.”