Sunlight crept its way through the window blinds, inducing spasms in the periphery of my eyeballs. With every twitch, the blue ballpoint pen in my right hand jerked in tandem. After the last twelve or so hours, I was barely paying attention to what I was writing anymore. Rather, my brain decided that the birds singing outside were much more important to fixate on than my project, although the gentle melody of the dawn chorus merely blended in with the unbearable ringing in my ears. Dogs howled at one another as their owners took them on their morning walks. Rhythmic thumps crept from behind the wall on Ryu’s side of the room, along with poorly muffled grunts and moans of pleasure. My headphones rested around my neck, attempting to counteract the waves of sound that assaulted my ears from all fronts… and they weren’t doing a very good job.

  My eyes glazed over while my pen kept on scribing nothing in particular. I wanted to check my phone for the time - or to see if anyone had even bothered to text me overnight - but I never mustered the energy or motivation to try and grab it. Considering I don’t even remember where I put the damn thing, it would’ve been a fruitless effort anyway. My head felt completely empty, only containing thoughts such as, “If time is a construct, have we just been taking someone’s word all this time that it’s actually the day that we think it is?”, and “What if Martians are just distant ancestors of the octopus?” Every time I attempted to get my train of thought back on track, the same ridiculous thoughts would just repeat themselves endlessly like a faulty needle on a turntable that keeps looping the exact same part of a vinyl record. The mental image of a needle dragging along the grooves of a record started to make my headache feel more like I had my own needle scraping along the sutures of my skull.

  I heard a faint *click* come from the lock on the door as Ryu recklessly swung it open. There was a long pause without a single word or footstep before he cut the tension in the air. “Hey.” Well, that was pretty unceremonious, even for him. Sounds of running water and subsequent splashes seemed to suggest that he was probably about to accidentally cut himself while shaving again. “Doesn’t look like you threw any parties while I was gone, that’s for sure.”

  “...incorrect.” Yawning through the rest of my words, I managed to muster a barely coherent string of words. “You know me… I’m a… tooooootal… party anim-” A loud belch escaped my stomach, snapping me wide awake almost instantly. In a panic, my eyes surveyed the room, only to find myself engulfed by a sea of torn sheets of notebook paper scattered across the floor. Each one was covered in a series of entirely illegible drawings and sequences of nonsensical hiragana pretending to be sentences. “...I can explain.”

  “I was being sarcastic.” Ryu bent down and cherry-picked one of the messiest looking papers, flipping it over multiple times to try and make any sense out of it. “Genjo, are you alright, man? What the fuck happened this weekend?”

  My pen slipped between my fingers and slowly rolled off the desk into the chaos below. “Weekend?” With my right hand now free, I snatched my energy drink off the top of my CD rack and hastily chugged what remained of it. “The hell are you talking about?”

  Ryu crumpled up the paper and threw it at me, bouncing it off my forehead onto the empty can in my hand, knocking it to the ground next to my pen. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

  I rubbed my eyes with closed fists, hoping to dispel the tingling sensation that was still making them twitch sporadically. “Ugh… forgot what, exactly?”

  He reached down for another sheet of paper and wound it up to toss it at me again, so I shut my eyes and sluggishly dodged to the left in anticipation. However, Ryu simply waited until after I made my move and hit me square in the face with little fanfare. “Oh god, it’s worse than I thought.” Ryu sighed before dragging his chair across the floor towards mine and sitting down in front of me. He leaned really close to me and stared deep into my eyes with uneasiness. “Your eyes are bloodshot to hell and back… When did you go to sleep?”

  “Um,” I replied as I rolled back in my chair to get Ryu out of my personal space. “Last night. I think.” I knew that wasn’t true - I had obviously pulled an all-nighter - but I wasn’t exactly sure of the truth myself.

  Ryu closed the gap between us once again. “And, if you don’t mind, when exactly was ‘last night’, Genjo?”

  I rode my chair over to the fridge, took out an ice-cold energy drink and cracked it open. Taking the first sip was a refreshing experience like no other. It was the closest thing any living being could ever get to knowing what electronic devices must feel when you connect them to a charging cable. A shiver momentarily ran down my spine. “You know… the night you told me you were leaving to go to Hiro’s dorm for the weekend-”

  Suddenly, the wires in my brain finally connected. I set my drink on top of the microwave and stood up quickly from my chair before promptly getting weirdly lightheaded, losing my vision and falling to the ground. “Hey! Watch it!” Ryu shouted as he darted across the room to catch me before I could hit my head on the floor. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Looking for my- Ow!” I struggled not to visibly wince in pain as I grabbed onto my legs - Yeah, like that would somehow stop them from cramping. Somehow, I could feel each individual muscle fiber spasming out of control, which was as incredibly disgusting as it sounds. Was I really that deprived of energy? “...I was looking for my phone. I don’t remember where I left it.”

  Ryu tried to massage the cramp in my calf, achieving middling results. “We can worry about that later. You need to eat something, first.” I hadn’t even realized how badly I was starving until he had mentioned food. My stomach started to contract and convulse just as badly as my legs. “And you need to drink something, too - That’s not caffeine.” Ryu rummaged through his snack drawer and haphazardly tossed a box of fruit-flavored candies and some dehydrated mango slices in my general direction. “Dried fruit has higher sugar concentration than… wet fruit.” He stared off into space for a few seconds, whispering “...what?” to himself in an attempt to process his own statement. “Should get your blood sugar back up.”

  As I reached to pick up the snacks, my heart rate spiked as it started to beat out of my chest. What’s with the sudden onset of all these symptoms? With a muffled, “Thank you,” I gently tore open the box of dried mango and started wolfing them down faster than was truly necessary. “You know,” I blurted out mid-chewing. “Mango’s my favorite fruit.” The sweet taste that greeted my tongue reminded me of a time that somebody had offered me some mango a few days ago. I decided to savor it this time.

  “Good. You shouldn’t have a problem getting some energy back in your system, then.” Ryu also reached into the fridge and handed me a bottle of orange juice. “I don’t mind if you finish those mangoes, by the way. Knock yourself out.”

  I did as Ryu asked, devouring as many mango slices as I could before a mysterious hormonal signal from my stomach told me it was time to call it quits. After each bite, life slowly returned to my body until it no longer felt almost completely numb. “Oh, could you help me look for my phone, by the way? I couldn’t find it anywh-”

  “No dice.” Ryu sat down beside me. “I took a quick glance around the whole room while you’ve been eating. Couldn’t see a thing.”

  “Damn, even under all the papers?” I started to haphazardly throw some of the scrap paper up into the air, hoping the phone would unveil itself like some kind of buried treasure.

  Ryu joined in on the search, taking the time to throw most of the scraps into the garbage can as well. After about 10 minutes, we had nothing to show for it. “Shit.” Ryu took a seat on the floor again. “Sorry, bro.”

  “...It’s fine.” It was not fine, but I wasn’t about to have a meltdown in front of him over a glorified rectangle made out of silicon, fancy wires and a screen. With Ryu’s help, I finally stood up and stretched out my limbs and my back, which I now realized were extremely rigid. Just how long had I been like this?

  Ryu gradually stepped away from me to make sure that I could stand on my own. “Well, how are you feelin’?”

  “Alright.” Static briefly flickered in my peripheral vision, but only for a second. “I think.”

  “Good enough for me.” Ryu gave me a pat on the shoulder before walking over to his bed and leaping on top of the mattress. It didn’t take very long for him to notice our next door neighbors partaking in the miracle of life, however. With a clenched fist, Ryu pounded against the wall three times and shouted, “The pill’s out of stock at the pharmacy right now.”

  The man on the other side of the wall yelled back, “Not like you needed it, you fuckin’ virgin!” followed by the sound of the girl’s hand making direct contact with his face.

  “Yikes… sounds like you didn’t either!” Ryu said with a shit-eating grin on his face as he stood up and walked back towards the sink. “I’m just lookin’ out for you and the lucky lady, big guy!”

  Loud footsteps echoed from the adjacent room before his door swung open and the ‘lucky lady’ in question quickly stomped down the hallway. Ignoring the sound of the elevator chiming in the distance, the air had become dead quiet. Ryu and I made eye contact for about a second, both attempting to keep our mouths shut to prevent any laughter from escaping. I gestured my head in the general direction of the door and whispered, “...I think we should go.”

  Ryu clenched his teeth while he scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah… probably.”

  We both quickly grabbed our important belongings and discretely snuck out through the door. Ryu booked it down the stairs while hastily buttoning his shirt back up, all the while I followed sluggishly behind, attempting to fight back against the TV static that wouldn’t stop interfering with my eyesight. ‘Maybe I just… developed an iron deficiency over the weekend,’ I thought as I tripped over the last step of the staircase, thankfully still landing on my feet. The door to the front entrance was slowly returning to its closed position, so I ran up to the door, spun around and pushed against the door with my back, swinging it wide open again. Normally, I’d be telling myself, ‘Wow, what a boneheaded decision, Genjo…’ but staring at the dormitory while stepping into the outdoors for the first time in days actually helped alleviate the burning sensation as my eyes readjusted to the outside world.

  After taking a brief moment to rub my eyes again, I slowly came to the realization that Ryu was nowhere to be found. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone so I could send him a text and… My pockets were empty. As it turns out, losing your phone means you can’t use your phone. What a concept, right? I let out an excessively loud groan. “Great - Just my luck, huh?” I thought aloud as I began to trudge towards the central park.

  A raspy, male voice crept up from behind. “You’d better not be on your way to buy a ticket for the lotto, then.”

  For once, I didn’t flinch at the sound of an unexpected speaker - Rather, my body no longer had enough energy to be startled. I pivoted about my right foot and was greeted by a familiar looking boy with messy hair and an oversized brown coat. “Rinji, what are you doing here?”

  “Good morning to you, too.” Rinji kept his arms crossed in front of his chest, only lifting his hand to take an uncomfortably long hit from his vape. A quiet crackling sound emanated from the device as the liquid inside vaporized, wasting no time getting delivered straight to his lungs. How he wasn’t choking on the vapor by this point was completely beyond me.

  I brushed my bangs out of my eyes, taking care to not accidentally let Petrov decide to give me an impromptu makeover. “...so are y-”

  Rinji took his hand off his vape and held out a finger, essentially telling me to “be patient, would ya?” A few seconds later, he finally took his vape out of his mouth, letting his arm return to its previously crossed state. But he never exhaled - He just kept holding it in. Thankfully, Rinji’s lack of eye contact truly prevented this moment from being more awkward than it needed to be. After what must’ve been at least ten seconds, Rinji finally expunged the vapor from his lungs, which lacked the typical white cloudiness that I would’ve expected - It was entirely transparent. “You could say I was just… passing by.”

  That suspense was killing me, and that’s all he had to say? Suspicious answers from a suspicious guy, I guess. “Funny. Humorous, even. Now what are you actually doing?”

  “Already told you, didn’t I?” Rinji blew away a clump of stray hairs that had fallen in front of his glasses. “I was killing time - Loitering. Lingering. Lollygagging. Take your pick.” I noticed a subtle shift in his tone. Whatever he was doing, at least he’s enjoying it. “Alright, that’s enough outta me. What’s your damage?”

  Before I knew it, we had started wandering around the park without any single destination in mind. (Oh god, does this mean that… I’m lollygagging too?) I told Rinji about the reason Ryu and I had no choice but to abandon ship and leave our dorm room, conveniently leaving out any details related to my accidental weekend-long all-nighter.

  Small, white clouds prematurely escaped Rinji’s mouth, who was unable to hold back a chuckle mid-drag. “Shit, dude. Hope you’re ready for that guy to fucking kill you later.” He shoved the vape back into his coat pocket. “Guy was just trying to get his rocks off. That ain’t a crime as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Shouldn’t’ve been so loud, then.” My legs were starting to wobble from walking so much, so I took a seat on a random bench to give them a rest and wait out the soreness. Rinji, in typical non-conformist fashion, instead chose to lean up against the nearby tree.

  “If it ain’t loud, it ain’t worth it - That’s what I say.” Rinji started rhythmically tapping his finger against the bark of the tree. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be mad if that happened to you instead. Getting interrupted when you’re mid-tap fucking blows, right?”

  My left arm started to itch. “I, uh… never actu-”

  “Hey, it’s cool. No judgment here…” Rinji held up his hands like a police officer had just asked him to show them. “Where’d your roommate go? You said you left with him, didn’t you?” I was impressed at how easily Rinji was able to change the subject like that… I appreciated it.

  “Dunno. Lost him right before I stepped outside.” It felt like the empty void in my pocket where my phone should’ve been was laughing at me. “Can’t call him either.”

  Rinji sat on the edge of the bench’s railing, refusing to sit normally like it was the last thing he’d ever do. “Gimme your number.”

  Without any warning, Rinji dropped his phone into my hands. The fear that I’d somehow find a way to drop and immediately break it nearly made me do exactly that. “Wait, what are you-”

  “Chill, I’m just gonna track your phone for a sec.” Rinji promptly snatched his phone out of my hand the instant I was done typing in my phone number. “You’ll thank me later.”

  I leaned over in an attempt to catch a glance of his phone screen. “Seems like a bit of an oversight when it comes to privacy. You can get someone’s location just from their number?”

  “Nah.” Rinji’s phone once again came flying through the air in my direction. “You also have to put in your account’s email and password for it to work. The phone number is just for verification purposes.”

  As I raised my arm to catch his phone, it slipped out of my grasp and fell into my lap, and quite painfully at that. “Good to… know.” I grimaced through the pain and typed my email and password before handing it back to Rinji. “Please tell me that’s the last thing you need…” I didn’t think my crotch would be able to take another blow.

  No reply. Rinji just silently tapped away at his phone screen with an oddly confused expression. “Hm. That can’t be right.”

  I scooted over to the other side of the bench next to Rinji. “What’s wrong?”

  Rinji smacked the side of his phone a few times, which I believe has been scientifically proven to always make electronics start working properly. “The app’s saying that your location is right on top of mine. There’s no shot that it’s-” Rinji abruptly stopped talking and zoomed in closer on his phone’s map. My phone’s icon was slightly offset from Rinji’s. “...Genjo, did you check all of your pockets?”

  “I thought so.” I frantically dug through each and every pocket - front, side, back, inside, outside - But they were all empty. “Thank god, I knew I wasn’t that stupid.”

  “Figured as much. Had to at least check, though.” Rinji stood up and began pacing around the tree to pin down the exact location. “Doesn’t seem to be moving, at least.”

  I started to lift myself up from the bench to follow him. “Hey, wait up! I’m-”

  A faint *crack* resounded from beneath my shoe.

  Rinji and I both stopped in our tracks, our eyes drawn to the origin of the sound. I slowly elevated my right leg, only to be greeted by my worst nightmare: The backside of my phone case, blending in almost perfectly with the tufts of grass. Reaching down to pick it up, I kept murmuring to myself, “Please don’t be cracked… Please don’t be cracked…” over and over. My palms began to sweat as I rotated the phone until its screen was visible, displaying a web of miniscule fractures radiating from the bottom left corner. I was stunned in place, only able to stare at my screen with my mouth agape.

  “Welp.” Rinji walked up behind me and stared at the phone screen over my shoulder, clicking his tongue periodically to break the silence. Eventually, he took the hint that I probably wasn’t going to reply any time soon. Even if I wanted to, I was too shaken up to comprise a coherent response. “Thoughts and prayers, bud,” Rinji said quietly as he gave me a hefty pat on the back and leisurely strolled away, but not before yelling back, “By the way, they do phone repairs at the smoke shop.”

  With that, Rinji took another troublingly long hit from his vape and exhaled a massive, opaque cloud into the air. At the same time, the wind picked up swiftly, dispersing it wildly throughout the air in front of me. When the cloudiness cleared, Rinji had vanished out of sight. I know that he probably just stepped behind a tree or something, but I decided to not question it and let Rinji have his moment of badassery.

  Suddenly, my phone screen lit up in my hand, displaying a text notification as best it could through the cracks and the glitches in the corner.

[171 Unread Messages]

  Holy shit. I hurriedly swiped up to unlock my phone and skimmed through an entire weekend’s worth of missed notifications. About forty percent of them were just group chat spam from the boys back home or the boys here. Another five percent were the missed calls and texts from Miss Chika Dokuro that I never read from last week. Without much thought, I swiped to the right and clicked “Delete’. And the other fifty-five percent? Well, how do I put this…

  Nearly all of them were from Aiko.

[Text Message: Aiko Matsuura :P]

“ayo, whaddup sleepyhead? (－_－) zzZ”

“u + ryu doin’ anything rn?”

“because if ur not…”

“( )っ✂╰⋃╯”

“SHIT”

“WRONG ONE”

“╰( ^o^)╮╰( ^o^)╮”

“there we go ( ◡‿◡ *)”

“i found something rly cool the other day!”

“so lemme know if u wanna check it out !! ᵔᴥᵔ”

“hey”

“ur not swamped with work, r u?”

“i hope not”

“i’m so bored (つ﹏<。)”

“r u bored too?”

“i might die of boredom tbh”

“(￣ ￣|||)”

“are coffins expensive”

“bc dad only gives me so much money each week”

“and i definitely didn’t just spend it all on books and posters (╥╯⌒╰╥๑)”

“i don’t even know if there’s space left on my wall for me to put them up”

“...why am i like this”

“so”

“is everything alright?”

“i haven’t heard from u or ryu in a while”

“ur not mad at me, right”

“（πーπ）”

“ok so i was going thru my stuff just now”

“...u left one of ur pens here”

“dummy :P”

“i’ve been taking care of it tho ❀◕ ‿ ◕❀”

“i’m like a momma bird!”

“momma bird aiko ( 〃▽〃)”

“genjo”

“quick question”

“when ur baking cookies”

“how many eggs are u supposed to put in”

“bc dad always told me “as many as your heart desires! <3” but uh”

“i don’t think they sell them in that amount”

  …and so on. I started typing back, taking caution to not cut my thumb on the cracks in the glass screen.

“AIKO HI I’M ALIVE”

“I’M SO SORRY”

“I didn’t mean to worry you”

“I lost my phone over the weekend, and I didn’t find it until now.”

“Everything is okay over in Aikoville, I assume?”

  In typical Aiko fashion, she wasted no time replying.

“omg u had me worried sick!!”

“idiot ( ⋋ · ⋌ ) [very anger]”

“don’t disappear on me like that again, ok?”

“Promise.”

“ok (*^_^*)”

“i wasn’t actually that mad”

“u just scared me for a bit”

“everything’s been fine other than that!”

“found a rly cool arcade the other day (*≧∀≦*)”

“u wanna go??”

“Sure! Might not be able to do today, though.”

“Still finishing up some homework.”

“And I gotta take my phone to a repair shop (´･_･`)”

“aw, u poor thing (｡•́︿•̀｡)”

“does tomorrow work?”

“Sounds good to me!”

“yay (≧∇≦)/”

“wait hold on”

“u said ur phone was missing, right”

“Yep”

“Why do you ask?”

“so then why wasn’t *ryu* texting me??”

“he didn’t lose phone too, did he”

“(¬､¬)”

“Don’t take it personally.”

“Trying to get a hold of that man is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“Except the barrel is in the ocean.”

“And the fish aren’t already in it, you have to wait for them to swim inside it first.”

“u know u could’ve just said ‘shooting fish in the sea’, right”

  I started checking the rest of my unread messages while walking back to my room, choosing to ignore that blunder entirely. Taisuke and Fumio had been talking endlessly about a new video game they had bought recently, and then pretended that they had ‘no idea’ they were texting the group the entire time. Sorry, guys - It’ll take more than that to drag me back into MMO hell again. Eiichi and Hiro’s conversations in the other group chat moved at such a breakneck pace that I eventually gave up on trying to follow them entirely. Honestly, my brain was struggling to keep up with anything. Most of my thoughts were sluggish and meaningless. Was the lack of sleep finally catching up to me?

  I locked my phone and tossed it onto my bed. The rest of my body soon followed. As I landed on my blanket, the reaction force briefly lifted my phone into the air before it fell right back down. Upon bouncing against the top of the sheets, the phone screen lit up again, displaying a notification reading…

[9 Unread Messages]

  …which didn’t quite make any sense. Hadn’t I already caught up on everything? I laid on my back and started swiping through my phone again. Surprisingly, I hadn’t gotten many emails over the weekend. None of my mobile games had sent me any pleas and begs to come back and spend my stamina - I hadn’t opened any of them in weeks. I deleted most of my social media a long time ago, so I didn’t have any DMs or replies to check. This is bullshit. Just what the hell am I forgetting? Purely out of habit, I clicked on Messages again. I already read all of these. There’s not going to be anything to-

[Text Message: Chika Dokuro]

  I saw it pinned at the top of my messages. Her name was sitting atop the remainder of the list comprised mostly of people I actually wanted to talk to. Didn’t I already delete these? I pressed my finger against the screen and swiped right… Unpinning the chat. Ugh, these pointless UI changes are going to kill me one day, I swear. Time to add ‘Learn how the fuck your phone works.’ to my agenda for the week. I tried holding my finger down on the chat in hopes it would bring up the option to delete it. Lucky for me, however, all it did was open the chat.

“Good evening, Sazama. I hope this message reaches you well. As I’m sure you’ve read in the email that just sent out, we have both been selected to work on the upcoming General Chemistry project together.”

“What does your schedule look like? I’d like to get a headstart on the assignment, so let me know your availability so we can get to it.”

“I look forward to working with you, Sazama.”

“I’ve gone ahead and split up each of the six chemicals on our list between the both of us. I hope you don’t mind that some of yours might appear more difficult than mine. I did some preliminary research and decided that, for some of these, you could certainly do a better job than I.”

“Forgive me if this sounds strange, but drugs and explosives are a bit more my speciality.”

“Sazama, if you don’t mind me asking, how exactly do ‘action potentials’ work? I’m afraid to admit it, but biology was never my strong suit.”

“Additionally, I’m struggling to distinguish between the ‘alpha’ carbon and the ‘beta’ carbon… I’m sure it’s much simpler than I’m making it, but could you show me what I’m doing wrong?”

“Listen… I know we’ve had our differences. I sincerely apologize if something I’ve said before affected you in a way that I didn’t intend. It is never my goal to push others away.”

“That being said, I would like to ask you to simply put those differences aside for the time being. Whether you like it or not, this is OUR assignment, and it requires your input just as much as it requires mine. Are you willing to do that? Not for me - but for yourself?”

  I shoved my phone into my jacket pocket and got out of bed. ‘I’m sorry that you’re mad about what I said to you’ is a hell of an apology, that’s for sure. I grabbed another energy drink out of the fridge, slamming the door a bit harder than I wanted to. Looking at the timestamps on those messages, none of them were from this weekend, meaning the ‘apology’ was from before the day I lost my phone. I’m not sure if that made me more or less upset than if she had sent it after the fact.

  Without anything else to do, I pulled my hood up over my headphones and went for a walk to clear my head. I mean, it’s not like I was tired.

~

  Classes were fairly uninteresting today. Theatre got canceled for unspecified reasons, which was a blessing in disguise for Aiko, who had to spend her whole morning putting the finishing touches on a rough draft of her history paper she had been procrastinating on. Calculus went about as well as Calculus always does - I didn’t pay much attention while Hiro took notes like a courtroom stenographer hyped up on amphetamines. During lunch, Eiichi droned on and on about some blonde chick on a dating app who told him about all of the kinky things she wanted to him in excruciating detail. Thankfully, I managed to tune most of it out, eating my cafeteria-quality sashimi in relative peace - That was, except for Ryu shouting, “She wanted to shove WHAT up your dickhole??”

  I didn’t have the energy to hang out with anybody, so I just walked straight back to my dorm after classes were over. A fresh can of Creature Energy (not trademarked, oddly) was sitting on top of my computer, so I cracked it open and reclined back into my chair. My feet rested on the edge of my desk, accidentally knocking off a pencil or two in the process. I took out my phone and stared at it blankly. Abandoning my friends after lunch but then randomly texting them asking them what they’re up to might be a bit rude, and something in my gut told me that texting her was a bad idea.

  So I opened one of those games that I hadn’t played in lord knows how long. After mindlessly waiting over half an hour for the game to download the update files, the game’s mascot sent me a ‘Welcome back!’ message that came with a metric shit ton of rewards, presumably to catch me back up with other players. One glance at the new main menu nearly gave a heart attack with how many new game modes and maps they had added. I hurriedly got back to building my old characters and rolling for new ones - which I should mention there were fifty-seven of them - and subsequently learning that the game had three new rarities…

  Ryu walked in through the door, proclaiming, “Honey, I’m home!” before beelining straight for the bathroom. I’m shocked he was able to shout at all considering how out of breath he sounded. “Don’t look at my shirt. There aren’t any stains on it. And if there were any stains, they absolutely are not shit stains.” The loud squeal of the shower head turning on and the sounds of water splashing against the tile would argue against at least some of Ryu’s assertion.

  I didn’t look away from my game, lest I figure out exactly which part he was lying about. “I’d hope not. It’d be quite the feat to get shit stains on your shirt of all things.” Before I knew it, I had already finished a raid, which was a bit weird - I remember raids taking longer than that.

  “For once, I’m glad I’m not that talented.” The shower shut off just as quickly as it had turned on, and Ryu stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. “Just a pretty nasty oil spill when I was doing maintenance on the sailboat.” He walked up behind and leaned down to get a closer look at my screen. “No way, you still play Vanquish the Venom, bro?” Ryu let out a quick chuckle. “You do know what year it is, right?”

  My thumbs kept executing combos like they were nothing, like my muscle memory from high school was finally kicking in. “Shut up, man. I just got bored and felt like giving it a revisit to kill time for a few minutes.”

  Ryu’s head stayed next to mine, watching the screen as mindlessly as I was. “Mhm. Been a pretty fun ‘couple of minutes’, then?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I replied, shortly before noticing that I was already done with another raid. “By the way, you shower pretty damn fast. I had only just started this raid right as you got back.”

  “...Mhm.” Ryu sighed.

  My eyes stayed glued to the screen as I started rolling for another new 8-star character. “What’s wrong?”

  Ryu tapped me on the shoulder, and I immediately jumped in my seat. I took one look out the window - it was pitch black outside. “Did you even have a clue how long you’d been sitting here?”

  I spun around in my chair until I faced Ryu, giving him a huge smile and a thumbs up.

  “God fucking-” Ryu muttered as his head sank into his hands. “And let me guess… you haven’t gotten any sleep today, have you?”

  I flipped my hand over until I was giving him a thumbs down instead. My facial expression stayed unchanged.

  Ryu, now fully dressed, hopped into bed. “I have no idea how the hell you’re still awake, dude. Props for that, at least.” He chugged the rest of a bottle of water and tossed it into the trash. The empty bottle bounced off the top of the pile of scrap paper and rolled gently to the ground. “Get some rest. Seriously.”

  “Sure, if it’ll get you off my ass,” I said sarcastically as I closed out of the game and changed into my sweatpants. “But I’m not even that tired. I’ll be fine.”

  “I mean it.” Ryu rolled over to face my side of the room, pointing both of his fingers at me, then his eyes, and then back at me.

  I rolled my eyes and pulled the sheets over my body. “Haha… Alright, man.”

  The room was dark and eerily silent. Ryu wasn’t snoring, the air conditioning wasn’t humming, and the neighbors weren’t fucking - Just a perfectly still, quiet room.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  Every time I tried to close my eyes, I wouldn’t drift off to sleep - Or at least, not the kind of sleep that I wanted. When my eyes were shut, all I saw was blue. Bright blue. Somehow, I knew it could see me too, but only while my eyes were shut, like somebody painted them onto the inside of my eyelids. Every time I tried to remember where I had seen that shade of blue, a jolt of pain surged through my head. If this was some type of prank… it wasn’t funny.

  I took a glance towards Ryu’s side of the room to make sure he was still fast asleep. I slowly crept out of bed, grabbed my phone and my bag, and quietly snuck out of the room. Did I have any plan on where to go? Not really. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to face what awaited me when I tried.

  I wandered around campus for about an hour or so. Unsurprisingly, nothing interesting happens on campus at night. My legs aimlessly carried me wherever they pleased, like they had completely seized autonomy from my brain. They abruptly stopped in front of an incredibly large building - One that I wished I would never return to.

  ‘Byrne Center for the Performing Arts’.

  The door slowly opened as I approached it. I didn’t remember this place having automatic doors, but then again, Aiko and I didn’t exactly enter this building in the most legal fashion the first time we were here. On the inside, I was shocked at how similar yet eerily different everything looked. The mural of the world on the ceiling was much more vibrant than I remembered, not to mention that it had clearly been updated to include countries that didn’t exist in the original painting, since their art was in a noticeably different style. South Sudan, Montenegro… even Serbia. How old was this damn building?

  I took a quick peek into the various rooms that split off from the mezzanine. They were all well-kept classrooms, each containing miniature stages for class performances and plenty of extra space for students to spread out and practice. Their walls and floors were pristine, almost like the ones in Nakanishi-Bennett. In fact, the resemblance was unnaturally similar. I felt a strange itch inside my head at the thought of it, but it faded just as quickly as it had popped into my head before I could scratch at it.

  I left the Byrne Center before any more chills could run themselves down my spine. One man can only take so many bone-chilling experiences for one week, and I was already way past the quota. Unfortunately, stepping back out into the dead of night was just as mind-numbing as I remembered.

  Before I could come up with any better ideas, I found myself heading towards my chemistry classroom in Kurosawa Hall. As I sat in my regular seat, my mind started to melt into a pile of sludge. I looked down at my phone to check the time - 5:17 A.M. - Almost time for sunrise. I was more certain than ever that my internal clock had been absolutely obliterated. I mean, who the hell stays up this late wandering around campus? Now that I think about it, isn’t it a bit odd that most of these buildings stay unlocked after hours?

  The rising of the sun from beyond the classroom’s glass windows told me not to worry about that.

~

“...Sazama.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose between my eyes and shut my eyelids, hoping I’d give my extraocular muscles a brief moment of respite. To say that they hurt was one hell of an understatement - Frankly, I wanted to gouge them out of my sockets to get them to stop spasming. “Professor Hirotada, can you repeat the question?”

  Hirotada’s chalk wailed as it scraped against the chalkboard, adding a tally underneath a section that he had labeled ‘Sazama Falls Asleep During Class’. About 13 tallies were already written underneath it, which seemed just a little bit exaggerated to me. “Would somebody like to do a huge favor for Mr. Sazama and remind him where he should be during this lesson?”

  A voice that I should’ve recognized came from somewhere in the classroom. “We’ve been discussing radiation. I guess it’s like, when uranium-”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what radiation is.” I stretched my shoulders back, cracking my upper back at the same time. “So… what about it?”

  “Something about… I don’t know…” He stumbled through his words, but eventually figured it out. “Oh, yeah! He was asking you to explain why helium is most often found in nature with… thorium? Pretty gnarly stuff, if you ask me.” I should recognize that voice. Why can’t I recognize that voice?

  I cracked my knuckles as I stretched my arms forward this time. “Pfft. Easy.” Listening to the sounds of a few students whispering or chattering amongst themselves in the background, I reached down below my desk and grabbed my can of Creature Energy (still not trademarked) and took a long sip. “Alpha particles.”

  “Listen up, everyone!” Hirotada smacked his hands together in an attempt to get the rest of the class to pay attention. “Do tell, Sazama… What the heck is an ‘alpha particle’?” While I knew it was a rhetorical question, it wasn’t exactly a reassuring one to hear from the professor.

  “Well, radiation is what happens when a nucleus is unstable, right? So imagine you have a nucleus…” I held up my right hand and waved it around in a circle to designate it as our ‘nucleus’, shaking it slightly to represent the instability. “...and this nucleus really wants to get rid of all of this excess energy.” I lifted up my left hand, positioning it behind the other. “Our nucleus is going to emit an alpha particle to release that pent up energy and keep itself stable.” I clenched my left hand into a fist and dragged it away from my right hand, which I stopped shaking in tandem.

  A student raised their hand, but didn’t wait for anyone to call on them before they spoke. “What does that have to do with helium, though? That’s what the question was about, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, you didn’t let me finish.” I put my right hand down, holding up only the ‘alpha particle’. “This particle is made of two protons and two neutrons. Since this gives it an atomic number of 2…”

  “...that means it’s a helium atom!” The pitch in the other student’s voice rose as they answered their own question before I could. “Thanks, that makes much more sense.”

  Hirotada chimed back in to direct the attention of the class back to him. “Excellent work, everyone.” He started to draw a crude representation of the process that I had just enacted for the classroom on the chalkboard. “As Sazama stated, an alpha particle is the result of the emission of energy from an unstable element, not unlike Sazama himself.”

  …I wasn’t a fan of how many people in the class laughed at that joke.

  “Larger, more unstable elements contain more energy, and thus will radiate more alpha particles than smaller ones to achieve the same effect.” Hirotada’s diagram slowly became longer and more complicated. “This is why all elements larger than uranium had to be created in a lab - They’re simply too big and unstable to exist in nature. Eventually, they will all decay to a more stable state, regardless of how much energy they need to release in order to get there.”

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  Another student raised their hand. “Sorry, professor. I have a question, too. For Sazama, I mean.”

  Just as I had started to zone out, the sound of my name made me jump. “Huh?”

  Professor Hirotada added a 14th tally to the board.

  I turned around in my chair to get a better glimpse of the person speaking. Shocking literally no one, it was Dokuro. “Do alpha particles have anything to do with alpha carbons, by chance?”

  ‘No. That’s a stupid question,’ I thought to myself. But out of respect for everyone in the class, I kept listening.

  “I was just doing some research into my project for this class, and I kept coming across that terminology when looking into structures and reactions.” Dokuro took a pause to wipe her glasses, but kept speaking as she cleaned them. “Why is the letter ‘alpha’ used for two completely unrelated concepts? Does that not get confusing?”

  “Oh, they use alpha for more than just ‘two concepts’, so sorry about that.” I tapped my finger against my temple to jumpstart my brain. “Sometimes they use it to distinguish between two different isomers of sugars, or as a variable for rotation, among other things. You’d think they’d try using any of the other 23 letters, but I guess not.”

  Dokuro finally put her hand back down. Had she been holding it up this whole time? “Interesting. I always thought alpha was designated to mean ‘first’, since it’s the first letter of the Greek alphabet, after all.” She turned away from me to face the chalkboard again. “...thank you.”

  Hirotada ended class not long after that, although I elected to wait until Dokuro left the classroom before getting up. That confrontation didn’t seem worth having today. Once she stepped out of the lecture hall, I reached for my bag and stood up from my desk.

  Then the voice I should’ve recognized came from behind me. “Didn’t wanna sit in the back with me, huh? I’m hurt, Gen… How could you hurt me like this??”

  I groaned. “No you aren’t, Eiichi.” His hair somehow looked even more vibrant and gaudy than usual. “How was I supposed to know where you were gonna sit? You aren’t even in this class.”

  Eiichi was running a comb made out of silver through his luscious, blue hair. Even in the middle of a bit, he still has to maintain his appearance. “As of today, I am in this class.” When he was done fixing his hair, he spun the comb in between his fingers and nonchalantly shoved it into his pocket. “I talked to my advisor the other day and - get this - Apparently, I actually have to sign up for the course requirements for Metallurgy during certain semesters, and I gotta take General Chemistry this year. Talk about a fuckin’ joke, dude. I’ve already got chemistry - and it’s with that chick, Kei, in the back.”

  Just as Eiichi mentioned Kei, a girl came walking down the steps behind him while laughing to herself as he turned around, gave her a smooch on the cheek and offhandedly waved her goodbye.

  “Wow.” I tried to get a quick look at Kei without gawking at her and making her uncomfortable. She was short - really short. Her gold dress sparkled so much, I couldn’t have looked at her longer even if I wanted to. “And you met her… when?”

  Eiichi shrugged. “During class. I hit her with the ‘can I get your number so I can catch up on the notes?’ Ah, the oldest trick in the book.”

  I walked out of the classroom with Eiichi to avoid bothering Hirotada with any more of our ‘guy talk’. “Do you always enroll in classes late? That doesn’t sound like the most sustainable pickup strategy.”

  “Not my fault they didn’t tell me what classes I’d need.” Eiichi’s phone started to vibrate erratically. His internal debate over whether or not to answer the call was apparent from the furrow in his brow. “Why the hell do I need chemistry for blacksmithing, anyway?”

  “I’ll answer your question with my own.” I made my way out of the classroom. “What is brass made out of?”

  Eiichi followed close behind. “...Gold, right?”

  I didn’t feel like correcting him, but I guess I have to finish my explanation anyway. “And what is gold, Eiichi?”

  He scratched his head. “Hey, I haven’t learned all of the molecules yet. Go easy on me!” God, ‘himbo’ is not a strong enough word for this guy. “Point taken, though.”

  “See?” I stopped outside the door to the classroom to tie my left shoe. “By the way, do not expect me to be your-”

  “I think I’ll need a tutor.” Eiichi leaned up against the doorframe above me and waited. “Say, Gen… Aren’t you supposed to be the-”

  I pulled my laces tight and quickly stood up, making sure to dodge Eiichi on the way up. “Nope. Never heard of him.”

  Eiichi’s head sank. “Come on, I didn’t even get to-”

  “I can’t just carry you through the class, Eiichi.” I lightly punched him in the arm and started to walk towards the front door. “I know it’s boring as hell, but you gotta take it for a reason.”

  He dragged his feet as he caught up to me. “I get it, I get it… but listen - You gotta understand, I need help. Don’t you know-”

  A different voice overpowered Eiichi’s in my head, moving from my left ear to my right. “-that it’s not always about you?”

  I stopped in my tracks as I pushed the door open to step outside. “...What did you say? I didn’t catch that-”

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Sazama.” This time, the voice moved in the opposite direction, echoing and layering over itself. “You’re not the man you think you are.”

  I bolted out of Kurosawa Hall and stopped to catch my breath, grabbing onto the railing on the steps down to the sidewalk. I threw my headphones off my head and pulled them down onto my shoulders.

  Eiichi sat on the railing in front of me. “Hey, you didn’t let me finish back there.” He seemed completely unfazed. If that wasn’t Eiichi… What the fuck did I just hear?

  “...I’ll do it.” I stood up straight and held out my hand for Eiichi to shake. “No reason not to help out a friend, right?”

  Eiichi smiled and shook my hand, very obviously putting in effort to look suave while doing so. “Sick. You da man, Gen.” With that, he wasted no time casually walking away, but not before turning around and snapping his fingers and pointing in my direction. “Tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” I snapped my fingers back at him. “You still gotta do your own homework, though.”

  He snapped with his other hand. “7,000 yen?”

  Running out of hands to snap with, I retaliated with both. “Not unless you wanna come to my academic dishonesty trial.”

  Eiichi gave me a thumbs down from a distance - presumably sticking his tongue out at me too - before disappearing into the endless mass of pedestrians. It was kind of surprising how easily a guy like Eiichi could blend into a crowd despite his fame and appearance. Hell, even some douche who still wore his suit and tie to school was more noticeable than him. Guess it goes to show just how grandiose and important everybody else here thinks they are.

  The words “The world doesn’t revolve around you,” kept repeating themselves in my head. I couldn’t put a name to the voice that said them. It obviously wasn’t Eiichi, and I’d heard Dokuro’s voice too recently to mistake it for hers - Even though it sounded exactly like something she’d say. For a second, I thought it could’ve been Cleo, if not for the drastic difference in tone. I racked my brain trying to recall as many voices as possible during my walk to biology class, but turned up with almost nothing. That is, except for one possibility that I didn’t really want to consider.

  What if I had just completely imagined it?

~

[Text Message: Aiko Matsuura :P]

“Done with class”

“You still wanna go to that arcade?”

“yep! ٩(＾◡＾)۶”

“hope u brought enough coins hehe”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Most arcades nowadays just use cards now.”

“Shouldn’t need that many.”

“oh ur so gonna regret that”

“this place is retro as hell”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Should I meet you outside your dorm?”

“u aren’t here already?”

“>:(“

“Message received…”

“I’ll be right over.”

  After a short walk downtown, Aiko and I stopped in front of a mysterious staircase leading down below the bookstore. “It should be… right here!” Aiko held out her arm, gesturing for me to head down. “Ladies first.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I grabbed Aiko’s wrist and gently dragged her down the stairs with me. “Don’t fall too far behind. I might need you to show me where the front door is.”

  Aiko wrapped her hand around my own wrist and started rushing down the steps, making me occasionally stumble as we approached the arcade’s entrance. “Ugh, you move too slow! Aren’t you excited??”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at Aiko’s almost child-like excitement. “Yeah, but it’s not like I’ve never been to an arcade before. I’m not gonna-”

  The door to the arcade swung open as Aiko yanked on my arm, pulling me inside the establishment. It was dark inside, illuminated only by the screens of the arcade machines and the flashing purple lights lining the walls and ceiling. The arcade was incredibly spacious, spanning across my entire field of view and filled to the brim with classic video games and other, more modern activities. There was a distinct scent wafting through the air that instantly washed over me as I stepped inside - It smelled like pizza and dreams that hadn’t yet been crushed by the indifferent cruelty of the universe.

  Aiko let go of my arm and stood in front of me triumphantly with a smug grin on her face. “What did I say? Impressed yet?” She placed her hands on her hips and basked in the glory of proving me wrong.

  I reluctantly conceded. “You said it was ‘rly cool’, but I’m leaning more towards ‘pretty cool’ myself.”

  “Hmph.” Aiko’s triumph quickly turned pouty. “You never let me be right about anything…” She started mumbling to herself, saying something about, “...and during women’s history month, too.”

  Ignoring the fact that I usually let her win most arguments, she made a pretty solid point. “I think that was last month, Aiko. Now come on, let’s go check this shit out already!”

  Aiko’s mood changed on a dime as she started running into the maze of arcade machines. “Hehe, I was waiting for you to say that! Hurry up or you’ll get lost!”, she yelled before taking a swift left turn down the third row of game cabinets. Had she already learned where all of her favorite machines were?

  I chased after Aiko, unconcerned by the sharp spike in my heart rate as I turned the same corner as her. When I caught up to her, I was greeted by two towering arcade cabinets titled ‘Trance Dance: Enhanced’. Each machine had a brightly lit up dance mat with arrows all pointing in different directions. Aiko stood in front of both of the machines, completely enamored by them.

  “Holy shit, they still make these?” I asked. “I thought this game got discontinued years ago.”

  “Nope, it’s always been a thing.” Aiko’s eyes were glued to the screens, watching the demo footage of the computer players somehow failing miserably at an impossibly fast pop song. Were the computers not programmed to be good at their own game? “They actually tried to rebrand about five years ago. I think they called it like, ‘Crampy Dancy’, but people really hated the name, so it wasn’t long before they changed it back.”

  My eyes slowly became glued to the screens as well. The speed that the arrows flew across the screen made my head spin trying to follow them. “You sure know your stuff.”

  “Of course I do!” Aiko elbowed me. “Didn’t I tell you? I used to beat all of my dad’s high scores in Trance Dance when I was a kid. I’m cracked at this game, Genjo.”

  “Damn straight.” I took a step back away from the machine. “Can’t wait to watch the master at work.”

  Aiko pulled me back towards the machine. “Oh no, you don’t. We’re both gonna play.”

  I wrestled my arm out of Aiko’s grip. “Wait, wait, wait, wait. I am not going up there.”

  She angrily crossed her arms. “Aww… Lame. Why not?”

  “Because I’m not a dancer.” I felt my legs ache at the mere thought of dancing. “Can’t we go play something else? Maybe something less… demanding?”

  Aiko’s scowl wouldn’t budge.

  My foot started to tap to the beat of the song playing over the game’s speakers. “You’re not going to guilt trip me into playing, you know.”

  Her eyes only narrowed further.

  I sighed. “...Fine.” With my hands in my jacket pockets, I stepped up onto the dance pad.

  Aiko nearly squealed with excitement. “Oh my god, yes!!!” She hopped onto the dance pad next to mine and immediately began scrolling through the list of songs. “Thank god they added a joystick to these machines. When I was a kid, you had to step on the arrows on the floor to use the menus. It was super annoying.” Aiko was talking so quickly, I was worried that she was about to burst at the seams.

  I warily approached the joystick and looked at the near infinite song selection that the game offered. “I already regret this decision, Aiko.”

  “Pfft, you’ll be alright.” Her eyes lit up as she finally stopped at one song on the list. “Hey, you like this band, right? Let’s do one of their songs! That’ll help you get in the groove real fast!”

  I eventually found the spot in the list that Aiko had reached. “Wait, Aiko, this is one of their fastest songs. Shouldn’t we-”

  “Too late. Already picked it!” Before I could get another word in, the game began loading the beatmap for the song on both of our machines. “Shit, I forgot you have to put in credits before you can play.”

  “Oops! How unfortunate!” I turned to step down off the dance pad. “Looks like we’ll just have to-”

  “Nuh-uh.” Aiko grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me back up. “You’re not getting out of this.”

  I leaned up against the machine. “But don’t we have to go buy one of those stupid cards? Arcade games these days aren’t-”

  “Coin operated?” Aiko pulled a quarter out of her pocket and inserted it into a slot on the machine, which played an obnoxiously loud jingle in response. She held another quarter in between her fingers and looked at me more smug than ever.

  I rolled my eyes and snatched the quarter out of her hand. “...Women’s history month.”

  The music emitting from the machine became exponentially louder after we inserted enough credits to start playing. I briefly saw the difficulty select pop up on the screen, but it disappeared after only a few frames. I turned my head towards Aiko. “Hey, was it supposed to do that?”

  Aiko’s heart sank. “Uh oh.”

  That didn’t sound good. I ran my right hand through my bangs to get them out of my face. “What do you mean, ‘uh oh?’”

  She rubbed the back of her left hand with her right thumb. “So… I kinda clicked on ‘Expert’ without thinking. You know, muscle memory… Haha…”

  The shock I experienced from the sound of the game starting nearly killed me on the spot. “Aiko. I’m killing you after this game ends.”

  Arrow after arrow flooded my screen without much prep time. Since each of the four arrows that indicated where and when to step were all laid out in a horizontal line on the top of the screen, I had no idea how my brain was supposed to translate that into the four cardinal directions on the pad below my feet. I could feel my legs getting twisted up like my headphone wires as my feet frantically jittered across the floor, praying that I was even hitting the notes in the first place. All of the bright, blinding colors started to melt together into a rainbow blob as my eyes began burning again.

  “Hey, Aiko…” I barely managed to muster any words. My heart began to pound out of my chest.

  “Hm? What’s up?” Aiko replied without diverting too much attention away from the game - I could tell because the score in the top right of the screen labeled ‘Player 1’ kept climbing rapidly.

  My body started to heat up like a space heater. “Do you think we should… start over on a lower difficulty?” At the same time, my head felt lighter, and not in a good way.

  It sounded like Aiko was responding to my question, but I couldn’t quite discern any words through the ringing in my ears, which was getting louder and higher pitched every second. I kept trying to focus on the game, but it was hard to make out any of the arrows. The screen started to glitch, turning into TV static, making it impossible to play.

  Somehow, I didn’t realize that anything was wrong until the glitching TV static started to spread beyond the Trance Dance screen.

  The temperature of my body fluctuated between piping hot and biting cold. My head began spinning, but my feet kept making their best attempts at following along with notes that I could no longer see through the static veil. I clutched my skull in an attempt to quell the feeling that my head was about to burst. I only managed to utter out a few more words before the plug finally got pulled from my brain.

  “...Ai…ko… I t-told you… I couldn’t… d-dance…”

~

  I awoke in my bed with my MP3 player in my hand, an ice pack on my neck, and a splitting headache. Disoriented. Lethargic. Famished. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more dejected in my life. My thoughts were still mostly dull and hazy. It was difficult to think about anything for longer than just a few seconds. Each memory came and went in waves, fluctuating in and out of my subconscious. Aiko… Pizza… Static… Alpha particles… Eggs?

  Ryu tapped me on the forehead. “Lift your head up.”

  I swatted his finger away from my face. “What?”

  “Just do it.” Ryu pushed his hand in between my pillow and the back of my head and gently lifted up, replaced the ice pack under my neck, and set it back down. “So… How was your nap?” The way that he asked that question felt weirdly condescending. He sounded like my mom.

  “Awful.” My upper body shivered from the bitter cold pressed up against my skin. I tried rolling my shoulders to work out the soreness before realizing that my entire body was aching from head to toe. “Fuck… I wasn’t out for long, was I?”

  Ryu placed a bottle of orange-colored juice in my hand and unscrewed the cap. “Not enough to make up for four days of sleep deprivation, that’s for sure.” He held out his arm for me to grab onto so he could pull me up until I was sitting up straight. “Drink up. I doubt there’s a single electrolyte left in your body at this point.”

  I took a quick swig from the bottle - Mango flavored. “I don’t need you to babysit me like this, Ryu. Trust me, I’m doing fine.”

  “Well, you might not need me to take care of you…” Ryu reached for my pillow to grab the ice pack and put it back on my neck. “...but Aiko does, apparently.”

  “What-” I hunched over as the stinging sensation in my neck returned. “Hey! Could you give me a warning next time?” I took a much longer drink out of the bottle. It’s honestly absurd how much better water and juice taste when you’re dangerously dehydrated. “Wait, now that you mention it… Where is she?”

  A faint *crack* came from inside the fridge as Ryu cracked open another bottle of juice. “You’re lucky she caught you before your head could hit the ground. Those Trance Dance machines can hurt like a bitch, you know. Make sure you thank her next time you see her, or she might just make you pass out again on purpose.”

  I chugged the rest of the drink in my hand and carelessly tossed the bottle onto the ground. “That doesn’t answer my question.” My arms started to feel lighter as my muscles began relaxing, if only just a little bit.

  “Let me finish my story first, ya grouch.” Ryu quickly replaced the bottle in my hand with a new one. “I was in the middle of working on a model when she came knockin’ on the door like her life depended on it. When I opened the door, she dragged you in here like a corpse. It’s nothing short of a miracle nobody at the front desk stopped her on her way up the elevator.”

  Based on the small bruises on my legs, I was worried she might have chosen the stairs over the elevator. I suppose Ryu figured I had enough energy back in my system to untwist the cap myself, because he didn’t bother to take it off for me this time. “You’d be surprised how little they care. Now, if Yukio was the one working the desk, I don’t think I’ll ever live that down.”

  Ryu leaned against my bedframe and twirled his pen in his hand. “Anyway, she came in here asking me to nurse you back to health. She told me that she would’ve stayed to help, but that she needed to pick up some things from the store first.”

  Eventually, I managed to wrestle the cap off the bottle. “Is Aiko still there, then?”

  “Nope.” Ryu’s pen flew out of his hand and lightly smacked against his chin. “Like I said, she had other things to take care of.” He bent down to pick the pen back up and put it back in his shirt pocket. “She also thought a shower might do you some good. You can probably guess why she wouldn’t be up here for that.”

  I slowly crawled out of bed and tried not to stumble as I walked towards the bathroom. “Glad to know my sex appeal hasn’t changed much.” I hastily grabbed a shirt and a pair of sweatpants before taking a quick run through the shower. For some reason, the water coming out of the shower head warmed up faster than usual. I chalked it up to it being the first time I’d taken a shower in this room without Ryu wasting the hot water first. I decided to relish in the heat for a few minutes longer than I typically take in the shower, but still tried to have some sense of urgency.

  When I stepped out of the bathroom, I had already dried myself off and thrown my hoodie and sweatpants back on. Ryu leaned back in his chair, like he was making sure I hadn’t somehow managed to pass out again in the shower. “I’d wear lighter clothes if I were you. You were running one hell of a fever while you were unconscious.”

  I zipped up my jacket. “Not unconscious anymore, am I?”

  “Touché.” Ryu went back to hovering over his desk to assemble another one of his model ships. “By the way, it’d be real cool if you remembered to not leave blood on the tile in there. Don’t need housekeeping thinking we’ve killed anyone during our first month.”

  I grimaced and let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah… About that-”

  Ryu held his hand up, telling me to stop. “I won’t pry. But if you did actually kill someone over the weekend, Hiro and I’ve got alibis.”

  “Heh, you know me...” I looked down at the scar in my left palm - At least it was finally starting to heal again. “Can I borrow your deodorant real quick? Just this once.”

  A loud groan came from Ryu’s side of the room. “Didn’t you say something about getting a job? You can’t be that broke, can you?”

  I silently popped the cap off the top of Ryu’s can of deodorant and gave myself a quick spray under each arm. “Working on it. I don’t even like the spray kind. Believe me, I want to have my own money just as much as you want me to.”

  Ryu’s phone started vibrating irritatingly loudly against his desk. “Of course she calls me during the hardest step-” he mumbled to himself before frustratingly setting his palette knife down and picking up the phone. “What?” I couldn’t make out what the voice on the other end of the call was saying, but Ryu was having absolutely none of it. “...Fine. I’m sorry for snapping… Yes, everything’s fine… No, I’m not mad. Are you done yet?” After a few seconds, Ryu simply replied, “Cool.” and hung up the phone.

  I grabbed my headphones off the stand on my desk and slung them around my neck. I didn’t notice it at the time, but I also grabbed my bag purely out of habit. “What was all that about? That wasn’t your step-mom, was it?”

  “Thank god, it wasn’t.” Ryu stood up and stared at his incomplete model ship. He grabbed a glass cover and set it on top of the model parts, shed a single manly tear, threw a leather jacket over his shoulder and walked out the door. “Aiko’s waiting on us. Let’s go.”

  “Wait, she’s what?” I hurriedly threw my shoes on and stayed back to tie them. “Hey, don’t leave without me!”

  Ryu stopped in the doorframe. “Oh, yeah. Forgot you didn’t know where she’s at.”

  I lazily pulled on my shoelaces and sauntered over to Ryu. “Gee, I wonder if there’s anyone I could’ve asked during the past 20 minutes.”

  “Wow, me and you both!” Ryu and I hopped in the elevator and rode it down to the first floor. “Do you want to go get a ‘Funniest Roommate in the World’ award, while we’re at it?”

  The speaker let out an ear-piercing *ding* as the elevator door opened. “No thanks, I’m actually working on being more humble.” I followed Ryu down a hallway that went past the front desk. “Where are we going, exactly?” We stopped in front of a door that I had never entered before.

  Ryu smiled and said, “Why don’t you find out for yourself?” before pushing the door open and shoving me into the room without warning. I tripped on my poorly tied shoelaces and fell straight into the only other person in the room. Luckily, I braced myself against their shoulders in time and managed to avoid tackling them to the ground.

  In my state of fight-or-flight, my brain didn’t bother to register who was actually in front of me. “Holy shit, I am so sorry. My friend and I were just-”

  “Teehee… Took y’all long enough!” The person who I had nearly fallen into was none other than the lovely Aiko Matsuura. “Seriously, I texted Ryu like, 14 times trying to get y’all down here. I’ve been waiting forever!”

  I looked up at Aiko’s face, which was beaming with joy like usual, realizing that our faces were incredibly close. I quickly stepped back and took my hands off her shoulders. “My bad… I didn’t-”

  Ryu shut the door behind him. “I said I was busy, didn’t I?”

  Aiko flicked Ryu on the nose. “And I said the plan was for you to bring him down as soon as he woke up, didn’t I?”

  My eyes were drawn to Aiko’s outfit, particularly because of how… abnormally normal it was for her. She was wearing… a t-shirt? And an apron? “Woah, what’s this about a plan?” In that very instant, I could hear my brain tell me to “Look around, idiot.”

  We were in a large kitchen space, complete with an oven, stove burners, a vent hood, and a large circular table. The scent of chicken broth flowed through the air, originating from a massive pot resting on a burner in the center of the table.

  “Oh, good! The surprise actually worked!” Aiko dragged me by the hand over to the table and pulled out a chair for me. I took a seat and set my bag on the ground beneath the chair in between me and Aiko. “While you were asleep, Ryu and I thought it would be fun for us all to make hot pot together when you woke back up!”

  “Run that back,” Ryu chimed in as he pulled out his own chair on the opposite side of the table. “Aiko thought it would be fun, and I had no reason not to go along with it - Common misconception.”

  Aiko threw an uncooked noodle at Ryu from her seat. “Oh, shush - I saw the way your eyes lit up before the word ‘pot’ ever left my mouth.” She swiveled her chair towards mine. “...Nitpicking aside, that’s why I wasn’t there when you woke up. I had to run to the store and get all of the ingredients… and the utensils.” The smile on her face slowly faded. “...and the pot.”

  I laughed, if only to lighten her spirits. “I thought you said you’d already spent your money for the week.”

  “Haha, about that…” Aiko nervously scratched the back of her neck. “I might’ve told Dad that I’d spend the money on textbooks…”

  Ryu tossed the raw noodle back at Aiko. “Oh my god, you two are hopeless. If I have to pay next time, I’ll do it.”

  Aiko’s ear perked up. “Hm? Did I hear somebody say there’d be a ‘next time’ over there?”

  “Nope.” Ryu started twirling the tip of his hair with his finger as he stared into space.

  Aiko and I wasted no time chopping up vegetables while Ryu reclined back in his chair and watched. I set all of the mushrooms, carrots and bok choy in a colander and started washing them in the sink. Meanwhile, Aiko started cutting the beef and pork belly into small pieces.

  “Stop. No. You’re doing it wrong.” A loud screech rang out as Ryu got out of his chair and walked over next to Aiko. “Your beef isn’t sliced thin enough - It needs to be thinner so it’ll cook right.” He grabbed his pen out of his pocket and clicked it… only for the tip to come out as a regular pen.

  I looked over my shoulder to the sight of Ryu holding a pen up to a chunk of beef. “Pfft… I don’t think you’re gonna make much progress with that, bud.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Ryu unclicked his pen and put it away. “The idea was better in my head.”

  Aiko delicately handed a knife to Ryu. “Aww, did somebody’s super awesome magic dagger not work?” Were the puppy dog eyes and the baby voice overkill? Probably. But seeing those in addition to the way that she puckered her lips and touched the tips of her pointer fingers together made me burst in laughter so hard that I almost dropped all of the vegetables in the sink. “Poor thing… It would’ve been so cool…”

  Ryu’s less cool, non-magic knife fiercely shredded the beef into strips that were properly thin enough to go into a hot pot. “I don’t have to hang out with you guys, you know. But I do, because I like it, believe it or not.”

  “Sorry, I’ll drop it. You know that I never actually mean it when I’m playing around like that.” Aiko was now carefully observing Ryu’s cutting technique and doing her best to imitate it. “You’re really good at this, Ryu! I’m actually kind of jealous.”

  “Heh, thanks.” Ryu’s smile slowly returned. “I forgive you. I knew it wasn’t that deep.” He compared a piece of meat from Aiko’s cutting board with one from his own. “I’m impressed. You’re picking up on this a lot faster than I thought.”

  I brought the washed vegetables back to the table and started helping out with the rest of the ingredients, and before long, we finally got to start putting everything into the pot. “I’m honestly surprised the pen trick didn’t work. I kinda wish we got to keep those weapons.”

  Aiko scooped some meat and dumplings out of the pot and into her bowl, nearly overflowing it with broth. “I don’t. Thinking about cutting my hand off while putting my hair up sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen.”

  Ryu avoided scooping up any mushrooms as he took his turn. “Well, neither of you had to buy a whole new notepad because your pen stabbed right through it. That shit blows.”

  “Y’all know what I mean.” I grabbed some extra mushrooms to maintain the meat to veggie ratio inside the hot pot. “It’d be nice to get to use some of those powers when we’re not… you know…”

  “In… there, you mean.” Ryu sat there blowing on his food for a really long time to cool it down. “I’m with you on that. Shit gives me the creeps.”

  Aiko twirled the noodles around in her bowl, waiting for the entire bowl to cool before she started eating. “One of the most traumatizing experiences of my life, for sure.”

  Ryu talked while chewing on one of his dumplings. “Same. Fuck that-”

  “But…” Aiko’s gaze got lost in the broth. “I wouldn’t be as close to you guys if we hadn’t done something.” She started to rest her cheek in her palm. “...so in a way, I’m still glad we went.”

  While Ryu wasn’t looking, I snuck a piece of pork belly out of his bowl and put it in mine. “You know…” I took a quick pause to slurp up the rest of a noodle that I wasn’t able to fit into one bite. “I actually went and stopped by that auditorium this morning.”

  Ryu mumbled underneath his breath. “You too, huh?”

  “Yep.” I got distracted by a rumbling sound coming from behind the wall. “Is that… the laundry room?”

  Aiko looked up from her bowl. “Oh, yeah. The dryers are insanely loud. It made waiting for you in this room very annoying.”

  “Huh, that’s good to know.” I reached into the pot to get seconds. “I didn’t know where it was until now.”

  Ryu scoffed. “Genjo, you did not just admit in front of a girl that you haven’t done your laundry since school started.”

  “Um-” My face turned red as I dropped my chopsticks into my bowl. “Not true. I… have my methods.”

  “Hehe…” Aiko couldn’t stop giggling to herself. “You boys are so gross. Don’t make me think about Genjo’s sweaty jacket while we’re eating.”

  I sank my head into my hand. “Then why did you bring it up?”

  “Hey, let’s get back on track.” Ryu tapped his chopsticks against the edge of his bowl like a teacher hitting their desk with a ruler or a piece of chalk. “Aiko, I know you weren’t there, but… seeing that dining hall change like that overnight was… surreal.”

  I pointed my chopsticks at Ryu. “And when I walked into the auditorium this morning, I had that exact same feeling again.”

  Aiko’s expression had ‘perplexed’ written all over it, like she was trying to solve a puzzle in her own mind. “I mean, they have to be related somehow… but I can’t put my finger on it.” She angrily munched on an uncooked carrot that she set aside specifically for this purpose. “Argh!! Who the hell is going around fixing up these stupid places anyway? It’s not like the phantoms are doing it - We freakin’ killed them all already!”

  The room went silent.

  “...” Aiko’s eyes darted between me and Ryu. “What?”

  I set my chopsticks down next to my bowl. “Aiko, that’s it!”

  “Hm?” She looked more confused than ever. “...Are you sure?”

  Ryu leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. “Genjo, I’m not sure I’m following-”

  “She’s right.” I felt my heart race with excitement. “The phantoms clearly aren’t the ones fixing these places up. Otherwise, why would it only happen after we destroyed them?” I grabbed the scoop and started taking all of the mushrooms out of the hot pot. “So what if… they’re the thing that’s in the way of these places being normal?”

  A light bulb switched on in Aiko’s head. “So what you’re saying is…” She began helping me pick out all of the mushrooms, allowing the denser ingredients to float to the surface. “By killing the phantoms, we’re the ones making the change?”

  Ryu crossed his arms. “Woah, that’s a pretty big leap in logic there.”

  “Why would it be?” I handed the scoop to Ryu. “It can’t be a coincidence that both times we killed those things, it had a very real effect on our world.”

  “I’m not convinced,” Ryu said while he seized the opportunity to grab seconds without fear of getting any mushrooms. “There’s just no way that can happen without somebody directly making that change, and unless you’ve been doing it while my eyes were closed, it’s not us.”

  I rested my hand on my hip. “I recall someone telling me that ‘sometimes, things just don’t make sense.’ Did I hear that correctly back then?”

  “Ugh.” Ryu seemed annoyed that I used his own words against him. “You’re not supposed to be the one using that as a ‘gotcha’ against me - It should be the other way around.”

  He’s right. Why am I suddenly radiating confidence out of nowhere? “Hey, that’s not me admitting defeat, by the way.” I picked up my bowl and started drinking the remainder of the broth. “I’m simply reminding you of your own reasoning. Unless you have proof otherwise, it’s the best we’ve got.”

  Aiko held her hand up for a high five, to which I happily reciprocated. “Way to go, Genjo! Look at us! We’re making so much progress!”

  “Progress is a relative term.” Ryu stretched his arms up into the air above his head. “I mean, what are we supposed to do now? Throw ourselves into another life-or-death situation just for the chance that this theory might be correct?”

  I set my bowl back down and wiped the few drops of broth that ran down my chin. “Not necessarily. I just think it’s-”

  The door to the kitchen swung open without any warning.

  All three of us instantly shut up. To whoever was about to walk in, they were about to think they were witnessing the least social hot pot of all time. I kept trying to think of something - anything - to talk about, but my train of thought always ended at ‘tell them about your octopus theory’.

  A tall, overly-dressed boy with silver hair and indigo eyes walked through the door. He looked to be about our age, but it was a bit hard to tell underneath his getup - A wrinkleless charcoal gray suit jacket with matching pants, both of which were clearly more expensive than anything I’d ever worn before. His hair wasn’t much longer than mine aside from his bangs, which almost entirely obscured his right eye. Including the bizarre device displaying various text and pop-ups on a small screen in front of his left eye that connected to his left ear, it was surprising that he could even see to begin with. The dark red tie truly brought the entire outfit together to achieve maximum douchebaggery.

  “No, no, no…” He said aloud into the earpiece in his right ear. “How many times do I have to tell you that it fits into my budget? Everything fits into my budget. If you need to ask, just assume it’s a ‘yes’, darling.” Does he have any idea how to talk any quieter?

  Aiko’s eyes widened. “Shit, not this guy.”

  “Who is ‘this guy’, Aiko?” Ryu whispered.

  Before Aiko could offer any explanation, ‘this guy’ immediately resumed his general social unawareness of how to be considerate to anyone else within a kilometer of him. “I shouldn’t have to remind you every single time, love…” He reached his hand up near his earpiece. “Listen - Call me back when you’ve sorted this all out. I’m incredibly busy at the moment. You better not call unless it’s fixed.” With that, he didn’t even wait for a ‘goodbye’ before hanging up the call.

  I slowly turned around to look at Ryu and Aiko, who were both staring at me in complete and total shock. “...so, do you guys think that octopi-”

  “Oh, good evening!” If the boy in the gray suit hadn’t established his presence enough already, the increase in volume that I didn’t even think was possible certainly did. The used-car salesman voice he put on became grating almost immediately. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all! What brings you here on this exquisite day, pray tell?”

  Ryu pointed at the hot pot. “I’ll tell you, Suit Boy - This is a kitchen. You… eat food here.”

  Suit Boy’s laugh sounded so obviously fake that you could probably take him to court if he tried to claim it was real. “Well, I figured that much was obvious. Would the three of you care if I join you?”

  Aiko started stammering. “W-Well, actually, w-we-”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see why not. There’s plenty of food left for seconds.”

  Ryu’s stare pierced through my soul, as if to say, “You think this is funny, don’t you?” - And to be honest, he wasn’t completely wrong. As funny as it was to watch this guy talk like a man in an infomercial, I still wanted to actually be nice and share some food - It’s not like we were rationing out scraps here.

  “Splendid!” Suit Boy pulled out the chair between Aiko and I, sitting directly between us. He immediately grabbed a bowl and started filling it with food. “Oh, my apologies for not introducing myself sooner! Quite rude of me, to invite myself in without even giving you my name.” He stood up and bowed in the most respectful manner we had seen from him yet (like there was even a contest for that).

  Ryu coughed in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was real or a signal. “That’s really not necessary, it’s fine-”

  “My name is Shiraki.” He swiftly pulled exactly three cards out of his suit pocket and handed them to each of us one by one. “And yes - That is of Shiraki Architecture and Finance fame, to answer your question.”

  Aiko subtly scooted her chair away from Shiraki during his spiel. “I… don’t think that anyone was-”

  “If you all need any assistance at any time, please don’t be afraid to ask!” Shiraki seemed to have quite the talent for not listening. “I strive to turn the money so graciously offered to me by my father from ‘heritable’ to ‘charitable’, after all.”

  My phone briefly buzzed in my pocket.

[Text Message: Ryu Kase]

“Oh, he TOTALLY practices that one in the mirror”

  I quickly put my phone away, as to not be disrespectful - Which was a thing that I had never considered until this very moment was on such a broad spectrum. “Hey, you don’t need to be so formal with us. I’m Genjo Sazama - Just ‘Genjo’ is fine.”

  Shiraki’s face shifted, like he was actively trying to switch gears from formal mode to casual mode. “Alright. I’m Jo-” He stopped. “...Jo Shiraki. But if it’s not too much to ask, I would prefer just ‘Shiraki’, please.” Man, I guess it’s harder for him to loosen up than I thought.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Shiraki.” Aiko’s tone of voice reeked of desperation. “Now, if you don’t mind, we were having an important, private conversation.”

  “Oh, I was completely unaware.” Shiraki was noticeably discouraged. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I finish this hot pot.” He ate it quickly but still took care to not make a mess on his suit. “My word! This tastes excellent! Although… it seems to be lacking something-”

  Ryu smiled. “Thanks very much, Shiraki. You’re-”

  “Aha!” Shiraki had his own little eureka moment mid-bite. “You know what would really complete this? Mushrooms.”

  Aiko slowly lowered the plate with all the mushrooms on it and dumped them into the trash can.

  After Shiraki finished his meal, he stood up, thanked us for the food, and walked out of the kitchen. The instant that the door closed, it was like a rope wrapped around our necks had been cut loose. Aiko’s head immediately collided with the table. “Oh my GOD, it’s finally over.”

  The room had gotten so tense, even Ryu had to unbutton the top of his shirt to figuratively loosen up. “Aiko, what was the deal with that guy, anyway? You recognized him, didn’t you?”

  "Ugh, don’t even get me started.” Aiko’s head didn’t budge. “He’s such a-”

  The door swung open again.

  “Silly me!” Shiraki’s entrance was just as energized as the last. “Genjo, I forgot to ask your companions for their names as well. I honestly can’t believe that I let myself-”

  “Ryu.” He gave Shiraki a thumbs up and nodded. “Don’t wear it out.”

  Shiraki once again sat down in between me and Aiko. “And, my fair lady, what would your-”

  “Setsuko.”

  Shiraki smiled. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Setsuko.” Finally, he stood up for what we all hoped would be the last time. “Now, I seriously must get going. I hope to see you all around!” With that, the door shut once more.

  Aiko slammed her head even harder against the table. “UGH.”

  I wasn’t actually sure how to comfort her. It was strange to see Aiko so visibly distressed. “Hey, it’s-”

  “Setsuko?” Ryu definitely had no issue ripping that bandaid off. “Who the hell is-”

  “It’s a fake name, Ryu.” Aiko sounded like she wanted to scream until her lungs collapsed, but knew she couldn’t and was very mad that she couldn’t. “It’s what I tell guys when they give off weird vibes…” She started rubbing her arms with her gloves, just like she always does whenever she’s upset. Her voice got quiet. “You know, like… stalker vibes.”

  That’s right - She probably had to deal with guys like all the time back in showbiz. I switched seats to the one where Shiraki had previously sat. “Sorry, I didn’t realize letting him stay would end up so bad. I’ll take the blame for-”

  Aiko quickly sat up straight again. “It’s not your fault, Genjo.” She rubbed her temples to work out the stress. “I’ve just… seen him around on campus a lot. I mean, you can’t miss him in that damn suit.” Now that she mentioned it, I think I remember seeing him once or twice too. “And each time, he’s always making a move on some girl, or flaunting how rich he is in front of anyone who’ll listen.”

  “Sounds like someone we already know.” Ryu shrugged. I gave him a harsh glare telling him that he better not be comparing this guy to Eiichi right now. “But… worse. Obviously. I mean, he definitely looks like someone who unironically listens to those stupid ‘alpha male’ podcasts. Is there anything else that-”

  She let out a deep exhale. “...I don’t even know. He just…” I could see her hands start to tremble, even though she hid them underneath the table to keep Ryu from noticing. “I just don’t like him. He creeps me out.”

  I put my hand on top of Aiko’s to help calm her down. “Hey, it’ll be alright. He doesn’t know your real name, so if he does end up being a… stalker or something, it’ll be hard for him to do it.” Once I felt her hands stop trembling, I decided it was fine to let go. “Ryu and I are gonna be here for you, alright?”

  “Yeah!” Ryu cracked his knuckles. “I’m not afraid to knock a motherfucker out if they try any weird shit.”

  Aiko started to tear up, but forced herself to shift into her cheerful persona. “Thanks guys! I knew I could count on you!” Her smile was so warm, yet the truth behind them couldn’t be colder.

  A half hour later, we packed up all of our hot pot supplies, washed all of our dishes, and took everything back to Aiko’s room. Ryu and I ensured that Aiko would be okay being on her own without us, said goodbye, and headed back to the West Dorm. I would’ve loved to stay up and chat with Ryu about any of the million things we talked about over dinner, but to be completely honest… He was probably right about needing to make up for four days of sleep deprivation.

  After I took a dose of sleeping meds that a doctor would probably advise against, I laid in bed. Still struggling to doze off, I thought a bit about Shiraki before I drifted off to sleep. Sure, he’s a bit strange, but he probably means well. I don’t blame Ryu or Aiko for getting annoyed with him, though. Like, no shit he gives off ‘My dad could buy your dad, and then buy his dad, and then buy your dad again!’ energy, but I don’t think a stalker would be stupid enough to hand you their fucking business card, let alone reiterate how famous their family is over and over until your ears bleed. Regardless, I’ll still keep an eye on him, just in case.

  For Aiko’s sake.

~

  Hearing my alarm for the first time in nearly a week was certainly a culture shock that I would’ve never anticipated. I rolled out of bed and reached out for my phone to shut it off. Following the steps of your morning routine is much weirder when you haven’t done it in a while. I brushed my teeth and felt weirdly uncomfortable the entire time. I tried to remember what classes I had to go to, but couldn’t figure it out for the life of me.

  I shouted from the other side of the room while I washed my face. “Hey, Ryu? What day is it again?”

  Ryu was still laying in bed, struggling to get beyond the state of half-asleep. “...Wednesday?”

  “Cool. Thanks.” I looked through my stack of school materials, grabbed my notebooks for theatre and calculus, and dropped them into my bag like usual.

  I heard the sound of papers scattering as my notebooks missed my bag entirely and fell straight onto the floor. I checked the time and noticed that class was in ten minutes. “Ugh, why now?” I gathered all of my sheets of paper and put them back into their respective folders. “Guess it’s my fault for being lazy,” I said aloud. This time, I decided to actually pick up my bag and put the notebooks inside directly. I reached down for the handle on top of my bag.

  And it wasn’t there.

  “Oh, that’s just great.” I walked over to Ryu’s bed and gave him a quick jostle. “Yo. Where’d you put my bag?”

  Ryu grumbled and rolled onto his side to get away from me. “...I didn’t do shit to your bag.” He pulled the blanket over his head. “You probably just lost it.”

  I grabbed the top of the blanket, pretending that I was threatening to pull it back down. “There’s no way I lost it. I never take it anywhere other than class and back here.”

  “Then why did you…” Ryu called my bluff and didn’t fight me for control of the blanket. “...why did you take it with you to the hot pot?”

  Oh my god, of course I did. “Why the hell do you remember that?” I asked as I threw a pair of pants on.

  Ryu kept yawning loud enough to overpower the sound of our next-door neighbor taking his daily trip to pound town. “Because… I thought it was weird that you left it… when we were packing up the stuff…”

  As I unzipped the top of my jacket, I shouted back, “And you didn’t say anything??” before I stormed out of my room, notebooks in tow, and hustled down the stairs to the kitchen. What are the odds somebody already took it? What if they gave it to the front desk, and they sent it to the lost and found somewhere? Where even is the school’s lost and found? I was preparing myself for the worst possible case scenario, because I knew my luck wouldn’t let any other outcome happen.

  …So imagine my surprise when I opened the kitchen door to find my bag directly underneath the seat where I had left it. I wasted no time on a single thought other than grabbing my bag and booking it to class, hoisting it up onto the table to shove my notebooks inside. As expected, the bag was unzipped so I could just toss the notebooks right in.

  But for some reason, my notes didn’t seem to sit quite right inside of my bag. “That’s weird,” I thought. “Are they caught on something? I don’t usually put anything else in here.” I reached deep into the bottom of the bag, expecting to find something stupid, like one of Aiko’s cooking utensils, or a piece from Ryu’s model that he’s been working on. When I finally grabbed onto the object, it was… smooth and flat - A feeling that felt incredibly familiar to me.

  I pulled out a CD jewel case.

  I didn’t recognize the cover, though. It clearly wasn’t something from my collection, but who the fuck else uses CDs nowadays? The album art featured three girls drawn in an anime artstyle. They were all dressed in black and red from head to toe, had the same long black hair, and blood running down their cheeks. Wait a minute… They had fangs, too. I finally read the title: ‘Felonious Embrace - Love Songs Without Titles (so we won’t get sued)’. How the fuck did this get in my bag??

  When I flipped the case around to look at the back (to confirm that the love songs were, indeed, titleless), I found a sticky note attached to the case. The handwriting was atrocious, but I eventually made it out - Though, once I finished reading it…

  I wish I hadn’t.

“Congratulations.

  Welcome to my game.

  You’ve crossed into a world from which you can never return. From this point onwards, you will be at the mercy of the winds of fate.

  You are no longer in control. Every action that you take will not be your own. Rather, what you identify as your ‘free will’ is nothing more than how a pawn gets moved across the board. The Pawn knows no better - His actions are decided by the player, and the player alone.

  Do not disclose the contents of this letter to anyone. If you violate this regulation, the game is off; Consequences will arrive in due time.

  Tonight, you will meet The Delegate at the following address:

  2401 Cracked Palm Square

  You must arrive alone. If The Delegate spots you with any other suspicious party, they will cease all further proceedings. The Delegate will have a purple bandana tied around their left ankle. When you approach The Delegate, they will ask you if you’ve gotten a ring fitted lately. You will respond:

  “No, but if you’re looking for something tight, there’s plenty of women here.”

  They will lead you to your destination.

  We will be expecting your arrival at 12:01 A.M. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later.

  My friend, you possess intelligence that I have a burning desire to inquire upon. You know it not, but you may have the answer that can change the world as we know it.

  I look forward to working with you, Bishop.

- Aznable”