There was a loud cracking sound, but no one was there to hear it. So, did it really make a sound? Half a second afterwards, Thaught appeared, half a meter over the floor, and fell on her butt, with the time travelling pyramid landing on her lap a moment later.

She got up, patted her jacket and pants to remove the dust she got from the fall, and looked around. A small room with bright pink walls. There were posters on those walls, liberally placed around the room, which all had photos of at least semi-popular boy bands and actors not much older than twenty years old. Most notable was the poster of the most famous boy band in modern history; they were called "Crossroad". Unfortunately for their fanbase, they moved in separate ways four years after they got together.

The poster was placed right over a really wide, but short, bed, which looked like a fluffy square. A duvet, just as pink as the walls, was covering the mattress, making it look like the world's biggest cotton candy. Cute, cartoonish princesses created by a famous children's entertainment company were knitted on the duvet and on top of it there were two unnecessarily fluffy pillows; one red and one blue. Thaught sat on the bed, wrinkling the neatly placed duvet. She run her finger through the red pillow before getting the blue one and tightly hugging it.

She looked on the other side to see a desk with a roof, which was uncomfortably small in both height, width and length, a chair that barely fitted underneath and a very fitting drawer right next to it.

Thaught got up and walked towards the desk. She looked at its roof and noticed a few drawing carved on it. It was a wooden spoon, since the roof was wooden itself, a cooking pot, a donut and... a pistol.

She then noticed there was a piece of paper sitting on the desk with some barely readable notes scrawled on it, which said:

New Apartment checklist:

1) No pink

2) No dumb posters

3) No super small furniture

4) Glass walls

5) Penthouse

6) Pizza-box table

She wrote these notes when she was looking for an apartment, right after she got hired in the travelling agency. Of course she kept it hidden from her mother who really took pride in decorating Thaught's room herself ever since Thaught was a baby, which was the same time the only interior designer the family trusted won the lottery and retired forever.

The space part definitely worked and thankfully she was not in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, although being in this room again was only fractionally better in Thaught's mind. She looked at her Pomegranate watch to check the date. She struggled to believe her eyes, but everything showed that the time jump happened. She went exactly eight days, thirteen hours and forty-five minutes in the past.

The party would start in less than an hour, and she needed to be prepared. She had little time. She did what every smart person would do in her place. She started running from one side of the room to the other and, after reaching the wall five times, which was not very hard to do, considering you needed around seven steps to go from corner to corner, she would drop and do five pushups, five crunches and five seconds of shadow boxing before repeating the whole process.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She soon started getting tired and sweaty, which is exactly what she wanted, as it would grow her appetite, making room for more cake at the dinner table. Her jacket was making her uncomfortably warm and was starting to get sweat stains on the armpits, but that was a small price to pay for cake.

While Thaught was on her thirteenth lap, thoughts of the donut heaven were the only thing keeping her going. Donut heaven is quite similar to the mainstream opinion of what heaven looks like. It is a big garden full of good people hanging around for eternity, only except for good people, there were all the best, most tasty donuts people had eaten in their lives, and they were waiting there for Thaught to eat them before they respawned again two minutes later.

*knock* *knock*

There was a very gentle and light knock on Thaught's door. Being too focused on the goal, she barely heard it. She paused her workout and said "Who's the-"

She was too late. With a forceful kick, the door was blasted to the side and got stuck there, in the dent that was made in the closet after years of opening the door like you are trying to set a new record on the boxing arcade machine.

The door revealed a woman that looked like a lunch lady. She was wearing a long pink dress with strawberries painted on it. A white apron covered half of it with a big strawberry on the center of it and a text underneath that contained a quite inappropriate "Yo mama" joke.

"Ohohoho!" She laughed from her belly. "How is my sweet wittle daughter doing? Are you ready for your big party?"

Thaught looked at her with her hands on her waist, trying to catch her breath. She did not enjoy having to take five second pauses every two seconds of talking, so she waited a couple of really awkward minutes before she answered. By the time she started talking, she had completely forgotten what her mother told her.

"Hi mom! Nice kick! High five!" Thaught said and lifted her hand as high as she could while walking towards her mother. Unfortunately, her mother could not reach that high, which meant she either would have to step on a chair to achieve the highest of fives or Thaught would have to compromise and go for a medium-height five, which was what she ended up doing.

The clap felt watery and grainy at the same time, way more than what Thaught's mother, Gloria, was used to. She looked at her palm to check if everything was okay.

"Honey," she said. "The sweat and dust, I can understand, you are still my blooming baby flower, but why did you have chocolate cake bar crumbs on your hand? You don't like mommy's cake?"

"Oops, sorry," Thaught answered. "This is from earlier... I mean later... I mean, a week from now... Ugh! Just forget it." She grabbed her hand and wiped her mother's hand on the left side of her jacket, right over the pocket.

"I am working so much and so hard for you and this is how you pay me back!?" Gloria cried, experiencing a mixture of anger, deep sadness and thirst for red wine.

"No, you don't understand," Thaught said. "It's complicated, but rest assured I'll attack the cake with all my might, so don't half ass it."

But Gloria was now on her own world, too focused on her own drama to pay attention to what Thaught was saying.

"Mothers do not have souls! We are bound to clean and cook and work for our little babies, without expecting a single kind or loving word back from them! And when we are disrespected by them, as I am being disrespected right now, we should not pay attention — ignore it and keep working instead. You will understand me when you become a mother, too!"

While Gloria was delivering this amazing monologue, with the back of her palm on her forehead, like a protagonist in a tragedy, Thaught turned her around and started pushing her from her lower back, slowly getting her out of the room. A very strenuous task, but Thaught had gotten used to it over the years and this also helped with her preparation for the incoming cake.

When Thaught finally succeeded in removing her mother from the room, she continued right where she left off. Seven more laps to go.