“I thought we were eating at an Italian restaurant,” I yelled into the phone. “What do you mean we’re getting sushi?”

“It’s what he wants to eat.” My stepsister Nancy sounded worn out. “I tried to tell him that the Italian place was nicer, and he started whining about how he already has enough noodles because he has ramen every day. I don’t wanna sound old, but kids these days. He needs to learn to cook!”

“I didn’t learn to cook until I was in my twenties,” I said.

“Yes, but you weren’t an honors student,” Nancy said. “And I expect him to try his best, just like I expect it from my baby sister. By the way, did you find that game for him?”

“Well…” I bit my lower lip. “It turns out that the version he played was super rare. I bought him the remake. Does he have the FantastiMega 3000 system?”

“I have no idea what he has,” Nancy said. “I just know he’d be on it all hours of the day if I didn’t limit his play time.”

“Can you check? It should look like the pic I’m about to send.” I hastily snapped a photo of the FantastiMega console sitting on my living room floor.

“What am I looking at?” Nancy asked. “That photo is terrible.”

“Sorry,” I said, taking a more careful photo. “How’s that?”

“...Is that your living room, Lizzie?”

“Yes.” I hated it when she called me Lizzie. It felt like she thought I was still in elementary school. (At eight years older than me, maybe she did see me that way.)

“Did you really buy the entire console for Nathan in case he didn’t have it!?”

“No.” I was terrible at lying to my family. “It’s mine.”

“Why do you have a video game system? You hate games!”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“Ohhh, I want every juicy detail,” Nancy said. I could tell she had just draped herself over her couch, one leg slung dramatically over the armrests, the same way she’d posed when she was a teenaged rock-star wannabe. “Spill. How did you end up with a ‘Fantastic Game,’ or whatever? Some sexy gamer guy refuse to sleep with you unless you played something with him? Did he tie you up with the controller cable?”

“Nancy, I need to know if he has the system or not! Can you at least go check?”

There were shuffling noises on the phone as my sister walked to Nathan’s room.

“It has a horse with wings on the top, right?”

“Yes.”

“He has it. It’s filthy, but he has it.”

“Good. I’ll be at the Harajuku House at 6.”

-x-x-x-

The Harajuku House was built five years ago and was not the kind of tacky I enjoyed. It was a freestanding building with cutesy cartoon characters painted all over its pink brick walls and a blobby yellow roof. It looked like a child’s dollhouse, but there was always a steady amount of young adults walking in and out.

“There you are!” Nancy’s voice. I turned to see my fuzzy-haired stepsister, with a strained smile on her face and Nathan, buried in his smartphone. Nancy looked embarrassed by her adopted son’s clothes – a baby pink shirt, baggy purple pants, and a mint green varsity jacket with “LOVELY” over the left breast pocket.

“Hi, Nathan,” I said, raising a hand in greeting. Nathan lifted his head from his phone, gave a small smile, and half-raised his hand back. “This place is… neat! What cartoon are these characters from?”

“They’re not ‘from’ anything. They’re all supposed to be the different items on the menu,” Nathan explained. He pointed to a pink and white kitten with a strawberry on its head, “Like, this one’s supposed to be their Ichigo Boba Tea.”

“I see.” I didn’t see at all.

The inside of the Harajuku House was even more outrageous than the outside, with bubble-shaped lightbulbs and cartoon pop art on every candy-colored surface. Bouncy music with squeaky-voiced singers blared out of the speakers. On each table, there was a small mat for the chef to prepare food. I wanted to take a bite out of the air. It smelled delicious!

“I have no idea why he wanted to come here,” Nancy hissed to me.

“It’s counterculture,” I whispered back. “It’s not supposed to make sense to us grown-up types.”

“It’s stupid,” Nancy said, jerking her thumb towards the back of Nathan’s jacket, which had a shiny-eyed cartoon panda embroidered on it. “He’s way too old to be wearing shirts with teddy bears on them!”

“Remember when you had that jacket with the skulls on it? And how mom always hated when you wore it? It’s kind of the same thing.”

“It is not. Skulls are appropriate for teenagers. This place is for toddlers!”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“It has a full bar and a happy hour.” I pointed to a sign on the wall featuring a drunken squirrel. “And I don’t think I see a single kid in here.”

We sat at one of the tables near the far-left corner of the restaurant. A waitress in a pink maid costume approached us. I was glad that Nathan was still looking at his phone as I caught the waitress raise her eyebrows at the sight of two pasty-white adults and one very dark-skinned teenager sitting at the same booth.

“Welcome to Harajuku House, a slice of Tokyo in America,” she squeaked. “Have you been here before?”

“Nope, first time,” I said.

“All right, I’ll give you a moment to look through these. When you’re ready to order, please ring the bell!” The waitress handed each of us a thick menu, placed a bell marked “MEIDO” on the table, and trotted away.

The sourest of frowns was on my stepsister’s face as she leafed through the menu. I almost laughed, then my stomach clenched. Visiting this restaurant meant she might get even stricter on Nathan on her nights off.

“Can I get a boba tea, mom?” Nathan asked. He looked absolutely starstruck. I had a feeling he didn’t realize his mom would view the Harajuku House as an “irresponsible” place.

“It’s your celebration. You can even get a dessert today, but make sure you save room for cake at home,” Nancy said.

“What’s boba tea?” I asked.

“It’s sooooo good!” Nathan’s face lit up again. “It’s tea and juice, sometimes milk too, but it has these little candy thingies in it called ‘boba’ that pop in your mouth. You can put a bunch of other stuff in it too.”

“And ‘Ann Pan’?” asked Nancy. “It says it’s bean bread. Is it coffee?”

“Anpan,” Nathan said. “It’s made with sweet beans. I’ve never had it but it’s s’posed to be good.”

“I see curry,” I said, “so I’m pretty sure I know what I’m getting.”

“Are we ready to order?” asked Nancy.

“I think so.”

-x-x-x-

The “Kakkui Curry” on my plate had all the vegetables cut into little hearts, which meant it was as cute as it was delicious. I also took a chance on the “Ichigo Boba Tea” and that turned out to be a sugary strawberry drink. Nathan opted for expensive sushi rolls. Nancy settled on a basic stir-fry. When we’d emptied our plates, I pulled Nathan’s present out of my purse.

“What’s this?” he asked once he’d torn off all the wrapping.

“It’s a video game,” I said. Nathan gave me a blank look.

“Duh, it’s a video game. Why did you get me a random game?”

“Isn’t that the flying game you played at Lars Dawson’s house that you always wanted to find?” asked Nancy.

Nathan squinted at the box. Something clicked and his eyes widened.

“ARE YOU SHITTING ME!? YOU FIGURED OUT WHAT GAME IT WAS OFF OF MY SHITTY DRAWING!?”

“Nathan!” Nancy snapped. “Don’t use that kind of language! Ladies don’t like it!”

“He’s technically an adult now,” I said. “So he can say whatever he wants.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” said Nancy.

“Aunt Liz, how did you know what game it was?” Nathan was almost bouncing up and down in his chair. “I’ve been trying to track it down for five years!”

“I had a lot of help from a big guy named Mac at Dragon’s Den Gaming. I’ll take you some time.”

“I can’t believe…! I never thought…! Thanks, Aunt Liz!”

“You’re welcome, Nathan.” I stretched my arms and leaned back in my chair, then yelped as a tangle of yellow tentacles appeared in the edges of my vision.

“What’s the matter, Lizzie!?” asked Nancy. “Are you okay?”

“Octopus…” was all I could manage. I turned and pointed to the character on the wall above me, a happy octopus with an O-shaped mouth and a different flavored ice cream cone in each tentacle.

“You just noticed that? It’s been behind you the whole time,” said Nancy.

“Are you afraid of octopuses, Aunt Liz?” asked Nathan.

“No!” I said. “I just wasn’t expecting to see one here.”

“If I remember right, you fight octopuses in this game,” Nathan said, holding up the Eagle’s Quarry box.

“I’m sure Aunt Liz would LOVE to see your game, wouldn’t you, Lizzie?” Nancy gave me a cheeky look. “She even bought a ‘Fantalo-Megalo System’ for herself.”

“Wait, you bought a FantaMeg?” Nathan asked. My fingers curled around the side of the chair. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything more to do with Eagle’s Quarry.

“Uh, well…”

You’re being dumb, Liz, I told myself. It’s just a game. Watch him play it. You’ll see.

And you’ll figure out what your dream meant, too. Strange thoughts had crept into my mind. Embrace the calling!

Embrace what calling? I asked myself. You don’t know what you’re talking about, brain.

The answer just might be right behind you, my thoughts said. A tingle ran up my spine.

That does it.

“I did buy a FantastiMega 3000,” I admitted. There was no sense in hiding all of the truth. If I lied about it, Nancy would show him the photo of my FantastiMega system on her phone. “I wanted to try out the game, but I couldn’t figure out what to do.”

“Never thought I’d see you pick up a video game,” Nathan said.

“Lizzie does things that even surprise herself,” Nancy chuckled. “Sometimes you can’t tell what she’s up to. Like when she came home one day with that big bag of beads and string, I had no idea what was going on in her little head! And then she ended up with her whole bedroom ceiling covered in those bead curtains.”

“Why do you always bring up my bead curtains?” I asked.

“They’re neat, Lizzie! I almost want the same thing in my room, but it wouldn’t coordinate with the rest of my décor.”

“I offered to make you some in the same green as your bedsheets. You said they weren’t that great.”

“I might’ve lied a little,” Nancy said. Her eyes drifted to the left like they always did when she was embarrassed.

“What was it about Eagle’s Quarry that made you want to play it?” Nathan had brought the conversation back to the game. Now it was my turn to lie a little.

“You were looking for it for a long time, so I figured it was really good,” I said. “And the characters looked interesting.” Okay, that part wasn’t exactly untrue…

“Really?” Nathan looked suspicious. “I think the box art is kinda ugly. Looks like they just slapped on the main characters and some evil guy.”

“I can take the game back if you don’t want it,” I said.

“No! Bad box art doesn’t mean the game’s gonna be bad!” Nathan said. “We’re good, we’re good!”

I leaned back in my chair until I could see most of the yellow octopus.

I’m gonna shut you the fuck up, I thought.