And so, we began the tedious task of rebuilding the garden. We gathered the scattered rocks, replanted the uprooted flowers, and swept away the debris. It was slow, grueling work, but we didn’t complain. We knew we had to earn back Master Hayashi’s respect.

I had learned a few things from my mom, who was a professional landscaper. I taught some of those things to Felix, who was oblivious to the careful art of gardening. It was painfully obvious the guy didn’t have a green thumb, not even a yellow thumb. Even so, he was a real good sport about it, eager to learn and restore the courtyard with me.

As the hours passed, the sun dipped below the horizon, and the sky turned a deep shade of purple. We were both exhausted, but we kept working until the last rock hedge was laid. I took a step back and nodded, appreciating our work. We had to seed a few areas, but for the most part, I knew Hayashi would be proud.

After our gardening session, I hit the shower. And once I washed up all the dirt and muck from my skin, it was time to wash all the dirt and muck from my clothes. Not a laundry day went by where I didn’t hear the sound of the machine churning. Granted, this was my second laundry day, but there were only two machines, a washer, and a dryer, for seven people. I guess despite the number of housemates, it was still better than what I had going on back in my old place, where we’d have to take the elevator down to the basement, where there was always a god damn fiesta of people there every hour of the day.

Washing clothes was the only cheap thing about that apartment complex….

I swear there was a guy running a laundry service on the fifth floor, advertising his business while using our amenities. But here, I didn’t have to worry about that. Apparently, all I had to worry about was Reina causing a mess in the shared laundry room.

“Don’t open the door, don’t open the door,” I murmured to myself as I heard a fuss from behind it, the sound of the machine rumbling angrily making me tense. Carrying my haul, I was seriously considering turning back around and pretending I didn’t hear a thing, until I saw bubbles poking from the bottom of the door.

I sighed.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another with her. So I flung the door wide open, bearing witness to Reina fighting the mess she made from putting a butt load of soap in her cycle.

She caused a flood of suds to erupt from the machine, soap continuing to spew from the lid. “Reina!” I yelled as a tide of bubbles flowed across the laundry room floor. She jumped at the sound of my voice and then turned around to stand there, gaping at me, still holding an armful of sopping wet clothes.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” she hissed. “Help me!”

I stood frozen in the doorway as the bubbles continued to spill out across the floor. Reina was frantically trying to scoop up piles of suds in her arms, but it was no use. The more she grabbed, the more bubbled forth from the raging washing machine.

“This is unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head. As much as I wanted to walk away from the chaos, I knew I couldn’t just leave her to deal with this alone. With a sigh, I set my laundry basket on the counter top and waded into the relentless sudsy sea.

“You can’t cook; you can’t clean,” I retorted, rushing over to turn off the machine. “But I’d think at the very least, you’d know how to do your own laundry!”

“I’m sorry that I’m not your typical housewife!”

I rolled my eyes as I tried to stop the overflow of bubbles. “Reina, you don’t need to be a housewife to know you shouldn’t dump a whole box of detergent in one load!”

Reina huffed, blowing a strand of soap sud-covered hair out of her face. “Well excuse me for not having a PhD in laundry!”

“Did you even read the directions on the detergent box?” I asked exasperatingly, picking up the empty box of NanoX.

“It’s in Japanese!”

“Don’t give me that excuse,” I slapped back. “I overheard you telling Gun that you know how to read Japanese.”

She snatched the box from my hand when I caught her in her lie, Reina pouting. “Well, who asked you, anyway?”

“And how the hell did you get your hair wet, but your clothes are completely dry? Well, minus the suds.”

She sighed defeatedly, bringing her soapy hands at eye level. “I was fighting with the washer machine, and the washer machine won!”

“You’re a whole case, you know that?” I tossed a dry towel from the overhead rack on her wet silky locks and then gently wrung all of the water. Her hair was heavy and thick. Healthy, too. I could see why she took the time she did to take care of it. “Your hair might smell like a fresh load of laundry, but you might want to wash it. All of those chemicals will irritate the follicles.”

“Well, well, well, who knew you were an expert on hair?”

“I liked to roughhouse with nature when I was young. Got lectured a lot by my mom about keeping my crown clean.”

“Thank you, Nero…” she said softly as she turned back to me, flashing me a sweet smile. And then she converted to Reina classic, pivoting her head around and slapping me with the tail-end of her hair. “Now, would you be a dear and finish my laundry?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Huh?!”

She proceeded to tiptoe around the mess she made on the floor, and then walked right out of the laundry room. “And when you’re done, fold them up in my basket and drop it off at my front door, m’kay?”

I chased after her, but my dumbass wasn’t watching out for those suds. I slipped and busted my ass, before I got up on all fours and crawled my way to the door frame. “Hey Reina! News flash! I’m not one of your servants back at your palace!” I cried out to her as I watched her make a turn on the other end of the hallway.

“I’ll owe you one, Nero!”

“Seriously?!”

“Need some help?!” someone from behind me asked, and when I turned my head over my shoulder, I saw Ash!

I screamed, not expecting her to have been in the laundry room the entire time! She sprouted from the thick film of suds like a sea monster, munching on a chocolate bar, her signature snack.

“What the hell?!”

She giggled. “Sorry to startle you! But it looks like you could use a hand, or two, or four.”

“Were you in here this entire time?”

Ash giggled again as she reached down to help me up from the sudsy floor. “Yeah, I was hanging around in the cabinet, where I usually store my snacks from Hayashi. But then I fell asleep, reading one of my favorite horror books. When all of a sudden, I heard this rumbling and groaning! I thought I was having a nightmare! Turns out to be Reina using the unit behind the door. She started crying to high heavens. Then screaming, then back to crying, then whimpering, and that was when you came in. By then, I was buried deep in the suds!” She smiled innocently. “I love bubbles!”

“Let me guess? You have a cat bed in there?” I said, pointing my thumb at the bottom cabinets.

“Don’t tell sensei, okay, Nero?!”

I face-palmed.

She looked around at the bubbly mess covering every surface. “But it looks like Hurricane Reina struck again! I swear that girl leaves a trail of chaos wherever she goes.” Ash shook her head, amused by her antics.

I grumbled, wiping suds from my clothes. “Well, I’m not cleaning up after her royal highness.”

“That’s okay, we will help!” Ash 1 and Ash 2 said as they jumped in front of the doorway.

I scratched my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing triple…

The Ash behind me chuckled. “No, you’re not hallucinating. I can multiply, remember? That’s one of my metas.”

“Yeah, it’s just, I’ve never seen you use it in person!”

“My clones have the same abilities and stats that I do, but with time and exertion, they power down. Splitting like this takes a big toll on my stamina. However, when I’m doing simple stuff like house chores, I get to keep them around longer!”

I smiled. “I’ve never met someone with your talent, Ash. You’re one of a kind.”

“How sweet of you to say! I’d like to think that I’m one of a kind in many ways. Just like you, Nero.” She winked. “I lost a lot of yen in that fight you had with Gun, but I know that you went easy on him.”

“Heh. I was just looking out for him.”

The two clone Ashes cheered and immediately got to work gathering up piles of suds and depositing them into the sink. The original Ash grabbed a mop and began swirling it across the soapy floor. I found a spare mop and started helping her clean the tiles. As we cleaned, I got to learn more about Ash. She was still hung up about hiding her family life, but again, I didn’t push her. I didn’t want her sharing more than she was comfortable with. However, I did learn that before she wanted to be a hunter, she had wanted to do social work. Ash was great with kids and animals. Which was why her career choice came to no surprise to me. The bubbly sugar addict already had childish traits, always playful and generally fun to be around. Speaking of, I got my cheetah prints back from her, but the elastic on them was stretched.

I was afraid to ask her for specifics on that one….

She was a ray of sunshine that could brighten anyone’s day. As we mopped the floors, she told me stories about her volunteering at animal shelters and children’s hospitals back home. I could tell as she talked that she missed all of that.

Whatever driving forces that peeled her away from her happiness and brought her here still remained a mystery to me. That being said, I was thankful for her being around.

Ash had a special talent of making me forget about my worries, but there was one thing that she couldn’t make me forget—The Hunter Games. It was both a stress and a blessing, and it was right around the corner.

It was all I could think about the next day at school. Between classes, during classes, during lunch, out in the courtyard, damn, even in the crapper. I was counting down the days, down to the hour. Felix’s team and my team had already registered, and Hayashi didn’t drop a word about our collective decision.

Deep down, I knew he was happy. He wanted us to participate.

Since news broke out that I was attending, I started raking in sponsors. Not only that, more of them caught my heroic stories, and now, I was up to 73.

“Man, at this rate, I’ll never catch up to Naomi,” I said, smiling to myself as I walked down the hallway of school, looking at my phone and studying my stats. “She’s missing out big time with this bet. Hey, wait a minute,” I said, opening another tab on the Hunter Fanbase Website. “Hold the phone, did I get a respawn token?!” I whispered to myself, trying to suppress my excitement. “Holy shit! I got a token! From a… secret admirer? One of my anonymous sponsors gave me a big-deal item!”

I wanted to rush to Reina to rub it in her face. I knew exactly where she was, too, out in the front yard showing off her diamond tennis bracelet to her fans, until law enforcement barged in through the double doors I was just about to walk through, rushing past me and down the hallway.

“What the hell is going on?” I whispered to myself, Felix, Gun, and Ash walking in behind me.

Suddenly, I heard screaming, fussing, and cussing. The police barked a couple commands, and that triggered my feet to move.

“Stand back!” one of them ordered us, clearing the hallway. It was then I noticed one of the students being handcuffed out of the building.

Dumbfounded, I watched my classmate Yusuke being handled by the police. His usual friendly expression was gone, the guy becoming a completely different person….

“You can’t do this to me!” he shouted, struggling against the officers. “Do you fuckers have any idea know who I am?! You mess with me, and I’ll make sure you pay! ALL OF YOU!”

The cops weren’t listening as they hauled him toward the exit. My mind raced, wondering what he could’ve done to warrant this. Yusuke was a simple guy who kept to himself. Besides being head of the Supernatural Club Naomi told me about, he had nothing else that made him stand out. As I watched him being dragged away, screaming threats the whole time, I turned to Felix and asked, “Any idea what happened?”

“He’s a suspect to the Isole murder,” Ash said, her face twisted with regret. “Yusuke Imashi. Junior year, engineering student. I can’t believe this….”

My eyes grew.

“Get your hands off me!” Yusuke continued to fight. “So what if I killed that dumb bitch? No one is going to miss her! She was a nobody!” he hissed. “All of this sport for a sorry sack of meat! Don’t you asshole have something better to do?!”

“Can’t trust anyone these days,” Felix said as he shook his head disappointingly.

“That lousy piece of shit has what’s coming to him,” Gun hissed angrily as the cops shoved Yusuke out the door.

Seriously? Yusuke?

I didn’t know the guy at all, even so, something about this didn’t feel right….