‘Take me somewhere far away from here.’

April 19th, 2000

The ocean is melting. A clump of unknowing was all it took to destabilize the thin fabrications of sapphire beauty — radioactive sludge crashes in waves, in cascades of liquid gemstone, in greedy tendrils that grasp at the desperate holdouts constructed on the shore. Concrete barriers, the only thing restraining the wrath of this planet. It almost seems laughable.

A study in architecture. A study in engineering. A study in humanity.

Knuckles clamped white on slick rail. My eyes freeze on the sight of a crumbling world. Another step, fade to black. On and on, a carousel ending in verdicts of truth.

I traded my legs for stubs. Arms for hooks. No way to slow down; gravity pulls faster and faster, squashing those around me, leaving only a quickening throb, spiralling trails of scintillating light. Slaughter my voice, silence my sobs, withdraw into the walls of my being.

Curtains of sparkling mist veil this city in white, concealing a deathly crag which life balances on. Not even I can see where the ground falls away — those barriers erect a thin, yet workable wall. Had some engineer not constructed those walls, the flood of unknown would eventually cause this place to crumble into the sea. A delayed Atlantis, a belated Port Royal; the mars swept away. Blight for blight.

Concrete erodes. Life fades away. There only remains a single question, an inevitable maxim: How long will it take?

How long? How long? How long? How long—

“—Marie?”

A voice. Not my own, nor Hers, but another voice entirely.

“You look a little pale… you feeling alright?”

A sound that pierces distorted glass. I bite down on my lower lip and drag myself through the haze — clarifying pain ricochets through my head. A hint of crimson wells in my mouth, coppery, almost sweet. Reorient.

I’m standing on an unfamiliar boardwalk, gazing upon Sapphire Isle through a faint layer of mist. Some vague imitation of sunlight reaches me as I rub the tiredness from my eyes. “How long was I out?” I mutter, turning to Felix.

He glances at his watch, then back at me. “Twenty seconds, just about.”

A vivid eternity condensed into twenty whole seconds. At least it’s a time-efficient hallucination. I find the nearest railing to spit off of — I lob a ball of saliva and blood into murky waters, then use the inside of my sleeve to wipe my mouth.

“Bah,” I mutter, hiding my sleeve. A bit of blood stains the whiteness of my coat — at least Felix can’t see it. “I didn’t get enough sleep. Your fault for dragging me out here this early.”

The boy pouts and crosses his arms, waiting in indignant silence. “Hnrg,” he grunts, trying not to look at me. He doesn’t do a very good job of it — I see him sneaking glances at my face.

Faint recollections from earlier this morning resurface and pop, glistening bubbles of self. I’m fully aware that this is what I requested he do, but I’m too proud to deny my feelings about being up this early.

I haven’t been awake before 10 AM for a long time. There’s a good reason, too.

The worst hallucinations always came in the morning.

Earlier, I woke up alone with a folded note on my desk. It was a hastily scrawled memoir from Erika, noting that she’d be out today on watch duty.

Sometime later, a fragmented conversation with Felix. I updated him on the situation with Pelchat, and as expected, he didn’t know anything else about the culprits behind the briefcase, nor the white book.

“Now that you mention it,” he muttered, stuffing his face with bananas he had bought the night before, “There was another girl that passed out. Forgot her name, but it was a few weeks ago. Think she might be involved.”

“Who, Ren? Ren Lawson?” I replied. I shrugged and went down on some grits Erika had prepared during my restless night. “She was always a sickly girl. I didn’t think much of it.”

The occultism club at Reyes Cooper was a gathering of weirdos I only monitored from a distance. In the small chance they stumbled upon some actual arcane secrets, I would have to go in and fix things. But thankfully, no situation like that ever occurred.

“I knew her, a little. Think she had anemia or something. Passed out several times last year.”

Felix nods, rubbing his jaw, hanging another banana from his teeth. “But there’s a possibility she could be involved.”

I remember getting irrationally pissed off at his smug mug. “Don’t try to play the skeptic while eating nothing but bananas, you dork.”

“Ghrgnhrgngrhrgnm,” he said, shoving another banana into his gullet.

He did have a point. Any leads would be a good one, and if the girl happened to be awake, we could ask her about the book I found last night. We needed to move fast, strike off as many leads as we could in the little time we had. Unlike my enemy, I don’t have the privilege of staying hidden — I need to maintain as much of my social image as possible. Due diligence, just in case somebody happens to be looking for a mysteriously aloof girl that disappears as soon as supernatural occurrences ramp up.

A few calls later, another phonebook scan, a ferry to the mainland portion of Sapphire Isle, and we set upon Greyhawk Memorial hospital.

“What time is it?” I ask, dragging myself away from my recollections.

Felix rests his hands on his nape and looks away. “About seven.”

Seven AM. Four hours until I need to actually be at school. Four hours I could’ve been asleep. My sleep-addled brain can barely muster the anger I should have about this injustice — I’m definitely going to take a nap during my spares.

“Alright. Let’s get this over with already,” I sigh. I step towards Felix and jab him in the shoulder with an index finger. “We’re getting breakfast after this. On me. It’s going to be fancy — that’s your punishment for waking up this early.” Then, sighing even louder, I turn and stomp off towards the general direction of the hospital. Only a few streets until I’m no longer obligated to engage this kid in conversation. “Hate. Mornings. HATE.”

“Glad to see that you’re already back to normal,” he calls after me, a hint of a smile in his voice.

We called ourselves her friends, a blatant lie. But it was enough for the receptionist, and enough for Ren’s caretaker.

“She’s been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past several weeks,” she says, escorting us down sterile white halls. Her name tag reads LYNN, all caps, all bold, in blue ink that’s the same colour as her eyes. “I’m concerned for her — we’ve never seen a case like that before. We might have to send for a specialist soon…”

I resist the urge to make a snide, self-important comment. Barely. ‘Your specialist is already here.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’m an expert in dream-stuff.’ ‘Not to fear, your secret benefactor is here.’ All the pent up bad words come out as a garbled mumble, something close to a “hrg hr gnrh nrg hrgn.”

The visitor badge the staff gave me distracts me from my thoughts. They spelt my name wrong and penned out a great big WEEEIS. Thanks. Felix seems to be equally distraught about his own butchered name. He’s fiddling with his badge, playing with the retractable cord, sneaking glimpses at his watch. It takes me far too long to realize that he’s worried about something else.

He refuses to look at me as we walk. Glimpses behind us, occasional twitches, tensing of the jaw. I’m familiar enough with the motions to know that he’s suffering from some sort of environmental based anxiety. Must’ve had a bad experience with hospitals before. Some minor part of me wants to reach out and console him, maybe pat him on the head a few times, but I’ve enough self control to not embarrass myself that conspicuously.

“You nervous?” I ask, casting a semi-apathetic gaze towards him.

Felix doesn’t seem to hear me; he just covers his watch and closes his eyes, walking in meditative silence. I make a mental note to pry further into his brainpan later. He hasn’t completely cleared my list of suspicions — I bet there’s some details left in his brain that’s been suppressed somehow. The key to all of our woes.

“We’re here.”

Lynn shows us to room 9-2S, a room tucked away in a dingy corner of the building. The clatter of tools and the whirl of a decades old AC unit are the only noises here, a requiem of machinery. How horribly depressing.

“Visitors are only recommended to stay around half an hour, so make sure you don’t overstay, please.”

I nod. “Will do.”

“You’re Ren’s first visitors. At least she’s been blessed with kind friends…” She opens the door for us, offers us a weary smile, then briskly walks away. Doesn’t even stay to offer any explanation — I watch her scrubs grow a faint shade of aquamarine as she scurries off into the white sprawl.

“Busy day, huh?” But that’s not my problem. I punch Felix’s shoulder to knock some sense back into him. “Oi. Showtime.”

That catches his attention. He straightens up, shakes his head, and focuses on the room around us. “Thanks,” he mutters.

“Just paying back the favour.”

First visitors. The statement lingers as I step into Ren’s room. Two random strangers are the only people who bothered to visit this girl.

The sleeping girl lies in a nest of mockingly pink blankets, stewing in the darkness of closed shades, an IV connected to her arm. A lifeline in liquid. There’s nothing else in the room besides the usual hospital furnishings, not even a ‘get well’ card or anything of the like. A heart monitor belts out a constant rhythm of blips, telling the casual observer that she’s still alive.

“What a terrible lie,” I mutter, walking to Ren’s bedside. “There’s no way that this could ever be called ‘life.’”

Felix has the decency to close the door behind us. He joins me with crossed arms and a sympathetic look on his face. “Did you also find Pelchat like this?”

I did, but the circumstances are entirely different. Ren’s face constantly twitches, shifting occasionally to a mask of despair. But otherwise, she looks completely content. My intuition ties my gut into a knot. “Something isn’t right.”

A plain girl. Nothing special about her. From memory, she was a shy girl who didn’t have many friends. Zero ether circuits — no compatibility with magic. Her parents must be used to the constant hospital stays if they didn’t even bother to visit. Maybe they just don’t care.

A lonely girl. From my reconnaissance, I remember seeing her eating elsewhere. She was like me, in a sense. While I usually just mucked off from the cafeteria because the food was bad and I had an eccentric group of assholes to hang out with, I always saw her alone. If it weren’t for me already taking up all the rumor space, I’m sure some accusations of witchcraft would’ve fallen to her.

A vulnerable girl. People like her could easily fall for scams and frauds. I feel a small twinge of guilt for merely observing this from a distance, but I know myself well enough to know that isn’t the case. I’m just feeling bad because I allowed this to turn into my problem. Mhm. Nothing more. I’m not going to delude myself into thinking I’m a good person.

Felix seems to be chasing after his own train of thought. “She was part of the occultism club, right?” he wonders out loud. “What was that like?”

“That group of weirdos? They’ve never been up to anything good.” I roll my shoulders and sit at Ren’s side. “You’ve already seen the reality of the magic world. What these guys think is anything but a romantic, idealistic dream.”

“A dream, huh…?”

“Yeah. A dream, something to be forgotten in the morning.”

“What draws a person to the occult?”

“That’s a deceptively simple question,” I groan, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Why do people do anything weird? They’re bored with the mundane. Might be different in certain cultures, but us bastards in the west are the rebellious types. People want to be special. People need to be special. There’s so many routes you could take, but y’know, magic’s a certain kind of escapism. A dream to end all dreams.”

He latches onto that last word, hemming and hawing. I cock my head, curious as to what’s cooking in that distorted mind of his.

“That creature we encountered the other night was a nightmare,” he says, grimacing. “Couldn’t have been anything else.”

A vague insight. “An astute observation.”

Wait. Neurons jolt and walls evaporate — Felix’s insight worms into a critical part of my brain and unlocks a flood of light; a key, a spotlight. I reach over and take a hold of Ren’s hands, squeeze gently, and scan her body.

The rune engraved into her soul the same as Pelchat’s, but the roots stretch out farther. I can sense the faintest of circuits developing around her heart; they might not be able to be used for any spells, but the sheer mana required to cause an overflow between the soul and body can be nothing short of overwhelming. And like a mad detective, I grin a manic grin as I tear apart my enemy’s first ploy.

“Sneaky. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky rat bastard. I’ve got you now.”

Felix cocks his head, silently asking for an explanation. I gesture for him to take off his backpack and get what we need. “I’ll elaborate as we work.”

He takes out a map of the Sapphire isle and unfurls it on the hospital ground. Instead of activating my circuits, I borrow Felix’s IR-Mana scanner and trace the latent current coming off Ren’s body. Whoever engineered this artificial flow was smart enough to make it blend in with the natural ley lines of this world, but not good enough to hide from this funky little tool.

“The power of dreams,” I explain, standing like a human protractor. “Suppose I was too wrapped up in the how-to to see the obvious.”

Felix starts doing some magic of his own with a compass and a small ruler. Uses pythagorean theorem to calculate the exact angle I’m holding my arm out at. Nifty trick.

“The enemy mage is harnessing the power of nightmares,” I continue to ramble. “By putting people into a pleasant arcane dream, they’re harvesting both ether and tapping into the negative energy of said nightmare for minions. A win-win for everybody involved, especially if they agreed to it themselves.”

He stops and looks up at me, confused. “They agreed to it? Why?”

“Why not? If somebody came up to you and promised a dream, an escape from a miserable life, wouldn’t you take it?”

Felix looks at Ren, then back at me. He averts his gaze with a bashful smile. “I don’t think I would. Even if it meant pure bliss, I wouldn’t want to abandon those around me...”

Another romantic answer. I roll my eyes and force another groan. “Hmph. You tryna win an award for sappiness?”

Felix goes back to moping as he finishes up the tracing job. “But it’s true…”

“Save the wooing for somebody actually interested.”

He makes some sad mumbling sounds for a while. Soon enough, he makes the final scratch, double checks his calculations, and nods. “Think I’ve got it.”

I toss back the IR scanner and lean over. Felix drew a small vector from our current location — seems like the intersection between Pelchat and Ren’s beacons is somewhere near The Ridge. Near our school. How convenient.

As we’re packing up, Felix shoots Ren another glance. “Are we just going to leave her like that?”

I shrug. “Breaking her out would alert our enemy — they’d know we’re onto them. Let’s leave her dreaming of nice things for a little while longer, mh?”

There’s also another way. Ending the poor girl’s life would certainly throw a wrench into my enemy’s mana collection, but I’d rather not go that far just yet. I only need to do what’s necessary, and this girl only stumbled upon a book. Perhaps if things get desperate enough, I could—

“...No. I’d rather not think about that at all.”

“Eh? Think about what?”

The more time goes on, the more Felix reminds me of a deer. He could even make crashing into a car on a freeway look graceful. “I’m going to have to take it upon myself to befriend this girl after this is all over,” I lie, sighing dramatically. I push him out the door, barely giving him any time to ask questions. “...I want chicken and waffles. And coffee. Lots of coffee.”

“Is chicken and waffles a breakfast thing?” he wonders, allowing himself to be pushed out.

“It is now. Come on, I want to wash away the realizations of this morning with grease and sugar.”

But I keep one such realization to myself. Pelchat’s chains and coal flash in my mind as I look back at Ren’s sleeping face. The question echoes in my head as I leave the hospital with Felix, screams itself in my face.

If a man with a happy home life could become the catalyst for a terrifying beast, what would become of a miserable girl with nothing to lose?

Felix meets up with Marie again during lunch break. Basking underneath an overcast sky, they go over their battle plans with a light lunch — a few scones and jam with a teapot that never runs out of hot tea. It would almost be a proper English tea party if they weren’t using old crates as a table and chair.

“So we’ve already got several points of interugmrrnrgrg,” Marie says, stuffing her face.

Felix tries to ignore the violation of the conservation of energy sitting next to him as he stares at the map of Sapphire Isle. Out of curiosity, he decided to start counting calories on her behalf. The day isn’t even halfway over and she’s already consumed 1.5x the calories of an average person’s diet. Magic seems like a very effective way to slim one’s waistline.

During a class break, he grabbed a meterstick and extended out the vectors of the magical traces. Due to Marie’s initial questionable measuring techniques, he threw in a variation of fifteen degrees. Turns out that mucks up the intersection point — it’s either somewhere in The Point, The Ridge, or in the ocean.

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Felix muses, nibbling on a crumpet.

“That we do.”

There are many landmarks in the search area. Any of them could be magical in nature — obelisks, old statues, refurbished buildings from the first founding of the town. If this was a traditional small town, there would only be a few obvious locations that would stick out as supernatural. Sapphire Isle is a whole kitchen sink of the potentially supernatural. Maybe that’s by design.

“What about the obelisks around town? Those have to be special—”

Marie shuts him up with an annoyed look. “Nothing special about those stupid rocks. I’m pretty sure some asshole put those up one day as a massive distraction — no innate magical properties. Might as well be statues of cheese.”

“But what if, say, just coincidentally, our arcane vectors lined up over them? That has to mean something…”

“Bah. Erika doesn’t even bother patrolling those. I’ve checked them myself, too.”

Felix traces the line of Marie’s original observation. It lines up nearly perfectly with the obelisk in the middle of The Ridge — he first noticed it when he was originally sketching. He added in variance for statistical integrity’s sake, but her denial is suspicious.

The safeguard etched into his body has been a constant reminder of her presence, a barely noticeable tightness around his spine and heart. But for whatever reason, their grip tightens, almost as though Marie were subconsciously clenching her fist around him.

He takes a deep breath, braces himself, and speaks the unthinkable: “Can you really trust her?”

Felix waits for some sort of retaliation. Perhaps he’d lose an eye, a tooth, an arm, a leg, a lung, a kidney this time. She could live up to her reputation’s name and turn him into a newt or eat him alive in a big pot of green stew.

But Marie doesn’t even blink. For once, she isn’t even phased; she just raises an eyebrow and spreads orange marmalade on bread. “While I appreciate your skepticism, I’m not stupid. I’ve only allowed myself a few close relationships — I keep tabs on everybody. At least, enough to know if they’re actively a threat to me. Erika’s raised me my whole life. She’s in the clear.”

That’s exactly what somebody who’s been thoroughly indoctrinated would say. But he decides to let this one go. Despite Erika’s frequent disappearances, he could tell that she truly loved Marie — maybe a bit too much.

“Anyways,” she says, shifting the topic, “let’s do some sleuthing around the obelisk just to cover our bases. We already know that there isn’t anything special — but that doesn’t mean an outsider does. We’ll know something funky is going on if we catch anybody studying it too carefully. After school, you’re coming with me.”

A surprisingly sound plan. Felix nods his approval.

That seems to be the end of their planning. The world moves to fill in the ramshackle tea party, a gust blowing around paper napkins weighed down by saucers. As Marie takes another long sip of tea, the cloud-scarred overcast sky shifts, exposing rifts of blue.

“Thought it was going to rain today, too,” she comments, frowning a little. “Well, that can’t be helped.”

Felix matches her sip of bitter English Breakfast, figuring he might try a conversation before the class bell rings. “Do you like the rain?”

“Eh?” Marie looks back, almost surprised he asked something. She places her cup down with a loud clink and rests her head against the shed wall she’s been sitting against. “Hm. I guess? I like standing in the rain, but not when it rains.”

“Isn’t that a contradictory anwer?”

“No? I dislike when it’s overcast and dreary and wet out, but… standing in the rain is nice. When it’s a warm rain, you can feel everything melting away. Worries, stress, all gone — an embrace from nature.” She puffs out one cheek, looking down at her jacket. “Though, having to iron everything out again is a pain.” She flicks her collar. “What about you?”

“Me?” This might be the very first time Marie has ever asked anything non-business related about him. “Uh…”

He doesn’t have an answer. The only thing he can remember when he pulls on the memory of rain is walking to the church that first night in Sapphire Isle. It was a distant sensation, like listening to droplets on the outside of a tent. “I don’t really know. I never really went out of my way to stand out in the rain.”

“Get some opinions so I can yell about how shitty they are, dork.” Marie smirks, exposing a sliver of white teeth. “No, you know what? Next time there’s a proper storm, I’m dragging you out. You’re not scared of a little bit of thunder and lightning, are you?”

Fear. He isn’t scared of thunder, nor lighting — he can almost hear the kobold twin’s voices, interrupting this pleasant scene like a thunderclap.

‘Fear of the unknown correlates to a human’s survival instinct.’

‘When a man doesn’t have that trait, what does that imply?’

Uncontrollable impulse and the colour of her eyes.

‘You do understand.’

“Oi,” Marie says, an iota of worry creasing her brow, “You alright? If you’re actually scared, then it’s fine, y’know? Don’t have to have that tough guy act on at all times.”

Felix isn’t scared — that’s the problem. He isn’t scared of anything. He isn’t scared of not being scared of anything; the most he feels is a dull prick of worry at the strangest things. Inhuman reactions.

How would she react if he told her about the urges? The colour of her eyes? Whenever he entertains the idea of telling Marie his problems, he freezes up — deer in headlights problem. It couldn’t be his survival instinct. There must be something wrong with him. There has to be.

“I only have one jacket,” Felix mutters, coming up with a lame excuse. “This is real leather. I don’t want to spoil it — it was a gift.”

“Pffftftftft. Oh come on, I heard from Aniya about last night. You’re rolling in it, man. Don’t be so cheap.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You already have an abnormal amount of money. Spend some, or better yet, just give it to me.”

Marie. A girl who doesn’t think about her future, despite accelerating towards it. She gets up, places her hands on her hips, and scowls down at him. “Actually, why am I talking to you? I have complete authority over you right now — go clean up this set.” She jerks a thumb towards the shed. “Just move everything in there.” Then she stops off.

Before she opens the door, she looks back at a bewildered Felix and offers something like a warm, bashful smile. “...Thanks. This is me paying you back properly for earlier, okay? Don’t get used to it.”

Then she slips through the steel door, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the almost-summer winds.

After another bout of horrifyingly droll classes, I head to my locker. Unfortunately, because I’m waiting for Felix, I have to deal with the afterclass trickle of students in the halls.

Having a nasty reputation can be nice. Even the big brutish jocks notice me coming and press against the walls to avoid overstepping into my path. I can’t really recall when I became so vilified, but if I had to take a guess, it would probably be when I started resorting to violence to solve my problems. My stellar academic record proved quite the boon when disciplinary meetings came around — few believed the eyewitness reports and tossed off most of the incidents as attempts to tarnish one of the school’s best students.

There’s a glass cabinet full of little trophies and trinkets between the bite-sized gymnasium and the front office. My name’s on the state mathematics and physics awards: case in point, MARIE WEISS written in faux-gold. Though, I might need to purposely biff some of my finals to avoid valedictorian. Don’t want to attract too much attention.

Those same accusing eyes bore and glare as I make the trek from my clubroom to locker, luck number 1412. If my enemy is somebody like me, then they might be among the crowds right now. No way to know. Even trying to sense magic might give away my arcane nature — can’t give up a single advantage if I can help it.

It’s only natural for people to stay away from monsters. So long as I’m vilified, scorned, hated through mundane means, that protects them from me. I am an upstanding citizen of both the ordinary and extraordinary world; I try not to get ordinary people involved if I can help it. But one day, I wonder if I could show somebody what I’m really capable of out of the blue — not just get discovered by accident, but a grand display. I want to see what an ordinary person’s face looks like when their world is shattered.

But that’ll have to wait. I dial open the combination lock and grab that nobrand ibuprofen again. Four lozenges, pink medicated ovals. Down the hatch they go, flushed by a swig from the water fountain.

I brace against the protruding metal sink and steady my breath. In the diminutive droplets of disappearing water, the tarnished sheen of the spout, the unusually polished drain, reflections of myself stare back at me. Ten thousand green spider eyes. Cannibalize.

A tap on my shoulder causes me to flinch. Muscles tighten and instinct flares — the only thing that prevents me from delivering a blow is a glimpse of neat black dress shoes near mine. Only one person in this damned school has the audacity to wear anything beyond hoodies, sneakers, and sweatpants.

Aniya greets me with a curt nod of her chin. “Afternoon, Marie.”

She doesn’t have her glasses today. Piercing blue eyes with no dam to hold them back.

“Yo,” I say, desperately trying to hide the fact that I was about to punch her lights out.

I didn’t see her earlier in the club room. Actually, I haven’t really seen anybody in the club room as of late. I’ll need to see if I can embezzle any funds from the group’s account later.

I loosen my fist and tuck my arms behind my back. “What’s up?”

“Not much. I figured now might be the only time to catch a conversation with you.”

She wears a complicated expression, a look that refuses to acknowledge me directly. Lips pressed into a flat line, hands clasped in her lap, head slightly bowed, eyes averted. I can’t tell if she’s being confrontational or playing hard to get. Probably best to play it safe.

“Whaaaat? You know you can talk to me at any time. I’ve got a phone for a reason.”

The corner of Aniya’s mouth pulls down into a frown. I take the hint and rummage around my jacket’s inner pockets, then pull out my cracked flip phone. It’s folded and crumpled in the complete opposite intended direction.

An unnoticed casualty of the mall battle. Whoops.

“Uh, yeah, I guess this happened,” I mutter, picking around the remains. I grab the SIM and memory card, then pluck out the battery. “I should check on my phone more often, huh?”

“That’s the way of the future,” Aniya says, patting her pocket. “Figured something was wrong when all my messages bounced.”

How thoughtful. I’ve missed an entire week of messages and calls — hopefully I didn’t miss anything important.

“I took a pretty nasty tumble.”

“What kind of tumble causes a phone to break like… that?”

I try to pinpoint the exact moment this phone broke, but there was no shortage of technologically harmful events that night. I did survive being impaled, but my mana denseifying technique doesn’t apply to my clothes. Thank god I wasn’t wearing my favourite jacket back then. “...Doooon’t worry about it. I’m fine, which is more important than technology. Just saying, I’m never going to a mall again in my life.”

She huffs. “That aside, we’ve got some club biz to talk about. Got a moment?”

Aniya has a shifty look in her eye — I follow her gaze to the small crowd of maybe eight or nine not-so-subtly eavesdropping on our conversation. I nod and play along.

“Yeah. Is this about the budget, upcoming competitions, or passing on the club to the juniors?”

We talk about mind numbing affairs and bureaucracy until our audience gets bored and leaves — the chittering of teenage gossip and squeaking shoes on waxed tile is replaced with the drone of AC units. Occasionally, an exit sign flickers and emits a sharp buzz; one particular chirp interrupts Aniya’s report about how we should spend our unspent budget on new lab coats.

She looks at me with a look I’ve never seen before, a look of sheer despondent neutrality: a forced mask of nothing. Seems like it hurts her to suppress her emotions. And with no small amount of fidgeting, she asks a question. “Is everything alright, Marie?”

I can’t fathom for the life of me why she would be so worried. I can see some causes for worry — I haven’t been showing up much to hangouts or club meetings, but she’s looking at me like I’m engaged in some death battle with my soul on the line.

—Which, thinking about it more, is pretty much the case. But it’s not that life threatening.

“Yeah, everything is going pretty swell. Just got some stuff I’m dealing with on the side.” A whole platter of garbage, maybe a few people who want my head.

“Ah. I see.” Aniya nods slowly, not believing a single word I said. “Well, that’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about.”

As much as I would like to abandon this sinking ship of a conversation, I owe Aniya at least a talk or two. But this is going to be much harder than I thought.

Feign some disbelief. “Eh? Whaddya mean?”

She rubs her forearm, a sign of nervousness. “It may just be me, but you’ve been distant… more distant than usual. I know you have things in your own life, but I can’t but worry.” She winces. “You know?”

These days, Aniya is a pretty popular gal — the class act she puts up is nothing short of genuine cool. Plenty of admirers and other friends she can worry about, but she’s worrying about me. Strange.

“I gotcha,” I say, not really getting her at all. “But don’t worry about me. My problems are almost over — nothing really to write home about.”

“That’s…” Her hands ball into fists as she struggles to meet my gaze. Then, just before she meets my eyes, she looks away with a small smile. “That’s very much like you, isn’t it?”

There has to be something I’m missing here. She’s always been a worrier, but this is a downpour of sentimentality.

I suppose I should stop flattering myself a little. I can tell when somebody is lying easily, but understanding other people’s emotions ain’t the easiest thing. Should’ve learned a spell for that.

“I haven’t gotten much sleep as of late. I have no idea what you mean by that,” I admit.

“You make me worry a lot, Marie. I know it’s unfounded — borderline selfish — but I’ve always been worried about you. You seem to be in a lot of pain, and I want to help. If even just a little…”

But you’ll die.

But you’ll get hurt.

Because you won’t survive.

My inner rationale fills my head with a crude, cold analysis. She wants to get closer to me, even though we’re pretty good friends.

But we were just friends of circumstance. Two travellers who happened to walk on the same path, destined to part at the next fork in the road. We only hung out because we incidentally shared the same class — the science club was her idea. How did she get so attached when I’ve always kept her at an arm’s length away?

“I’ll be fine,” I say, brushing off her concern. “As I said, it’s just—”

“I know there’s something you’re not telling me. I know that.” She finally musters the courage to look me in the eye — a fiery determination burns in those icy blue eyes. “And I know you’re stubborn as all hell. That’s why I’m not going to back down either.”

Her uncharacteristic surge of emotion is almost admirable, but I don’t have time for this. I need to get back on my reconnaissance mission before the gap of opportunity closes. “Just explain yourself clearly. Please.”

“High school is almost over, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again after this. You’re always so cryptic, a-and maybe I’m just confused, but you’re the only person I’ve ever been able to be myself with.” The same Aniya who is always composed, always cool, is turning into a flustered mess in front of me. She places a hand over her heart and stares downwards. “I know it’s stupid and shortsighted, but… I really want to be with you. Even if just for a little longer… I really...” Her voice pitters out, leaving silence between us.

But I can read the word on her lips: love.

I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I don’t know what’s more stupid — the fact that this girl has fallen for me despite all my avoidance towards intimate relationships, or the part where this completely flew over my head. For years, I didn’t have even the slightest clue that anybody could feel this way towards me. Me, of all people.

And I thought myself good at reading other people.

But as much as I want to, I can’t laugh at an earnest show of somebody’s heart. It must have taken a lot of courage to even speak those words out loud.

I can’t understand her. I don’t feel anything towards her. I don’t even know if I’m capable of loving like a normal person — my emotions are thoroughly warped. I’m self-aware enough to know that much.

I take a deep breath and try not to speak my mind. “This is a lot to process, but… give me some time. I do like you as a friend — you’re the best friend I’ve had — but I’ve got a lot of other things I’m dealing with. So I’ll figure myself out by month’s end, alright? May first.”

The only thing I’ve done is buy myself some time, but that seems to be enough for Aniya. A gleam of hope settles into her cheeks, a rosy glow. “That’s… eleven days from now.”

“Yeah.” I hold my hands behind my back and perform a pseudo-curtsy. “But no matter what, I’ll still be your friend. We owe each other that much, right?”

My cheeks are burning. I should just die — having to say these kinds of things to appease others should be a crime punishable by harakiri.

Now that I’ve rebuffed Aniya temporarily, the weight of the situation seems to be crashing down on her. A delayed blush and widening of the eyes gives away her realization. She takes a step back and nervously smiles. “Um, you can come over to my place any time…”

“Later. Busy tonight. Just like, drop me a note in my locker with your address — will let you know when I have a new phone.”

If any other proper magus saw this show of mundane drama, they’d laugh themselves to death. Not even Erika would approve of me wasting my time and emotional energy like this. I’m not sure if I should go home and laugh at myself until I die to save others the trouble.

Aniya seems to be regretting her outburst, but there’s an undeniable glee surrounding her. “I-I’ll see you later, then.” Then she turns around and scampers off at a speed I didn’t know she could actually move at.

“Later.” I half-heartedly wave goodbye, forcing a small smile. I don’t think she hears me.

As much as I want to be happy for her, all I’m left with is a bitter taste in my mouth.

Instead of betraying Aniya’s emotions, I’ve thrown my own into the grinder. I’m still not sure how I feel about this — I like her, but not that way. Mages don’t really exactly fall in love — they only produce heirs. I can say with certainty that this is the very first time I’ve even considered the possibility of proper romance in my life.

One way or another, she’s just one more person I’ll have to leave behind. One more to disappoint. One more to hurt.

But I’m already used to killing my emotions, used to watching leftover tar seep out of my heart. I’ll deal with the repercussions when they come.

Felix is waiting by the bus stop, lying on his back atop a metal bench. He perks up when I arrive very belatedly.

“Run into something?” he asks.

I run a hand through my hair and groan — this groan comes from deep within, the raging howl of an exorcised ghost. “Hooh boy. Minor problems. I just realized my phone broke — you’ll be on comms duty. But also social problems. Do you have any idea how to deal with those?”

Felix pushes himself up and stretches his hands above his head. “I have the poise of a drunken warthog.”

“At least you’re finally admitting it.” I take a seat beside him on a cold section of the bench; the biting chill flushes away the nervous knots of earlier. If I can procrastinate studying for finals until the last day, then I can leave emotional tangles until then, too. Got many better things to worry about in the meanwhile.

It’s a partially overcast day — a seaborne draft picks up litter and sends it into the shadow-laden forest. Something whistles a sorrowful but sweet tune from within the shade. Can’t tell if it’s a bird or a strangely shaped nook making that song.

“Did Aniya say something?” Felix says nonchalantly, yawning.

Heat kicks up a notch in my soul. My own emotions flare wild: I reach over and start wailing on him. “You bastard, I knew you were hiding something! Are you psychic? ESP? Why couldn’t you have revealed that sooner? You fucker…!”

Felix raises his arms and protects his head, but that’s just for show. He’s smiling like an idiot, shrugging off my blows as though they are mere raindrops. “H-Hey, I’m not psychic, she was just gushing about you last night—”

“She did what now? The hell did she say about me?!” I stop my barrage to let Felix respond.

“Well, she asked me if I was dating you very threateningly, then seemed really relieved when I wasn’t…”

I really didn’t think this situation with Aniya could get worse. But it did.

“Then she started going on about how you two met for the first time, and then she started gushing about how much she respected and admired y—”

A wave of legitimate panic flows into my hands as I grab him by the collar and start shaking him. “Die. Die! Fucking perish! I hope you trip and break your neck. I hope you drown in a park fountain. I hope you disembowel yourself on a butterknife. I hope you choke on a piece of fucking toast then get hit by a semitruck. Actually, scratch all of that — hold still, I’ll rip the memories directly from your head…!”

“M-Marie? Calm down, please…!”

We end up making quite the scene, but the only witnesses are a few departing teachers and the trees. Not like they can make fun of us. I scream and holler and laugh while going up against the absolute emotional brick wall that is Felix Conti.

Mucking about like this does make me feel a bit better; after a few minutes, I run out of energy and end up crossing my arms with a huge pout.

“I’ll let you off this time. Don’t you dare tell anybody else about that.”

“Will do,” Felix says, straightening out his jacket. He checks his watch and makes a sound of displeasure as he looks back at the road. “By the way, we missed the last bus…”

Because of Aniya and I. “You don’t say,” I huff. “Doesn’t change what we have to do.”

He stands up and rests his hands on his nape. “I suppose it doesn’t. Best get walking, then.”

Today is already too long for my liking, and it’s barely the afternoon. I consider knocking myself unconscious via application of trauma to the head for a few moments, then force myself to trudge down the winding forest road back to the city.