I stumbled into my room and onto my bed, the wind from the closing door pushing me further into the sheets. I looked over at my clock, it was still pretty early to be going to bed, but despite that, my body shut down as I became limp. Trying to recalibrate what had just happened put me into a nervous breakdown. I guess I should start from the beginning, just after lunch. I had noticed Aika’s smooth, calm demeanour gradually become more aware of her surroundings with her eyes becoming more sporadic, constantly going back and forward. No, no… it was even before that, when we were walking back to class, she kept moving her head side to side, occasionally looking back and forward, as if she was looking for someone. Every moment perfectly thought out so she would have the upper hand when the time was right to strike, like that person could jump out at any moment. But she wouldn’t have to be worried about herself, since she is an immortal being, whether she has any spectacular powers or anything is yet to be seen, however, one cool thing she has is, obviously, wings, exactly like the ones I saw on that figure in the other world. After class ended, she stood up from her seat, and just… stood there. Still.

“Yuuki.” She called out my name, looked to her left, and signalled me to follow her with a head nod. Natsuki was stunned, to him, this was just one of the many weird occurrences I’ve had with Aika, however, to me this was just a normal day as I think to myself, “Oh, I wonder what we’re gonna do today?” I stood up from my seat and followed her through the door.

“So, what’s happening this evening? Committing high treason, or going for ice cream?”

“We’re going to investigate a student at this school, Mao Nakamura, do you know her by any chance?”

“No… why do you ask?”

“Thought so, she quite the shy girl, if you get what I mean, keeps to herself and all that stuff. Why I ask however is because she was the same girl on the bus this morning.”

“Wait… you mean the one that was spying on us?”

“Exactly.”

“Hold on, we can’t be completely sure she was spying on us, right?” Even I had my doubts about her, I mean, a secret agent spy masquerading as a high school girl? It sounds like something out of a poorly written fanfiction.

“I-I mean, there could be many reasons why she had an earpiece in, and how do you know they weren’t just earphones?”

“I just know…” Her demeanor became more serious, her head tilted down, but her eyes were firmly set up. She was pissed, I could tell that much. As we walked down the hallways, I tilted my head into each classroom looking for the girl on the bus this morning, per-instructed by Aika, but in all honesty, I couldn’t even remember what she looked like. I tried to reach into the very depths of my brain to see if I could extrapolate any memories of her face, but none came to materialize. Aika took the lead and headed on down the halls until she stumbled outside, her face all red and out of breath.

“Hey, if you need a breather, I’m fine to wait for you, or…”

“N-no… I’m fine, don’t trouble yo-ursel-” She choked mid-sentence as she tried to catch her breath. With her hands against the cold brick wall, we waited in the shadowy spot cast by a nearby building.

“Let’s just… wait, for a moment…” her breath began to come back to her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this after all…”

“No…” She was quick to cut me off, it looks like she’s serious about doing whatever she intends to do when she finds Nakamura.

“Yuuki…” Her wording made it so I could hear her words very clearly, “Look around the school campus for blind spots in the CCTV, regroup back here when you’ve found any...”

Her orders were clear and precise, leaving no room for interpretation, I followed those orders given to me, knowing full well of the consequences if I were to fail this straightforward task.

“Look around the school for blind spots in the CCTV.” Such simple orders, even so, I was shaking with fear and adrenalin.

“If we’re lucky, the person(s) tailing us may not be of such high rank that they know of my existence, meaning they don’t know of my true nature, my immortality, and other trivial things attributed to my being.” Even though she said that with such confidence, her face said otherwise. The biting of her lip, the lack of eye contact. God damn… I forget how much she was staking as well, even though she may be immortal, she’s still a regular girl. The only power she has besides her immortality is those wings, and those can only do her so good.

“No…” A more confident Aika came into being. “No! We’ll be fine, won’t we Yuuki?” Looking at me for a positive answer, I could only nod with a smile.

“I highly doubt they would send anyone here who knows about my existence.” That could just be her way of calming herself down, either way, we can’t afford to lose now. Waving her off, I sprinted around the school, looking for any points of interest that wouldn’t have CCTV, no matter where I looked though, the place was littered with tiny little cameras placed on top of every school building and their surrounding areas. I hadn’t noticed up until now how heavily monitored the school was, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume whatever organization that’s using me would also be monitoring my school. Hell… t-they could even have my house wired up with radios and god knows what else…

I hadn’t been very careful, but now I realize I must take this seriously, for the both of us. As I frantically rushed around the school, eyes glaring at me from all directions, a thought came to my head, something I had oversighted whilst I was in a panicking frenzy.

“The school shed!” Like that my whole body did a 180, almost twisting my foot whilst doing so. I rushed like mad. Halfway there, I remembered.

“Regroup back here when you’ve found any…” Damnit, I was too worked up with energy. A pitiful walk back to the middle of the school, I found Aika waiting for me.

“Did you find any?”

“I know of one place where there are no CCTV cameras, a place barely anyone goes, even during school hours…”

“Y-… you do?”

“Yeah, the old shed on the back of the school field track.”

We had made it, no one was there, it was the perfect place.

“Yuuki, you’re a genius!” That was the first compliment I had ever received from Aika, it felt good, not only that, but it was the first compliment I had ever received from an immortal, so it felt even better.

“Not only are there no cameras, but no one’s out here either! It’s perfect! And if someone does decide to approach it, we’ll know why!” We entered the shed, the summer heat still somehow crept its way into the old, red, worn-out wooden storing unit. Aika slightly opened the door to the shed, peeping outside, looking for anyone at all who looked suspicious, out of place, someone who didn’t belong.

“No one…” She disclosed.

“We might be waiting here for a while, Aika, wanna play a game or somethin’?”

“A game?”

“Yeah, a game.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I always bring a deck of cards with me to school. When I’m bored on my lunches, me and Natsuki sometimes play.”

“What type of games do you play with the cards?”

“Ever heard of the game crazy eights?”

“Nope… I don’t think I have.”

“It’s a little variation of that game. I’ll explain the rules to you as we go on.” I shuffled the deck expertly, something that my mom taught me to do at a very young age, Aika looked upon in awe. I laid out two sets of eight cards, one for me and one for Aika.

“We both start with eight cards, the first one to withdraw all their cards wins.”

“It sounds pretty simple to me…” She said with smuggish snark.

“It gets a little bit more complicated than that, trust me. This game can be called a predecessor to Uno if you will.”

“U-uno…?” Of course she doesn’t know Uno…

“E-e… never mind… anyways, I must place down a card that corresponds either with its number or with its suit, clubs, spades, hearts, or diamonds. We both have one go each.”

“I wouldn’t call it the most intellectual game ever, but…” With a grin surrounding her face, “it sounds like fun…!” I had realized, this is definitely the happiest I have ever seen Aika, so cheerful, so carefree, I had completely forgotten all of the shit I had we had to deal with back – then…

“There is one card though that has a special ability, if you manage to pick up a number eight, that card allows you to change it to whatever suit you would like, however, you must follow suit.”

“Gotcha.”

“Finally… if you can’t play, you must keep drawing until you find a card you can place down.”

“Really…?” The grin she had on her face washed away after the terrible realization that she could… pick up more cards!

The game had begun, like the seasoned veteran I am, I let Aika play the first card. The card she would have to match was the Jack of Diamonds. Scrolling through her cards from left to right, then right to left...

“Ehhh…? This can’t be right…” By the look on her face, I could already tell… on her first go… she couldn’t place down anything! Blundered at the very beginning! A sigh came out of Aika’s mouth as she went to pick up a card from the deck, luckily, the first card she picked up was one that matched both suit, diamonds, the nine of diamonds to be precise. I then went after, looking through my options, I placed down the nine of spades, good for me though as my deck mainly consisted of spades. As it turned out, so did Aika, one after the other, I prepared to lay down my cards. Finally, with two left in my deck, and Aika with three, I was prepared to win this game!

Aika got one in on me, forcing me to pick up, once again being very lucky and only having to draw one before quickly putting it down. Queen of clubs, and by the look on Aika’s face, it seemed like she had a chance of winning, but I wouldn’t let that happen. She placed down her Ace of clubs; two cards left between the two of us.

“Aika… please forgive me for what I am about to do…” Judging from her reaction, I could make a solid guess her last two cards were clubs. Unfortunately for her, I just so happened to have an eight up my sleeves. “However… that smile she has on her face… she could also have an eight… play it at the right time and she could have this game, this is bad…”

I dropped down my eight of clubs, hoping for the best outcome… “I change to hearts.” my only eight better have been a worthy sacrifice…

A glimmer shined within her eyes, as her hand lowered, the view of an Eight of Spades came into view. “Noooo!” Her very next sentence could decide the fate of this game!

“I change to…” The words hung on her lips, ready to fall out at any moment… this was it, the decider, the endgame!

“Diamonds!” And like that, the game was already won – by me… An evil smirk made its way across my face as if it was saying, “You shouldn’t have done that…” as I placed my hand upon the table not yet revealing the card, only Aika’s anguish and despair remained… Hahaha! This is it! Thank you Aika for this beautiful victory!

The card, Ten of Diamonds, appeared in front of Aika’s eyes.

“H-how… did this happen…? The victory was right in front of my eyes!”

“That’s how it goes, I guess there were a few things I didn’t tell you when entering this game… One is to always check how many cards your opponent has… Two, hide and conceal your cards from your opponent… three, you are able to bluff your way through the game if you so desire… meaning you can pick up cards even if you have a card you can play… or keep picking up cards even if you previously picked up a card you could’ve played… and finally… work on your poker face!”

“Hey, you didn’t tell me about those tricks!”

“It wasn’t in the rules, so… but hey, this is like a learning experience! I’ve never actually taught anyone card games before, you’re the first, and… it was kinda fun teaching you how to play and all.”

“Yeah…” Aika laughed with glee, “it was kinda fu-”

She stopped.

Her pupils constricted.

Her head imminently looked towards the door, she bit her lip, so, so hard… a quick burst of blood made its way down Aika’s chin and neck.

“Shadow.” She said. “Shadow… wait, could that mean…!” Aika began to shuffle in my direction, still facing the door. She spotted a window above ground, it was too high for anyone to reach, but if someone had a ladder, they could…

Aika’s head swung towards the window, her hands now outwards as if to guard me. Her breathing became erratic, taking deep and short breaths before scouring the room once again. I was petrified, not able to move a single muscle, literally. Frozen cold, I could only watch as Aika began to search the room.

This feeling… of being petrified… it feels all too familiar.

“Yuuki, stay here, okay? Don’t move from this spot, I’ll be back in a minute, so don’t worry…” her words began to break, and so was I. Her uncharacteristic break of ‘coolness’ started to become the norm.

‘Stay calm, Elizabeth.’

In the middle of the shed with nothing but my thoughts, I could hear the slow and methodical footsteps of Aika moving on the outwards of the shed. Her footsteps were perfectly in sync with that of a clock. Every second that passed I heard a new footprint touch the crunchy grass.

A strange new light appeared to shine on the left side of my cheek. I looked to my left, in brilliant mayhem, I witnessed Aika bellowing through the side of the shed, pieces of wood colliding into me, splintering me in the process. This girl that Aika had in her grasp had been thrown onto the floor.

“Jesus, is she the one from…” That’s right, she was on the bus this morning, I remember her now. Blonde neatly tied up hair in a ponytail. She was the one wearing that earpiece. The so-called ‘spy’ Aika referred to, well… not very ‘so-called’ anymore, as Aika appeared to be right.

“Yuuki! Get away from us!” She screamed as she was punching her to the ground, the girl doing the same thing, completely ruining each other’s faces into a bloody messy pulp.

“Die!!” She kept repeating. Now with no other option, the girl grabbed something from her blazer, “a needle?” She was going for her jugular, attempting to stick the needle straight through her neck. No luck, Aika had her pinned down on the floor.

Moments passed, she had stopped resisting, I could see the back of her head was bleeding, and Aika’s eyes had blood pouring out of them from the splinters, the cuts were that deep yet her composure was confident. She grabbed the needle and stuck it in her neck, this girl now on the floor, completely immobile. Her breaths were loud as she let out a loud scream. This pain she was feeling… my fears where confirmed, she did feel pain. She kept all that in so she wouldn’t compromise her confidence. She was on the floor shaking.

I rushed over, adrenaline-filled, legs shaking, I did not blink, not for a second, I was way too alert. I didn’t know what to do, I flipped Aika over, attempting to see the wound in her eye whilst she screamed out in utter agony. I couldn’t cope, I too lost composure and stared at her screaming, trying to figure out what to do. I had no band-aids with me, no antibiotics, nothing. I felt useless, just like back there, at the radio station.

But her eyes began to heal, her eyes began to shape and turn, the blood stopped pouring. The sharp pieces of splinter began popping right out of her eyes, making room for the new lens. She stopped screaming as I fell to the ground, completely exhausted. I tried to move but the shock from what I had just witnessed had me paralyzed. I could now feel all of the splinters that had entered my body. Dozens of little splinters were now all of my face and dug their way into my arms. I screamed out at the top of my lungs, so loud it reverberated around the entire shed, deafening me in the process, but I couldn’t stop. Something I hadn’t noticed when I ran towards Aika, was the medium-sized piece of wood stuck between my leg.

“Oh… that must have been from when Aika went through the shed… I see…” My thoughts were simple as I tried to make sense of the situation. As I quieted down, I began to blackout, I felt extremely tired. “I just… really want to go to sleep, I just needed a lie-down, then I will be awake in five or ten minutes, not long at all… just… a little rest.” I heard a voice calling out to me beyond the realm of sleep, and a face to go along with it, I could feel it tugging at me tightly, but I couldn’t make out who it was, just that the person was there.

My vision was blurry, throat groggy, as I had just woke up. My mind was all jumbled but I soon regained my memories. It seemed like my head was lying against a bag of sorts and I had a blazer on top of me. As far as I could tell, and if my senses weren’t lying to me, it appeared to still by daylight. I rubbed my eyes and looked over to the far side of the shed, where the hole lied, and where I found Aika and that girl. She was lying on the floor, bound and gagged. “What the hell has she done to her?” Not that I blame her though. In fact, I should probably be happy the only thing she has done was only that and nothing more. Awaking to this was much better than the latter.

“Speak.” Aika ripped the gag from her mouth, I don’t think she noticed I was awake yet.

“Who are you? Why have you got Hayashida with you? Tell me who you are now!” She sounded scared yet frighteningly so, like she had nothing left to lose so she tossed all reason aside to try and get out of the situation.

Aika threw some sort of document at her. “Here contains a list of people who are involved in the project formally known as G-1945, your name was on the list of employees.” She said in a cold, calculating and calm demeanour.

“H-h-how did you… get that…?” I had seen that look before, back at the radio station, that look of complete and utter terror in her eyes spoke volumes. I stood up, well… tried too. Even though the pain had gone, most likely because Aika had removed all the splinters out of my face and arms. My leg… the piece of wood that laid dormant there was now gone… this… this took me by surprise, Aika… she… must have taken it out herself. What was in place of the wooden shrapnel was a band-aid and some heavy coating of cotton balls that was dripped in some kind of antibiotic cream. I kinda knew where this situation was going so I wanted to “step” in before things got, well… like they did before.

“Do you want to tell her, Aika?” I said, as I shuffled over towards Aika’s side.

“Yuuki, you’re awake?” she asked with concern.

“Yeah, just now I woke up, feel like shit…” I sighed, looking around the shed for a more clear context of the situation. “Yep, we’re definitely still at school.”

“Ugh…” A groan, something that took even me by surprise, I can’t help but feel like this is the result of me hanging around with Aika for too long…

“Nakamura, look, I kinda know everything. Well, not everything… like basically a general understanding of what the fucks being going on for the past god knows how long, and the radio towers you guys use to… wait, what do you guys do with it?”

“Yuuki, we’ve been over this right? Ugh, I’ll give you a more in-depth explanation later on, but for now, let's just ask her some questions. So, Nakamura, can I ask you how to go about getting in touch with a certain Jacob Barron?”

“Jacob Barron…”

“Yes, do you know him?”

“Of course, he’s my boss.”

“Oh goodie, then you could probably get us to meet him? Do you know where we could find him? After we ransacked the radio building that you guys use, the people who I killed gave me a bunch of documents with all kinds of employee’s names, you wouldn’t believe it! However, unfortunately, I guess you could say I got tricked… the documents they gave me did contain a file about Jacob Barron, but sadly no information on his whereabouts, I assume he is in Japan, after all, he is your boss.” She had an iron will, the silence became the only thing between Aika and getting to this “Jacob Barron” character.

“I…” She was about to say something…

“I- don’t even care anymore… I can take you to him… it doesn’t matter for me anyway, it’s over, the test subject knows… it’s all over.”

“Decades of hard work, all in vain.”

“Good…” I saw something on Aika’s face, a smile I had never seen before. It was evil. Like she had everything in the grasp of her hand.

“I’ll take you to him under a few conditions.”

“Hmm…?”

“You have to promise me, once this is all over, and you got what you need out of Barron, promise me… destroy any records of me, any trace I was ever an employee, so they can’t find me… I don’t want to be associated with them anymore. A plane ticket out of Japan, ¥30,000,000, a new passport, and you… you can’t let me die, okay? Can you do that?”

“Now this, I like.” She snickered for a brief moment.

“Okay then! Miss Nakamura, I Aika Yamaguchi, solemnly swear to your promise, to erase any trace of your existence, meaning your employment status and any other records you may have, it’ll be like you never existed! A plane ticket out of Japan, ¥30,000,000 with a new passport attached, and of course… to protect your existence…” Aika extended her hand towards Nakamura. She looked at her as if she was stupid.

“I’m all tied up, y’know…”

“R-right… sorry about that…” She untied her as an awkward silence gloomed over the entire room.

“Now then… do we have a deal, Mao Nakamura?”

“Yes…”

“Well then… I look forward to working with you…”

Rumours spread the following day, about a bunch of hooligans who entered the school grounds and made a hole through the wall of the shed. Some theorized a fight had happened on school grounds. All of these rumours were false.

“Nakamura… how do I know you won’t betray me?”

“You don’t, but that isn’t any of my concern anymore… I want to make our relationship clear though… I am not your friend, nor am I your ally, we are merely co-conspirators. You get something out of it, I get something out of it. You follow up on your end of the deal, I’ll follow up on my end...”

As we left the shed, Aika and Nakamura both had me over their shoulders. Thinking to myself, “I really need crutches…”

“So, Nakamura, how did you get involved in this entire thing?” Aika asked out of curiosity.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Come on… what do you have to lose?”

“True enough… I, well, long story short, I was approached by a certain organisation, I didn’t know they’re name or anything, but that they had connections to the police, I’ve always wanted to be a police officer and they said this will give you the required training early on and will put me on that path.”

“And you believed them?” Aika looked at her dumbfoundedly.

“Looking back on it, it did sound too good to be true, but on the first day, they had taught me combat… like military. That should have been my first warning sign. The further I went I realized that they weren’t hiring police officers, but training me to protect their secret. My first operation was to analyse you, Yuuki.”

“M-me? Analyse?”

“They told me to look for any unusual behavioural patterns within your daily routine… we even have a memoir on your sleep schedule, what time you go to school, what you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” She went into scarily accurate detail about almost every detail of my life, it was like my existence was presented right in front of me.

“Alright, Jesus… I get the idea.”

“Wow, interesting… very interesting…” Aika replied with a grin on her face.

“What the hell are you smiling about…”

“Oh, nothing… nothing at all…” You know I can still see that grin getting wider, right?

“Oh by the way,” I looked at Nakamura. “You took quite the beating back there, you sure you’re okay?”

“Oh, me? Don’t worry about me, your friend somehow found it in her cold, dead heart to fix me up with some antibiotics and band-aids, so I should be fine.” She said with a smile, like she had gone through this exact same thing in the past.

As I was being guided along by these two, I had realized that we were going back into the school building.

“A-Aika… where are we going…?” I asked pre-emptively with asked with concern.

“W-where? Where do you think? The nurse’s room! Look at your leg! There’s no way we can leave it like that.”

“You treated it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but… I want to see if they have any crutches, the chances are you won’t be on your feet again for a couple of months or so… we need that leg healed fast.” Something that felt akin to an ounce of genuine concern, was all I needed to be reassured of Aika’s plan.

As we approached the door, I thought to myself… “How the hell are we going to explain this to the nurse…” Without a second thought from Aika, she immediately knocked on the door three times. No answer. We opened the door, and to our surprise, no one came into view. A window was left open, leaving the cool breeze of the summer evening’s air to swoop in and catch my nose. I breathed in every ounce of fresh air I could, because the room itself smelt like an actual hospital. Its pungent and nostalgic smell almost made me gag if it wasn’t for the fresh breeze courtesy of the open window.

“Yuuki, you just sit on the bed for a minute.”

“Right…” I tried looking around the room myself, looking for anything that resembled crutches, I didn’t want to be walking around with an old man's walking stick, so this was the next best thing.

“Over here, I think I’ve found some.”

“Thanks, Nakamura.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it, I’m don’t consider myself an ally of the state anymore.”

“Hehe… right…” An awkward bit of laughter escaped my mouth as I tried to formulate a rebuttal to that sentence. My God, just what the fuck was she doing? Like, seriously? Enemy of the state? You’re joking, right!? Just how deep into the rabbit hole was she? How much did she know?

“Well then, here yeah go! You’ll have to put up with this for the next couple or so months so I’d get used to it.” Nakamura said, waving over to Aika signalling that it was time to go.

Yeah, it probably is time to go, we stayed at school far longer than I expected. Getting up and down these stairs is gonna be a real pain for me as well. That reminds me of back then… the amount of force Aika would’ve had to use to pierce such a large piece of wood through my leg… she gave it her all, is all I can say.

“How are we gonna cover this up?” I asked with a worried look on my face. I knew if we didn’t come up with some sort of alibi, we would dig ourselves deeper into the lies we were already telling.

“How about we tell people that you broke your leg during soccer practice?” What sounded like a mocking remark came out in such a serious way, I didn’t know if she was genuine or just taking the piss. Either way, I know that wouldn’t fly well with the teachers, especially Natsuki, I mean he knows how much I hate soccer… and how I try to fake an injury to get out of practice…

“That won’t work.”

“Well, Yuuki, you’ve gotta have a suggestion, right? What kind of activity would you do that would result in your breaking your leg?”

“Let me think…” I thought about that question for a moment. Honestly, I couldn’t think up an answer, nothing I usually ever do ends up with me breaking my leg, well, except when hanging around with Aika, of course…

“What if we say… now, bear with me… I got accidentally pushed down the stairs by Aika?”

“Wait, why me exactly?!”

“Well because… I can’t say Nakamura accidentally pushed me down the stairs, can I? But if it were you, we could make a testimony! We could go up to my mom after school and just explain to her what happened! I’ll just say I wasn’t looking where I was going, mom will give me the usual scolding, and then I’ll say I bumped into you and fell down the stairs!”

“Wow, Yuuki, give yourself some room to breathe before you use up your last braincell, ey?”

“R-right, yeah sorry…” It was if my below-average brain suddenly went into maximum overdrive to come up with that completely elaborate plan, despite the fact it was quite simple.

“I get your point, but it’s the school faculty we want to convince, not your mother…” Nakamura added.

“My mothers the one who’s going to be contacting the school about it, hell, I might even get some time off because of it. God… time off, such beautiful words… w-w-what do you think, Aika?” I said in exasperation.

“Do you think I could pull it off?”

“We need you in school, if you’re off we can’t proceed with plans.”

“What plans? I haven’t heard a single ‘plan’ on how we’re even gonna meet this guy anyway, a-and why do you wanna even meet him?” I may have tripped on that metaphorical ‘landmine’, she went dead silent, it even spooked Nakamura.

“A lot of reasons.” Quick. Very quick. Her tone was that of sharpness, it dug straight through me I didn’t want to pressure her about her relationship with this guy, nor do I wanna know.

“Look, I am… sorry, I shouldn’t’ve pressured you. If you don’t wanna talk about it, obviously, you don’t have to. That should be a given.”

“No, it’s not your fault… in all honesty, I don’t have a plan, I was kinda hoping you would have one, Nakamura…”

“W-what, me? Why me?! This is your gripe with him, now you want me to do all of the planning for you, too? What kind of sick joke is this!? I’m already dead as things stand now if this entire thing blows up in our faces. YOU’RE the perpetrator here, you want him I can take you to him, that’s it, how you wanna go about doing it is up to YOU, Yamaguchi.”

“Enough… look, I don’t wanna stay here any longer than I have to, I’ve got a massive bottle of cola lying in my bedroom, probably boiling hot now that needs to be consumed.”

“I thought you only drank cola on Monday nights?”

“Okay, seriously that’s really fucking with me now, how the hell do you know that, do you seriously have cameras crawling around my house or something…?”

“No, that would be too risky… anyway, that’s what it says in the report.”

“Report…what report?! Anyway, why would you need to know when I drink cola…?”

“Anything helps us, medial or not, general habits of a subject are always nice to have handy with you, from that you can deduce what type of behavioural patterns they might exhibit in the future.”

“I don’t know what you can deduce about me from when I decide to drink cola…”

I walked around the room, trying to get used to these two sticks I would have to use for the next couple of months. I was getting a little better, I suppose. I wouldn’t say I’m the best at the game of, ‘Try to Stay Upright on Crutches’ or anything, but I wouldn’t say I’m bad at it, either.

I could see Nakamura and Aika chatting off in the middle of the doorway, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I ignored them, instead, focusing on getting used to the crutches. The only problem I could see with them was getting up and down the stairs, other than that, I was basically set.

“If you’re done chit-chatting, I would like to get going now… we don’t know when the nurse will get back and we’ve basically stolen the school’s equipment…” That thought had only crossed my mind in that very instance… I don’t know how well school faculty will respond to us stealing from the nurse’s office, but either way I’m not going home limping like a dog.

We arrived at the school gates. “Yuuki, I will walk you back to your house, from there we will explain to your mother what had ‘occurred’ and how it wasn’t ‘technically’ your fault.”

“Yep, sounds good to me!”

“Of course… listen though, I will be calling you around 11, so pick up your phone and don’t leave it hanging.”

“That late? What if they-”

“They won’t, without all broadcast stations in operation, they won’t have any luck with the operation.” Nakamura interjected.

“Whatever you two need to talk about over the phone, I can guarantee you by Hayashida randomly passing out mid-call.”

After we had left the school, we had sworn a secrecy to each other, one that would make sure that the only souls that knew about our plans were us and us alone. No one else can hear about this. As such, Nakamura went her separate ways for the time being, we pretended that this conversation never came to be.

“All we need to do now is to explain this all to your mother. That will be the spark that lights up our path into the next phase of the operation.”

“I see you’re still as dramatic as ever… look, when we get to my house, my mother probably won’t be home for another few hours…”

“She won’t?”

“That’s right, whatever phone call you wanted to make with me, we can just discuss it over at my house.”

“A-are you sure about this…? I hope I won’t be intruding, would I?”

“What? Are you kidding me? Of course not! If anything… look, my mom’s been telling me for ages now that if I don’t think seriously about the future, I’ll end up without anybody…”

She looked at me with a disgruntled face.

“H-hey, don’t get the wrong idea now… if you’re there, she’ll lay off of me for the time being.”

“I see… if I didn’t know any better, I would assume this was an unprecedented confession of love, Yuuki Hayashida…”

“Yes… it’s a complete and utter shame… now, can we get back on topic? When we get there, if you want I’ll heat some food up for you, I have absolutely no idea to cook so that’s the next best thing from yours truly…”

“I’d rather starve if I could…” She said coldly.

“How cruel…!”