Danny was standing on the balcony located at the front of the house. From there, Danny could observe any movement in the streets from the comfort of a chair.

The sky had just begun to darken now that the sun wasn’t visible anymore.

From his position Danny directly saw both the gun shop and the medical clinic to his left and right respectively. They were positioned on the other side of the street, both a block away from where he stood, while he would have to turn the leftmost corner to reach the mini-market.

Danny was not sure if he would visit those places after all hell broke loose, but at the very least he had the option. He already had prepared medical supplies and, although he didn’t have any firearm, Danny wasn’t so sure if getting one later was even a good idea.

All kinds of problems might arise if you had a gun in a chaotic situation. People may treat you with hostility and excessive caution. They might run away at first sight or preventively attack to defend themselves.

Besides, Danny never held a gun, he might be better off with a melee weapon. Not that it would make too much of a difference what kind of weapon he wielded if he went against something like Tutu.

The street had many similar houses to his own. There were also trees planted on set intervals on the sidewalk. This arrangement added a little bit of greenery to the view and offered some shade during the hottest hours of the day without obstructing his view too much, given that there was about 15 meters in between each tree.

Danny wondered whether he should go inside or stay on the balcony watching the outside for a bit longer, now that the expected moment was due to arrive soon, when he felt his phone vibrating.

He took it from the back pocket of his trousers and saw it was actually Janice calling. Danny knew what the call was for. He had completely forgot about the meeting to set up details regarding their group research project was today.

Danny had been so busy after his last talk to the demon that any memory regarding the gathering had completely slipped his mind.

Danny felt conflicted about answering her. To be honest, Danny didn’t give a heads up to any of his class colleagues about what he knew. On one hand, he was not sure how to approach the subject and wasn’t sure if anything would actually come to pass, even though he felt it was likely.

On the other hand, Danny wasn’t really close with anyone from college. They could be classified as acquaintances at most, definitely not his friends. He also didn’t owe anything to anybody there. He had already made calls to everyone that he felt deserved to know.

But remembering how Janice counseled him last week, Danny put his left hand on his face, placing his thumb and index finger on his left and right eyelids respectively, before slowly stretching his face downwards in annoyance.

He looked at a coffee shop across the street to his right and sighed. Danny knew he was about to do something stupid.

Janice waited for Danny to pick up the phone, while Jane pretended she was not interested and Carl and Chris stood in a bench not very far talking with each other.

So far, anytime the group got in touch with Danny, Janice had been the one to initiate it. Therefore, when they noticed Danny was running late to the agreed upon appointment, the task of calling him naturally fell upon her shoulders.

Behind her was the building they had decided to meet in front of beforehand. Since all four lived in the campus dormitories, and given that the college didn’t allow for boys to access the girl’s residence and vice-versa, they had to settle for using another place instead.

Fortunately, the campus had a dedicated facility for such occasions, where the students could meet up to study together or to participate in group projects, just beside the library building.

That was exactly where they were right now.

“Hello?”. Janice heard Danny’s voice from the other side of the line.

“Hi Danny! It’s Janice! How are you doing? You have missed quite a few classes these days, is everything alright? You didn’t reply to my messages”. Janice had already texted Danny a few times right now to make sure he was okay ever since he had disappeared.

In fact, Danny received quite a few of those texts and calls, from many people from the college, but he hadn’t responded to a single one. At the time, he viewed them as a distraction and felt he had bigger things to worry about.

“Yeah, sorry about that. My phone actually broke and I was caught up into something else. Today is the get-together, right? I had totally forgotten about it until just now. I am truly sorry”. Danny made up an excuse on the spot for not replying.

“It’s fine Danny, so long as you are alright. We were worried something had happened to you. It’s not such a big deal if you can’t come this time, there is still quite some time for the delivery date the professor stablished. We can postpone the meeting for another time. The few of us will just hang out instead then”. Janice said without asking for anyone’s input. She knew that they wouldn’t mind. Those days Danny had acted very differently from his usual self, so they knew something important must have cropped up.

“Tell you what Janice, I got a better idea. I am actually free right now, so why don’t you guys come over? There’s a coffee shop where I am right now, and we could do everything here instead. I can also buy you guys something to eat and drink as an apology for the messing up”.

“Where are you then?”

“I sent you the location just now”.

“Okay Danny, let me just check with everyone for a bit and I’ll call you back”. Janice hung up and turned around to face her best friend.

She immediately realized she didn’t need to explain anything to her. At some point during the call, Jane had dropped the façade of indifference and came closer to listen on the conversation, much to Janice’s amusement.

Jane’s face reddened a bit from her shameful display, but she quickly recovered her thick skin and pretended nothing happened.

After explaining the situation to both Chris and Carl, everyone decided to accept Danny’s invitation and soon they were on their way over.

They were already outside, so having to go somewhere else was such a minor thing, it didn’t even need to be mentioned. Who doesn’t like free food and coffee after all?

Danny hung up the phone and placed some things inside one of the backpacks he had lying around in the house.

In the end Danny couldn’t resist inviting them over. If Janice hadn’t called, Danny would felt fine about ignoring them and leaving their fate up to luck. Some might find him detestable or selfish for choosing to not do more in order to save as many people as he could, but, for better or worse, Danny was like that.

Danny didn’t imagine himself to be a hero or even a good person. He wasn’t cruel, but he could be apathetic at times towards others, especially if they had no relationship worth mentioning.

This kind of mentality had long since fostered inside him, resulting from the numerous times other people had disappointed him in the past, leaving him to fend for himself against the demon.

If others ended up dead, Danny wouldn’t lose one wink of sleep because of it. He didn’t kill them himself, why should he feel bad about it? Was he supposed to feel sadness or anguish? They could only blame their own bad luck for the outcome, life was tough.

In fact, this sort of thing was something that had been said to Danny many times over the years. People would often think that Danny wasn’t their responsibility, why should they put themselves at risk to help this random kid? Just because he was young, was Danny’s life worth more than any of theirs?

It wasn’t strange then that Danny ended up mirroring the same behavior. People were usually like this, a product of their own experiences.

However, since Janice called him directly and also showed goodwill towards him before, Danny couldn’t bring himself to abandon her and by extension her friends. Was that strange or contradictory?

Of course not!

That was actually a very common peculiarity in humans. People would be more affected by events happening near them than away from them. For example, everyone knew that there were many kids going hungry in Africa, but how many people actually did anything more than shaking their heads about the state of the world before going about their daily lives? On the other hand, if they found a starving kid on their way to work, most people would probably do something about it. That was a very normal thing.

Therefore, Danny ended up doing something that went against his plans and would possibly put him in danger. Tutu had advised him to stay away from other people and here he was doing the exact opposite. In the end, Danny wasn’t heartless.

He didn’t want to know if he would be able to face himself in the mirror if he behaved like his father did all those years ago, so he didn’t leave it to chance. Some lines are best never crossed, since once you trespass your bottom line, the easier it gets to do it again. After a while, you won’t even care about doing something you previously thought unthinkable.

After he decided to intervene, despite his misgivings, Danny could only chalk it up to fate and hope the small deviation would not matter in the end.