Chapter Text
To re-enter things at this point of ensuing pandemonium would add to the melodrama at the costly expense of making little goddamn sense. So I’ll start from the beginning.
It was closing in on seven-fifty-three when Temmie, anime figures in tow, and I pushed through the gymnasium’s double doors. The pace at which our peers went to and fro had hastened, a sense of urgency marked by a seven-minute warning. Orders were barked with little regard for existing friendship structures or relationships. I saw a girl trip and face plant—luckily nothing from what she carried was damaged—picked herself up and carried on with a feral attitude.
It was lucky that I had accepted Temmie’s help, ‘cause carrying a bunch of well-endowed hardly clothed anime girls past the forming line of parents would have been pretty damn awkward. I passed Mom in line. She gave me the usual fussing over. At least she understood my lack of time and stepped aside. Once inside Temmie surrendered my ‘girlies’ and with a low face I quickly discarded them on to our table display. Despite these effort my activities went noticed by an arachnid girl with too many prying eyes, and I decided to move up my imminent suicide a few weeks.
But this is the point where I turned away in shame, only to have one Ceroba Kim come crashing into me. It took us both to the floor, and for a few odd seconds I became intimately familiar with her fur that smelled like lavender.
“Dreemur—!” she said with a lot of distress, pushing herself off me in a painful way. “Let’s go—now!”
I hadn’t the luxury of asking where or why, but the how was being dragged by the arm across the entire gym, out a side door and into an ancillary bathroom. This might have been a dazed hallucination, but I swear the entire place grew extremely quiet—or the sound of my shoes squeaking against the floor in effort to keep up was just that loud.
She let go of me once inside, practically flinging me against the dirty tile like she was ridding herself of something gross. “Get up, Dreemurr, this is serious,” she spat.
I did as I was told, throwing in a mumbled quip about being kept out of the loop simply for drama and theatrics, but then I saw the present scene.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, man!” The cry came from a humanoid chap with a sickly pale purple complexion. His canines protruded in a way that was peculiarly vampiric, and curling horns came out from a head of combed purple hair. He wore black slacks and a clean white shirt with a trim that had to be ethnic. What gave context to his distress was the way Chujin Ketsukane appeared to be in the middle of wrestling him to the ground. In Chujin’s hands covered by disposable gloves was a pair of tweezers. Held within the tweezers was a familiar used tampon.
“Tell them your name,” Ceroba commanded. I noted the way Chujin suddenly released him, keeping on his knees. It left the odd fellow look fellow crumpled on the ground, shivering, a mess.
“Uh—oh, god—do we really have to be in the girls’ bathroom?—augh!”
Ceroba gave her boyfriend a nod. On silent orders Chujin offered him a sympathetic wince as he pressed the used tampon against his skin. It made a gross squelching sound, and some redness began dripping down the poor vampire’s face.
“Tell them,” Ceroba said again.
“It—It’s Dalv! My name is Dalv!” Dalv shouted in a panic. “Okay?—h-holy shit, you people are insane! I’m with the Asian S-Student Association. Er—the other one—I’m Filipino.” Here his breaths grew increasingly rapid.
“Tell them what happened,” Ceroba said.
“O-okay, what the fuck?!” he strained through chattering teeth. “Oh! Oh my God!” Then he keeled over and vomited all over the floor.
“Tell them!” Ceroba was screaming now.
“Okay!” Dalv said with a heave. “I have an ability!” His shout echoed against the cramped stall. “I have this ability—it might be difficult to believe, but I have this—”
“They know about the chalk,” Ceroba cut him off. “Tell them—tell us what yours does.”
“Okay, okay—holy shit.” He was still retching. “My ability is to ‘take’ things and ‘hide’ them somewhere. My ‘cursed ability’ is to ‘hide things’.”
“Okay, Dalv,” Ceroba laid a hand of her hip with an eye roll. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“I can hide things! I just told you! I—I ‘took’ your boyfriend’s ‘ability to walk’ and ‘hid’ it somewhere. Oh, Christ Almighty shit on a stick! It’s so goddamn cold, please make it stop!”
I gave Ceroba an inquisitive hum. She just shrugged.
“Okay, so give it back,” she said.
“I c-can’t. You have to ‘find’ it. You have to find the ‘thing’ I ‘hid’! Please, man!”
“Then tell us where it is.” Ceroba’s arms crossed. Her dark expression darkened.
“I can’t—augh!” This time Chujin squished the tampon against his face without encouragement. “I can make it move on its own automatically. It’s an ‘automatic’ ability!” A drop of blood hung at the edge of his lip, but he opened his mouth anyways. “L-look, it only has a range of about thirty meters,” he said, coughing and gagging. “It’s probably somewhere in the gymnasium.”
“What does it look like?” ordered Ceroba. Her sharp eyes sharpened.
“It’s a Labubu doll. I put it inside a Labubu,” Dalv cried. “Please, just let me leave!”
“Which Labubu is it?” Her sharp teeth came out with her yell. Dalv flinched and shrunk back.
“I—I don’t f-fucking know, man. It belonged to one of the other Asian girls. It was, like, p-pink or something.”
“Lychee Berry,” Ceroba’s thumbs flew over the keyboard of her phone, and in seconds I had a picture of it shoved in front of my face. “You heard the man. Go find it, Dreemurr.”
I told her to go find it herself.
“I can’t go find it because I’m keeping him here with my curse,” she said, annoyed.
I asked her what that had to do with anything.
She pinched the tip of her nose. “Jesus fucking Christ. You’re,” and then she called me a bad word. “I’ve used it on you twice and you still haven’t figured it out? Its intensity is directly proportional to my distance from the person affected,” she said. “The cold won’t be strong enough if I go too far away. And obviously Chujin can’t walk right now, so you’ve got to do this for us.”
But I owned them nothing. She knew I owed them nothing. In point of fact, as far as anyone was concerned, I should have very well told them both to go fuck themselves, stop torturing this poor kid Dalv, and left the bathroom then and there. But admit my weakness, that my brain was still a little addled by the smell of Ceroba’s soft fur so close to my face. I wasn’t thinking with my head.
“Okay,” I said, and I proceeded quickly on my new quest.
This brings me back to current events, whereupon exiting the girls’ restroom my mind is torn from one thing to another, as a thoroughly flummoxed-looking Noelle Holiday—in polite terms—choke-slams me into a wall. There’s a queer look of mania about her face, but also she’s really fucking hurting me, so I tell her that.
“Kris,” she says, releasing me. She paces back and forth in front of me. “I’ve been going through this in my brain for a few minutes and I can’t actually think of a normal reason why Ceroba would be dragging you into the bathroom.”
Her fierce buck teeth set me alight by her rage. “So there actually isn’t a normal explanation for that,” I begin, “but—”
She doesn’t let me finish. “Kris, like, I know you might be insecure about your chances with Susie and stuff, but, like, that does not mean you try to come in and steal my girl!”
“…Ceroba isn’t your girl.”
“Kris!!” She shrieks. “I know you’re, like, kind of a little teensy-weensy autistic or whatever stupid disease you caught from being human, but this is, like, the one thing keeping me sane right now and I need you to get out of my swamp right now because right now you’re in my swamp and if you stay there any longer I’m, like, actually gonna rip out your eyeballs and feed them to Azzy in a meatball sub.”
“She wanted me to find a Labubu for her. You should help me.”
“Oh, okay.”
[?+555-5555] fyi
[?+555-5555] idk if any of those chinks know we have dalv.
[?+555-5555] be careful
Whom I presume is Ceroba comes in as an unknown number. How she got mine I haven’t a clue. I fiddle with a new contact for a bit, finally settling on a zoomed-in picture of her in a lineup with the other Japanese kids on the poster board at our table.
I’ve let Noelle do a fair lot of the heavy lifting. At the prospect of conveniencing her beloved Ceroba she told me to eat a dick and took off to find the Gaywad Pinktits Labubu. I know that guy Dalv is suffering, and with a clearer head I understand his rescue is my actual motivation. Ceroba is still an enemy, by the way she’s acted against me thus far, but tonight will have to be an exception. That feisty girl from before, Kanako, guards our table, so I’m free to amble off. Noelle’s haste in excess encourages my more careful search, that maybe I’ll actually engage with the whole point of tonight while I’m at it. Ralsei accompanies me.
It’s worth noting that Kanako isn’t cursed. I suspected all Tojos were, but that proved demonstrably false when I had Ralsei try bumping into her on accident, only to phase through. Indeed this walk has a secondary purpose, to catalogue the cursed away from the sane and normal. For to a cursed individual Ralsei will appear as an ordinary passerby, and said goat boy can probe them with eye contact, brushing shoulders, et cetera.
It’s a good plan, or at least I think it is. But then I hear a squeal from afar that can only be Noelle. I hear Ralsei sigh, and I figure he also adjusts his glasses. “Alright, let’s go,” I say.
Winding through the scattered crowd proves cumbersome, even with tight focus. Off in the distance I can trace Noelle’s path by the dancing of her antlers above the sea of heads. And by analyzing the rippling waves in which they are disturbed, so too can I approximate the path of what precisely she’s chasing.
Eventually we’re in the same row, and the crowd parts to each side of the aisle. For a small Labubu doll, presumably the one desired, is animated, appearing to run across the length of the floor. It’s disturbing, or in other words uncanny, seeing something that oughtn’t move so it anyway, and it’s for this reason that I’m stunned for a few moments. It’s just enough for two Asians whom I fail to identify to come in from each side of me and lunge for it. The sight of Noelle exiting the crowd well off in the distance is enough to snap me out of it—
—and here thought of ‘snapping out of it’ leads to an critical epiphany. The speed of thought is functionally instantaneous in this situation, and so with the flick of a neuron Ralsei likewise ‘snaps’ from beside me to far in front of me, in a way such that his furry paws are already cradling the Labubu. It’s a ‘cursed’ object, so he can touch it. As my thoughts are his he already knows to catapult it to Noelle. She shrieks as the projectile comes at her—two bounces out of her hands and she catches it on the third try. She stares across the scene at me. Her fight of flight chooses neither. And soon the two chinks come up, obfuscating her from my view.
The crowd begins to resettle. In a few moments my traversal will be impeded, so I make a hasty decision and turn ‘round—walking straight into my dear mother’s arms. She materializes from the jumbled crowd and yanks me into a hug. For a few seconds I forget about all this chaos.
“I’ll go on ahead, Kris,” Ralsei shouts above the distant commotion.
“Hello, sweetie,” she says. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”
“Yes,” I get out quickly, and make a big deal of showing I really don’t want to be hugged at the moment.
“That’s good to hear.” She obliges me halfway, releasing me yet still latching onto my hands. “I went and took a look at the exhibit you helped Noelle with.” She pulls my arms with the natural swaying of her body, like a swing. “Though some of the things you had on display were a little vulgar, I think.”
“Look, Mom, I’m sorry, but I’m really in a hurry right now.”
“You can spare a few minutes for your mother,” she says, suddenly stern. “The one who took you in and raised you and gave you food and water and a warm bed—” You know the spiel. It ends soon enough, and I think I’m free, but she’s yet to let me go. My hands start to get sweaty in her clutches. “You know Kris,” she says eventually. “You could have made a human exhibit.”
“Too much work,” I almost shout. I try to sneak a look over my shoulder, but the people have already reset to their usual patterns of walking.
“But I’m sure it would be really popular!” Mom says. “You’d win the popularity contest for sure!”
“Mom, please not now.”
“Kris,” she pulls in close. Her left cheek raises in a goofy smile. “You need to be more proud of yourself. I bet half the people here don’t know the first thing about being human, and you could be the one to teach them—”
“Good Godly mother dearest who could do no wrong—please, I really need to find Noelle and tell her something. Can we please finish this conversation later?”
I don’t mean to whine, but I’m sure it sounds like it. “Alright, Kris,” she says with a sour face. “But when I’m old and on my deathbed you’re going to look back at moments like these and wonder why on Earth you couldn’t spare just a few more moments of alone time with your precious mother—”
“‘Kay. Bye.” I bolt off.
Ralsei appears beside me as I’m pushing through people—moving obstructions, so far as I’m concerned. “I lost track of Noelle,” he says.
How? I think.
“Um!” A lot of anxiety bleeds out of his voice. “Let me start from the beginning. I saw that weird Filipino guy—Dalv—I saw Ceroba chasing him out of the girls’ bathroom. I think he must have disabled her ability somehow.”
That’s inconceivable. Did he somehow figure out what makes it go away?
“I think—and this is just a theory—it must have to do with that ‘proximity’ Ceroba was mentioning. If you go far enough away, the freezing effect ends.”
That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been further from Ceroba than the length of this gym, and I’ve still felt her curse’s effects.
“I’m getting to that, Ralsei says. He yanks me out of the way of some stroller. “Listen to this: Ceroba was stumbling around and bumping into people while she was trying to chase Dalv. I think he must have ‘taken and hid’ her perception of distance!”
The hell? That doesn’t make any sense. He was still, like, five feet away from her. He should have still felt its full effects.
“But, see, that’s what I’m getting at,” Ralsei says. “I’m starting to think all these ‘cursed abilities’ are all in your head. Kind of like how I’m all in your head.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine Ralsei as a three-headed fire-breathing dragon. It doesn’t work. He shoves me from colliding with another person.
“No, you’re not getting what I mean.” His voice peaks, like he’s frustrated. I twist and plant a heel, full stop. “It’s, like,” gesturing impatiently with his hands, “a subconscious ‘thing’, I think. Like, Ceroba’s curse only acts like Dalv is a hundred million light years away from her only if she genuinely ‘thinks and believes’ that. It’s her perception of reality. Hence why Dalv ‘took’ that particular sense from her.”
I ask him next if he caught how it’s activated.
“I did.” Ralsei nods. His glasses droop, and he pushes them back up as a part of his present fidgeting. “He touches his pinky to one of his horns, then sticks his pinky out and fires something that looks like a projectile. And whatever that projectile hits, he can take from and hide.”
I put two and two together. To Ralsei—so you think he ‘took and hid’ Noelle’s entire person?
He nods viciously. “Ye—”
“Kris Dreemurr!” I know the stiff English to be Chujin Ketsukane’s before I see him behind me.
Ralsei and I give him the Spark Notes of our discussion.
“Okay,” Chujin says without another question. “So our goal becomes to find whatever object Noelle Holiday has been sequestered into.”
“Wait, how did you get your walking back?” Ralsei adjusts his glasses. The buzz of Multicultural Night activities weighs down on us. It’s claustrophobic. I guess to everyone else this has all been nothing more than dumb teens horsing around.
“I believe there is a limit to his curse. So you will need to closely listen.” Chujin’s precise pronunciation maintains composure even now. “Two ‘thefts’ total—one per horn. Ceroba and I failed to consider that. It was our failure. When he took Noelle Holiday, he chose to release me in favor of keeping Ceroba’s incredible destructive capabilities neutralized.”
“Okay,” Ralsei says. “But then why did they capture Noelle, then? This whole thing kind of doesn’t make any sense.”
“That,” Chujin says, straightening his back out of our impromptu huddle, “I do not know.”
There’s some silence that comes next. I’m growing more self-conscious of us as a pair of morons slouching in the middle of the aisle. “So now what?” Ralsei says eventually.
“I do not know,” Chujin says again.
“What’s your ‘curse’ do anyways?” I ask him. “It’d be good to know if we’re gonna get Noelle back.”
“Nothing useful.” I’ve a feeling he isn’t going to budge.
“Okay, whatever,” I say. “Where’s Kanako? I know she doesn’t have an ‘ability’, but she’s good at pushing the others’ buttons. These chinks aren’t trying to kill us, right?”
Chujin eyes me warily. “No, but expect a thorough beating nonetheless,” he says. “As for Kanako, I will see what I can do. I will find the other members of our Asian Student Association and make sure they are aware of the situation.”
“O-Kay!” Ralsei shouts, hopping in place. “Kris and I will track down Dalv. We’ll figure out a plan between now and then.”
We part ways with a few nods between us. Taking long, powerful strides now, I outpace Ralsei intentionally. It’s an opportunity I use to practice his ‘teleportation’. As such he darts across my field of view. From atop the table he disappears, and comes back into sight hanging high up from the ceiling. And an instant later right in front of me. And again atop a table. Then far, far down the aisle I walk. Next I try closing my eyes. They flick open when Ralsei lets out a yelp, and I find him stuck inside a pillar off to the far right side of the room. Another snap from off to on in a single neuron and he’s back by my side. “We’ll have to work on doing it sightless,” I tell him.
He nods. “Now that Dalv is loose, he’s definitely back to being our ‘opponent’, but I’m not yet sure he’s exactly our ‘enemy’. Finding Noelle is our main goal. Agnostic of alliances, making everything go back to normal is priority one. Whatever disagreement has the two Asian Student Associations so diametrically opposed we can figure out later, and side with whichever one ideology we agree with the most.”
I nod back. Agreed.
It doesn’t take long to find Dalv. As I’m cursed, I doubt the common passerby sees the same as I see, the pair of shimmering horns which are more apparent against the backdrop of a dimly lit gym than previously in the girls’ bathroom.
His critical error is thinking that a hoodie will conceal his features when those peeking horns tell a lot about him from afar. He’s near his exhibit, table number seventeen, talking with some girl that happens to be Temmie Chang. She sees me, leans conspicuously over such that he reflexively follows. And now a decision must be made.
My train of proceeds in those microscopic moments as follows: Dalv is about to see me. And at present Dalv is my ‘opponent’. Therefore once he sees me he’s likely to have a fight or flight response; this is to say either he’ll associate me with the torture Ceroba and Chujin put him through an try to flee like a little bitch, or he’ll stand his ground and try to use his ‘ability’ on me. It’s crucial moments like these where I lament that correspondence between me and Ralsei is not instantaneous in both directions. My thoughts are his, but his thoughts to me need to be conveyed manually. See, he failed to elaborate on the nature of Dalv’s ‘projectile attack’—speed, precision, and effective range. I’ve no clue if I’ll have a chance to dodge, and so offense becomes my only viable strategy.
In an instant I shunt Ralsei forward in space, he gets the memo and spreads his body wide for a tackle. Dalv turns at that same moment.
“Oh, hey, you’re Kris, right?—woah!” Temmie jumps as Ralsei brings Dalv to the ground. But the dumb goat hardly incapacitates him. He’s on the floor before long, Dalv standing over him. My eyes dart to his pinky; apparently he’s managed to prime it in the scuffle, and so he fires it at me dead on. As my body is slow and untrained, the one thing left for me to do is think—and interpose Ralsei between myself and his projectile.
In a bright flash, Ralsei’s visible form turns opaquely pink, shrinks to a more the size of a grape, then travels to Dalv’s open palm. His eyes widen, appraising me in shock. I suppose I’m the antagonist here, but I don’t care.
Dalv cups the small orb, and presently his face washes white with conflict. The hand trembles, and making a hasty decision smothers it in his fist. It next lunges for a red balloon from a lineup of white and blue at a British exhibit, ripping it off its anchor and sending it into the ceiling. And only then do the implications of these events set in—Ralsei is no longer here.
“The fuck did you do?!” I shout.
Dalv flinches, timid. “I took him,” he says. “I ‘took’ your friend and ‘hid’ him in that balloon. Don’t worry, this one won’t move.” And then he bolts off.
“Bro, what was all that about?” Temmie cocks her head.
“I think he must have stolen my ‘ability’ and hid it in that balloon.” I point vaguely at the ceiling.
“Ability?” she says. I’d assumed since she saw Ralsei she would know. “Oh, you mean that chalk stuff? You’re wrapped up in that nonsense, too?”
“Aren’t you?”
“What makes you think that?” She says, pressing a paw to her chest, as if offended.
“You saw my ‘ability’ earlier today. “Only people with abilities of their own can see other people’s abilities.”
Temmie drops to all fours. We walk and talk. “Sure, yeah,” she says. “I’ve eaten a Hagoromo. Dunno my ability, though.”
“How’s that so?”
“Bro.” And we have a staring contest for a few seconds. “Some of these curses make you have to do a handstand in a bucket of water on a Tuesday while it’s raining outside just to activate. You think I have time to just sit around kicking toddlers or pissing on watermelons just to find out I can turn plastic into peanut brittle? No thanks.” He shakes her head very exaggeratedly. “You’re lucky yours is—was—so convenient,” she adds.
“Touché.”
“Anyways, what’s up? How come you jumped Dalv like that?” She course-corrects the subject.
“He used his ‘ability’ on Noelle,” I tell her. “—and Ceroba. He took Ceroba’s ‘sense of direction’ which neutralized her ‘ability’. But then he used it on Noelle—‘took’ her and ‘hid’ her someplace.”
We stop in front of a Greek exhibit. ‘Greeks are people of color, too’ says a sign. “But then he took your ability,” she says very deadpan, staring at the sign.
“Yeah, he did.”
“Which makes three thefts,” she says.
“Shit, you’re right,” I start. “I think he must have returned Ceroba’s ‘ability’, then. Its potential for destruction is extreme, but he must have taken Noelle specifically for some reason,” I decide aloud. “Have any insight on that?”
“Pssh—what, bro?” Temmie laughs. She gets back quadrupedal and we start walking again. “I’m just here for the volunteer hours. Last thing my life needs is getting on little Miss Kim’s bad side and find myself turned into a popsicle.”
“That can still be arranged.” Of course it’s Ceroba. Her claws are out, head on a constant swivel. Chujin steps close behind. “A quick mauling could even out that fucked-up, drooping face of yours,” she tells Temmie, who uses the nearby table to stand bipedal. “Looks like you were in a car crash and the doctors forgot to stitch it back together.”
Temmie scoffs. “Bitch.” She storms off.
“That Filipino guy—Dalv,” I tell the two remaining Asians. “He ‘took’ my ability and ‘hid’ it in a balloon. It’s on the ceiling now.”
Ceroba stretches her neck. “Yeah, I see it. I was wondering about that.”
“Your boytoy wouldn’t happen to have a ‘ranged ability’, or is he only good for eye candy after all?”
“Excuse me?” Chujin says. “You were not very much help to begin with, and Dalv must think so as well. Note that he chose to specifically remove your ‘ability’. He could have very easily handicapped you in a way that restricted your curse as a side effect—for instance, removing your capacity for creative thought—but he did not, while with Ceroba he did.”
“In other words,” Ceroba says. “He clearly doesn’t view you as much of a threat as he does me.” She smirks.
My shoulders slump a little, but I can understand her perspective. It’s logical, and as I consider myself a solutions-oriented thinker, I have to agree with it.
“Despite this, Kris Dreemurr.” Chujin adjusts his grasses. “You are still useful to us with your current faculties. You will go find Kanako. She was supposed to receive an ability from the Hagoromo box you discarded,” he puts on a rare cross face, “but that is at the moment neither here nor there. Remember that Noelle Holiday must have been stowed inside an ‘object’. Go find this ‘object’ while Ceroba and I pursue Dalv.”
“That makes sense,” I lie. “Okay.”
Kanako receives the summarized events well. I leave out the part where I got a chalk power instead of her, though there’s a chance she already knows. I’m sort of surprised how quickly she gets with the program. Thus far she’s only given me evidence of a carefree and perhaps somewhat slovenly girl. Though I suppose Ceroba maintains her company for a reason.
Regardless, we march as two down the aisles. She’s kind of shrimpy, so although she takes the lead I’ve a clear view of the path ahead. Multicultural Night is scheduled to go for one and a half hours officially, two hours involving stragglers, of which eighty minutes have passed. In other words it’s ten minutes ‘till they tally the votes for best exhibit. Yet as we proceed I find myself lagging, less in tune with my surroundings and more hypnotized by the aggressive batting of her tail. How she’s so chipper at this dire hour, when whom should ostensibly be her friend is victim to an attack from a probable ‘enemy’, I do not know.
“Think we’ve got a good shot at winning?” I ask Kanako randomly.
Her ears perk up. She turns around. “Oh, you talk,” she says. “Here I thought you were just gonna stare at my ass the whole time.”
Instinctively I jerk my head to the side in shame. Yet when I peek back she does a little twirl, and I find my face heating up.
“I’m not gay, by the way,” she says. “Sorry to break your heart.”
I tilt my head.
“I mean, I know I’m probably the first girl to give you the time of day who doesn’t have a fucked-up face, or fucked-up teeth, or weighs two hundred pounds, but try not to get too attached.” She does another twirl.
“Mhm,” I hum.
“But I think we’ve got a shot at winning,” she says, finally deciding to answer my question. “We actually put a modicum of effort into our display, whereas half these exhibits look put together on the fly.” We share a nod. “On the other hand, though, we’ve got limited time to find Noelle, and without a curse it’s gonna be almost impossible.”
“What’s finding Noelle got to do with winning?” I say.
“Oh, well Noelle’s the one who signed the submission form thing and you need that person to accept the prize or you get disqualified,” she says. “I guess you wouldn’t know this ‘cause you’re a junior, but there was this controversy in my freshman year where some rando tried to claim the third place prize.”
There’s a rumbling of the crowd behind us. The tinny audio of a voice speaking into a mic—visitors are encouraged to head to the far side of the gym for the announcement of the winner. “You don’t think that’s why they attacked Noelle, do you?” I say through the people bustling past us.
“Well, yeah, duh,” she says dryly. “Why else do you think they’re going through all this trouble for?”
“Not sure,” I murmur.
“It’s like this,” she says, turning on a dime. “Now, this is just a theory, but just based on what you’ve told me, I figure Dalv got captured by Ceroba on purpose. His plan was to lure Ceroba in, since he probably figured she was too dangerous to battle head on.”
“That makes sense,” I lie. “Okay.”
We idle for a few moments more. Indeed time is running short, and the clock is winding down on our deadline. I check my phone. Five minutes left. Each precious second ought to count, and yet Kanako and I take the time to people-watch. I spot my mother among the particulates filtering out through the sieve. That announcement was like gravity; it pulls back the curtain of layfolk like a receding wave. It leaves behind five people: me and Kanako, the latter standing on tiptoe to peer over the still tables; and three rows down Ceroba and Chujin, the latter’s claws seeking to rend the flesh of the fifth, the kid Dalv. A few parents give concerned looks at the scene that to them (and me) appears like a direly asymmetric campaign by Ceroba, but more in a way that ushers their small children away from the scene than any intervention.
Dalv points his pinky finger, and for a split moment he catches me watching; it’s enough to convince him to move his pinky from Chujin to Ceroba. She dodges the projectile—that’s invisible to me—with incredible speed, so fast I miss it between blinks. She must have some kind of training, I decide. Maybe a sport or something. Though he missed, Dalv exploits the opportunity to put more space between him and the offending couple.
I try checking in with Kanako to see what she wants to do next, but she’s out of talking earshot. I see her off near the other end of the gym, probably searching blindly for whatever Dalv’s hid Noelle in. I try the opposite direction, only to collide with something lithe and soft. I only stumble a little. It’s puzzling that nothing’s before me but empty space, but then I hear it.
“Kris!” Noelle’s voice is a sound for sore ears. “Please tell me you can see me.”
It takes a bit to surmount the shock of hearing a voice without a body. “No dice,” I tell her. Before her invisible shoulders can slouch, “but I think I know what’s going on.”
“Oh, really?” I can imagine her buck teeth rolling their eyes—whatever that means. “Because, like, I’ve been trying to talk to people all night, and all I get are freak-outs.”
“I’m not freaking out right now, am I?” I offer her.
“I guess not,” she admits.
“Never mind that,” I say. Four minutes left. “We’ve gotta move quickly here. There’s a Filipino guy that Ceroba’s trying to attack—you see him over there, right?”
“I see him,” Noelle says. There’s some silence that comes next, allowing the bated breath and anxious murmuring to make it all the way here. “Gee—Ceroba really knows how to move. Like—”
I sense a monologue incoming so I cut her off. “Noelle—focus!” There’s a light gasp, like she’s surprised by my shouting. “That kid’s name is Dalv. And this is gonna sound insane but he’s got a supernatural power that he got from eating cursed chalk.”
“I believe you,” Noelle says.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I think,” she says. “It’s the Hagoromo originals from, like, two weeks ago, right? I tried asking Ceroba about that whole thing when you ran off with it, but, like, she was being really weird about not telling me.”
“I see.” My neck runs cold with sweat. The growing pressure begins to haunt me. We’ve got maybe three minutes and thirty seconds to three minutes and fifteen seconds before Multicultural Night is over. “Look, the point is that this Dalv guy’s ‘ability’ is to ‘take’ something and ‘hide’ it someplace,” getting out the words quickly. “And he used it on you to ‘take’ your ‘physical appearance’. But when he ‘takes’ something, he has to ‘hide’ it in an object. Do you remember what happened when you lost your ‘appearance’? Did you see what ‘object’ it was put into?”
Some more silence. “Kris, why are you talking like that?”
“Noelle, we have, like maybe three minutes until they announce the best exhibit vote.” I cross my arms, lean to one side.
“Fine, gee,” she says. “I don’t actually know when people stopped seeing me, I guess. Like, I can see myself just fine. But after those zippers took Ceroba’s Labubu I was just off minding my own business, and all of a sudden, like, people are bumping into me and not saying sorry.”
Damn. That rules out that possibility.
In the meantime I check back in on Ceroba. In the minute or so that’s passed, she’s managed to gain some ground with a little ingenuity. She moves in sync with Chujin, interposing him between herself and the enemy. It sabotages each of Dalv’s offensives with an undercurrent of doubt. Each forward attack he flinches away from. He takes the second-guessed steeper angle with his pinky every time. Despite the fact that I can see none of its supernatural magic, I can still approximate the details of the fight unfolding.
But however ingenious Ceroba’s protected advance may be, her striking range barely clears two feet. My phone reads eight-twenty-seven and forty-five seconds. A little over two minutes until the vote is announced, a reality predicated by another timely warning over the speakers over yonder.
“Got any ideas, Noelle?” I ask to my right. With no knowledge of what the hidden object even looks like, we’re kind of flailing in the dark. Even Kanako’s given up; or, to not discredit her integrity, maybe worn herself from all that running. Either way I see her slouching off somewhere, watching the unfolding battle same as me. Ten more seconds have passed. “Noelle, we don’t have much time,” I say again.
There’s no response.
“Noelle?”
Even without the facilities of sight, one might yet sense another person’s presence in a vague sense. When someone is being watched, in the absence of more explicit evidence like their spectator’s footsteps, subconscious clues from the periphery will still clue in this unsuspecting person. Whether it be a subtle change of the light, or a subtle audio cue from breathing or the rustling of clothes, the magnificent brain will automatically pick up on these things and prepare a reaction without authorization. By these base instincts working in tandem with its supreme intelligence has monsterkind (humans as well) earned its dominion over this shimmering blue dot.
I suspect this is why Dalv winds his shoulders. To Ceroba and Chujin his profile has slimmed, and by pulling his outstretched pinky local to the center of his abdomen, he is very easily able to pivot with his hips and aim behind him.
But it isn’t enough. For an unseen force buckles Dalv’s legs. It’s flimsy, and only jerks his pinky skyward for a quarter of a second or less, but that’s all Ceroba needs to swing ‘round her boyfriend and scrape her claws against his ribs.
He falls to the ground immediately. “Augh!” He cries out from equal parts cold and pain. Even from here I can see the small amount of blood staining his once-white shirt before he falls to the ground. Ceroba leaps onto him, and Chujin helps her pin down his arms.
“Where did you put Noelle?!” She screams.
Heads turn from the far side of the gym. What must have first come off as odd roughhousing is now undeniably outright battery. As some students timidly step towards the scene, the crowd parts to allow some teacher to make their way through.
I cut through the rows of tables by crawling underneath. Just in time to hear Ceroba say in a lower, glowering tone: “My ‘ability’ isn’t supposed to be lethal, but if you keep this close to me for too long you will freeze,” she snarls.
Dalv gets the memo. “It—” He coughs. “It’s a paper lantern. It doesn’t move. I put it in one of the ones from our exhibit.” His breaths are sharp and short. At this point I arrive behind Ceroba. She sees me, but she also sees that teacher—whom I now realize is Miss Alphys—scuttling towards us.
“Chujin, go deal with her,” she barks, and so he does.
“And Kris,” she snaps at me. “We only have thirty seconds before they announce the winner. You’re gonna have to run.”
“What about me?” Noelle’s voice comes beside her.
Not stopping for anything, Ceroba says, “make your way to the front where they’re holding the vote.”
“On it!” Noelle exclaims.
I hear the noise of her sprinting off, and I prepare to likewise abscond. My heart revs up. Adrenaline begins its production, then spikes. My leg muscles tense, on the precipice of explosion. All that’s left is the ignition. Twenty-five seconds remaining.
And yet before the spark lights my senses ablaze, I’m arrested by my right wrist. My lungs choke and sputter. “H-hang on, Kris,” I hear Miss Alphys say behind me. Under normal circumstances pulling free from her grasp should be trivial; a child could do it. My crashing brain sends the rest of my body into shock. Skin floods with a cold sweat. Chujin stands off to the side, a sorry look about him. “C-can you please get off him?” she asks Ceroba. Signs of an imminent eruption flash across the kitsune’s face, yet she submits to the teacher. Twenty-one seconds.
“Miss Alphys,” I say in a panic. “I really just have to—”
“No!” I wasn’t aware she was capable of such forwardness, and the whiplash in and of itself is enough to neuter another escape. “Kris,” she says so slow it hurts. “Now, I know I’m just a long-term sub, but I—I’m just a little concerned with your behavior recently. First, you’re getting mixed up with troublemakers like Susie, and now this.” She rubs the back of her neck. Rolls her wrist around all nervous-like. It’s lost me a combined twelve seconds. “But, um, when I stopped by the police station I happened to hear what happened with your father.” She takes a deep breath. “And, uh, I just wanted to let you know that the school has resources for this sort of thing.”
I’m beginning to lose hope as the clock ticks down to eight-twenty-nine and fifty-six seconds. The announcer is already in the process of announcing the winner. In just four—three—seconds, Noelle will arrive, but she won’t receive the prize. Her chances of winning that gift card are going down the drain. I’m about to slack my shoulders, hang my head, and tell Miss Alphys that I’m sorry and that I’ll make an appointment with the school guidance counselor, ‘cause maybe I am going insane and perhaps a little disturbed.
Then, at the last possible moment, an opportunity presents itself.
They say to never interrupt your enemy in the midst of their error. The wisdom is time-worn, and for two thousand years and more before its utterance our society has understood it still as an instrumental yet undiagnosed, axiomatic truth. This is Dalv’s fatal decision, for as Ceroba Kim complies with Miss Alphys and raises herself off of him, he takes the opportunity to activate his ability—grazing his horn with a pinky, aiming straight for her stomach. Maybe its some base desire to pursue momentary relief no matter the cost, or maybe he was simply too stupid to think on a higher level. Perhaps he’s one of those hylic thugs who who revels in sensation. That his only concern is the here and now. He’s made of clay, then, and clay is unlike ideas or spirituality in that it’s a purely physical thing, molded by beings of great intelligence and molded by the forces of nature, but never declaring its own shape. It begins and ends in the present. It doesn’t dwell on the past, and it certainly doesn’t peek into the future. Though I don’t see that fabled pink projectile, I see Ceroba’s reaction. She stumbles. At this minute instance in time, I understand that something has been ‘taken’ from her. Which makes three ‘things’ that have been ‘taken’. The single, lonely second remaining before the time reaches eight-thirty could be the lifespan of the entire universe held up against the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second it takes for me to usher along my neurons my next, focused thought.
At the same instant Ralsei appears next to their exhibit and crushes a cursed paper lantern.
Kris Dreemurr (17, they/them)
Curse: Allows for the materialization of the imaginary friend ‘Ralsei’, a small goat boy about Kris’ age. He is beholden to their most subconscious thoughts and desires as they come to pass in real time.
Otherwise Ralsei is considered independent, and possesses his own personality that is not entirely predictable—polite, mild-mannered, and somewhat perverted. His own thoughts and machinations are his exclusively, however, and he must selectively convey them as does any other person. Ralsei can physically interface with other individuals also bearing a ‘curse’ or objects affected thereby. But otherwise cannot affect objects or ordinary people.
Power: E
Speed: D
Range: A
Stamina: A
Precision: B
Potential: A