The Simulacrum

"You have what?!" the princess shouted in a quite unladylike manner as she jumped to her feet and slapped the tabletop, prompting me to quickly grab the drinks in the middle before she would flood everything with them. I breathed out a sigh of relief as I managed to do so in the very last moment, then I glanced up at the wide-eyed girl standing on the opposite side of the dinner table.

"Careful," I told her as I set the glasses back down, then after a moment I added, "It's not such a big deal," but she only shook her head in response.

"No, this isn't something you can just trivialize like that!" she exclaimed again, and I let out another tired breath and gestured for her to sit back down.

Now, for a bit of an explanation, we had to turn back the sands of time for about… ten minutes or so? Anyways, since my new girlfriends (damn, that still sounded weird, no matter how many times I repeated it) couldn't agree on who should make dinner, by process of elimination, they both did. This explained the fact that we had two different kinds of broths, mashed potatoes, some kind of fruit salad, a plateful of toasts and even homemade waffles. Even if we considered that there were three of us, the amount of food on the table was a little daunting. As for where they even got the ingredients for all of this, that was one of the seven mysteries of my kitchen.

Anyways, once we sat down around the table, I decided to let the princess in on one of my little skeletons in the closet, namely my amnesia. She was my girlfriend after all (still weird), so it was only proper to let her know about some of my secrets, and this was one the less weird ones. … Which made me realize how messed up my life was once again, so I was trying to ignore it by filling my stomach, which she rudely interrupted. Hence, we were back in the present, where I rubbed my temple with one hand while grabbing a toast with another.

"I'm not trivializing anything. I had it even before we first met, and I learned to work around it. In other words, it's not that big a deal."

"How can you say that?" she continued to protest while leaning closer, her hands still on the tabletop. "And why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"It's complicated, so I kept it a secret," I answered between two bites. "In fact, you are only the third person in the know."

The blonde girl's eyes narrowed in suspicion as she took a sneaky glance at my assistant, who was quietly eating her broth on my right.

"Who are the others?"

"Judy and Josh," I answered honestly.

"A—!" She began while she pointed an accusatory finger at me, but then her enthusiasm wilted in a matter of moments and her exclamation ended in a soft "…ha?", then she shook her head and leaned even closer, to the point where she was practically on top of the food in the middle of the table, and she asked, "I kind of expected Judy, but Josh too?"

"He was the first," I answered while I extended my arm and pushed her back with an index finger while telling her, "If you keep doing that, the end of your hair is going to get into the soup."

She let out a soft 'Oh' and sat back down, only to give me a weird look a moment later.

"Why didn't you tell the others about it?"

"I told you, it's complicated," I answered with a voice that was only a tiny bit exhausted.

"But you told me."

Now it was my turn to give her a weird look, and since she didn't seem to get the message, I told her, "It's because we are going out now."

"Oh, right," she muttered with an absent-minded voice, then her cheeks very slowly flushed as her lips curved upwards in a dopey smile and she began to giggle.

"Chief, she is creeping me out," my dear assistant stated with her usual deadpan voice, which was quite an achievement considering her cheeks were so full of waffles she reminded me of a hamster. Unexpectedly, the princess didn't react to her words; instead she had a weird, dreamy look in her eyes. I looked between my two girlfriends (nope, still weird), and for a moment I couldn't decide which of them was the stranger. But then again, people in glass houses shouldn't call other people weirdoes or something. … I never got that saying, by the way. Who lives in glass houses? And why would they throw rocks? Language is weird.

Anyways, I exploited the fleeting lull in the conversation to empty my mug, and by the time I put it down, the princess got over her momentary stupor and shook her head.

"Wait, don't try to sweet-talk me!"

"I didn't," I answered her protest with one of my own, and she honest to goodness huffed.

"You think I wouldn't be on to you after all this time?" she asked with a cocky grin. "Whenever you want to dodge a question, you would say something to embarrass me. However, it's not going to work anymore!" Saying so, she pointed a challenging finger at me. I don't know how I knew it was a challenging one and not an accusative one, I just did. "Since I'm your girl… friend… now…"

Aaaaaand she got exactly that far before her voice trailed off, an almost translucent blush conquered her face, and her mouth twisted into a dopey smile… again.

"Chief, I think Eleanor is broken. We should return her to the shop while we still have the warranty on her," Judy spoke up with a serious expression, then after a momentary pause she added, "No need to fix her, just ask for our money back."

"Hush, Dormouse," I chided my assistant. "She's just not used to the situation yet. Remember how much she used to freak out whenever I teased her in the past? She got over that too. I'm sure if we give her a little time, she'll be fine."

Judy looked over the princess, then shrugged her shoulders and continued eating her fruit salad. In the meantime, Elly wiped the smile off her face and scowled at me.

"Oh, that's a nostalgic look," I spontaneously muttered, earning me a curiously raised eyebrow from both girls, so I hastily added, "It's been a while since you glared at me like that. It brings back memories."

The princess let out a huff and averted her face with a pout.

"And whose fault was that?"

"You can't fault me. It's in men's nature to tease girls."

"No Chief, that's just your nature," my assistant retorted between two bites.

"Right, it's all because you are a flirt!" Suddenly the princess's eyes opened a fraction wider and then her brows immediately knit together in a frown as her gaze returned to me. "Now that you mention it, no more flirting!"

"Pardon?" I asked reflexively, taken more than a little aback.

"I said, no more flirting," Elly repeated with a look that was even more intense than usual. "Since we are in a relationship…" She paused for a moment, and while I was half-expecting that she would start giggling to herself again, she only closed her eyes for a moment, took a huge breath, and continued, "… since we are in a relationship, you cannot flirt with other girls anymore!"

"I never flirted with anyone other than you," I answered emphatically, which, to my sincerest surprise, drew a reaction out of the other girl.

"I knew it!" Judy exclaimed… well, no, in her case it was more like 'said a bit more forcefully', but the effect was the same. Semantics aside, she continued by stating, "So you were aware that you were flirting with Eleanor."

"Well, in retrospect…" I muttered while scrutinizing the far corner of the room. Because it was interesting. There was no other reason. I was most definitely not avoiding her gaze at all.

"He was flirting with you too!" the other girl exclaimed as she pointed at my assistant with a fork in hand.

"That's a given," Judy answered, completely deadpan as usual.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means it's only a problem when he flirts with other girls."

"That's right!" the princess agreed, completely ignoring the fact that Judy probably meant said category included her as well, and she faced me again. "There you go, we are both in agreement! You are no longer allowed to flirt and tease girls."

I let out a small sigh and faced her accusatory fork (that somehow collected half a kiwifruit somewhere along the conversation).

"Fine, fine. So what you are saying is that I am only allowed to tease you from now on, my princess."

"That's…" Elly gave me a classic deer-in-the-headlights look.

"Say no more! I promise that, from now on, I will dedicate my whole being to teasing you!"

"Don't do that!" she riposted while she was getting red up to her ears again.

"But I have to! You just told me that it's my nature, and therefore I have to tease someone. Since you are the only one I can tease, it is only logical that I will—"

"What about her?!" she interrupted me while waving her hand towards my assistant. I also glanced over, and for a moment our eyes met. We held eye contact for a second, then Judy put down her own fork and let out a small sigh that sounded weirdly exasperated.

"I guess I have no choice," she uttered in a defeated voice, "Since you asked me directly, I will oblige and tease you too. Are you happy now?"

"No! That's not what I was asking for!"

"Too late," Judy said before she turned to me and asked, "Chief, since you are awake now, would you mind if I stayed over?"

The question raised a brow on my end, especially since it felt like a bit of a non-sequitur, but in the end I nodded. We had a lot of things to discuss regarding the past three days, the state of the Celestial Hub, and some other things as well, so I was already inclined to ask her to stay for a while longer.

"Very well. We need to explore a lot of things," Judy told me with a weird emphasis on the word 'explore', but I still nodded. "For example, we need to document your scars. I want to observe your body. From up close."

Again, there was some weird emphasis on certain words, and I finally figured out where she was going with this, so I gave her a knowing smile and told her, "Sure, you can look as much as you want."

"Can I touch too?"

"Only if you promise you won't poke too hard. I'm sensitive."

"I know. I will be very gentle for your first… examination."

"Now that you put it like that, I am getting a little shy," I told her with fake modesty.

"I want to see all of you, but I guess we can do it in the dark for the first time."

I wanted to point out that the innuendo no longer worked with that, but then all of a sudden there was a loud creak coming from the other side of the table. We both looked over and found the princess gripping her fork so hard it was being bent out of shape.

"Leooooo…" she began to growl in a weird voice, but before I could answer, she suddenly jumped to her feet. No, correction: she jumped right over the table and towards me with a weird battle-cry saying, "LEWDING IS PROHIBITED!"

Before I knew it, I too was on my feet and, using my finely honed girl-catching reflexes (which was a skill I still couldn't believe I had to develop), I grabbed the irate girl under her arms with a deft motion that surprised even me, then I spun her around to disperse the momentum. This part made me a little dizzy, but by some miracle I somehow managed to land my butt right back on my chair with a faint thud, followed by another soft sound as the princess landed on my lap.

After a long moment of silence, during which I admired the fact that I somehow managed to do all that without turning over the table, or even disturbing the dishes too much, I let out a pent-up breath and asked, "What does 'lewding' even mean?"

"Was that really the first question that you should ask in this situation?" my disgruntled assistant inquired while getting out from under the table. I was tempted to ask just what she was doing under there, but then she sat down like it never happened, so I decided to ignore her and focus on the beet-red girl on my lap.

"What was that all about?"

"Shut up," she answered while averting her eyes. "You two are jerks."

"Now, now," I reflexively patted the head of the sulking girl. "We were just teasing you. We even told you we were going to do it."

"That's…" she began speaking, but then she just fell silent. I let out a sigh and looked over at my assistant, only to find her frowning back at me.

"Is there something you would like to say, Dormouse?" I asked cautiously.

"She tried to attack us, and you are now rewarding her. You are spoiling her, Chief."

"I'm not," I answered indignantly. "Not to mention, I am pretty sure that wasn't an attack, just another one of her embarrassed reactions. She didn't mean harm, right, Princess?" The girl on my lap nodded without a word. "You see?"

Judy's expression didn't change an iota.

"Playing favorites already?" she asked with thinly veiled irritation.

"Most definitely not," I answered in kind.

"That's not how it looks like from here," came the instantaneous answer, prompting me to roll my eyes and gesture with my free hand.

"Then come over here."

There was zero hesitation in her movements as my dear assistant stood up, walked over, and pushed the princess to the side with her butt so that she could also sit on my lap. For some reason, I was getting a distinct sense of déja vu…

"Are you happy now?" I asked with a smile I hoped was dry enough to soak up oceans, but then Judy honest to goodness raised a finger to her lips like she was deep in thought before she lowered her head.

"Head pat," she stated with her usual lack of enthusiasm, yet the small tinge of red on her cheeks told me she was less calm than what she showed on the surface. Since I didn't respond right away, she repeated, "I demand a head pat."

I rolled my eyes again and used my free hand to tussle her hair a little.

"We should've done this in the first place," Elly grumbled, earning a questioning look in the process.

"We should have done what? Head pats?"

"No!" The blonde girl puffed her cheek for a moment, then she exhaled and told me, "I mean, I'm not saying I'm against it. It feels really nice and comfortable, and it makes my heart beat harder, and… Um…" She paused, probably realizing she went off-topic, and then she came back with, "I wanted to say we should've sat like this from the beginning. I sat on the other side so we could eat face to face, but then Judy sat down next to you. Then I realized I wanted to sit next to you too."

"… Then why didn't you just come over?"

"Because it would've made it look like I was following Judy's lead, and I didn't want to be second in line."

For a while, I could only stare at the girl in disbelief.

"Don't tell me we are going to be dealing with this kind of nonsense from now on?"

"It's your fault," Judy told me while she reached over and grabbed a toast.

"Yeah," Elly agreed while trying to, and failing, to reach her plate while still sitting on my lap.

I couldn't help but shake my head. My girlfriends (no, still not used to it) were on the same wavelength at the weirdest of times, but I had to grant it to them, they were right. I chose this outcome, so I had to live with the consequences. We still had a lot of kinks to hammer out though. For example, how the heck was I supposed to have dinner like this…?

"Repeat after me!" the princess demanded with a severe look while standing on my front porch, her extended finger pointing at me in a very princess-like pose. "NO," she stressed the word, then her finger moved over to my dear assistant standing right next to me with her arm awkwardly entwined in mine, "LEWDING!"

Both of us gave her a flat look in return, and Judy voiced my thoughts by telling her, "'Lewding' is still not a word."

"I don't care," my girlfriend told my girlfriend with a huff. "I want you to promise me you won't get up to anything while I'm away."

"So it's fine when you are around?" I asked in a very innocent voice that was completely genuine and in no way mischievous.

"Yes! I mean, no! No lewd things are allowed yet!" the flustered girl replied with a pout.

"She said 'yet'," Judy stated at my side with a strange light in her eyes.

It didn't go unnoticed by the princess, as she grabbed hold of my assistant and leaned closer to whisper, "We are going to discuss this later, you hear me? Between the two of us. As girls. Understood?"

I had no idea what she was referring to (maybe some 'girl thing', as Josh would put it), nor did I know if my assistant understood, but after a while she gave the princess a shrug, which she conveniently accepted as a sign of agreement.

"Good." Saying so, she turned to me and poked me in the chest. "As for you, Leo: You are still recuperating, so go and rest. Don't go outside. Don't move too much. Do not do any… activity that requires you to move your body a lot." She paused, then repeated her words with extra emphasis: "Any. such.activity."

I gave my girlfriend a wry look and sighed.

"I got it, we are not going to tear our off clothes and jump into the bed the moment you leave, I promise."

Elly's ears went crimson again, which of course didn't secretly amuse me or give me any kind of satisfaction, but she quickly overcame her embarrassment and mumbled something along the lines of, "So long as you understand."

It was around this time that her usual limo rounded the corner, and after some final farewells and a peck on the cheek, my girlfriend left the premises, leaving me alone with my girlfriend.

… Yeah, I know, this is confusing, but this was the bed I made, now I had to lie in it. That aside, Judy and I closed the door behind us and I immediately exhaled a small sigh.

"All right, it's just the two of us now," I said before I glanced down at the girl still holding onto my arm and continued with, "You know what that means, right?"

"We are going to tear off each other's clothes and jump into the bed?"

I gave my dear assistant a flat look and said, "I am going to flick your forehead now."

She only blinked at my statement, so I proceeded to do just as I said, earning me a frown and an unenthusiastic 'ow'.

"Chief, that hurt," she told me while rubbing her forehead, but I scoffed at her protests.

"No it didn't, I barely touched you. Not to mention, even if it did, you would've deserved it. Now stop messing around and please get your notes."

My assistant let go of my arm with what I presumed to be mock reluctance before she clicked her tongue and mumbled, "Spoilsport." Still, in just a few seconds she bounced back and we both took up our customary places in the living room; she sat on the sofa with her phone in hand, while I paced up and down all around the place.

It was at this point when I took a huge breath and tried to clear my head from unimportant thoughts as much as I could. After I felt adequately prepared, I gestured for Judy to pay attention.

"Let's not beat around the bush: the events at the school last Sunday were a disaster, and I believe we are to blame for it." I paused to see if Judy would like to add something, but she was only looking at me expectantly, so I continued, "The writing was on the wall, yet we… No, I ignored it all. One mistake and we could have ended up with one of our friends dying."

"You almost died yourself," Judy told me with a hint of disapproval, and I could only nod.

"Yes, unfortunately. I have nothing to say in my defense. I messed up, and I paid the price," I told her while placing my hand on the still tender scar on my stomach. "In retrospect, there were many opportunities to prevent that night. I should have interrogated Snowy better, or looked into Crowey's movements after I learned that he was out for my blood, but I guess I just didn't take the situation seriously enough." I paused to let my words sink in before I finished with, "That changes now."

The expression on Judy's face somehow felt conflicted, and I had a feeling she wanted to say something, but after waiting for her for a few seconds she just closed her eyes, and when she opened them she was back to normal and simply asked, "How so?"

"First, we have to expand our intelligence network," I answered after just a moment of hesitation. "We've been wasting the potential of the Celestial Hub. We only used it as a source of background information. We need to start using it to monitor the movements of the other factions. We need to know if something is about to happen so we can prepare."

"Sounds reasonable."

"I'm glad you agree. By the way, I want to leave that part to you. I have other plans."

"Such as?"

I paused. In fact, I even stopped pacing up and down for a moment before I told her, "Judy, I'm a mess. I have all kinds of powers, but I have no idea how to use them effectively. Hell, I almost died that night, multiple times, because I kept forgetting about my various abilities at critical moments. I need training. I need to learn how to deal with whatever supernatural nastiness will throw at us next."

"If that happens, do you plan to get involved again?"

"Only if necessary," I answered uncertainly, but then I steeled my voice and added, "No, chances are, I will have to. We have already established that this world is running on the conventions of some kind of 'supernatural-battle-harem-school-life-comedy' genre. I'm afraid what we have seen is just the tip of the iceberg of the 'supernatural battle' part, and I need to be able to hold my own when the next crisis comes knocking around the corner."

Judy pursed her lips almost imperceptibly, but in the end she just wrote a few more notes. I waited for her to finish, then she finally asked, "Which power did you forget about? Your Far Sight?"

"Actually…" I paused again, then I shook my head and began pacing once more. "Actually, open up the file on my powers. I have a lot of new entries."

"Oh?" Judy voiced curiously before she began to furiously poke at her phone for a moment, then she gave me the go-ahead.

"Okay, so my Far Sight is a given, no changes there. I also told you about my ability to see magic. I can apparently also see through magic, such as camouflage, and I can disrupt magic by cutting it with my fingers."

"I got all that," Judy informed me.

"All right. First off, I have precognitive reflexes."

"Didn't we test that already?" she inquired while glancing up at me, and I shook my head.

"There might be some kind of condition to it, such as only reacting to actual danger or intention to harm me. Either way, it was thanks to it that I could survive against Brang and the chimera."

"Who's Brang?"

"The leader of the Faun. The one with the spear."

"You mean the one you growled at?"

That remark made me freeze for a moment before I told her, "Actually, that's another thing. Apparently I can fluently speak Faunish, and started doing it without me realizing it was a different language at first. It might be just that I already knew it from before my amnesia, or it could be another power or ability. Maybe I have one of those convenient magical translation suites common in stories where someone travels to another world."

My assistant gave me a strange look, then she gestured for me to come closer. I did so, and after a few seconds of poking her phone, she showed the screen to me.

"What does this say?" she asked.

I took a close look at the symbols on the screen, but I only shook my head.

"I don't know. What is this?"

"Traditional Chinese," she said as she returned to the phone, and after some more screen-prodding, she turned it my way again. "What about this?"

"'Si vis amari, ama…' Is that Latin?"

"Yes. Do you know what it means?"

"No."

For some reason, she clicked her tongue as if I spoiled another of her jokes before she returned to her phone, this time for more than a minute, before she showed it to me again. Even at a glance, I recognized the familiar interface of the Celestial Hub, which earned my assistant a curiously raised brow, but she urged me to read on.

"'… Incident at twelve and ten under zone of school Magi…' … No, wait, it's 'inside the territory of the Magi', I think, and…" My voice trailed off as I focused more closely on the screen. "Judy, what language is this?"

"Celestial Script," my assistant answered without missing a beat. "It's a type of magical cipher only Celestials can read. I thought you told MoroseMoose to organize the classified reports because you couldn't read them either."

"Well, I can. Apparently." I squinted at the letters, which were somewhat hazy on a second look, and asked, "What does it look like to you?"

Judy paused for a moment, then she told me, "Like angular hieroglyphs. What do you see?"

"Normal letters," I answered absent-mindedly. "Though if I look at it really hard, I can see the words kinda… shimmer and move around? It's hard to explain."

Both of us fell silent for several seconds.

"So," I asked tentatively, "you said it's like a magical cipher? So does this fall under seeing through magic or understanding languages I have no business understanding?"

"Which is the weirder?"

"The latter," I answered reflexively.

"Then it's that," she told me with a kind of unwarranted sagely wisdom that made me shake my head.

"Doesn't really matter right now, but we are going to test this to hell and back later. For now, let's focus on my other new abilities."

"Roger," Judy answered as she closed the browser and returned to her notes. "So far we have Far Sight, Magic Perception, Anti-Magic Swipes, Spider-sense—"

"Okay, stop! I will talk to you about the other names too, but that last one is just blatant copyright infringement!"

She clicked her tongue again.

"Fine, I will call it 'Chief-sense' then."

"That's… only marginally better."

My complaints fell on deaf ears as she continued, "Then we have 'Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane Multilingualism'. Anything else?"

I took a long, deep breath, and just let it go.

"Yes, I can also teleport now."

My previously pouting assistant's expression took a 180-degree turn in a split second.

"Really?"

Instead of answering right away, I took a deep breath and tried to remember how I did it. I had a feeling the process was incredibly complex, but somehow it also felt really intuitive, like riding a bicycle, and after a moment or two of fiddling in the proverbial saddle, I could feel my surrounding blur for a moment before my vision returned to normalcy and I found myself standing behind the sofa. I let out the aforementioned breath, and then quietly placed my palm on the top of Judy's head.

My dear assistant visibly flinched, then she very slowly looked over her shoulder and told me, "That's new," in a deadpan voice made hilarious by her decidedly not deadpan expression. The whole thing was worth it just for that. I stifled a small chuckle and then walked around the sofa to be face to face with her again.

"Yes, it's new. I just discovered it during my Dominance with Brang."

"Another new term. What's a 'Dominance'?"

"A kind of ritualistic magical duel fought with apparitions. More on that later," I told her before I began pacing again. "So, I obviously haven't done any controlled experiments, but as far as I can tell, I do not have too many limitations on this one. Using it is like my Far Sight; a little disorienting, but not particularly straining at short distances. I do not know how far I can teleport, but based on my experiences during my chase with the chimera, I was moving anywhere between two to five meters without any issues. Anything more than that, and it became much harder and made me lightheaded." I halted for a moment and asked something that bothered me a little, "Hey, Judy? How does this look like from the outside? Did I just disappear? Did it make a noise?"

She was still in something of a daze, but she quickly shook her head and answered, "First you blurred, like you were out of focus, then you were gone. There was no sound accompanying it."

"Is that so? So it's stealthy as well. We are probably going to focus on testing the limits of this ability, because I think this has the most potential utility both in and outside of combat, but before that, there's one more thing." I extended my hand towards her, palm pointing up. "First, do you see this?"

Judy gave me a funny look, but then she squinted at my hand and observed it from multiple angles. At long last, she shook her head and told me, "I don't know. Am I supposed to see something other than your hand?"

"So you can't see it, huh?" I mused as I made my brand new phantom tendril limb thing wriggle a bit. For a second or two I pondered how I could explain it to her, but eventually I decided to be blunt. "You see, after I woke up today, I found myself with a phantom limb of some sort. It feels something like a… tentacle, I guess?"

"Tentacle? Really?" Judy asked with a critical frown.

"Hey, I don't like it either," I protested. "Thing is, I can't seem to do anything with it because it's completely intangible."

"So it's like a real phantom limb," Judy told me expressionlessly, and it was my turn to return her critical look.

"Yes, Judy. It's like that."

"So you can't use it to grab things? Or touch things? Or do tentacle-things with it?"

"No, no, and I don't even know what you mean by the third one," I grumbled as I waved my phantom limb around. "Look, if I try to use it to grab, say, my mug, it just—"

I got this far in my sentence. As I attempted to demonstrate my point and swipe my invisible appendage across my beloved 'I mug sitting on the coffee table, my vision suddenly blurred. It was kind of like when I entered Far Sight, except about a thousand times more nauseating. I instinctively staggered back and my knees nearly buckled, but before it would come to that, I was quickly supported by Judy.

"What happened? Are you all right?" She asked in a worried voice which, considering her temperament, could be probably translated to mild panic for anyone else.

"Yes, I just…" I began, but I had no idea how to finish that sentence. What exactly just happened? I shook my head and regained my balance. "Judy, I want to try something. Catch me if I was about to keel over."

"Chief, you can't be serious," my assistant answered with the same worried voice, but then she added, "There is no way I can catch you. You are too big."

"You'll manage," I told her off-handedly as I slowly extended my phantom limb towards the mug. Initially I only touched its surface, but there was no reaction. I tried it a few more times, and then I decided to go, for a lack of better words, deeper. It was like when I extended my consciousness towards a 'dot' during Far Sight. In fact, maybe it was exactly the same? Maybe I was extending this 'phantom limb' all this time? These were questions for later, as at the moment I focused on the mug. As I did so, and my appendage reached deeper, I was once again assaulted by violent nausea. I clenched my teeth and endured. Then, just as tunnel vision was about to set in, something weird happened. … Okay, something even weirder happened.

The mug, for lack of better words, divided, but it didn't. It was the same mug, but when I looked at it, there were countless other beverage containers overlaid on it. Tiny porcelain ones, large metal ones, wide-mouthed ones and cylindrical ones, with or without handles, and all of them had countless color variations. The longer I looked, the worse the nausea became, but I soldiered on, ignoring the voice of the girl in the process of steadily losing her composure at my side.

As I looked even deeper, I realized that the different mugs weren't overlaying each other, but they were… it was hard to explain, but if I were to use an analogy, I'd say they were like leaves on a gigantic tree, except instead of looking at them one by one, I was trying to look at all the leaves on an entire branch at the same time while looking at them individually at the same time. Did that make sense? I wasn't even sure I understood my own analogy, but I had no better words to describe what was going on. Then, as I reached even deeper, the nausea very quickly turned into a terrible, terrible headache. A headache that seemed to permeate my entire being. A very… familiar headache.

I'm going to be honest: I panicked. I could deal with pain, but that headache was something else entirely. I tried to retract my phantom limb, but it felt like… it felt like I stretched it too far? It passed through too many small holes? It got entangled with other branches full of different leaves? It made no logical sense, but something told me that I was in danger, so I pulled with all my might, and after a few 'tugs' my phantom limb finally 'dislodged', for lack of better words. Then, just as abruptly as it came, the headache disappeared along with the tunnel-vision and the overlapping mugs, and I could simultaneously feel my legs wave the white flag as they surrendered to gravity, and I would have probably ended up face-planting on my coffee table if not for Judy's intervention.

When my brain finally started working again, I found myself on my hands and knees, hyperventilating, and my stomach threatening to spread my dinner all over my living room carpet. I quickly got my bodily functions under control, and once my ears stopped ringing and my eyes started focusing, I realized that Judy was holding onto my waist with all her might.

"Dormouse?" I whispered.

"Chief, are you all right?" She asked back while still holding onto me like she was afraid I was going to run away.

"I… I'm fine," I answered through clenched teeth.

"What happened?" my assistant finally let me go and sidled over to the front to look me in the eye. "You said you would try something, then it looked like you had a seizure. Do you have any idea how scared I was?"

"Sorry, sorry," I weakly told her as I sat down onto the floor and took several deep breaths. "I don't think I was supposed to do that. Or rather, I don't think I was supposed to be able to do that…"

"Do what?"

I glanced between her and my beloved mug still sitting on the table without any sign of it being disturbed, let alone being overlapped by every single mug in existence, and at last I weakly muttered, "Something that was against the rules of this world."

"Are you sure you're all right now?" my girlfriend inquired somewhere around me while I was resting on my sofa. I say 'somewhere' because at the moment I had a damp towel draped over my head while I was lying on my back, with my legs dangling off the side. It wasn't the most dignified of displays, but I still felt a little lightheaded, so I didn't really care.

I'll be frank here: this most recent stunt of mine left me feeling weak, sick, and more than a little freaked out. It was that headache, that infernal pain that felt like it permeated every cell in my body. It was something I could have lived without ever experiencing again, but apparently I wasn't so lucky. At the moment it was gone, but that didn't mean I was fine; my eyes still hurt, my vision was messy, with colours and lights bleeding into one another, and my stomach was still churning. Now granted, this all felt like nothing compared to the headache itself, but it was still bad enough to land me in my current situation with the cool towel and all.

I let out a long sigh and raised a hand to gesture in the general direction from where I last heard Judy's voice.

"Dormouse, please co—" I got this far before my waving palm made contact with something soft, eliciting a surprised noise from my girlfriend before I quickly pulled back. "... Judy, what did I touch just now?"

There was a long moment of silence before she answered with a question of her own. "Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Depends. Would doing so result in comedic shenanigans followed by awkward sexual tension?"

"... Most likely."

"Then I don't want to know. I'm not in the mood for either of those," I told her as firmly as I could under the circumstances.

After that, there were a few more seconds of heavy silence in the air (which, I assure you, didn't contain even one iota of awkward sexual tension) until Judy broke the ice.

"Why did you call for me?"

"Right, that," I mumbled while I tried to clear my thoughts. "While I'm recuperating, I thought we should continue our discussion about my powers." I could hear some rustling nearby, and I was reasonably sure it was Judy getting her phone ready as usual. I waited for her to finish before I continued, "So, ignoring the names you gave them, I have two extra-sensory abilities, I can teleport short distances, I can understand languages I didn't know about, I can engage in ritualistic magic combat humans weren't supposed to be able to do, and on top of all that, I've got a phantom limb that does 'something' that results in... well, let's just say it felt like the entire world whacked me over the head for even trying it. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes," Judy answered while her fingers never stopped tapping on her phone.

"Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but all of these seem pretty much all over the place."

"Not all of them," my assistant countered. "Your Far Sight and Chief-sense can be interpreted as psychic abilities."

First I wanted to roll my eyes at her naming sense, but then I realized that it would've been a pretty silly thing to do, considering my eyes were still covered by a towel. As such, I simply said, "I'm still not convinced those even exist."

"Says the person with the ability to teleport around like it's normal."

"Mystic apples and magical oranges," I grumbled back. "Speaking of which though, my teleportation could be magic. As in, the run-of-the-mill kind that others can use. Do you have anything on that?"

"... Why are you asking me?"

"Hey, you are the girl with the photographic memory. Who else am I supposed to ask?"

My assistant may or may not have mumbled something about me being a total, unrepentant slave driver, but ultimately she launched into an explanation anyway.

"We don't have much to go on, as usual. I have a few fragments from the Dracis library and some basic information from the Celestial Hub. First question: From where do you draw your power?"

"... Pardon?"

"Let me reiterate: Where is the energy used by your abilities coming from?"

For a moment I hesitated between upholding my carefully cultivated faux image as a smart person or revealing my confusion, but eventually curiosity won me over and I admitted, "I don't even understand the question. I don't... 'draw' anything from anywhere."

I could swear I heard my girlfriend huff in self-satisfaction, which I graciously ignored as I waited for her to enlighten me.

"As we all know," she began, and I was once again tempted to roll my hidden eyes at the clichéd delivery, "the people of magical persuasion living in this world have three methods of using magic."

"Vocal, kinetic, and harmonic magic," I added, but I only got silence in return. "What?"

"I shook my head," my deadpan girlfriend answered, eliciting a small groan from me.

"This is like our phone talks all over again," I whispered in a voice that wasn't the slightest bit exasperated, I swear, before I asked the most important question: "Why did you shake your head? I thought those were the three basic spellcasting methods and whatnot."

"Yes Chief, but that wasn't what I asked about."

I wanted to protest, but then I thought back on her choice of words, and I only said, "Please do elaborate."

My assistant once again let out a self-satisfied noise that I continued to ignore.

"Those three are the ways to use magic. The source of that magic is different. It's the difference between a power tool and the thing that powers that tool. For the sake of analogy, let's say that each of the magical races is a handyman who has to get through a locked door with their tools. Draconians draw power from their blood, which acts as a huge, heavy-duty battery that can supply their huge drills and saws, but once they run out of charge, it takes a considerable amount of time to recharge it. Abyssals are similar, but their battery is smaller and they use it like a camera flash; they have an intermediary to store power, then they channel it into a capacitor, which allows them to power big tools they would be otherwise unable to use, but only briefly. Knights seem to also use batteries, except they use magical weapons to store power, and they are useless without them. The Magi use the power grid instead. By tapping into these rivers of power they call 'ley lines', they can keep casting spells as long as they please, but once they are unplugged, they can't do anything. Finally, the Celestials have an internal battery too, but it's small, so they use it for powering a WiFi to hack the door instead." There was a brief pause, then she innocently asked, "Which one would describe you the best?"

"... Before I answer that, would you tell me how long it took you to prepare all those analogies?"

"No," she bluntly answered, and as much as I wanted to shake my head in response, I thought better of it and moved on.

"To be honest, neither of them. When I use Far Sight or when I teleport, I do not draw power or expend it anywhere. It's more like… it's like taking a breath or moving a limb. It's natural."

"And that's," my dear assistant began, then stopped for a beat for what I presumed to be a dramatic pause, "why your powers are different from the rest."

"… That's not exactly news," I grumbled, but she either didn't hear it, or she simply ignored me.

"You know Chief, while I understand why you would leave this type of research to me, you should at least read up on some basic magic theory on the Celestial Hub. That way you might have understood how bizarre your abilities are."

"I know already. It doesn't mean they are psychic powers though."

"We cannot exclude the possibility," Judy answered, and her insistence made me wonder if she had spent too much time with the class rep. However, before I could question her about it, her tone took an abrupt turn as she told me, "While I would really love to find out for sure, for the short-term I believe it's more important that you realize that your abilities are strange by local standards. I would even go as far as to call them outside-context. I don't think the others have seen you teleport, but you still drew attention to yourself with your other powers."

"Yeah, yeah, I know…" I answered, slightly downhearted. "I think my ability to see and dispel magic is already out of the bag. Angie knows it, plus the others have seen it when I untied Josh and when I used it against Crowey. Twice."

"I gather that's why you used it so openly to destroy the surveillance in the room."

"Huh? I mean… Yeah, that's exactly why I did so."

After a fairly long pause, Judy simply stated, "That didn't sound very convincing."

It was at this point where I got fed up with not being able to visually express my displeasure at her jabs, so I took the lukewarm towel off my head and gingerly opened my eyes. Looking into any bright light still stung a little, but otherwise I was fine, so I tried to sit up and, to my surprise, I found my dizziness almost completely gone. I blinked a few times, and once I was sure I was fine, I looked at my girlfriend sitting on my favorite comfy chair and I promptly, and finally, rolled my eyes.

"Come on Dormouse. You can't expect me to think of everything, all the time. I don't have your amazing memory, I tend to forget things."

Instead of giving me an immediate counter like I was expecting, my comment seemed to have triggered something in Judy, as her expression slowly darkened. After a few seconds of weird silence she quietly put her phone away and let out a shallow breath, though her face remained as strangely stern as before.

"Chief, I think we need to talk about the meta for a moment."

"You mean, about the prophecies being routes? I remember you mentioning—"

"No, not that," she interrupted me, much to my surprise, and then she warned me, "Do not get side-tracked, or we might forget to talk about it."

"Um… Okay, I don't know what you mean, but it sounds serious, so I'm listening."

Judy lightly nodded and began with a bombshell right away:

"Chief, I think we are being affected by the narrative." I blinked at her and wanted to say it was obvious, but she didn't give me an opportunity, as she continued, "Do you remember what you said not too long ago? How you kept forgetting about your abilities during the incident at the school and you almost died because of it?"

"Yes," I nodded, a little uncertain of what she was getting at. "I…" I wanted to say I reflected on it, but I couldn't really remember when I did that. I felt like I did that. I also reflected on a lot of other things, but I couldn't really recall any of them. As I tried, I felt the cold sweat running down my back. "Now that I think back, things could have been done so much better. I just… I guess I got caught up in the heat of the moment, and—"

"Are you sure?" I got interrupted again. "Are you sure it was just that? Do you remember your Far Sight?"

"Well, of course I do."

"It's a big deal, isn't it?"

"Err… Yes, it is."

"So why did you never use it after our first date and before the fight between Neige and Eleanor?"

That gave me a pause.

"I… I think I just didn't want to think about it? As in, I didn't want magic to be real, so I…" The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

"Chief," My assistant spoke in a soft voice, as if to soften the coup de grace, "You keep telling me how great my memory is, but… I never really thought about it either. I knew about it, but I never thought about it. Do you know what I mean?"

By this point the cold sweat on my back was running in rivers as I answered, "Our thoughts are being censored?"

"I think it's not so direct," Judy shook her head. "If it was the same kind of perception masking, like how the others don't find the placeholders' behavior strange, we would'nt even be able to notice the discrepancy."

"So it's more like misdirection," I ventured a guess.

"Not just that," Judy told me in a grave voice. "I believe we are affected in multiple ways. For example, I looked at our old notes. I had a lot of time to do that while you were unconscious, and I found that we had all the clues to put together the fact that there were supernatural elements right around the time when we went on our date in the amusement park, even without your Far Sight being revealed."

"Yet we didn't," I said, mostly just to keep the conversation rolling.

"Correct," Judy continued with a nod. "We also never paid much attention to your reaction to Sebastian and Noir."

"Who?"

"… Crowey."

"Ah, right..." I nodded, but then I slightly tilted my head to the side. "What do you mean by 'reaction'?"

"Chief, think about it for a moment."

I did just that. How did I react to those two? Well, when I first met the old butler, I… antagonized him for some reason. No, actually, there was a reason. When I first looked at him, I felt really irritated. Same with Crowey.

"I could have been just subconsciously responding to their power," I told Judy with a frown. "They are both big-shots, and with all those extra-sensory abilities, it's not unlikely that I was simply perceiving them as a threat."

"And you provoke people who you think pose a threat to you?"

"… I have poor impulse control?"

"Chief, I'm serious."

I let out a groan and threw up my hands.

"Okay, so let's presume that the reason why I was immediately irritated by them had nothing to do with the fact that they were both pompous authority figures, but there was some kind of other, underlying reason. Now what?"

"I don't know," Judy said with a shake of her head. "We don't know enough of the narrative that exists to be sure."

"If there is a narrative in the first place."

Judy gave me a look like I just got an elementary math problem completely wrong.

"Chief, it's abundantly clear there is a narrative, and it's subtly steering us. Remember our discussion during the school incident? The whole thing was set up in a way that the authorities couldn't intervene to force us to act."

I took a deep breath and answered, "Let me be the devil's advocate for a moment: We already know that this was a plan by Crowey, and he timed it in a way to make sure he wouldn't have been interrupted by the authorities."

"Yes, it was planned by him," Judy told me with a shallow nod, "and it was executed by Neige. We both saw it happen, but we did nothing to stop it."

"We just talked about that. I just didn't take the situation seriously, and—"

"Don't try to rationalize it," my girlfriend warned me, "You are better than that."

I wanted to retort, but then I closed my mouth and thought about it for a moment, and as I did so, my mind began churning like an active volcano.

I knew about Brang's mission to assassinate me, and while I looked into Fauns, I never made any counter-measures. I was aware of Snowy's weird behavior, her use of magic on school grounds, and I even knew they were leaving soon, but I never connected the dots. On the day of the incident, I had no reason to fight the Chimera, yet I wasted a lot of time trying to kill it, as if doing so was required to save Josh. Then there was the question of me forgetting to use my powers to their fullest. Even if I just recognized them, I used both my precognition and my teleportation very extensively against Brang, yet I repeatedly forgot to utilize them during the incident.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like Judy was onto something.

"I think you are right. Not only that, this is a huge freaking deal and it was entirely in my blind spot," I finally told her with a weak smile, "Good catch."

"Thank you," she answered with a small smile of her own. "This is why you hired me."

"Indeed," I said as I crossed my arms. "So, if we follow the logic behind what you discovered, where does it lead us?"

"The narrative is rigid," Judy began. "It requires certain things to happen, and if our actions go against them, it creates blind spots and situations to make us follow the script."

"And that takes us back to the prophecies," I said with a frown. "Your hypothesis was that they are routes, right? Like in a game?"

My girlfriend nodded and said, "We don't have enough information to know for sure, but that was the most obvious parallel that came to mind. Joshua is the protagonist. Each female member of the group has a prophecy that revolves around him. It's too much for a coincidence."

"From a meta-perspective, it's obviously not one," I continued where she left off. "If we combine that with the idea that each of the prophecies is 'predicting' a possible future Josh's choices could lead to…"

"It is likely that they are not predictions, but pre-written scenarios being foreshadowed," this time Judy continued my thoughts. "In that case, I believe we must be on the Neige scenario."

That remark made my brows skyrocket and I immediately uttered a stern "No," surprising my girlfriend.

"No?" She asked back, and I could only furrow my brows in answer.

"Honestly… I don't know why, but I have this really strong feeling that Snowy…" I paused for a beat to collect my thoughts, then calmly stated. "I don't know where I heard this or why it feels so obvious, but I think Snowy doesn't have a 'route' so to speak. In fact, I feel like the school incident didn't go the way it was 'supposed' to go either. I mean… I can't really explain. It just feels like it has something to do with Snowy and Josh saving her, and Crowey getting his face burned off, and the Chimera, and…" I fell silent again, this time for a few seconds, and ultimately I let out an annoyed groan and declared, "I don't really know why myself, but it feels like I have this hazy idea that we might have… no, we definitely went off the rails. Do I make any sense?"

For a short while Judy only looked at me curiously, but eventually she simply shrugged her shoulders and told me, "Not much, but I'm already used to it," with a tiny little smirk that probably only I could notice.

"Ouch, that hurt," I responded while imitating her flat tone.

"You'll get used to that," she replied without missing a beat.

I allowed myself a slightly hollow chuckle in response, then asked:

"So then, what should we do now that we are aware that at any given moment some kind of ethereal force could sneakily tweak our perceptions and priorities to uphold some form of narrative flow?"

"Panic?" Judy replied with a completely serious face.

"Nah, it didn't work before, it probably won't work now either," I countered.

"Fall into an existential crisis and cry ourselves into sleep?"

"That's so last season, we need something better."

"I got it," Judy stated emphatically as she raised a hand up high. "We take a ton of notes, scrutinize our every action and reaction, and then try to figure out this narrative and how to beat it?"

I gave her a wide smile and a thumb up.

"That's more like it!" For a few seconds we stayed in the exact same poses until we pretty much just deflated. Heavy topics concerning the meta always took a lot out of me, and this was no exception. As I thought about just how many ways this world could find to casually terrify me, my eyes landed on the clock on the wall and I noticed with a start that it was already past seven in the evening.

"Speaking of Snowy," I spoke up maybe just a wee bit too loud, to clear some of the heavy atmosphere in the room, "It's getting late. I should go and talk to her right about now."

"Are you sure you're well enough for that?" Judy asked with a tinge of worry in her voice. "You still look a little pale."

"All the more reason to go out and get some fresh air," I answered with a toothy smile. "Not to mention, it should help digest this discussion."

It looked like she would protest at first, but in the end she just almost imperceptibly shook her head.

"Take care," she said, then she stood up and took out her phone. "I'll write down what we discussed and make some backups."

At first I almost nodded and left her to her devices, but then I recalled something and I stopped mid-stretch to tell her:

"Could you turn on the water heater in the ground floor bathroom? Also, please prepare some hot cocoa and light snacks while I'm away. I think Snowy will appreciate them."

My girlfriend shot me a glance, then she put her phone back away with a simple 'sure', eliciting another smile from me.

"Thanks, Dormouse. You're still the best."

This time she only responded with a knowing nod as she exited the living room. Meanwhile, I limbered up my legs one more time, just to make sure I completely recovered, and then I headed up to my room. First things first, I took my phone off the charger and checked it for new messages. I had a missed call from Josh, but it was from before he came over, so I dismissed it on the spot.

I also had a text message from Angie asking about my health, so I sent her a message to explain that I was fine and I also asked her about her situation.

I also got several messages from the class rep, half of them inquiring about my condition, the other half apologizing about not being able to visit me while also complaining about being buried under a mountain of paperwork, which may or may not have been the end result of the stunts I pulled off a few nights ago. I sent her a short apology and then finally pocketed my phone and turned towards my wardrobe.

My indoor clothes were fine as they were, as I just put on a fresh set after I took a shower this afternoon, but the weather outside was already flirting with winter, so I looked for a coat to keep me warm. On a cursory examination, I had two black long coats, three black trench coats, something that looked like an honest to goodness duster (also black; figures), and last but not least, a black dress coat with embroidered lapels and fancy metallic buttons. I never wore the last one, by the way.

Yes, my default wardrobe was more than a little monotonous, but I didn't really mind. Ultimately I decided on one of the trench coats and I put it on with practiced motions. It fit me like a glove and was comfortable as usual. I also picked up my spare keys for the front door (my main key was still with Judy) and after making sure I got everything I needed I walked downstairs.

"Chief?" Judy, who just came out of the kitchen with an apron over her clothes, called out to me the moment I got to the living room and gestured for me to go over, so I did just that, "Lean forward."

That line earned her a quizzical eyebrow-raise, but I complied all the same. She then stood on her tippy toes and started combing my hair with her fingers, then once she found my mug satisfying enough, she proceeded to straighten my collar and tug at my sleeves before she took a step back and gave me a full look-over.

She nodded to herself and told me, "All right, now I can let you out into the public without you embarrassing me."

This time I rewarded her with an unsubtle eye-roll and grumbled, "What are you, my mother?"

"No, I'm your girlfriend."

I looked for a good retort, but after a while I just shrugged my shoulder in defeat and said, "True enough," before I beamed a smile at her and added, "Thanks, Dormouse."

"You are welcome." There was a brief pause at this point, after which Judy asked, "So?"

"So what?" I asked back reflexively, earning me a displeased pout from my girlfriend.

"Aren't you supposed to say something here? Or better yet, do something?"

"... I'm... drawing a blank here. What do you mean?"

Instead of answering my question, Judy's shoulders dropped and she let out a clearly disappointed sigh, which made me twitch just by how overt it was, then she told me, "You are still horrible at reading the mood."

I raised my hand and awkwardly scratched my chin with a tentative 'Sorry' on the tip of my tongue, but then she gestured for me to lean forward again, and when I did so, she planted a quick peck on my left cheek.

"Stay safe," she said to me, and I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Will do," I answered with a completely plain and normal smile as I headed for the front door, only to stop as Judy called out to me one more time.

"When should I expect you back?"

I thought about that for a long moment before I replied, "Snowy doesn't seem to be too far away based on Far Sight. I'm also going to experiment with my teleportation on the way there; I might even discover something new. Either way, I should get there quick, but then I'll have a talk with Snowy, and as for the return trip, if we catch a taxi... Let's say two hours, give or take thirty minutes."

"Okay. Give me a call when you are on your way back."

I gave my unusually fussy girlfriend a slightly exasperated glance and then waved her goodbye and left the house through the front door.

The cool mid-autumn air felt pleasant on my skin, and the evening sky was scenic as usual. I reflexively made my way towards the usual intersection, and a casual glance was able to show me that things haven't changed much since the first day I woke up and walked down these roads. Things were still squeaky clean even after close to two months, and while the number of placeholders and cars has increased over time, it wasn't drastic enough to warrant any surprise.

Maybe that was the reason why I pretty much immediately noticed that I was being shadowed by not one, not two, but three different sneaky individuals. Well, at the very least I was sure they thought they were sneaky, but they were not only very conspicuous in their actions, but all three of them were glowing with magic, so I could probably see them even in complete darkness.

Now, in their defense, they had no way to know that I could see magic, or that their stereotypical sneaking about made them stick out like a sore thumb, or that I was a really observant guy whose attention no small detail could ever hope to escape. Then I rounded a corner, and I immediately bumped into someone because I wasn't paying attention. In fact, I bumped into three people. Three familiar people.

"Hey, watch where ya goi—" The big guy in the middle, followed by a tall and a short one, began to grumble, but then he looked at me and his lips curled into a huge grin. "HA! Look, guys, it's him! I found him!"

I blinked in surprise, but then I immediately buried my face in one hand while raising the other up to halt the goldfish poop gang on their tracks before they could gather momentum.

"Stop!" I told them in a stern voice and then after taking a deep breath, I looked the three in the eye. "Okay, listen up guys: I'm in a hurry. I promised my girlfriend—"

"Which one? The blonde or the brunette?" the short one interjected, but then he fell silent after I sent a scathing glare his way.

"The brunette one, but it doesn't matter," I answered with no small amount of irritation. "As I said, I promised her to do something and get home ASAP, so I don't have the time to waste on you." I gave each one of them a separate warning glare, then I continued with, "So, here's what we are going to do: You are going to tell me your new naming scheme, I will make fun of you, and then you leave me alone? Deal?"

"Why do you have to make fun of us?" the tall one with the high-pitched nasal voice protested. "You are mean!"

"Yea, ya are a bully!" seconded the short one, but I ignored them and scowled at the leader with the pompadour in the middle and urged him to say his piece.

The guy gave me a weird look in return, but then he cleared his throat and said, "I am ProTony." I must have given him a weird look without me noticing, as he immediately became flustered and added, "Like, it's a combination of 'proton' and 'Tony'."

"So you are going with particles this time," I nodded, slightly frustrated. "That means the small guy is something-something electron, and you two are attracted to each other, but the tall one is the neutron who keeps your group stable and unable to act upon your attraction. Insert joke about unresolved sexual tension here, yada-yada. Am I right so far?"

"What? No! I mean, yes on the particles but no on everything else!" 'ProTony' or whatnot protested, but I simply ignored him.

"Whatever. I've done my part, I made fun of you; now go lick your imaginary wounds and let me get going on my way."

The three of them looked between each other for a few seconds, then their shoulders drooped in unison and they shuffled aside to allow me to pass, and when I did so, the tall one muttered something about me being a 'real mean bully' or something. I didn't care though. I kept walking without looking back, and after I was sure I was out of earshot, I let out a tired groan. Okay, fine, I did care a tiny bit. I mean, this was these poor guys' whole thing, so I felt a little bad for ignoring their raison d'etre like that, but come on! There was a time and place for everything, and this was neither one nor the other.

But speaking of place, I quickly used Far Sight to see which way I was supposed to go to get to Snowy's hidey-hole. While it was convenient to be able to tell her general direction, it wasn't exactly a GPS navigation system; I didn't know the exact location, nor how to get there. Still, it was better than nothing, so I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the red dot on the edge of my vision. With now practiced motions (if you can call them that), I extended my consciousness towards the dot, and after a short moment I (or rather, my point of view) was inside the dark hotel room I saw earlier. Apparently Snowy hadn't left the place.

With that, I once again had a rough idea of the direction where I was supposed to be going, so I looked for a quiet back alley where I could get out of the sight of my unwanted shadows just long enough for me to start teleporting. Of course, the suburbs had none of those, so I took a small detour towards the shopping district where I was reasonably sure I could find some abandoned backstreet. It took me about ten minutes to get there and about five more to find a suitably secluded place, but once I was certain no one was looking at me, I hurriedly got ready to teleport. I was just about to start when I abruptly stopped myself.

As for why… I had a weird feeling. Or rather, the weird part was that it was a familiar feeling. Now, I'm the first to admit that I never really thought about the mechanics of my teleportation when in the heat of the situation back at the school, but since I wasn't under any serious time constraints at the moment, I allowed my senses to dwell on the process, and I noticed something peculiar. When I initiated my teleportation, for a very short time I became very distinctly aware of literally everything in my environment in a bubble of about ten meters in diameter around me. That wasn't the weird part. I mean, yes, it was weird, but it was somehow intuitive. However, the part that surprised me was how similar the feeling was to something else I felt just a few minutes ago.

I closed my eyes again and quickly brought forth my Far Sight one more time. First I focused on Snowy, and in a moment I was in the hotel room. Then I focused on Judy, and after a quick shift of the world around me, I was looking at her washing the dishes at my place. I made a mental note to tell her that the theoretical ninja maids would take care of them even if she left them alone, but that was for another time. For now, I focused on Snowy again, and I was in the hotel room for the third time.

"It's the same," I whispered in utter astonishment.

I looked around and focused on the interior of the place. I could perceive the furniture. I could perceive the walls. I could perceive the things behind the walls. As for the distance, it was in a bubble roughly ten meters in diameter centered on the girl huddled under the blankets on the bed.

Coincidence? There was no way this could be one.

I only hesitated for a moment. I swiftly glanced at the mouth of the alleyway between the buildings, and I didn't see any of my stalkers, so I inhaled a huge breath and closed my eyes again. In a moment, I was in the hotel room once again. Then another moment later, I was in the hotel room, period.

There was no fanfare, no headache, and only a tiny bit of dizziness that lasted for a few short seconds. In the literal blink of an eye, I suddenly found myself teleported across a vast distance the same way I had teleported a few meters to appear behind Judy not so long ago. Now, common sense told me that both of those were patently impossible and freaky, but my finely honed uncommon sense then told me that the whole 'being able to freely teleport to any place I can see with Far Sight' was an absolute bullshit ability of epic proportions cut way above the rest.

Anyways, I spent a few seconds forcefully calming myself, then I remembered that I stopped breathing, so I softly exhaled the lungful of air I took back in the alley. When I did that, Snowy shuddered in the bed and timidly poked her head out of under the bedsheets.

"Leo?" she asked with a weak, uncertain voice, and now that I could see her, I had to conclude that the rings under her eyes gave Josh a run for his money in the haggard department.

"Hi, Snowy," I answered her with a smile. I expected her to freak out, but instead she returned the gesture ever so feebly.

"I didn't think it would be so soon," she stated while her smile slowly distorted into a heartbreakingly pitiful grimace. "I didn't think I would be seeing things after not sleeping for just a few days."

"You haven't slept for days?" I asked as concern tugged my brows up, but she didn't react.

"I'm sorry, Leo," she muttered almost deliriously as a steadily rising stream of tears began to roll down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," I told her while I took a few steps towards her, "It wasn't your fault. I know you were forced by your brother."

Snowy kept looking me in the eye with a distorted expression, then she began to chuckle even as it made her face look even worse.

"Even in my delusions, you are so nice to me. You… were… so nice…" As she continued, her voice became a stuttering mess drowned out by soft sobs, "I didn't want to… I didn't… want to hurt you… I didn't want to kill you!" She finally cried just as I reached the edge of her bed, at which point I sat down; the sudden bounce in the mattress prompting her to stop with a blank look on her face. The abrupt change in her expression was a little startling, but to be honest, I was just relieved she stopped sobbing. I hesitated for a moment, but then I raised my hand and tried to wipe away her tears with my fingers. At first she flinched back a little, but then her eyes opened even further.

"You… touched me."

"Yes, I did. Do you have a handkerchief or something here? Or some tissues? Your nose is running."

She ignored my question and instead she reached out a hand and gingerly poked my shoulder. She blinked at me a few times, then she timidly asked, "Are you… haunting me?"

I gave her a long, critical look, but since she didn't seem to get it, I just rolled my eyes and used the corner of her bed sheet to wipe her nose while telling her, "Do I look like a ghost to you?"

"But… But I saw it!" she suddenly exclaimed, startling me for a moment. "You collapsed outside the school! And there was so much blood!"

"Well, I got better," I replied to her with what I hoped was a soothing smile.

"But… But… But… Why are you here!?"

She was getting a little hysterical, so I placed my hand on the top of her head and softly rustled her hair. Head pats already worked once this day, and they didn't fail me this time either, as she immediately quieted down.

"I'm here to take you home," I told her reassuringly.

"To… the Abyss?" She asked tentatively, and I shook my head.

"Don't be silly," I told her while rubbing her head a little harder. "I meant my place, obviously. Judy should be preparing the bath and making you a nice cup of hot cocoa as we speak. So, do you wanna come with me?"

The white-haired girl stared at me with wide-open eyes for a second, and before I could even react to it, she suddenly threw herself at me so hard she almost pushed me off the edge of the bed, and then her slender arms caught me like a vice as she hugged me and began to bawl into my chest.

"Whoa! Easy there, easy…" I soothed her to no avail, and no matter how much I rubbed her head and back, she didn't stop crying and holding on to me like she was afraid I would disappear in a puff of smoke. After a few minutes, I finally let out a sigh and gave up. I wasn't late from anywhere anyway. In fact, with my newest discovery, I doubted I will be late ever again, but that was beside the point, so for the time being I decided to indulge her and let her get all of it out of her system.