Fateful Encounter Pt. 3

"An eavesdropper?" Lana asked, her displeasure visibly oozing from her expression alone. "How did we not sense him?"

Chloe knelt over next to me. Her soft hands rested on my cheek as her eyes glowed a sharp hue of blue. It felt as though my soul left my body the moment our eyes connected.

"Huh? W-wait..." Chloe mumbled.

Her eyes glowed even brighter than before. Once more, she backed away with wide eyes.

"That's odd," she said. "He... doesn't seem to have a thread attached to him."

"What?" Alice questioned.

"Is that even possible?" Lana asked.

"Well... there have been moments where I fell asleep while spinning, but I still completed the thread, albeit very lazily," Chloe admitted as if she worried about how her sisters would react. "This one... doesn't have a thread at all. Lana?"

"Unlikely. I make sure to measure every thread you spin. Even now, those threads are being distributed, and I know of every single one of them. This... This is beyond me."

"Certainly explains why we weren't able to sense him at all," Alice said. "Now... You. What's your name?"

"A-Aikami Enzou, ma'am..." I answered as diligently as possible.

"Aikami. What were you doing back there?"

"It's where I normally eat lunch."

"Eh? Don't you have any friends to eat with?" Lana asked.

"Well... N-no, I don't."

"Eh? Not one?"

"I'd be surprised if there was anybody out there who knew my name."

The girls looked at each other for a moment before turning back to me.

"By any chance, do you... have a family?" Chloe asked.

It took me a couple of seconds, but I answered, "No. If I do have a family somewhere out there, I'll probably never know."

Their expressions dropped as if feeling pity. Alice turned her attention to Lana, who was frowning at the ground. It seems that even these... people... can feel shame.

"No friends, no family, no one in his life to call him by his name," Lana muttered. "He really doesn't have a thread."

"What do we do?" Chloe tilted her head up to ask.

Their brows furrowed as they fell deep into their own thoughts. I don't understand any of this. Giving me a thread? What's that supposed to mean? I want to speak up, but my tongue keeps turning back. They might just kill me on the spot. It's not like I lived a very eventful life, so it doesn't sound overly terrible.

I think I'm about to regret this, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. No matter how afraid I am, there are too many questions.

"W-who are you guys?" I asked with a slight stutter, turning their attention toward me. "Are you really... demons?"

"Demons?" Alice scoffed. "I forget that humans like to believe in that kind of stuff. I can see why you'd come to that conclusion, but no. We are not demons."

"Then who?"

Chloe and Lana looked to Alice to speak. She gave them both a momentary glance before shrugging.

"We are the fates," Alice said. "Or I guess, to put it in a way for you to better understand... we are the Goddesses of Fate."

"Wait, we're just going to tell him? Chloe asked.

"I mean, he already saw us using magic," Lana interjected. "It's not like we can explain it any other way."

The Goddesses of Fate... as in the Greek goddesses? They exist? As much as I wanted to call it a bluff, the weird magic that Alice displayed before made it believable.

"H-how come you're here in the human world?" I asked without thinking.

"The heavens tend to get boring after a while," Alice said while scratching her nails. "Sometimes, we take an impromptu vacation to the human world just to relax. You happened to catch us at just the right moment."

"Is it... really the right moment?"

"That depends."

Alice effortlessly picked me up and pushed me onto a bookshelf. She slid a single finger under my chin with a seemingly murderous smile on her face.

"If you're a follower of fate, then it most certainly is the right moment," she whispered into my ear. "If you fear us... probably not so much."

"P-please don't kill me," I begged. "I won't tell anyone."

"Damn right, you won't," Lana said with a long strand of thread weaving around her fingers.

She waved her hands in front of her, forcing the strand to untangle. When she pointed at me, the thread quickly wrapped itself around my entire body, and panic began to overtake me.

"W-wait!" I shouted. "Please! I won't say a word!"

Suddenly, the threads dispersed, and my body was free once more. I rapidly brushed my whole body to find that I still had every part of it.

"Gosh," Alice huffed. "You really think we'd kill you just like that? You're the most interesting thing that's happened so far. Although, your little panic attack was... overly dramatic."

"I thought it was cute," Chloe giggled.

"What did you do to me?" I grunted, my heart still beating faster than ever.

"Not much," Lana said. "I just gave you a thread of fate. Now that you actually have one, you should be able to live a normal life."

"However..." Alice walked up until she wasn't even a full step away from me.

One arm rested on my shoulder while the other was now holding a pair of silvery scissors right in front of me. A single piece of thread became visible between the two blades.

"If you so much as mutter a single word about our true identities to anyone else... snip, snip," she whispered.

"I... understand," I gulped nervously.

"Good."

The girls sat back down on the table as if nothing had happened just now. Lana was back to watching her cat videos, Chloe was browsing through social media, and Alice was resting her eyes.

Really? Just like that? I still can't believe any of this.

"I have a question," I said. "You're goddesses, aren't you? Why not just erase my memories or something?"

"We don't have the power to do that," Lana replied, her eyes still fixed on her phone. "Anything that happened to you before you received our thread is beyond our domain."

"So am I expected to simply forget any of this ever happened?"

"That's the best thing you can do," Chloe insisted. "I'm sorry we couldn't be of more help, but we did the most we could."

"Now, be a good little human child and run along," Alice said. "No need to come close to dying again, hm?"

She's right. There's no reason for me to continue involving myself with them if it means that I could die at any given moment. One near-death experience is enough for the rest of my life. From now on, I'll just avoid them and keep my mouth shut. As Chloe said, that's the best thing I can do.

"Then... Goodbye," I said for what I thought would be the last time.

As I scurried off as quickly as I could, everything about my body was off. I was sweating profusely, my heart was pounding insanely hard, and my mind was definitely not in the right state of mind.

That was dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Demons, goddesses, or whatever they are, I have to keep my distance no matter what. Otherwise... I could really die.