RUN, GRAMMAR BOY, RUN

Let me be clear:

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

And it’s glorious.

A man in a sombrero just suplexed a priest. Someone threw a chair at the altar. Kaito’s wanted for owl murder. Sota’s in a marital panic spiral. Hana is two seconds away from setting her dress on fire out of spite.

And me?

I’m having the time of my life.

Look, I used to be omniscient. Past, present, future—it was all in my head like a very well-organized Wikipedia page. But ever since I downgraded to “freelance journalist in the apocalypse,” I’ve been dealing with this weird human phenomenon called surprise.

And I was skeptical at first. Confusing. Sweaty. Loud.

But now?

Now I get it.

There’s something magical about watching a forced marriage ceremony descend into warfare while an unblinking cowboy bounty hunter screams about Duolingo vengeance.

I don’t know what’s about to happen.

And I’ve never been more excited.

This isn’t a story anymore. It’s a train crash inside a spelling bee inside a telenovela.

And I am front row with popcorn.

So, dear reader, if you were hoping for a romantic chapter full of vows and soft music—too bad. That ship sank. Probably onto another ship. And then exploded.

What you’re about to witness is chaos.

Messy, beautiful, language-breaking chaos.

And I am thrilled to be recording it.

One spectacular disaster at a time.

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For three whole seconds, no one moved.

The wind held its breath. A chicken blinked.

“KAITO SASAKI,” he bellowed again. “YOUR STREAK ENDED THE WORLD.”

Kaito held up his hands. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t end the world! I just... slightly inconvenienced it.”

“No one inconveniences Duo and walks away!”

From the back, someone shouted, “WHO DUO?”

Another voice replied, “THE GREEN BIRD WHO YELLS WHEN YOU FORGET FRENCH.”

The priest peeked out from behind the curtain, took one look at the chaos, and wisely retreated back into hiding.

The sombrero man lunged forward, reaching for a very shiny, very unnecessary boomerang strapped to his belt. Kaito ducked just in time.

“HE HAS A BOOMERANG?!” Kaito yelped.

“WHO GIVES THE WEDDING CRASHER A BOOMERANG?!” Sota said, already hiding behind a stack of folding chairs.

Hana didn’t answer—she was already moving. Fast. Low. Surgical.

She launched herself off a table and tackled the sombrero man from the side, knocking him off balance. They crashed sideways.

Right into a goat.

The goat screamed.

(No, really. Screamed.)

It bolted forward, directly into a fruit vendor who was already balancing one too many baskets.

The baskets flew.

The vendor stumbled and accidentally elbowed a mustached man holding a ceremonial ladle.

That man swore. Loudly.

The owner of the goat gasped. “YOU NOT CURSE AT BUN-BUN!”

And punched him square in the nose.

Everyone stopped.

Someone in the back yelled, “VIOLENCE!”

And then—

All hell broke loose.

An old woman hit a guy with a folding chair.

A child screamed “COWABUNGA!” and belly-flopped into the lemonade tub.

A man in a tuxedo vest threw a punch at the priest.

The priest dodged and hit back with a holy book.

And a goat—possibly the same one from last chapter—leaped into battle like a woolly cannonball.

Meanwhile, the sombrero man went straight for Kaito, swinging with the elegance of a furious ballerina.

Kaito blocked with a pew leg. “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!”

“You broke the streak!” the man shouted. “You killed Duo!”

“I missed one lesson!”

“ONE LESSON TOO MANY!”

Hana dove in again, kicking a plate into his shin. He hissed, spun, and grabbed a wedding decoration off the wall—a heart-shaped wreath—and tried to strangle Kaito with it.

Sota, panic-fueled and floppy, grabbed a broom and jabbed it between them.

“BACK! BACK, YOU... MASCOT SYMPATHIZER!”

The sombrero man swatted him away. “You're barely a sidekick!”

Sota yelped and scrambled under a table. “I resent that!”

Punches. Grunts. Wild swings.

A guest tried to join the fight but got tackled by a flower girl.

Someone shouted “YEEHAW” in Mandarin.

A goat knocked over a table and stood atop it like the king of the apocalypse.

The trio fought like idiots possessed.

But just when it seemed the sombrero man might overpower them—

WHACK.

Kaito grabbed the boomerang mid-air and slammed it across the guy’s temple.

The man dropped to the ground.

Sota peeked out from under the table. “Is he dead?”

The three of them just stood there, watching him for a few seconds.

And then, a growl.

A horrible, guttural, glitched-sounding growl that no man should be able to make unless he’s possessed by both rage and a corrupted Duolingo server.

"I don't think he's dead," Kaito said.

The sombrero man twitched.

Then his hand flexed.

“I THINK WE SHOULD GO” Sota screamed.

And just like that, they took off into the alley behind the wedding tent, the sounds of fighting still echoing behind them.

Behind them, the man in the sombrero sat up slowly, growling like a dial-up modem from hell.

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“GO! GO! GO!”

Kaito didn’t know who yelled it first—maybe Hana, maybe himself—but suddenly all three of them were sprinting through the wreckage of the wedding like they’d just robbed the grammar bank.

Behind them, the man in the sombrero pushed through the crowd, still coming. Still furious.

“I thought he was down!” Kaito shouted, leaping over a collapsed buffet table and nearly stepping on a pie.

"Well, now he's back up!" Hana said.

“I THINK I KICKED HIS HAT,” Sota wailed. “WHY WOULD I DO THAT?!”

Behind them, bootsteps thundered.

“I can hear him breathing!” Sota cried.

“Why is he so fast?! He wears BOOTS!” Kaito wheezed.

They barreled through the market—knocking over spice jars, leaping over stray rugs, ducking under clotheslines filled with what might have once been shirts but now looked like defeated flags.

A villager stepped out of a hut carrying soup. Kaito yelled, “INCOMING!” and somersaulted under the man’s elbow. Hana vaulted a basket. Sota just screamed and ran through it.

The soup went airborne.

It landed on a cat.

The cat screamed. The cat jumped. It landed on the sombrero man's face.

“YES!” Kaito shouted. “Finally something good comes out of all this chaos!”

“No time to celebrate!” Hana said. “KEEP RUNNING!”

They rounded a corner and darted into a side alley, barely avoiding a hanging tarp that was definitely held up with dental floss and hope. The man in the sombrero tore the cat off his face and kept running, more enraged than ever.

Sota panted, barely keeping up. “This is it. This is how I die. On the run. In a wedding robe. Covered in soup.”

Kaito skidded to a stop. “Quick! In here!”

He pointed at a house with its door open.

They dove in and immediately slammed the door shut behind them before collapsing in a heap of sweat, fabric, and trauma on the floor.

“I think… we lost him,” Kaito said between breaths.

“I think I lost a lung,” Sota added, face planted against a welcome mat that said “GOAT BLESS THIS MESS.”

Hana peered out the window. No sombreros in sight.

“We might actually be safe,” she said cautiously.

And then—

“HEY!”

All three of them jumped like they’d been electrocuted.

Standing in the hallway, illuminated by a single swinging lightbulb and an aura of furious dad energy…Was the bride’s father.

Still barefoot. Still sunburnt. Still radiating beach towel robe authority.

Sota flinched. “Look, if this is about the vows, I meant everything I said!”

“Shh! No panic,” he said, voice low. “I help.”

“…What?” The three of them blinked.

The father took a step closer. “My daughter… cannot marry dead man. You run, he chase, she cry. Not good love story.”

Kaito nodded slowly. “Can’t argue with that.”

Then the bride's father spun around. “Follow me.”

They didn’t argue.

They sprinted after him through a back gate, around a stack of broken scooters, past a cat that looked way too invested in their survival, and toward the edge of town where a massive tarp-covered caravan waited.

It looked like a camel had tried to cosplay as a garbage truck. The wheels creaked with existential dread. The smell was… chewy.

The father yanked open a flap that led to a very cramped compartment in the caravan's floor.

“Hide here. Is secret cargo. Very illegal. Do not open sack. Or speak to parrot.”

“…There’s a parrot?” Hana asked.

“You’ll know him when you see him," he said. "Now get in, Caravan about to leave."

“To where?” Kaito asked, climbing over a suspicious crate that growled.

The father gave a dramatic pause.

Then said:

“India.”

The flap closed.

They were off.

And somewhere, on the rooftops behind them, the man in the sombrero finally arrived—just a moment too late.

He stared at the horizon.

And screamed.

A scream that promised revenge.

A scream that made the parrot in the crate mutter, “Drama queen.”