CHAPTER 1: Wake Up and Look

I’m convinced the universe has it out for me.

For some odd reason the universe has made it so that every forenoon, dawn and/or any synonym for the early morning is canonically my enemy.

Needless to say we’re not on speaking terms.

And by "morning," I mean anything before 11 a.m. And by "speaking," I mean any inkling of normal human functionality.

Today was no exception to this rule. I was running on four hours of sleep. I spent the greater part of last night hunched over at my PC obsessing over attack patterns and the best way to abuse cancel windows.

You get the idea. Priorities.

I sat up in bed like a real mess.

Hair: insists on defying gravity.

Brain: still attempting to calibrate after last night’s speedrun attempt.

Eyes: crusted and begging to be closed back again permanently.

School is at eight-thirty, as it is every day.

The estimated probability of anything worth getting out of bed for? I’d give it a solid 0.003%.

My parents? Gone. Again.

They’re always flying off somewhere, leaving me to fend for myself at homebase.

They might say they love me, but if they really did, they'd be a smidge more there for me. Right?

The whole thing feels like a massively corroded pipedream at this point.

I think my parents went to Peru last time. Or Madagascar. Might as well be Atlantis. They always send me a postcard.

Not even a video chat. Such is life.

That’s when I gave up trying to make sense of it.

Finally, I dragged myself to the bathroom, I had a bad habit of half-assing the whole ‘brushing my teeth’ thing.

Both eyes were half-shut. Something caught them though.

It practically pried them open.

I breathed on the mirror’s glass.

Nothing.

No fog.

I blinked then breathed again.

A strong, minty breath.

Still nothing.

"Huh."

Isn’t that something?

Normally mirrors do that sort of thing, fog up, y’know?

That wasn’t just weird. That was... wrong. 

I leaned in and tapped on the glass. Cold. But not foggy. Still clear without any marks at all.

My reflection stared right back at me: dark green eyes, jawline that isn’t as sharp as I’d like it to be plus one hell of a pitiful bedhead.

My school uniform was also thrown on in a rush. Never been ironed once.

Something flared for a fraction of a second.

A flash.

I froze.

Okay. Two options:

Sudden onset schizophrenia.

My bathroom mirror decided to manifest eldritch horrors beyond my comprehension.

I tapped on the glass again. I wasn’t about to let this gut feeling go so easily.

That flash definitely didn't come from me. It couldn't have.

Something in the reflection blinked before I did.

I felt a block of ice in my chest. The air felt... heavy. 

And just as I leaned in closer—

"Keizoooooo~! Come on! We're going to be late again!"

Ow.

Mika didn’t so much shout as sonic-boom her way into my morning.

The girl had lungs plus no definition of ‘quiet’ or ‘morning’.

Put the two words in conjunction with one another and now you’re asking for the impossible.

I leaned out the window, toothbrush still in my mouth.

“What part of ‘I’m brushing my teeth’ does this world not understand!?”

“The slow as hell part, Keizo!”

Thanks for that.

She’s not wrong though.

I rolled my eyes, spat into the sink, and glanced up at the mirror one last time.

I’m still on that! Fogless? Gimme a break. Mirrors don’t fog.

Apparently mine does now.

But Mika was waiting, and I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to endure her wrath on an empty stomach.

We trudged around the back path to school like always.

Mika hugged her bag closely as if she were caching away contraband and/or trade secrets.

Knowing her, she probably was. Did I wanna know? I’ll live without the info dump.

I adjusted my tie like it would change the fact that I’m a walking cadaver with no pep in my step.

It didn't.

Mika said something about math problems she hadn't done. I offered to let her copy mine instinctively. Didn’t even have to think too hard about that one.

Probably because I was quite literally not thinking and putting 90% of my brain to work just to stay awake.

She accused me of being a sadist. I neither confirmed nor denied it.

"You're too much of a jerk sometimes," she muttered, elbowing me with no actual intention of hurting me behind it.

Me? A jerk? Nooooo, see that’s just silly. I just have a teeny, tiny, tendency to... I dunno, tell it how it is sometimes?

Yeah, let’s go with that.

"Say that to your math grade," I told her.

She complained.

I smiled.

At this point in our routine, this is where Mika goes off to find her lady friends and I go off to rethink every interpersonal relationship I’ve ever had.

⊹˚₊‧──────────────‧₊˚⊹ ⟡ ✧ a temporal jump ✧ ⟡ ⊹˚₊‧──────────────‧₊˚⊹

"Keizo~!"

There were fingers in my face. Interrupting my train of thought which was heading nowhere and bound to derail at some point anyway.

I opened my eyes—immediately regretting it.

Mika towered over me at my desk, cinnamon locks bouncing, hazel eyes far too alert. Her normal energy level was operating at a healthy twelve out of ten.

I was… slightly better than I was this morning

"Mika, for goodness' sake, stop waving at me like I'm in your debt. I'm still assembling my brain modules," I grumbled.

This was what classes with Mika were like: Her racing around the room before class like an overly-caffeinated ferret, and me trying to just chill in the moment.

I’d prefer a freezer personally, but you learn to make do with what you got.

She was wearing that smile. Always a bad sign.

"What's got you so perky?" I asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Ah, just done a bit of calculations~," she sang.

"Calculations?" I repeated. "Like… math?"

"Like this!" She brandished a stack of crumpled worksheets.

I took them and scanned through each one.

Pythagoras and al-Khwarizmi are 100% rolling in their graves right about now.

Hey, I would too if your life’s work got butchered and misunderstood this badly.

I thumbed through. Winced. Unobtrusively lamented.

"...These are all wrong," I blinked at her.

"EH!? All wrong!?"

Her eyes sprang open like dinner plates. Priceless look.

"Yes and I’m putting a special emphasis on the ‘all’ part."

"No way, lemme see!" she pouted, grabbing the papers back like a raccoon with the accursed garbage.

I leaned in and gestured. "Here. And here. And here again. You left out three vital steps in each and every equation. How am I supposed to read this? That number's literally backwards! This all looks like patch notes from a cursed game no one dared to beta test."

I guffawed.

"This is no laughing matter!" she cried, her cheeks puffing out like an offended mochi.

"It is to me," I replied, still grinning. "What happened to Miss 'Math-Is-My-Superpower'?"

I playfully poked at her shoulder.

She groaned.

"I was tryna listen to you the other day! But when you start describing things, your words went in one ear then out the other!"

She flailed and covered her face, mortified.

Poor Mika.

She was the kind of student who could absolutely decimate a novel in one sitting, but when faced with a number, she treated it like some kind of foreign glyph. Still—she tried it. That was something.

I eased up a little.

"If you think about it, these equations cancel each other out nicely," I said to her.

"I'll cancel you out nicely..." she muttered, pouting.

I blinked. "That... makes zero sense, Mika."

"Neither does algebra, Kei."

Then she leaned in, smug. "By the way… how's your book report for lit class going?"

"I haven't opened a damn page, yo," I said, proudly and unashamed.

Reading wasn't my scene. I liked having books. I liked the idea of books. Lots of them. Shelves of them towering behind me.

But to read them? Unless it was game lore, something niche, or somehow involved crazy-ass game mechanics? Ha. No shot.

"Eh?! You've hardly even started it!?" Mika cried out.

"Yeah, well, I didn't wanna."

Mika burst into a cackle of laughter. Full-on, shoulders-shaking, laughter.

See, I’m not exactly what you’d call a comedian, but somehow my mouth makes the right sequence of sounds that causes her to do… that.

"At this rate, you'll finish by graduation!"

"This is not a laughing matter!" I snapped, copying her from before.

"It is to me," she replied, smugly pleased with herself.

And then—

WHAM!

The classroom door swung open like a mini sonic boom.

Our teacher barreled in like a hurricane in heels.

What did I tell you? Mornings spare no one.

And just like that, class began.

Call it illogically hopeful optimism or whatever you like but this day’s gonna fly by, I can feel it.

Spoiler: It never does.