The Unexpected Encounter

The sun shines brightly on an empty sidewalk within a certain neighborhood. The houses lined up along the street are littered with fireworks scattered about on driveways, porches and front lawns. Additionally, there appear to be firework mortars installed on the rooftops of a few houses. Seeing that it’s currently June 30th and firework season is just around the corner, is the neighborhood planning some sort of small-scale festival?

Children are seen excitedly throwing bang snaps, a popular noisemaker, at the ground and at one another. Despite the little danger that they present, bang snaps -also better recognized as ‘poppers’- are still considered explosive. And yet, despite all the warnings and risks, do children really listen to rules like that when the firework in question is so small?

Funnily enough, it certainly does bring an ease of mind in knowing that they’re sensible enough to not throw with as much force at others compared to when their excitement overtakes all sense of reason, feverishly throwing one or even a handful of poppers at the ground. That “CRACK”-ing sound has to be so satisfying to listen to…

As parents stand idly by and happily watch the lively chaos unfold, they don’t have the heart to dampen the fun in telling their kids to wait for the evening…

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Just across the street from the energetic neighborhood is The Square Entertainment Center, Techno Haven’s most infamous tourist melting pot for all kinds of wild events and festivities.

The Square was largely inspired by France’s Grande Arche, a hypercube-esque building and humanitarian monument that spans an approximate height, width, and depth of exactly 360 ft. When directly comparing it to The Square, the only notable difference stems from the deliberate decision to not copy the aforementioned’s inward edges, but instead popping them out; maintaining the ever-familiar classic shape of a cube. This, in turn, helps to understand why The Square is called as such, because people would be able to see one of four square faces from all sides.

Additionally, the city of Arcadia originally wanted to construct The Square to provide a more localized and accessible place for the vast community of shut-in gamers. This vision was one day expanded upon when someone on the design team pitched that it should have a more open-ended use; being cheap and easily accessible to not only house, but to host and organize events from within the enclosed space of a giant cube. The idea was sold on a unanimous vote and the multi-purpose Square Entertainment Center was born.

From esports tournaments to ani-manga conventions, idol concerts to stage plays and operas, fierce cage fights (although there is a designated place for that already) to sports drafts, games, championships, and the like, The Square Entertainment Center is THE central hotspot for Arcadia’s passionate demonstrations of entertainment and the arts!

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On a certain empty sidewalk, a girl with short brown hair wearing an orange hoodie, hot pants, and black leggings is seen having an exparasted conversation with someone over the phone.

“Change styles?” The girl frowns, putting a hand to her hip.

“Frenda, this style super screams originality.”

The girl, Kinuhata Saiai, turns her head to look at her white arm sleeves with grey stripes, the current object of her fashion. Frenda, being the girl on the phone as well as Kinuhata’s friend, is currently trying to talk her out of wearing such a tight and closed ended outfit, but to no avail.

That’s what their current phone call is about.

Frenda, being someone who prefers to wear more breathable clothing like skirts, is torn at the direct contrast of Kinuhata’s current getup; consciously choosing to wear something like arm sleeves in the middle of summer. It’s a little odd how she’s only complaining about the arm sleeves when the sweater is easily the stuffiest thing on Kinuhata’s person. Perhaps Frenda is the kind of girl who prefers to show off her arms and skin instead of covering them?

In any case, Kinuhata’s only defense is that because of the summer season, no one would even think about wearing arm sleeves; so now’s the perfect time to bring them back in [her own] style. Unless there was someone out there in the world that was just as peculiar as Kinuhata (in Frenda’s case) or if they coincidentally have good taste in picking out accessories, the chances of a miracle meet-up like that are about as close to zero as one could get.

…Unless one of two things happened. One, they find her address and randomly show up at her front door. Or two, if such a person were to exist, they would quite literally have to be walking down this exact same sidewalk as her right now. As if anything as silly as that could actually happen… right?

Kinuhata begins her next sentence with a big sigh.

“Look, this style literally represents—” she begins, her sentence being cut off by another voice.

Unbeknownst to Kinuhata, there was another girl a short distance away. As a consequence for her inability to pay attention to her surroundings, the other girl walking up the sidewalk was dressed in an eerily similar fashion to her. Sporting short mauve-pink hair, a hexagonal-patterned orange tank-top, fishnet leggings, and even the same kind of hot pants (all that was stylish and all), but there was one thing that would’ve stopped Kinuhata dead in her tracks if it weren’t for Frenda’s annoying and distracting phone call. The most striking thing of all was a pair of turquoise arm sleeves with navy blue stripes that she was wearing in the middle of this summer heat.

“—Me, myself, and I!!! Heidi, listen, I just don’t have the heart to try out new clothes,” the other girl on the sidewalk says in conjunction with Kinuhata’s sentence, almost as if she were finishing it for her.

It seems that the “originality” of Kinuhata’s fashion sense was brought into question as there was apparently someone else who was wearing not only the exact thing as her, but is also engaging in a very similar conversation with someone over the phone. The only major difference was that this pink-haired girl wasn’t wearing a sweater. If they were both to be stopped right there and then, they could’ve easily been mistaken for twins. Perhaps, in another life, maybe they could’ve even been sisters?

But anyway, neither Kinuhata nor NZ, the supposed Kinuhata copycat, noticed that they were so much in sync that they had just finished each other’s sentence.

“And besides,” they both continued in unison, “I don’t see in any way how anyone’s gonna copy my fashion sense—” Seeing as they were too focused with their own respective phone calls, it wasn’t until the pair of girls each perceived an unfamiliar voice saying the exact same thing as the other that they both stopped mid-sentence and simply stared. At each other. It was as if time had stopped.

Think about it this way: Two identical looking girls. Both were wearing some sort of orange clothing, hot pants, leggings, and even arm sleeves in the middle of the summer. Who wouldn’t find that weird? As the realization slowly set in, none of them could accept reality.

And you blame them? It was like looking at a mirror.

“HEEY!”

Dumbfounded by sheer coincidence, the two girls could only yell that one word out. Not only had they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and yelled quite loudly, but now they were now pointing fingers at one another. This made for a really silly scene for anybody watching nearby. It was quite the sight to behold.

The unexpected had happened.

A once-in-a-lifetime encounter.

What a small world we live in, right?