You Wouldn’t Want a Loyal Herbivore as Your Date

Raven had been investigating the Robin Hood for a few days now. There was no shortage of rumors online, rumors I had dismissed before, because my quasi-omniscience couldn’t find any information on this mysterious figure.

That only left me with the Internet, which could remedy my blind spot. I dreaded the day when I actually had to rely on that inferior database. Mine would never give me anything untrue, but the Internet was filled with false information, distorted and framed for various agendas, mass-produced by bots and artificial intelligence. People ate it up all the same, disregarding the quality of information.

Throughout the week, I used Raven’s laptop while she was asleep. I verified the information I got from forums through quasi-omniscience and location scouting while in spirit form.

Despite all his care in hiding, he still left traces. The telling marks were the impoverished families, homeless shelters, and orphanages that he had helped. He had gone by different names and deployed layers of measures to hide his tracks, but I still recognized him from cases of reversed fortunes. It was the void, an absence of information, that signaled his presence.

Hidden within the chaos. A number. One that he had recently used. That was all I needed. I smirked and shut Raven’s laptop. Finally, I could get off this wretched internet, and begin my real work on handling this bastard.

***

Raven kept asking Pestilence about me. And Pestilence would divert every conversation towards how much I had hurt her. There was a time I killed her in India. There was another time in medieval Russia. But all the other stories were from Pestilence's victim complex of an imagination. Raven slurped up Pestilence’s tears regardless, while writing down the fiction like it was gospel.

The scene looked like a girl venting to her friend about her asshole ex, or maybe a reporter interviewing a victim of a tornado.

The accused, me, exercised my right to remain silent. While the preparation ran in the background, I let Raven live her life, loosening her guard.

Then, the day came when she got a text from an unknown number:

Dear Midorikawa-san, I am sorry about the transgressions by your previous source, and congratulations on your position as assistant to the esteemed Ueshima Hideka-san. I hope that you will get what you want from her. However, I know that I can give you the thing that you want from her, because she knows nothing about the market.

Let's meet Monday 10 am at the east entrance of the Ikebukuro Station for a date.

~E

“A suspicious text? I wonder who sent it.” I broke my quiet streak, causing Raven to jump.

“Gosh! Don’t just suddenly talk like this. Give me a warning.”

What warning? Does she want me to punch her or something?

“Do you want me to tell you who it is? You want to, right? Spoiler, it’s about your story. Someone found out about your hidden identity. Isn’t that spooky?”

“Tell me.”

I was expecting her to be more combative. “I’ve changed my mind. Information isn’t free.”

“What is the price?”

“One million yen.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me.” Raven lay back on the bed that once belonged to Junk-o. I could feel a knot tying up in her stomach. The text acted too familiarly. It hinted at knowing her identity. The sender didn’t sound aggressive, and their meeting place would be in public. These considerations must have been running through Raven’s head.

She could wonder all she wanted for all I care, since I knew who it was already. What mattered to me was that, once again, she was dancing in the palm of my hand.

***

Raven chose to put on moderate makeup, heavy enough to confuse the security cameras, but not too much for her date to recognize her.

She arrived ten minutes early, hoping to scout the area. But she didn’t get a chance to. A man approached her right as she set foot into the domain of the open sky. Even among the crowd pouring out of Ikebukuro station, he found her.

His brown eyes sparkled. Lively black hair sprouted from his head. He rocked a casual polo paired with neat jeans. He could easily blend into a crowd, but the more you looked at his face, the more you would notice his subtle beauty.

He might be a stranger, but his soothing voice carried familiarity and understanding, without the flair for condescension. “There you are, Midorikawa-san. My name is Endo Takafumi. I texted you yesterday.” So, E.T. for short.

Raven raised her eyebrows, stance defensive. But she softened up once she stared at his face for a few seconds. I couldn’t use quasi-omniscience to read her thoughts, but we still shared a heart. The elevated pulse that I felt revealed just how shallow Raven was, but I knew this about her already.

“Do you want to go to a net cafe? Or a karaoke room? I know a lot of private places.” At least I could appreciate Raven maintaining her professionalism, though her cheeks were heating up. It would just be the two of them, alone, after all. Oh, and Raven was definitely a virgin.

“I’m thinking that we can go shopping or to a restaurant.” E.T. beamed with a smile that could knock out a lady.

Unease overwrote Raven’s bashfulness. “Are you sure? There are cameras everywhere. And also hidden microphones too.”

Confusion flashed across E.T.’s face. “What are you talking about? Why would that matter to our date?”

“What? Date? Date? Date?” Raven’s mouth gaped. How I would want to witness the chaos that must be happening in her mind. I could only settle for her awkward fidgeting.

“I told you in the text yesterday.”

“What? I thought. I thought you wanted me to interview you? Or that you wanted to tell me something?” Raven skimmed through her outfit from head to toe, and she checked her makeup with her phone, rushing to fix her hairstyle as much as she could.

A bit late doing this in front of her date. But, as the saying goes, better late than never. Maybe she should have asked me for advice. E.T. displayed no reproach at Raven’s hurried patchwork; he only chuckled, appearing a little amused.

“Death, what is happening?” she said under her breath. I didn’t feel the need to say anything.

“Did you say something?” E.T. said.

Raven shook her head and waved her hands, trying too hard at denial. “No. No. It’s nothing. Anyway, I’m sorry for my cringey introduction. Can we start over?” I could guess her internal monologue.

Me am lonely and single. Me asked out by hot guy. Me accept.

I might have simplified it, but it captured the essence of the situation. Raven would have been more receptive to me if I had sounded like a confident male. She might act open-minded to me on a whim, but if she were to know the full story, the morals she inherited from her mother would set in, and I would have a mess on my hands.

Keeping a distance between us was the ideal move. Nothing good would ever happen if the horseman got too close to their host.

Our relationship could never be like that between two humans, like between Raven and E.T. here. The idea of a date with a hot guy must have overwhelmed her; plus, her daily activities mainly consisted of arguing with trolls online. All that said, she wasn’t doing too badly. The initial embarrassment evaporated as they interacted more.

This is how strong humans are at forming bonds with others. I watched the two picking out skirts; they settled on a light-blue A-line, because it was the same color as Raven’s contacts. She neglected to tell her date that her real eye color was green, but he knew she was in disguise. Regardless, I could almost see a string of connections forming between them.

Sometimes, I thought about the possibilities. What if I could sense social links forging, instead of all those people dying?

They went to a cafe for lunch and a cinema for an afternoon movie. A typical first date. But the next part wasn’t as common. E.T. stopped in front of Hotel Celeste. “I booked a room for us,” he said, without a change in his tone.

As if Raven’s heart had overdosed on caffeine, it leaped around; the thumping was almost audible to an outside ear. “A room?”

“I have something to show you. You’ve come all this way, why not take a look?”

Wowie. A hot guy inviting me to his room? Lucky. Well, this was only my speculation of her thoughts. Her expression told a different story, the funeral-type of solemn. It took her half a minute before she replied. “All right. But I have to warn you. I know martial arts.” Not specifying the school of martial arts showed just how little she knew about martial arts.

The dim bulbs barely lit the corridor enough for navigation. Shifting legs only presented as silhouettes, and the numbers on the doors had to be guessed, not read. I couldn’t tell if Raven’s tensed muscles were from anticipation or fear.

E.T. halted next to a door. Beyond it, my quasi-omniscience told me, was an empty void. I didn’t have a chance to scout this place out as a spirit ahead of time, but still, I didn’t believe for a second that a hotel room would be empty. This could only mean one thing.

A swipe of his key card unlocked the door, and he nudged it open. I was right. The typical bed-dresser combo loomed inside. With the grace of a gentleman, he gestured for Raven to enter first. After a moment of hesitation, she marched forward with stiff steps. E.T. followed in after. The door clicked shut.

“So, what is the-” Raven didn’t get to finish her sentence, because E.T. pounced at her.