A Quick Segway

Nisa held the controller firmly in her hands, but she had no idea what to do. She inspected it like it was an alien object, turning it every which way. Eventually, she decided that maybe it was food and tried to chomp on it.

“Wait!” I quickly let out as I took the controller from her hands. Her small sharp teeth crunched down on nothing but air.

She looked at me confused, but her tail moved around like a snake in curiosity.

I sighed, “Something tells me this isn’t going to work out as easily as I thought.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Ritsue, who had changed her outfit to closely resemble Nisa’s tapped her crossed legs.

All three of us were sitting on the cold hard wooden floor. Since I didn’t have a tv, Ritsue had to bring an old one she had stored in her closet. It was small with wear and tear on the plastic and screen, but it got the job done. The only issue was that I didn’t have a place to put the tv where there was an outlet, so the floor had to do.

“So what do we do?” Ritsue asked as she dropped to the floor. She used her hands as a pillow and turned to look at me. “Do you want to try to teach to play anyway?”

“I would…but I rather leave that to someone who knows how to teach…” I said while glancing over at her. “Man, if only there was someone who knew how to teach around here…”

“Hm, I wonder who that’d be…” Ritsue, the girl studying in the teaching program at the college looked off onto the white ceiling.

Bob suddenly rolled up to us clamping his claw hands like some sort of tongs. “If my information is accurate, does Ritsue not study under the teaching program of this college? It has also come to my attention her grades are…hm…average?”

“Who told you to look into my grades?” Ritsue jabbed the robot’s chest with her finger.

“So that’s why you don’t want to teach. You’re not good at it,” I smirked.

“Piss off.” She plainly insulted. She closed her eyes in deep thought before opening them and turning to me, “I could ask a friend of mine for help. She has been in the program for two years more than me. She’s also one of the top students of the program.”

“I assume you speak of Tanya Rowe?”

“And there you go looking through my information again.”

“Should I not be doing so? I can be more helpful if I can scavenge as much information as possible.”

Although what Bob said made sense, it was still unsettling to have someone else know everything about you. I still didn’t understand how he got so much information, or how Hitoshi got it either, but having all of that information tossed into the public wasn’t favorable.

“I know you’re trying to help, but I think it's best if you only search for information when it’s absolutely necessary, okay?” I said as nicely as I could be.

“I see. I apologize.” Bob lowered his head before rolling away.

I felt bad telling Bob off like that, but I was certain that both Ritsue and I were a bit on edge with how easily all of our personal information was being accessed, plus all of the weird things going on with Hitoshi too. For now, we would have to play it off like normal, at least until we could figure out what was going on.

“So, about this friend of yours, do you think she can come over?”

She thought about it for a few seconds before saying, “She has two classes today, so that’s a no-go. I might be able to arrange something for tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow, huh.”

I looked over at Nisa who was tracing the yellow orb character traversing the pellet-filled maze. Her eyes were fully black and she seemed at the brink of jumping at the tv, hunching herself over in an attack mode.

“Hey, Nisa.”

Her ears folded backward then she turned her head in my direction. She blinked a few times as she awaited my response; her tail was rapidly swinging side to side.

“Can you turn off the console?” I tried giving her an easy task. I really just wanted to see if she knew what I was talking about, but if her sideways turned head and tail coincidently looking like a question mark was anything to base it off of, she did not.

“Um, can you touch the little light there?” I pointed at the console’s power button.

She placed her finger on it, but nothing happened. In this case, it was my fault; I hadn’t specified to push the light. She reminded me of my time during programming in high school. My teacher would always mention that when we code, we have to keep in mind the computer won’t assume things that aren’t specified. That’s basically what this was. He would definitely give me an earful for having forgotten such a basic rule.

Wait…programming?

The sudden realization that those thoughts had run through my head made me freeze on the spot. As far as I knew, I had never taken a programming class. Not in high school nor in college. I was majoring in graphic design, not that I had any interest in that topic.

So why…?

“Can you press the little light?” Ritsue asked Nisa, thawing me from my thoughts.

As she said that, Nisa put force in her finger, causing a little beep and turning the screen to black.

“Good job!” she said like an elementary school teacher.

Nisa waved her tail in happiness.

“Come here,” she told Nisa who crawled her way towards Ritsue.

She placed a hand on top of her white hair, ruffling it then smoothening it like she was petting a real cat. She then reached for Bob standing to her left and grabbed a round red object from his hands.

“Here’s your reward,” she handed her the big apple which Nisa took with widened eyes.

Even in her two hands, it looked like she was grabbing a small watermelon instead of an apple. It was definitely not an apple I had boughten if there were any of those even left.

“Where do you even get apples like these?” Ritsue asked Bob.

“Hitoshi brought them from…well, that’s classified.”

Right, like everything involving that man, even something as small as an apple was classified.

Either way, my thoughts began to drift over to earlier. The programming class that felt so real at that moment now felt like a lie I had randomly fabricated—because it was. My teacher’s pale face and bald head seemed to slowly dissipate, going back to the fiction that had been.

I had tried getting into programming at some point, but I remember giving up on it a little before entering high school. By that point, I was woefully lost in what I wanted to do with my life, not that I was any different now.

Three loud knocks assaulted my front door.

“Was someone coming over?” Ritsue asked, still stroking Nisa’s hair.

“Not that I know of.”

I stood, shaking my thoughts away, and headed to the door.

There was no way it was Vang since he just opened the door by himself, somehow, and I couldn’t Imagine Hitoshi knocking on my door. He would probably be in my room somewhere when I least expect it.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me!” came the familiar but unexpected voice.

I quickly unlocked the door and opened it. Standing there was a small girl with short hair and a clip on her bangs. She carried a plastic bag in one hand and her phone in the other.

It was my younger sister, Delia Shiga.