Now yes, the treasure hunt begins!

Some dark clouds were still on the sky, but it was still mostly blue. The ground wasn’t dry yet though. However, there was no more time to lose. They both went down with baggy eyes to receive Eli, who was waiting in front of the main door.

—Good day! Oh, you guys look pretty tired.

—Yeah, I didn’t have the best of my nights —responded Mirena.

—I’m sorry for calling you so early then, but the store where Alice works closes at 12 o’clock, and this is the best opportunity to meet her.

—It’s fine —said Ken—. I wasn’t feeling like staying in bed more time anyways.

—Ok then, let’s go!

It was a very well-known place for anyone who did cosplay in that city. Not because it wasn’t that big, but because you could find even the weirdest and most uncommon things there. The fact that it was attended by a whole family was also one of the reason of its popularity: the generational branch didn’t matter; you’ll always find someone who knows what are you talking about in that store. Also, they all were nice persons and the service was very comfy.

A small bell rang when they opened the door.

The store was full of huge shelves divided in squares where rolls of different kinds of fabrics were exhibited. The wall of the back actually was just a bigger shelve with tons of fabrics of various colors, designs and textures. In the opposite side was the box, next to a door that led to the storage, presumably with even more and more fabrics.

The target, Alice, was there. She welcomed them with a smile. She was wearing a casual pink shirt, black jeans and a hair band as a wristband; therefore, her long and light-brown hair was falling wildly on her back.

—Oh, but if it isn’t Eli! —she said. Alice had a very soft voice, but her intonation was charged with a lot of enthusiasm.

—Hey Alice! Are you alone?

—Yeah, my mom went to buy something for lunch, because she has to go to the stylish at 13 o’clock and doesn’t have time to cook.

—Stylish? Fancy! Special occasion?

—Yes, yes, today is her anniversary with dad and…

At the beginning, Ken was doing his best to follow the conversation. His intention was to try to find a gap in the conversation where he could enter, in order to seem more friendly as he actually was. But the chitchat between Eli and Alice went deeper and faster, and he ended up losing the interest. At one point, he just started to hear unintelligible murmurs while watching the variety of fabrics. His attention was only recovered when his name was mentioned.

—Ah, yes, hello —he said, returning abruptly to the earth.

—And this one right here is María.

—Oh, María? Are you a foreigner?

—Yes! —she responded—. I’m from…

And that way, Mirena joined to the amusing fast conversation, making Ken’s brain to melt down because of the overheat his neurons were producing trying to follow those 3. At the end, he just heard quietly.

—Now that I think about it, why were you here? —Alice asked, finally bringing the conversation to the important point.

—Oh well, that’s a funny story —responded Eli—. Some days ago I was walking in the center, I don’t remember why. Oh right, I wanted to buy some ice cream. Oh shit, I forgot the ice cream. Whatever. The point is that…

—Ehm, excuse me —interrupted Ken—. Some costumers came in, so probably we shouldn’t bother her for too long.

That wasn’t a lie, actually. A couple came in to the store some seconds ago, and were looking together to the fabrics. Ken took advantage of that in order to force Eli to tell the story in the briefest form possible.

—Oh, you’re right. You wanted to buy something? —asked Alice.

—No, actually…

—Oh, that’s great! Then you can come here in this side of the box and tell me the story. That way I can still attend the costumers while listening! —she said with a big and radiant smile.

—Yes, that would be great —responded Ken with a growing desire to die.

While Alice was working, Eli told her the entire story about how she met Mirena and Ken. And of course, she did it in the longest way possible. Mirena participated in the conversation actively, while Ken was just changing his weight from one leg to the other, over and over.

—So, in conclusion, we wanted to borrow the upper part of the Mask cosplay —Eli finally said.

“Thank god” thought Ken. “Now comes the most difficult part: how to convince her of lending us the…”

—Yes, sure!

—Eh? —Ken was so surprised that the words simply escaped from his mouth (if you can count “eh” as a word). Alice laugh at that reaction.

—What happens? You didn’t expect me to say yes? Or maybe you were hoping I would say no? Are these two girls forcing you to dress-up? No wonder, they can be very difficult to handle. —She laugh again after talking.

—No, no. It’s just that I didn’t expect it to be so easy.

—Of course I would say yes. Also, if you need some adjustments you can let it to me! Maybe I’m not so good yet to do a new costume from zero, but I can fix one already made for sure!

Meanwhile, Mirena took mental notes about this. She has been chatting with Alice lively, but she hadn’t forgotten her goal: understand Ken. During that brief conversation, she already reached the first conclusion: he tends to think that people will be mean. That way, the mental jigsaw of Ken’s true personality already had the first piece, and so had the cosplay.

The upper part was still in Alice’s hands (since it was in her home and that was kind of far away from the store), but they gave to her their phone numbers to call her. Also, she took Ken seizures to start right away with the adjustments.

Now the trio was just having dinner in the outside tables of a restaurant, below the shadow of a parasol.

While enjoying the taste of his orange soda, Ken was meditating about the previous measuring scene, and thinking about how anime always lies to the people. If his life were an anime, or a manga, or why not, a web novel, something comically-erotic would have happened there. But no, nothing happened. He wasn’t even nervous. Maybe he was a virgin, but not so undignified as to be flustered because the hands of a cute girl were close to his body.

—What’s our next target? —asked Mirena with the mouth full of the hamburger she was eating. It was a complete hamburger with lettuce, tomato, fries, onion, mayonnaise and fried egg, from which the orange liquid of the yolk dripped.

—Don’t talk while munching —Ken reproached to her.

—Eh? Why not?

—Because it’s disgusting.

—If that’s what your culture does, I’m fine with that —said Eli.

—My culture? Yes, I guess I was never told to not talk while eating.

“Yeah, that’s because anime girls eating are always cute” thought Ken. “But when a real person does it, it’s not.”

—At least try to cover your mouth with one hand, like this —he said, trying to find an in-between point.

—Fiiine. What’s our next target? —repeated Mirena, imitating Ken’s gesture from before.

—Our next target is Sean. He’s at work until the 6 pm.

—6 pm?! —exclaimed Ken.

—Yes, so we have plenty of time to have fun together.

—That’s… That actually sound pretty good. —Instinctively, he was against the idea. But after thinking about it twice, he realized there wasn’t anything bad about that.

Actually, it was perfect.

A trio was probably Ken’s favorite group composition. More than 3 was too much people, and the conversation tended to either be divided in groups of 2, or be a complete chaos. And only 2 people was a pain, because he always needed to be thinking new conversation topics. And if the conversation failed, he tended to blame himself, thinking that he was too boring or uninteresting. 3 people was perfect.

That way, they spent a very funny afternoon, walking in the city, visiting different kinds of stores, eating ice-cream, drinking coffee, eating cheesecake, eating chocolate cake, eating cupcakes, eating strawberry cake (those last ones only Mirena did, by the way), and so on.

And then, at 6 o’ clock, they started the way to Sean’s house. It was then when fun ended for Ken.

He lived in an average house, with an average shape and an average color. The neighborhood was also normal: not too fancy, not too ugly. It was a perfect place for a normal person to live.

It’s not like Ken was claiming to be special like if that were a good thing. It was just a statistically verifiable fact: if you do a sociological experiment, only 1 on 100 people, or maybe even less, is going to have a similar profile with Ken. He was aware that being “different” wasn’t something good or something bad, it was just something.

However, he was very bad at dealing with “normal” people. The tastes weren’t the problem, actually any of his co-workers had any “weird” like and he still was able to get acquainted with them (of course, after a long year of sharing experiences). But that was because their personalities weren’t “normal” at all. And people with “normal” tastes tends to have a normal “personality”. That was what he was scared of.

Maybe it’s time to explain, what meant to have a “normal personality” to Ken. Well, this are some of the characteristics a “normal” people had in his opinion:

1. Expansive personality: they have tendencies to talk and laugh out loud, like wanting everyone to hear their conversations, sit occupying the most amount of space possible, walk moving the arms like if they were wild snakes, etc.

2. Too confident personality: they reflect themselves in others. That means that they treat you like they treat their friends and even themselves. That could sound good, but it wasn’t for Ken. When people was like this, they tended to do to him the same kind of jokes they make to their friends. And of course, since Ken had a very limited use of the word friend (number of people he considered friends so far: 0), he didn’t like that. He pretended for the other people to be more respectful and careful before getting acquainted (of course, if you’re a cute anime girl incarnated in real world, you have special benefits other people don’t have).

3. Repetitive personality: he was fine with joking, but when it was too repetitive, he got tired easily. And “normal” people tends to repeat the same joke over and over. He could stand some jokes of him being an otaku, but at the joke number 8523th of “take a shower” he didn’t find it funny anymore.

4. Mirror-like personality: “normal” people tends to think you like the same things they like, so instead of asking “do you like football?” they ask “which football team do you like?”, and Ken found that very annoying. Specially because some of them even sounded “mad” or “disappointed” when he responded that he didn’t watch football.

5. Uninterested personality: kind of related with point 4 and 2. They don’t care about annoying other people because, since they are not annoyed by almost nothing, they think nobody should be annoyed by the things they do. Things like being late, listening to music too loud, etc.

We could continue, but I think those five are the basic elements of what Ken considerers a “normal” personality. If one person had just one of this points in his or her personality, it was very probable that Ken was not going to have a good time with them.

Eli rang the bell, but nobody came. She had to rang some more times until he finally answered.

—So you must be Arthur's friends! —he said, extending the arms as far as he could—. Yeah, I could smell you guys from the inside —and then he laughed, as loud as he could.