Part 41: Locked Out

On the ninth floor of Candiere’s Cafe, the banging on the 16th door got louder before I heard my name being called out from behind.

“Ararima! It’s me, Imagi!”

Wait… Why was Imagi here? I decided to respond back with a bit of resentment towards her.

“Why should I help you after what you did to me and Cherry?”

Suddenly, Peppie patted my back to usher us back downstairs so we could tell Princess Candiere. It was then that I heard Imagi say something as if her soul was leaping out of her body.

“Please, open up! I didn’t do anything to either of you! I don’t even know who Cherry is! I haven’t even seen you since the day you asked me to get the pictures!”

The day…

I asked her…

Oh no.

I still wasn’t entirely sure but if what Imagi said was true, then the person I had talked about the pictures in the cafeteria wasn’t the Imagi I knew.

To confirm that this was the real her, I asked her a question only she would know.

“What is your favorite color?!”

Then I heard Imagi’s voice trembling as if she saw something more frightening than anything she could have ever thought up of.

“Purple…”

I immediately reached for the door but Peppie teleported me right back to the first floor of the cafe before anything else could be done. Before I knew it, I had felt disheartened by what had just happened.

“Peppie, why did you do that?!” I shouted.

Then I saw why she had done it.

Imagi had been teleported to the center of the cafe. It was a spectacle that made the customers and staff uncomfortable.

“What is this madness?” asked Princess Candiere before catching sight of the horrifying image before her eyes.

There was my friend. Laying on the ground with the mysterious pink frosting mentioned from William’s story wiped all over her body. It seemed to be blowing her up like a balloon while her mouth was wide open with blood gouged from her empty eyes. She was clearly paralyzed by whatever happened behind that door. Wata began telling everyone except for Princess Candiere, Peppie, and I to back away from the gory scene as he directed some concern about the situation to us.

“Who is this and how did this happen?”

Once Peppie explained to him about what happened, Wata froze in shock. He looked up at the time on the cafe’s official analog clock.

6:08 PM.

He stared around and directed me to change my clothes and meet him outside to talk for a bit.

As soon as I came back down the stairs with my Dream Academy uniform on, the sky was getting dark and the streets of Tartropolatté were now empty as most of the Bibbly Bubbles seemed to be leaving. I didn’t see Taylor anywhere, so that made things feel a bit more depressing. The only other disturbing part was that that green Bibbly Bubble that was there at Jelly Jungle was now following me. I gave up trying to tell it to go somewhere else at that point.

Anyway, I ended up standing with Wata about a few feet apart from the cafe itself as he took a deep breather.

“Ararima, we can talk about some serious stuff now. You know how Peppie mentioned that girl named Imagi?”

“Yeah?”

“If you heard about my story, I got teleported here the moment I started jotting down names from The Books Of Fate. Each person has their life story written in them based on a series of connected events. I saw her name in that book. I tried to write it down late at night, but it was too late. The Traveller was there at my doorstep.”

So that explains the “I…” phrase. If only I had known.

“How did he send you to the Candy Room?” I asked him.

“According to what William said, anytime you can tell The Traveller is there, you go into a state of sleep paralysis. Then you hear those tunes that he hums. He does it to further cause his victims to panic because at that point they are dead. When I said not to show the watches in the day, I meant that. You see, he is immune to practically anything. Even magic. As long as he doesn’t know about it, he won’t tamper with it.”

“What really happens if you try to use it against him though?”

“He can turn it against you. Matter of fact, even The Books Of Fate can’t be destroyed. Princess Candiere and I tried everything on that once. Set it to flames, froze it, tried ripping the pages out, scribbling over it, acids, and especially different spells. None of them worked.”

“So there is no way to avoid their outcomes? Are you saying that it’s going to be impossible to save the people that have already ended up here?”

“I’m afraid so.”

I was starting to panic.

Did I have a book that would foretell when I died? I didn’t want to think of it. My situation was being downplayed by a malevolent monster who was controlling everyone he came into contact with. The game was already bad enough. Really, without the shutdown of the Cafe Catalog, I wouldn’t have had to overthink my situation now. How long has it been since students have died in Dream Academy? About a week ago?

This curse was going way over the yearly limit. Was The Traveller just switching up his killing spree? Was there something I wasn’t told? My parents wouldn’t know where I was. By that time I was sure to be another statistic. Checked off on the additional list of students that died because of a single game.

“I’m going to tell the oth—“

I looked back at the cafe only to notice how dark it was all of the sudden.

“That’s weird. I thought Princess Candiere said she was going to keep the staff alert about what we were going to do overnight. Did something happen?”

Wata shrugged his shoulders as we decided to walk to the cafe.

As the heart-shaped moon shone bright, we cautiously entered inside.

“Hello?! Princess Candiere?!” I yelled.

I saw a small round floating figure pop out from behind the closed curtains.

It was Peppie telling us to come over.