The sun didn’t do anything to the American flag on the moon; I went there and bleached it myself.

"I know it’s going to be an eight! Can't I just say I have your number?"

Henry screamed as he ran behind Dark! Fighter! Kimei! Vice principal Nameru rapidly walked next to him, out of breath but still determined to catch the evil doer.

"You can’t join the club unless you complete the rite!" The knock-off villain spoke out of character.

What followed was a montage of Henry chasing Nameru-sensei chasing Kimei. They went through many twisting hallways, classes, storage rooms, shrines, a forest, an abandoned temple, a mine shaft, the surface of the moon, and other similar rooms you could find in a school. At one point they kept entering and leaving the same rooms until they ended up inverting the order at which they chased each other; at another point a fourth person who has asked to remain anonymous joined them for a period of time, before tripping over a pothole and being swallowed whole by the school's quicksand.

The whole time, a zany theme played from mysterious sources, serenading the group with the high pitch sound of a sax.

“Gimei… please!” Henry forced his words out between grasps of breath, “This bit has gone on for too long! Can’t you see we’re on a new chapter?!”

He tried to jump, extending his arm to catch Dark! Fighter! Kimei! and stop the chase. But because of his fatigue, and overall weak physique, Henry only managed to throw himself forward and collide with the vice principal, who was losing breath a couple of steps next to him.

The student and the teacher were sent on a one-way trip to the ground, and as it normally happens with trips, Nameru-sensei lost some of his luggage in the process.

“I-I’m sorry teacher! Are you hurt?” He stood up and anxiously apologized to the vice principal, not noticing what he had caught in his hand.

“I’m ok… Uh?”

“Hey, you uh… got the paper…” Kimei shyly told him.

It took Henry a couple of seconds to understand. He was indeed holding the slip of pink paper Gimei made; that was easy to see. What was harder to accept was the fact that it was still taped to Nameru-sensei’s balding scalp. It helped to feel that the scalp was made of a rubbery material that only resembled human skin, but he was still very unnerved by the realistic sprouts of black hair attached to its side.

“My toupee!”

The top of his head now exposed, a long and lush mane of hair rolled down Nameru-sensei’s shoulders. One that models would be jealous of.

“The balding is fake?? But… why?”

“It’s beautiful, that’s why! Much better than this… bush that keeps growing on my head! Don’t you think the balding look fits me more?”

“Maybe… But why not just cut your hair?”

“The hair grows too much too fast... Shaving every other day would be a pain. Wait, I don’t need to justify myself! Give me back my toupee!”

Henry took off the paper and apologetically gave the teacher his lack of hair back.

“Careful with it!” He tore the toupee out of Henry’s hands and rapidly, but messily, put it back on his head. Some locks of hair escaped from underneath the rubber.

“I’m willing to turn a blind eye over this, but you must tell no one of this accident, understand?”

“Yessir.”

“You as well, Dark! Fighter— What?”

She was gone. Only a piece of her cosmetic armor was left on the ground. A piece of colored plastic that could have fit on a shoulder as well as on a knee. The vice principal picked it up.

“I will find you, Dark! Fighter! Kimei!” He said, staring out the window. “Even if it means testing every student in the school to find the one who matches this piece of body armor! I swear I’ll find you!”

“I’m going to leave now…” Henry decided to leave the vice principal alone and legged it.

He kept walking until he was sure the vice couldn’t find his way back to him. And he made sure of that by getting lost himself between the many hallways.

“I think I’m starting to understand this school more. Nothing makes any sense, because the people who run it also don’t make any sense! Trying to find a sense would be useless, so I’m just going to read the next hint.”

He opened the pink sheet, ignored the eight drawn on it and read out the rest. This time, however, the hint wasn’t some twisted riddle, but a map of the school. It looked like a Rorschach test. He was unsure whether he was looking at it upside down or not. The only reason he could tell he was looking at a map was thanks to a sentence, written above the drawing, which said “Map of the school. X marks the spot!”.

Henry could not see any X on the map. Although he could faintly recognize the outline of two dragons making out.

He cleared his mind and stared intensely at the blot. After some seconds, he noticed that the ink at the very bottom of the so-called map had two thicker lines intersecting each other.

"That must be it!" Henry convinced himself to say.

The (possible) X mark was not on the main body of the drawing, but on its edge. Being unable to read the map in a way that a human brain could decipher, Henry had to assume that the external position of the cross meant he had to go to the schoolyard.

He reached the main entrance (and we’ll skip how he did it because this bit is getting repetitive) and approached the sand-colored dirt. He took out the paper from his pocket to check the exact location of the mark, but noted that something changed, or better yet, was changing in front of his eyes. As the piece of paper was exposed to the light of the sun, new text began to appear. Gaining opacity with every second that passed, words covered the map to reveal new hints. Henry was flabbergasted (excuse my French).

“The sun blesses you with its energy and reveals to you the path! To find the buried treasure you need to start from the gates. From there, walk 20 steps forwards, then turn 180° and walk 6/3 steps backwards, then count the windows on your left and walk sideways to the other right until you reach 5½, then crawl towards the edge of the school for a distance that amounts to the square root of the Moai statue’s volume, then look at the top of the school’s bell and solve the riddle printed backwards on it, then go back and walk a number of steps that amounts to the first number found on the first page of this chapter, then close your eyes, spin around for a minute, and go where your heart takes you, then go back to the school’s gates, then enter the school and go to our classroom, then take a piece of chalk and throw it out the window, then go to where it lands in the schoolyard and bury it in that spot, then walk in a circle around it for about a minute, then walk on your toes for a kilometer around the school, then leave and go home, than call a taxi to bring you to the school’s gates, then walk in the shape of a chess knight’s pattern, then walk seven half steps towards the school, no wait that’s wrong, walk twenty five one thirds of a step south-east, wait that’s still wrong, you know what go back to the school gates and let’s restart from the beginning, then moonwalk for two million micrometers, then jump on a leg forwards until you fall, then look at the shape your blood has made in the dirt and follow the longest edge, then slide to the left, then walk two steps back and one step right.

There, you will find the X.”

Henry read the whole message, but his brain stopped taking information after the second line. He read the rest with his mind’s eye, but it was as if someone was trying to talk to him while a broken radio screeched in his ears. He looked away from the paper to try and turn what little brain he had left back on. A quick reboot later, the cogs in his head began to turn again. But he couldn’t look at the paper again, as he feared it would fry his circuits a second time. He looked at the schoolyard instead, and it was then when he noticed that a couple of meters to his right, a large X had been marked in the dirt.

He ripped the paper in half and threw it away.

“This wasn’t here before…” He walked towards it. “Well, if she was able to create this whole rite in less than an hour, I wouldn’t be surprised if she carved the X while I was inside.” He wondered if Gimei had access to faster-than-light travel or/and time travel, as that would make many things easier to understand.

Henry looked at the hole-to-be next to his feet.

“…How am I going to dig the treasure out?”

As if someone was following and listening to him thinking out loud, a trowel fell from the heavens and almost hit him in the head.

“What the—?!”

He looked up, and noticed a window closing, a black cape getting stuck in it, and a distant thud. He sighed, picked up the trowel, and got to digging.

The sun was harsh on his blonde hair, but harsher on his black uniform. Luckily, the treasure wasn’t too deep. It was a damp shoebox with the number eight painted on the lid. He threw the lid away and read the pink paper lying inside.

“The adventure itself is the treasure!”

Henry disagreed, but he had learnt not to interrupt the paper.

“The next number is also written on a piece of paper. But! That piece of paper doesn’t exist yet! It needs to be produced. How could it be possible to produce a piece of paper with a number and a hint out of nowhere? Answer that question and you’ll have the... answer. That is indeed how questions work. Anyhow, good luck!”

Henry pocketed the paper and immediately began to look for the magic club. He didn’t know whether such a club, or magic, existed, but he had learnt not to question it. This was a day full of learning for him.

Of course, actually finding the club was the real challenge. He remembered seeing, in his previous track, a dark blue crystal door, but he couldn't remember the way to it. And even if he did, it could have also been the door to the dark blue crystals club.

"I think my best shot is asking someone."

He went back inside the school and waited at the spot that was the most likely to have people pass by. And in fact, not even five minutes of waiting later, a girl came out of the bathroom.

"Hey, sorry to... startle you." Henry said after noticing the way she was looking at him, "I was looking for a club that could produce a piece of paper."

The girl's look didn't improve. If anything, it got worse. She didn't know how to answer.

"Some sort of... Magic club, for example?" He tried to make himself clearer.

"...I don't think there is a magic club," the girl finally felt pressured to answer him, "the closest thing I can think of is the occult club. But I don't know if they can produce paper."

"There is an occult club? Really? How do I get to it?"

"You... It's easier if I make you a drawing."

They went to a nearby classroom, where the girl could find paper and pen. She then began to draw what looked like one of those maze-puzzles you see on those paper things family restaurants sometimes put on the tables to entertain children. I don’t know what they’re called. She drew a red line to represent the path he had to take. It started on their location and continued down the corridors in unruly shapes, with twists and turns and going back on itself multiple times. At one point she took out a second piece of paper, which represented the floor above them. The line intersected the two sheets multiple times, and eventually reached the black corner that signaled the occult club.

"H-how long will it take me to reach the club?" Henry asked, terrified.

"A couple of minutes?"

"Oh. I thought it would take longer."

"It just looks bad, but it's easy once you get used to it."

"I sure hope so... Thank you."

"Next time you need help, refrain from waiting outside the women's bathroom." She felt compelled to tell him before he left.

Henry was surprised when he reached the sign that read Occult club. Firstly, because it actually did take him a couple of minutes to reach it. Not even he was sure of how he managed to cover that much distance in such a short amount of time. Secondly, because:

"Finally! A normal club!"

Henry knocked on the door. The ghastly scream of an unknown creature answered.

"Sorry about that!" The door rapidly slid open to reveal a boy in a black cloak. "We're trying to fix the door."

"W-what was the scream?"

"Rogue curse, apparently the door can feel pain now.”

“Your voice is very similar to the scream I just heard…”

“That’s a coincidence! Who are you!?" The boy looked suspiciously at Henry.

"M-my name is Henry Tailer, I'm a new student. I’m on… an errand for my classmate."

“Are you being bullied?"

"I don’t think I’m being bullied. It's more like a game really. She told me you could produce a paper that I need?"

"Henry! I've been waiting for you!" Another cloaked student called him, this time a girl.

"You know him?"

"No, but he's a classmate of Gimei." The girl conspicuously winked at the boy.

"I don't know any Gimei... Actually, that doesn't sound—"

"Come in, Henry!" The girl put a hand on the boy's mouth.

Unfortunately for him, Henry was starting to get used to students acting weird, so he didn't question what had just happened and simply followed the girl inside. The club room was extremely dark, the windows were painted black and ultraviolet lamps were the only source of light. Everyone's teeth glowed.

"My name is Master." The girl greeted him.

"I doubt that." Henry answered.

"Yeah, but call me that regardless."

"Can I ask why?"

"All my minions call me Master, so it's what I'm used to the most."

"It feels a bit demeaning to call you master."

"You either call me Master on your own free will or call me Master because you're my minion, your choice."

"Just so we're clear, is the word minion being used as a sort of S&M thing or more as an occult thing?"

"Absolutely an occult thing."

"Free will it is then."

The two approached a dark, purple curtain (it could have been any color really; it still would have looked dark and purple in this light). The girl that called herself Master slowly pulled it open to reveal a cauldron bubbling with a phosphorescent green goo.

"Woah. What is this stuff?"

"Glow in the dark paint."

(Disclaimer: I do not advise buying a couple hundred glow-in-the-dark sticks to break open inside a pot and heat up their contents. I feel like that’s a bad idea.)

Henry got closer to the pot and looked at the visible fumes.

"Right. That makes sense."

(Disclaimer: No it doesn't)

"I've heard of the rite from Gimei. I'm happy to see she's found someone as unstable as her."

"I don't know if I'm already at the point where I would call myself unstable..."

"I'm sure you'll get to it!"

"Thanks ...I think?"

"As for why you're here. I do know how to make the paper that you want, but I couldn't just give it to you, right? That would be too easy."

"I don't mind it being too easy."

"I do. Don't worry, I'm just asking for a small favor for the club."

"I fear what a favor for the occult club might be."

"Be not afraid, little lamb! I just need help brainstorming some curses."

"Brainstorming curses?" Henry repeated what the girl had said, wasting a precious line of dialogue.

"We are making a series of books on curses, many of which are original. Right now, we're on the Mild yet Excruciating section, but we've run out of ideas a bit. If you come up with one or two good curses, I will give you the paper!"

"That's... I guess I could try?"

"Good! This is what we have right now."

Master picked up a half-burnt scroll and unrolled it. She cleared her throat, then began reading it with a grandiose and severe tone.

"Your hair shall always grow subcutaneously."

"Remind me a second what the meaning of that word is?"

"Basically, the hair grows but it doesn't come out, forming bubbles under your skin." She kept the grandiose and severe tone.

"That's mild?!"

"You should read the strong ones! Anyway, the next one is: An immortal mosquito shall forever buzz in your ears and sting you every two hours."

"Oh, this one is actual torture."

“Your saliva shall forever taste like someone else's saliva."

"Hmm... I feel like some people might actually enjoy this one."

"Tinnitus."

"...Fair enough."

"You shall always have to sneeze, but never actually sneeze."

"Wow, these are good curses."

"Of course they are." She smiled self-sufficiently, hinting in a not-so-subtle way at who the author of these curses might be. "Think you can come up with something?"

"Hmm, how about... Whenever you order an anime figure, the shipping will be delayed by a month, every month?"

"I fear that might be too specific."

"Your favorite manga series will get axed?"

"Less specific, but still not what I’m looking for."

“You will be shrunk and trapped inside a—”

"No."

"I don't know! I'm not good at this. Can't you just give me the paper? I'm really not in the mood for this right now.”

“This is part of your rite, you know? Are you not up to the task?” She teased him.

“Not up to the task?! You have no idea what I had to go through! I started by crawling out of a hole in the ground and then I had to wander around this Escher maze of a school for half an hour just to find that the damn paper was out in the schoolyard, there was a super messy class with desks hanging from the ceiling, then Gimei appeared as some sort of villain from a copyrighted series and messed with one of the vice principals because I had to take the paper from his bald head, then there was a really contorted treasure map that no sane human could follow without a huge amount of luck, and… and… I feel like my sanity is being attacked at every step!” Henry was about to cry.

"That's... perfect!" Master smiled in the face of Henry’s tears.

"…What?"

"The rite you’re going through could work wonders as a curse! A bit convoluted, sure, but it fits the Mild yet Excruciating section perfectly! I just need to trim it down a bit."

"..Thanks, I'm good at what I do. Can I get the paper now?"

"Of course! I just need to produce it."

"How are you going to produce the paper?"

"Magic, of course."

Master put on a long glove and sank her hand in the pot of glow in the dark dye.

(Disclaimer: Also don’t put your hand in it.)

She stirred her arm around and fished out a piece of paper.

"Here you go."

She extended it to Henry as the paint dropped on the floor. The paper was drenched in dye. It rapidly destroyed itself and melted on the ground with a loud splat.
The two stared at the puddle.

"Please... this hunt is already too hard as it is."

"D-don't worry! I think I can remember what it said! It was... something about sliding blocks… and a club… Right! The non-euclidian club!"

“The non-what? Whatever, just tell me how to reach it…” There was desperation in his words.

“It’s the club next-door.”

“Really? Are you sure?” There was religious ecstasy in his words.

“I’ve been here for two years now, I would know.”

“Oh, thank the lolies for that!”

“thank the what”

"Right, I almost forgot! I’m sure I don’t even need to ask, but I might as well. Was there also a number in the paper?"

"You're right, there was! It was the number eight."

"Of course. Thanks."

POSTFACE

- GULLIBILITY TEST
Rorschakh test: I had to look up how to spell it. They are ambiguous drawings used in some psychological tests to read your brain. They are supposed to have different interpretations, but they all look like me getting bullied in middle school.

Photochromic ink: I found one(1) video of a shirt that had the text made with photochromic ink, and it became visible under the sunlight. Based on that sole evidence I’m going to assume that what Gimei did with the text on the map is also possible.

S&M: If you don't know what it means, you're too young to learn.

Manga getting axed: It's when someone from the production team of the serialization of a manga goes to the author and assaults them with an ax, impeding the continuation of said series.