"Jace, did you hear? About the underground identity dealer?"
I pointedly ignore her. I spend a lot of time with Rhies and I've learned to tune her out over the years.
"I got the noodles with the fried tofu, but I'm starting to think I should have gotten the chicken cutlet curry." I pause to slurp up my noodles. "Like, don't get me wrong, it's good, I'm just feeling kinda hungry and maybe the curry would have been a more filling meal."
"Jace."
"The noodles are good, though, you know how I like fried tofu. Very umami, lightly sweet. Not too fishy. Also, the fishcakes are shaped like bunnies."
Rhies smacks me with her tablet. "Are you stupid? Listen to me!"
"Okay, okay. Okay." I protect myself from the deluge of smacks. "Alright. We've been through this before. Every time you-"
"Not every time!"
"Every time you hear some weird rumor, it goes to your head. You get obsessed with it, and neither of us gets any rest until you get tired of it."
"That's not true." Rhies pouts. She's a good looking girl. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, delicate facial features that wouldn't look out of place on an actress. But she has a terrible personality.
"What about the ghost in the girls' bathroom? You forced me to go in there alone. I got detention."
"That was one time!"
She's stubborn. And loud. She's not very feminine and doesn't have any female friends. Or friends period.
"And the crosswalk slasher? You left me standing in the rain for several hours."
"Nothing wrong with getting a little wet."
"Four days in a row."
None of those things are a big problem though. On any other person, that sort of traits would be fine. A little annoying at worse. But she's not very smart either. And she's naive. She has neither book smarts nor street smarts.
"The zombie man?"
"That one was true!"
"It was just an old man who liked to go for nightly walks and had a bad burn on his face. You could have been sued for harassment."
Because she's pretty and her parents are well off, guys always hit on her and girls pretend to be her friend. Teachers suck up to her and bump her grades. A lot of people resent her. I have to be the one who steps in someone is taking advantage of her, so nobody likes me either.
"The black eyed kids, Bloody Mary, you even tried to charge your phone in the microwave."
I might sound harsh, and I am. She's the worst. But I love her. I could say no to her dumb schemes, but I usually don't.
"Jace." She whines my name. "This time I know it's true. I have proof."
"Of what."
She takes her phone out and turns it on. "Look."
"You changed your lock screen."
She huffs and unlocks it, then points at an app in the home screen. I can feel my eyes glazing over.
"See. The Mask app."
I tilted my head aside to look at her. "It's a phone app. There's billions like it. Just because it comes with a spooky story doesn't mean anything."
"No, but you see, I didn't get it from the app store!"
"You're gonna get a virus."
She huffs and smacks my arm. "Do you want to know how I got it?"
"Sure."
"I went to the electronic alley last night."
I give her a concerned look. "Alone?"
"Shh. Let me talk."
"Fine, whatever.
"It was almost 3 am."
"You snuck out."
"Shut up. It was almost 3 am." She clears her throat. "You must have been sleeping by then, but last night it rained. I walked downtown, of course. There were barely any cars on the road, but when they drove past, the reflections on the sidewalk looked like glass. It was kind of ethereal, you know.
Everything looks different during the night. I got to the alley and almost everything was closed. There were a few places still live. The card shop had a midnight prerelease going. Some of the food stands were sticking around for a couple more hours. It's a very different environment compared to midday after school. Going from bustling crowds and loud vendors to almost dead quiet and empty streets. All I heard was the rain, sizzling from the food stalls, and my own footsteps. The deeper I went into the alley, the less familiar everything got."
She pauses to make sure I'm still listening. I raise my brows.
"You know how in the back of the alley you have all those computer stores? The alley is front-loaded with nerd stuff, then fades into more and more specialty stores. Some of those look like relics. Others look like they've closed down a long time ago, but there's no dust on the door handles. The deeper you go in, the more it feels like a different world entirely. When you reach the end, there's another alley. You wouldn't know it's there if you weren't looking for it.
You have to go in. It starts off narrow but roomy enough to walk comfortably, then it tapers, closer and closer together. By the time you get to the end, your shoulders are touching the wall. There's no doors or windows, and the walls are exposed brick. Once you manage to touch the back wall, you need to wait for 3 am. Take out your phone, and knock three times on the darkest brick on the wall. You will get a Bluetooth notification and you'll be able to download the app installer."
She goes quiet, staring at me.
"That it?" I ask.
"Yeah.
I touch my chin. "Okay, that's a pretty cool story. You should write."
"Oh, shucks. But it's real, though."
"I'm not doubting you." I stick my finger in the air, looking straight at her. "First off, I think the atmosphere speaks for itself. It was 3 am, and it was raining to boot. So, of course, everything looks creepier.
The electronic alley started off as a street that specialized in computer hobbyism in the 80s. Because computer stuff and nerd stuff are closely related, it's no surprise that things like comic and card shops moved in, but closer to the entrance to attract foot traffic. With the nerd boom, and everything just sort of becoming more accessible overall, that was only exacerbated. So now you have things like food shops, game stores, merchandise stores in the front, general technology stores in the middle, and really ancient parts stores in the back.
The whole thing has obviously been set up by someone to seem mysterious. Since few people actually venture all the way to the back of the alley, that secondary alley is unknown but still easily accessible. If there was already a hole in the wall furthest back, that would make things even easier to set up, but removing part of the wall and patching it up with a fake brick layout wouldn't be terribly difficult either for someone with the right skills. And it's 3 am in a dark alleyway, so even if it looks off, no one will be able to tell.
All they would have to do is jury rig a gadget to turn on at 3 am, some sort of pressure trigger, and there you have it. Pretty smart, and pretty spooky."
Rhies is staring at me blankly. "So it's not ghosts."
"It's better than ghosts, Rhies." I can't help but smile. "It seems like an ARG."
"Like they do for movies?"
"Yeah, but there's loads of ARGs not made to advertise things." I hold my hand out. "Give me your phone, I wanna check out this app."
She pauses before handing it over. I open the app. It only displays an animation of a blue sky with swirling clouds.
"Is this it?"
"Yeah."
"No notifications or anything?"
Rhies shakes her head. I think the lack of ghosts has waned her interest in this.
"I guess they're still gathering participants." I take out my phone. "Here, I'll transfer the installer to my phone, because there's no way I'm getting out of the house after midnight."
Just as the transfer completes, the bell rings. Rhies and I have different afternoon classes, so we drag our feet, chatting about other things. We got so caught up in this app nonsense we didn't actually talk about anything else.
I don't see her after school. She has sports and I have chronic squishy nerd syndrome. I take the bus home.
My back hits the bed and I bounce. Now that I'm back at my apartment, everything seems a lot grayer. I sit up, inspecting my domain.
Since my parents moved overseas, I've been living on my own. I got a flat near my high school, and this is my second year staying here. It's small but it's not so bad. The landlady tells me there used to be more students from my high school living here. When they built the dorms, parents would rather have their kids stay on campus. Now it's all college students and young workers.
Bored out of my mind, I end up fucking around on my phone. I check my downloads on a whim and remember the installer. Maybe this will brick my phone, but I'm in need of an upgrade anyway. I watch the little arrow bob up and down. When it finishes, I sit up, and something drips out of my nose. I curse and throw my phone aside.
Ever since I was a kid, I've had chronic nosebleeds. There's nothing wrong with me, I just have thin capillaries. I stare at myself in the mirror while pressing a rag to my nose. I'm very plain looking. Like white rice topped with shredded seaweed. My hair is dark and sticks up. I'm not unattractive but also not particularly noteworthy. Also, my personality is terrible.
The nosebleed eventually stops as usual. I walk out of the bathroom. Usually, I would forget what I had been doing before and wander off to do something else, but the glow of my phone piques my interest, almost beckoning to me. I assume the notification is a text from Rhies, or someone at the card shop, but when I bring my phone closer to my face, it's from that dumb app.
Next, to an icon of a theater mask, there's a message. "Do you want to be someone else?"
I open the notification and it gives me a simple, default yes or no screen. I'm guessing whoever made this program doesn't have all that much experience coding.
I know this is just a game, but I end up wondering anyway. It's not exactly a cutting question. I'm not unhappy. But I'm not really happy either.
Would my life be better if I was someone like Rhies? Attractive and naive enough to not realize all the crappy things happening around me?
Probably not. She's not happy either.
Then someone with an average life? With an average family and going to an average school with average hobbies?
That would make me averagely happy, which might be a step up. But if I was just me as I am, transplanted to that scenario but with my current state of self, then I'd be miserable. And if I changed into a completely different person, wouldn't I, as I am right now, just die? What's the difference between completely changing and just ceasing to be?
Neither of those sounds that appealing, but what about something like being a superhero or a manga character?
The abilities might be cool, but aren't main characters usually tortured? Unless you're talking about Goku, who's even happy when he dies because he gets to train. But most heroes have deep flaws and a lot of problems. That's why they're exciting to read and watch. So it would just be all the more dramatic parts of life, except now people's lives are in your hands as well.
A sports star? I don't even like sports.
Celebrities? I don't like being the center of attention either.
A pro gamer or an artist... Well, I'd still be the center of attention but my job security would be way low.
There's no one I want to be.
Still, I press yes because this is a game and I assume that's how you move on to the next stage. Nothing else happens so I decide to play video games until bedtime.
When I wake up, there's another message, and it fills me with confusion.
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