There wasn’t much time left to continue their talk, so the boys split up with the understanding that they would discuss things in more depth after school.

The first half of the day passed by in an uneventful blur. 

Arland was still gone, and Thomas was sitting too far away for he and Lee to do more than exchange glances. 

There was nothing to distract Lee from the typical mundanity of boarding school life until lunch time finally arrived. 

Thomas joined Lee at his lonely table in the far off corner of the cafeteria, but the first thing the President did upon sitting down was open up a textbook. He was getting in some last minute cramming before the quiz they had coming up in fifth period.

Lee munched on a leftover bag of chips and watched his classmate study. With a quizzical frown he commented, “I don’t understand how you can focus on schoolwork after everything that happened this morning.”

Thomas replied without looking up from his book, “I’m not about to let my grades drop just because you’ve dragged me into some kind of supernatural gamified phenomenon.”

“I didn't know you’d get pulled into whatever this is with me,” Lee insisted, before looking away guiltily. “Even if a part of me is glad I’m not alone anymore,” he admitted softly, hunching over in his seat. “Sorry, I know that’s selfish.” 

Thomas shot a glance toward him, only to be greeted by Lee's unconscious ‘kicked puppy’ expression. He let out an audible sigh and scooted closer so that their legs were touching.

Lee reluctantly raised his head to look at his classmate.

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way," Thomas said gruffly, fixing Lee with a steadfast stare. "I'm sure I'd also be relieved to have another person to rely on if I were in your place. Since I’m here, I’ll help you as much as I can.”

Lee perked up at the President's blunt but effective reassurance, glad that Thomas didn’t appear to resent him for being cursed by proxy.

******

After school they met up in Lee's room, their de facto base of operations.

The two boys sat on the carpeted floor in their lounge wear as Thomas opened his laptop on the small table he brought with him. 

“So, to start with,” the President began by gesturing toward the screen. “The ‘PARAMETERS’ application isn’t just on my phone, it’s here too.” There was a heart-shaped shortcut identical to the one on Lee’s desktop. “After checking it out I've confirmed it has all the same information as what you showed me earlier. Even the pictures.”

“That’s so strange,” Lee mumbled, mildly disturbed. “So once you… joined me, the curse spread to all your devices like a virus?”

Thomas shook his head. “That was my first assumption, but no. When I was in the teacher’s office I noticed the same icon on one of the computers there too. I decided to investigate further, so right after classes ended I went to the library to look through those computers. They all had the application installed.”

Lee was dumbfounded. The curse had infected the whole academy?

Thomas opened up a blank document on his laptop and started to speedily type a summary of what they knew about the curse as he spoke. 

“My working theory is that this isn’t a new development; it wasn't caused by the change of having me with you," he detailed. "I think the ‘game’ has been on all these devices since the moment you first downloaded it, but we’ve only just recently noticed this because I can see it too.”

Well, now that he thought about it, Lee hadn't looked at another computer besides his own in the past few days, so he wouldn't have seen anything different. That made Thomas' suggestion plausible.

“Have you checked your phone, Lee? Assuming I’m right, it should have the application too,” Thomas proposed.

“Oh, uh, I don’t own a cellphone,” Lee admitted sheepishly.

The President stared at him like he’d just said the sky was green.

Feeling judged, Lee hurriedly explained, “I used to have one, but when I accidentally broke it my parents said they wouldn't give me a new one until I learned to be more responsible.” 

“Ah.” Thomas gave an understanding nod. 

Since that seemed to be enough, Lee chose not to mention that it had been eight years since then.

Moving on, Thomas stated, “We should plan our next moves as best we can with the information we have so far. The theory for now is that you have to find and …romance everyone listed in the game’s ‘Routes’ menu to break the curse, right?”

“Well, that’s more of a worst case scenario,” Lee replied, still holding onto the hope he wouldn’t be forced to participate in a series of dating tropes with a bunch of strangers. 

He’d been lucky to have Thomas, someone he was at least reasonably familiar with, be the first person put in his path.

Thomas nodded once again. “I see. What other factors might affect our success?”

Lee tilted his head thoughtfully as his mind drifted back to the most recent dating-related game he’d played, Princess Aliana’s ‘Your Royal Romance.’

“It usually depends on what the game considers the ‘True Ending,’ he expressed. “For instance, if the game has a main title character then once you get the best ending with them the game is technically over and the other love interests are considered bonus content. For all we know, there might only be one person I need to romance and I just haven’t met them yet.”

When Lee finished, the sound of Thomas’ speedy typing seemed to become louder and harsher for a few seconds before abruptly stopping.

“That’s a good place to segue into the next point I wanted to bring up,” Thomas declared. 

The President temporarily minimized his document page and opened the ‘PARAMETERS’ window, clicking on the ‘Routes’ menu. He ignored his own profile and went straight to the only other one available.

“We should focus on Arland from here,” Thomas advised.

Lee stiffened; just the thought of engaging with Arland in any sort of romantic context immediately made his chest tighten with dread.