“That is wild, dude!”

The lad bothering me right now as I wrote down a month worth of lecture was Arun, a classmate of mine for this particular class. Were we friends? Allegedly. The tanned-skinned ace of the football team was just friends with everyone. Unfortunately for me, some people got annoyed by his constant yapping in class. That was the reason he stuck around me—I just never shut him off for being annoying.

“I saw the clip on the news, man. I was like, ‘isn’t that my best friend, Kagura Sota?’ You literally single-handedly took care of a terrorist group.”

“Am I your best friend, now?”

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. “Non, non, non. You are my brother.” Not that I minded it. Hanging out with Arun was mostly harmless. That was unless he started his usual thing. “So, help a bro a little. Let’s hang out tonight.”

Ah, there it is. “No, Arun, for the hundredth time, I’m not going with you to meet some random chicks.”

“Why not?” His voice basically pierced through the rowdy class. “Are you not interested in the ladies? I can bring cute guys with me.”

“Say that louder, the students next door didn’t hear that.”

“Come on, man, I told them already that the hero is also coming.”

“First of all, that sounds like a you problem. Second of all, I’m recovering—”

“You are being too loud.”

The voice cutting me came from a woman beside me. She stuck out with her all-black attire–a one piece dress that reached below her knee—that contrasted her ashen long straight-hair. There was a purple undertone under the reflection of the sunlight. The neutrality of her overall appearance emphasized the vivid violet eyes. Striking. A blue rose corsage decorated the chest area of her dress. It looked weirdly natural despite the inexistence of a natural blue rose.

The whole classroom heard the discourse and immediately went dead silent. Eyes were all on the girl.

“Kagura Sota.”

“Yes?” Her calling me straight to my full name alerted the whole room.

“Going around calling yourself a hero after what happened? Foolish.”

“No. Not at all. That’s all him.”

“You shut your mouth then,” she said, looking at Arun. She took out a business card from her pocket and put it on the desk in front of me. Without saying anything else, she walked away, out of the classroom.

I took the business card. “The Footnote” was the name written on it along with a Holo-code at the back. Scanned it with my phone, the code showed a detailed route to a place at Sector Six.

“Second-hand bookstore and book club. Sheesh, sounds boring.”

“Arun,” I looked at him, throwing a questioning look. “Aren’t you supposed to be an English literature student?”

He just laughed it off.

“Who was that, by the way?”

“You don’t know Lady Justice? Gentiana Hathaway. You know, the one who always beats you at the exams. Do you not even know what they call the two of you? Number one and two of Law major? Lady Justice and her future assistant.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” I glared at him. I didn’t usually pay attention to other people. Besides, Hathaway always ended up in different classes than me despite taking the same exact subjects, for some reason. The little mind of mine thought that maybe she was avoiding me so I decided not to even look for her. “So that’s Hathaway, huh?”

“Your type?”

“Why is it always about that with you?”

“What else is there? We’re twenty-one and this handsome friend of mine is awfully single and sad after his beloved senior—Sota, are you even listening?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t.” My concentration was broken by this feeling of being stared at. Looking around, I noticed someone standing in front of the opened door. I have never seen her before so maybe she was from another class. A glimpse of jealousy. That was what I could feel from her glare as she looked at the passing by Hathaway and then Arun. Trouble is coming.

“Dude, I think that girl is looking for you.”

“Who?” Arun turned his head to the direction I was pointing at. He tilted his head in confusion before tossing me a suspicious look. “There’s no one there, Sota.”

“No. Look carefully. That girl—the one with blond hair in braids.”

Arun patted my shoulder, looked into my eyes, and shook his head. “Do you want to take a break today? Looks like you’re still in a lot of pain.”

My shoulders dropped in disappointment. “No, thank you. I must’ve mistaken it for something else.”

Nothing much to do in between classes so we just sat around having lunch in the cafeteria. The place wasn’t that packed with students as there weren’t any other classes that day. Unfortunately, Arun and I needed to take some of the later classes so there we were.

“That was quite the heavy one!”

“Yeah… it was—” my mind was split between the conversation and the girl who was sitting right beside me, looking at Arun. She had her eyes on him for the past twenty minutes and, magically, Arun didn’t notice her. I’m starting to lose my mind.

“Arun, tell me—”

“Kagura Sota, is this seat available?”

Once again cutting off my sentence, Hathaway emerged from the darkness. I wondered why she suddenly showed up around me a lot. Arun and I shook our heads in unison awkwardly. Seeing that, Hathaway sat down on the empty seat on my left, leaving me sandwiched between an ice queen and an invisible girl. I glanced at other seats and found most of them empty. Why? Why did you sit here?

“Ha- Hathaway, right?” I said awkwardly.

“Gentiana Hathaway,” she nodded in affirmation. I caught a glimpse of a lunch box full of cute decorations. Seeing that, she immediately closed it and glared at me. I only threw back the glare.

“By the way, there are other—”

“Arunendra Laurent, do you know a Computer Science student, Ashley Jones?”

Can you let me talk? Miss Hathaway?

Hathaway looked at the other girl as she cut me mid-sentence. Can she see her? If I could split my eyes in both directions, I would stare at both Hathaway and the girl. Arun stopped eating his sandwich.

“Did something happen to her?”

“Nothing. She’s alright.”

“Your friend, Arun?”

“Yeah. She’s a childhood friend of mine. We went through elementary, junior high, and high school together—all twelve years in the same class and all. She’s alright, right?”

“You sound concerned.”

“She tends to stumble into trouble every now and then. She’s practically a sister to me, you know?”

“She’s looking for you at the central campus hub.”

“I see! You should have told me earlier.” Without even saying anything else, Arun got up and walked away. The girl who was sitting beside me vanished into thin air. It was a weird feeling but somehow my brain assumed that was Ashley Jones.

“That was Ashley Jones.”

“Don’t read my mind!”

“I didn’t.” Nonchalantly, Hathaway opened her lunch box. Once again, despite how she acted, the lunch she had was surprisingly cute. I couldn’t help but look at it. “I’m not giving you any.”

“I’m not expecting you to.” Feeling a little awkward, I got up and moved to the seat across from her. To be honest, maybe moving to another table was a better choice but at this point in the conversation, it was definitely rude to do so.

“What you saw was a Diegesis.”

“Pardon?”

“Extension of an entity’s soul.”

“You meant the girl that vanished just now? You saw her?”

“Correct. Consider this a warning, Kagura Sota. It’s only going to be more dangerous around Arunendra Laurent.”

“Is he okay? Does it have anything to do with the vanishing girl? No, was it Ashley Jones you just talked about?” I leaned to her and whispered : “is she dead? Is that a gho—hmph!”

She pushed a piece of bread into my mouth. Red bean, it was. “You talk too much.”

“Sho whiff whi–” I bit the bread off and took the other piece away. “Is he okay?”

“He will be.”

Rapidly finished her meal, Hathaway closed the lunch box in an orderly rhythm. She got up without answering any of my previous questions. The only thing I could do was stare at her as she walked away. After a few steps getting further, she stopped and turned back to me.

“Kagura Sota!”

“What is it this time?”

“Do not do anything rash.”

“That only made me want to follow him. What if something actually—”

She walked to me, rushing. One hand on my shoulder, she squeezed it hard. Her face was barely five inches in front of mine. “Listen to me. Do not do anything rash.” Half- scary and half-annoying, she forced me to nod in obligation. “Think of your own self for a change.” Like a storm, she then just walked away.

What was that?