A splash of midday light bounced off of the walls and shelves of the manga shop. Ruse, the only customer there, placed her selection of manga on the register counter. She was so excited to at last purchase the final book of her favorite shoujo series; a series she had been following along with since she was a teenager. Shoujo, or Japanese comics that targeted the demographic of girls and adolescent women, were her very favorites. She placed her hand flat on the cover of the plastic-wrapped manga and gently caressed the face of the pink-haired, sparkly-eyed protagonist girl.

“Damn, I just got those in this afternoon!”

The owner of the shop, a large, many-chinned twenty-something white boy with a name tag reading ‘Kevin’ waddled unceremoniously out of the door behind the register and looked curiously down at Ruse. The door behind him swung softly back and forth. Kevin pulled on a blue canvas strap that was stretched across his chest, causing the neck and head stock of a banjo to peek over his shoulder. “You’re gonna finish the series too fast and then have nothing more to look forward to. You know how people always get depressed when they finish their favorite books.”

“I know, I just can’t help it,” Ruse said, still eyeing the manga cover lovingly. “I’m just so excited to see if Yuki Niji and Sora-san get together!” She dramatically snatched up the book and held it close to her chest and sighed softly. “I just want my girls to be happy.”

Ruse Thursday, who was around the same age as Kevin, was a tiny black girl, lacking in curves or even a pinch of fat. Her shape and size could very fittingly be likened to the body of a pre-pubescent boy. Unlike the average boy, however, Ruse typically adorned herself in soft pastel colors, especially lavender purple. Today, for example, she was dressed in a lilac purple t-shirt, extra small with a deep boat neck, with matching lilac hair scrunchie, shoes, and nail polish, and black leggings. Everything she was wearing was very form-fitting, something she took pride in, since in her past, she had been forbidden to wear anything that showed off her body shape. She was feminine, petite, soft and cutesy—the very opposite, visually, of Kevin Humphric, yet the two had been best friends for years.

Kevin grabbed his scanner from its receiver and scanned the bar code on the back of the manga while it was still in Ruse’s hands. “Anything else for you today, Ruse? Or do we only get to hang out for a few seconds?” He glanced towards the red-tiled floor in faux-sadness, letting a thick greasy fringe of bronze-brown hair cover half of his equally greasy face.

But Ruse was already busy rummaging through the international candy section to the right of the register. She either didn’t notice Kevin’s body language or didn’t care. Quite possibly a combination of both. “These are new!” she commented on the candy display. “Do you think I’ll like the matcha Kit Kats or creme brulee flavor better?” she asked absentmindedly, her voice soft, but somewhat shrill. She had one one of each of the Japanese limited edition candies in each hand, and was examining their fancy foreign packaging. “Oh! Wait, I need to get a Ramune too.” She lightly fluttered her purple ballet flats over to the small refrigerator to her left, reached in, and grabbed herself one of the fruity Japanese sodas.

“Hmm, probably creme brulee, because it sounds sweeter. Better suited for a sweet girl like you,” Kevin answered, tipping the black fedora atop his head towards her.

Ruse faked a smile. She was definitely not interested in men, Kevin most of all. Even though she appreciated his kindness, and even though he had provided her with more structure and safety than anyone else in her life, his ‘play-flirting’, as he liked to call it, never grew on her. Honestly, she was kind of amazed he hadn’t yet asked her the ever-creepy question, ‘where’s my hug?’ A question to which she would not, and never had in the past even dignified with an answer or even the slightest engagement.

“Aww,” she said in a not-quite-genuine way. She shoved the matcha candy bar towards him and instructed, “you can put that one away then, I’ll take the creme brulee one.” She could have put the candy away herself in less than a second, but giving him a little task like that was a sort of payback for the unwanted straight male attention. At this point in their long friendship, he knew better than to pester her like that when they were alone, anyway. And he had never gotten away with pushing his luck before, so she had no idea why he was still trying. Straight men were so weird when it came to lesbians, they could never act right.

Kevin scanned the chocolate and the soda, seemingly unaware that he was being weird. “That’ll be 20.22, then. Did you want a bag?”

“Iiyo!” Sure! Ruse spoke a little bit of Japanese, courtesy of Kevin, who had provided her with free lessons over the last few years. She reached into her hand-sewn pink lacy flower-print bookbag to grab her debit card. When she looked back up, Kevin had already placed her two items in a plastic bag with a fuchsia pink logo printed on it. When her brain registered what the logo said, she exclaimed, “oh my god!”

She snatched up the bag with so much force her many hair twists bounced. Her large brown-black eyes had gone wide with excitement.

“Hm?”

“Lulu Sparklefest!” Ruse flipped the bag around so the fuchsia logo faced Kevin, and pointed at it. There on the bag was a cartoon of a woman in a frilly dress drawn inside of a circle with the words ‘SparkleCon’ around the outside. “I love her! I even have a few of her handmade dresses and stockings! Ugh, Kevin, you know this.”

Cosplaying was one of Ruse’s recent favorite ways to express herself…and spend loads of money. Upon settling in Japantown three years ago, she took it upon herself to learn how to tailor dresses, gloves and other frilly girly accessories. And she had gotten especially good at it, ultimately turning it into her main source of income. Sure, she probably had developed some sort of arthritis along the way, but to her, it was worth it! She and her clients always looked so sharp in the garb she so masterfully created.

Lolita style dresses were her absolute favorites to create and wear. Those were the ones with lots of bows and lace and layers with giant ruffled sleeves and big fluffy hoop skirts. They gave the wearer that popular aesthetic of the eternal beauty of childhood. Ruse couldn’t help but love them—they were just so adorable! And she wouldn’t have gotten to where she was without Lulu Sparklefest. Lulu was a seasoned lolita cosplay seamstress with an enormous online following, and Ruse was her self-appointed biggest fan. Everything she knew about the art of sewing, she learned from her dear Lulu Sparklefest.

“Huh,” Kevin replied in a rather unamused tone. Yeah, he knew Ruse loved Lulu...not that she had ever met the lady. I mean, he thought to himself, I’m right here and she’s known me for years! Where’s my love? How did she not see how little sense she was making? “Were you thinking of going to the convention?”

“Kimatteru!” Duh! “She’s only my favorite cosplay seamstress on the planet!” She wedged her debit card into the card reader slot and punched in her pin. “I have to get her fricking autograph,” she said with a determined smirk. “Maybe I’ll ask her to be my wife. Can you imagine? Our names even go together: Lulu and Ruse…”

Kevin rolled his eyes at her musing and leaned down with both elbows on the counter top. His banjo slid up his back with a hollow noise and the collar of his large black trench coat frilled up around his prickly neck folds. “Well, if you’re going it must be a pretty big deal. Mind if I go with? I know you have dibs on Lulu, but there’s bound to be a cute yandere or two out there looking for a senpai like me to get with.”

Not that he truly wanted anybody but Ruse...

“Of course, I need you there to protect me from creeps,” Ruse replied, automatically filtering through Kevin’s rambling for only the most important details. She did actively separate Kevin from other creeps, of course, because he had never physically acted on anything. Sure, it was a huge feat of mental gymnastics, but she did truly need him around, even if he was only serving as a meat shield. She was a fragile little thing, after all. “When’s the con?”

Kevin glanced at the bag while ripping the receipt from the printer for her. “Looks like it’s tomorrow and then the two days after that. I’m down for tomorrow if you are.”

“Frick yeah!” Ruse stuffed the receipt into the bag with her fingertips. “I’ll meet you here in the morning and we can head out together?” She liked to be early to these sorts of events, so she could get first claim on all the goodies.

“Deal.”

* * * * *

Henry sat himself down at his kitchen table and turned on the early morning news. He had with him his breakfast: a single Red Delicious apple, and a can of the legally strongest energy drink he could find. The breakfast of champions. He had also just taken his phone off of its charger, and between news segments, he read the morning’s most recent texts from his squadron.

Yes, this fine young physically fit black fellow Henry Kepler was an officer of the law. And his day of defending the citizens in the small South Dakota town of Brookings, in which he lived, was about to begin.

Then, suddenly, there was a flash of pink on the screen, and this immediately grabbed his undivided attention.

Pink was her favorite color...

Maybe that strange dream last night meant something after all? Perhaps it was a sign? He had to keep watching, just to make sure he wasn’t jumping to conclusions.

The local lady news reporter was visiting Japantown, Nebraska, a city just across the state line, where some sort of anime convention was just about to start. Folks were setting up booths and tables and a stage behind the lady. It was still quite early, even though Japantown was a time zone ahead of Brookings, so the event still had a while before it would officially start. The sun had barely risen on that town. Nonetheless, there were still a handful of nerds there, waiting for the activities to begin.

“Lame,” Henry remarked, taking a chomp out of his breakfast fruit. His most recent ex-lover, the girl represented by the seamstress in his dream, was into that sort of thing. And he never really understood why. He had so much more to offer her than cartoons in school uniforms speaking Chinese or Japanese or whatever it was, with their annoyingly high-pitched voices. After all, before his training to become a police officer, when he was still with her, he had worked for NASA. NASA!

Henry was a descendant of Johannes Kepler, famed astronomer and mathematician, and as such, he had inherited a strong fascination with space. All throughout his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, he had wanted to follow his ancestor’s footsteps…to the stars. But after he was dumped by that petulant girl, his desire to transcend to space diminished, and his urge to learn how to dox people blossomed vibrantly.

He sighed. This girl was taking a very long time to come around, but he knew it wouldn’t be long now. The dream was proof. She didn’t really mean to leave me in the first place, he had always thought. She would never want to hurt me like that. She just needed to get the silly idea that she was sexually attracted to other women out of her system, then she’d come crawling back, begging for his forgiveness. And he would do it! He even left a photo of himself with her as his profile picture on Facebook the whole time as a sweet surprise, for when she inevitably caved. She had tortured him with her absence for three long years, so something was sure to budge, and soon.

The news reporter on the television stuck her microphone out and began to interview the attendees of the soon-to-begin anime event. Henry watched down his nose at the virgins in embarrassing costumes. While the reporter spoke to a nerdy-looking Asian man, Henry scanned the small group of losers rambling about behind them.

And then he laser-focused on a pink sweater.

…Could it really be? He stood up, pushed his chair away from his kitchen table and walked as if in a trance into his living room, eyes on the screen, unblinking.

It was…

He knew it was her, he would recognize her soft pink aura anywhere. He knew his dream was, in fact, a premonition!

The blue television light glowed in his dark chocolate eyes as he stared. He snerked. So, she had only managed to bring herself a few towns over… He understood the short distance—she obviously couldn’t stand to be any further away than that from her one true love.

But, who was this clown with a banjo his prize of a woman was hanging out with? A Fool, for sure.

“What is she doing with that fatso?” Henry sneered. He was angry. It wasn’t like her to hang around with obese people, nonetheless white obese people. What was she, a race traitor now, too? “Ruse, baby…” he laughed sarcastically to nobody, “you’re such a silly girl.” He crossed his arms, which caused his black-blue button up shirt to tighten around his muscular chest. “I guess I have to come show you what you’ve been missing out on.”

* * * * *