Ruse climbed out of the bathtub, pulled the stopper and dried herself off with one of the hotel-provided towels. She still felt fairly shook up, but at least now she was clean.

Clean...with no fresh clothes to change into, since her apartment was momentarily off limits. This excluded the cosplay items she had purchased from her darling Lulu Sparklefest; this was neither the time nor place to sport those. She grabbed the clothes she was wearing during the convention and put them back on, all except for her shoes.

As she pulled her socks on, she continued deploring Henry’s choice to become a cop. He could likely easily obtain a warrant, and with him being the way she knew he was, he probably already had. He liked making her feel like she had nowhere to run. How he managed to get himself into a law enforcement position while being as unstable and disturbed as he was, she couldn’t imagine. It must’ve been some sociopath thing she as an empathy-feeling layperson would never understand.

Through the bathroom door, Ruse could hear Kevin in their main room griping to himself. She quieted her breathing so she could listen in. Kevin was always saying dumb things based off of the weird fringe content he regularly partook of. This was bound to be interesting.

“What have I been telling her about these Chads this whole time? They’re no good! Tyrone-lookin’ ass...” he was insisting to nobody. The guy had an unhealthy obsession with ‘Chads’, or men who always landed women regardless of how poorly they treated women in the past. These Chads were supposedly the worst of society, deadbeats, druggies, cheaters, and so on, who only scored women due to their chiseled physiques or ‘bad boy’ personalities. Ruse needed no help to assume that ‘Tyrone’ was a generic, racist name referring to a black Chad, and that Kevin was referring to the image Henry had sent to him. Two seconds later, Kevin had a completely different gripe; he was full of them: “and doesn’t she know that bathing strips your body of healthy oils? It’s so bad for you, uuuggh.” This unfounded remark was followed by a whimsical few notes on his banjo, a stark contrast to his very not whimsical words.

Ruse couldn’t help but laugh. Even though Kevin was a big disgusting oaf, he was her big disgusting oaf. She loved how much he worried about her, even if his worry was sourced from the strangest depths of the internet. She placed her towel on the wall rack and finally opened the door.

Kevin greeted her in Japanese and continued to play his instrument. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still dressed in his day clothes, including his fedora, trench coat and sneakers. From what Ruse could tell, he was still wearing the same outfit from when she had made her recent manga purchase from his shop. This was normal for him, but the shoes threw her off. Keeping one’s shoes on in a living space wasn’t exactly common in Japantown, especially for the Japanese-American folks living there. And Kevin considered himself somewhat of an honorary Japanese person, or at least that’s what he told her. She had rarely ever seen him in bed, thank god, so she assumed that his refusal to abide by that cultural norm had something to do with his refusal to change clothes at all unless absolutely necessary. It was still strange to her that she had picked up the habit and he hadn’t.

Oh well, she thought. She was gonna be stuck with him and his weird cherry-picking of Japanese customs for the rest of the night whether or not she liked it. She pulled the curtains on the window behind him aside so some light from the setting sun could pour in, then sat next to him and placed her hands in her lap.

For a moment, she listened to him play. He wasn’t exactly the greatest musician, but he was fairly talented, and the little ditties he played were charming in their own way. As the twangy notes filled the room, Ruse thought…perhaps she was being a little too picky about the situation. It wasn’t like it was Kevin’s fault she was cooped up there. Sure, he was leaving behind dirt and smells she would inevitably have to clean off the blankets once she kicked him off of her bed to the floor, but he wasn’t doing anything to intentionally burden her. And he was undeniably better company than Henry ever was.

“Listen, Kevin,” she said, “I’m sorry I ruined your chances of finding your yandere waifu at the convention, but,” she paused to bump her shoulder against him playfully, “I want to thank you for doing this for me.”

“Hey,” he said between notes, “I said I would protect m’lady. Besides, those girls are too uptight for me, they put those signs put up that say ‘no touching’ and ‘no photos’ and all that. ’Can’t interact with them to begin with!” He looked down at Ruse from his one eye not covered by hair and smiled. She did too. His humor was crass and sexist, but it was just dark enough to tickle her.

The phone on the bedside dresser rang suddenly, causing them both to jump. They looked over to see the red light on the receiver flashing and the digital screen reading ‘UNKNOWN’. They looked at each other, then Kevin set his banjo aside and stood up to answer the call.

He pressed the speaker button and asked, “moshi moshi?”

“Boo.”

Ruse felt ice in her veins. She hadn’t heard it in several years, but it pierced right through her just as it had the last time he spoke to her. It was Henry’s voice that had come through the phone. He couldn’t reach her by text, so he must’ve used those ‘tools’ he had at his disposal to triangulate her location. To set her scrambling and back on the run...

“You thought you nerds could hide from me? I have eyes everywhere.”

Then the phone clicked, signaling Henry’s side hanging up.

Kevin looked over his shoulder to see if Ruse was as terrified as he was, and saw that she was staring at the floor, not blinking, looking as if she was on the verge of tears. “That was him, wasn’t it?”

Ruse nodded absently.

“This dude must’ve done a real number on you,” Kevin said as he walked over to stand over her. She didn’t give him an answer, and he felt that was totally understandable. He went on, “I guess now’s as good a time as ever to say I forgot to lock up the store before we left to the con.”

Ruse looked up. Kevin was grinning in an apologetic way. “Wanna get out of here?” he asked, sticking out his hand.

She nodded again, then used his hand to pull herself to her feet.

“We’ll figure something out when we get there.”

* * * * *

“I guess that was a waste of money,” Kevin said from the driver’s seat to Ruse, who was sat once again in the back seat of his car. The two were on their way from the hotel to the comic shop Kevin owned. “We paid for the whole night, and we were barely there an hour.”

But Ruse could hardly pay attention to him, even though she knew he was trying to cut through the tension and distract her. She was too busy once again fidgeting a hole into her seat and ruminating about Henry weaseling himself into a position where top notch stalking technology was at his fingertips. It all bothered her too severely to appreciate anything in the moment.

“I’m thinking of putting up a sign,” Kevin continued. “Like on the inside of the door of Kawasaki’s,” that being the name of his shop, “that says ‘Closed For Sparklecon’. Just in case we’re on the run for a while.”

We probably will be! screamed the pessimistic voices in Ruse’s head. But she still said nothing out loud.

Kevin tapped his hands on the steering wheel as he drove to occupy the silence.

After a minute or two, he accepted that Ruse wasn’t going to participate in conversation, and said, “don’t be mad, but I blocked that asshole on Facebook. I thought it would help or something, but I think it just made him madder.”

Ruse continued to fret in silence.

“I know, I should’ve kept my phone off, but—fuck,” Kevin hissed as something outside caught his attention.

The expletive drew Ruse out of her thoughts. She looked out the window to her right to see what was up.

Outside, the sun had finally set and the sky was turning dark as they crept up on the little shopping center in which Kevin’s shop was located. As they neared the shop’s small vacant parking lot, a concerning sight appeared before the two of them: the glass door to the comic shop was open. And through the cracked open door, they could make out a figure moving around inside.

Kevin backed the car into the spot furthest from the door, parked and looked back at Ruse. She had ducked herself down in her seat so much so that she could barely see over the dashboard from back there. Her face was also scrunched back like a frightened turtle, which was causing the stickers on her cheeks to peel.

She was precious; Kevin would protect her at all costs.

He unbuckled his seat belt and tilted his head toward her while turning his gaze back to the shop door. “D’you wanna stay in here while I go investigate?”

“You’re sure about this?” Ruse whispered in response. Henry wasn’t the type to play around or give a warning shot.

“’Man’s gotta protect his stuff,” Kevin said. And because Ruse knew him so well, she could sense that there was some ambiguity about whether his ‘stuff’ meant the shop, Ruse herself, or both.

Regardless, she didn’t need to put herself in any more danger than she was already in. “I’ll stay,” she whispered. And if it did turn out to be her psycho ex tearing through the shop to get to her, she at least had a very vague idea on how to operate a vehicle and flee.

...And maybe she’d lay a lily on Kevin’s grave later.

Kevin grabbed his banjo from the shotgun seat, then opened the driver side door as quietly as he could and stepped out of the car into the night. As he gingerly closed the car door, Ruse whispered, “be safe!”

He then tiptoed towards the shop with the banjo held up like a baseball bat, making sure to keep his breathing steady.

Ruse pressed down the lock buttons on each door in the car—she couldn’t be too safe—and squished herself back into her spot.

After one last quick glance at Kevin, who was keeping a very slow pace so to not trigger any sudden movements from the criminal in the shop, she grabbed her phone out of her flower print bag. Her pale purple phone case was decorated in holographic stickers of kawaii animals, bloopy shapes, and emojis in pastel colors, and she had a shiny sparkly white decorative charm hanging from the side, donned with pastel rainbow beads and a fluffy tassel. Unlike Kevin, she had actually turned and kept her phone off for her safety since arriving at the hotel earlier. But a bright idea had come to her just before they parked. She powered the device back on, grinned for just a second at her lock screen photo of Lulu, unlocked it, then opened Facebook. She would delete the huge build-up of Henry’s insane texts later… At least Facebook gave her the option to refuse messages from people she hadn’t added as friends. Her ‘message request’ inbox was absolutely loaded, though…

The last time she had used the app, it had been to lurk the profile of Henry’s hot cousin Breanna, and that was where it remained. Every now and then, Ruse would get the urge to break the ice with the voluptuous lady, but she had always backed out at the last moment.

Well, now was the time. And who better to contact in this moment than her crazy stalker’s relative? Breanna had been on the inside. And she was bound to be a more well-rounded and sane person, right? If anything, she couldn’t possibly be worse than Henry. Ruse prayed to the heavens that Breanna would know how to handle him...

Ruse sucked in a sharp breath and breathed it out through her nose, then tapped on the ‘message’ option. She was going to do this. She had been a coward for too long, and now she had a good reason to take that leap.