It began to sting a bit, being stuck on the set of a recreation of a reality show that I'd last seen with Ko. One entirely about romance. The absurdity of seeing Thadley, star of many educational videos, or a retention sprite of him, didn't make that stinging feeling go away.

If things had worked better between us, would I be here alone? Would Ko be at my side still?

"Um, like, so..." Thadley said. He looked identical to how he looked in the Cani training videos, which were filmed ages ago. Either this was a retention sprite or Thadley had some otherworldly anti-aging powers. None of us could reach for our wristbands to send out a scanning ping wave to tell. "Uh...I'm the host, I guess."

"Just a dating show host?" Ash said. "That's so...boring."

"Do you seriously expect original concepts from these low rent evil mascots?" Anastasia asked.

"OK, but that's not like a regular dating show host, it's the guy from all the Cani training videos, so I don't even know if evil describes him," Michi said. "Since when did he have a dating show, though?"

"Decades ago," I said. "I only learned about it a bit ago, it had horrifically low viewership, but still somehow managed to get three seasons."

"Gee, people weren't lining up to watch this?" Michi asked as Thadley played with his hair.

"No, but like!" Charmaine said. "I get what Ash is saying, it's even more annoying. The void is infinite dimensions, right? They can do better than one note gimmicks."

"OK, chill out," Anastasia said.

"Sorry, I'm just heated!" Charmaine said. "I've been stuck here for like an hour! And for all that the payoff is just this surfer jackass doing a recreation of a cancelled show. Also, you're one to talk for chilling out, Ana, just saying."

"Watch it..." Ana said.

"Hey, let's all like, unwind and relax," Thadley said. "Because this season of Thadley's Love isn't like about me or whatever, this time it's about you."

"Yeah, we got that from the matchmaker thing," Anastasia said. "I especially don't want to be on a dating show after I just got dumped." Her face twitched, like she let something out she wasn't intending to in her anger. "And...today's not about me, I'm trying to just have a nice day with my friends, not think about romance."

Thadley scratched his belly. "Well, I mean, like you're here, so you might as well play, you know?"

"If we really don't want to play, can you just let us go?" Michi asked.

"Uh," Thadley squinted. He turned slowly toward the spotlights, then back to us. "No?"

"As soon as I'm out of this chair I'm ripping every strand of your stupid bleach blonde hair out one strand at a time," Anastasia said.

"Like, I'll let you go when you play," Thadley said.

"We don't have a choice," I said. "For now, until we see an opportunity, just play along."

"You don't order me around," Anastasia said, scowling. Sai stomped on Ana's foot. "Ow!"

"Lillia's right, I don't see anything else we can do right now," Sai said.

"We could just sit here and not play along," Anastasia said. "I can sit silently for hours, can this guy? You need to think outside of the box in situations like this."

"Or do what we usually do and just play along until we see an opening!" Sai said. "Do you think this guy is going to be able to outsmart us? Just play along until..." Sai wiggled their wrists.

"Fine," Anastasia scoffed. "You're probably right, I just get very pissy when—"

"We know," The Althea sisters said in unison.

“I didn’t even get to say what I get pissy about!” Anastasia said. “I was going to say it’s when I'm in a stupid situation like this."

“It’d be faster to say when you don’t get pissy.” Sai said.

While they were openly talking about revolting against the game, Thadley didn't seem to notice or care. He stared at the chairs at the end of the row. "We still have a few empty seats..."

"Oh! I know!" Tay said. "If you can bring more people in, I know just who to get!"

"Tay, don't help him!" I said.

"No, no, trust me, this will work out!" Tay said. "Go grab my book and go to page uhh...three hundred and fifty-two!"

For some reason, Thadley obeyed immediately. I began to wonder if Tay really was responsible for this as Thadley paged through the book, needing Tay to repeat the number at least six times before he figured it out. "OK? These three?"

"Yep! I don't know what your selection process is or if you can pull people in that aren't right here, but those three would be great!" Tay said.

Thadley took the book and walked away, leaving into the backstage area behind the audience seats.

"Alright, while he's gone—" Anastasia started, but was interrupted by three more classmates dropping down in front of us, landing in a pile. Thadley came back in.

"Got them!" Thadley said. "It was, um, these ones, right? I got like, a method, so it wasn't a big deal."

"Where are we...?" Amara asked. She had fallen on top of KJ and Rain. "Oh no, sorry!" She got up, helping her partners to their feet.

"You're in my, uh game or whatever!" Thadley said. "Thadley's Game: Matchmaker Edition."

"Is this like a prank show?" KJ asked.

"Stupid void thing," Michi said.

"Ah, that explains it," Rain said.

"Wait, don't move!" I said.

It was too late though, because as soon as the three members of the love trio stood up, they too were zipped to the empty chairs.

"Awesome! Now we got enough for even pairs, dudes, dudettes, and wildcards," Thadley said. "Five on one team and five on the other, that's easy. I like even splits like that."

"But there's eleven of us now..." Michi said.

"Oh...well we'll figure it out," Thadley said. "But we should like probably start the show or whatever."