Chương 40: The Ways To Hurt Yourself

There was something intelligent and insightful-feeling about gesturing at a whiteboard as you laid out plans and theories. That was one of their main benefits. The problem was that they just weren't worth it, now that we were running a serious operation with a real chance of success – imagine how awful it would feel, for example, if everything got ruined because some random person saw 'GO BACK IN TIME' written on a whiteboard in big red marker.

Yet, even as I led the fifth installment of our odd group's weekly meetings, the research lab's pure and blank whiteboard gave me a mental itch. I was still in the process of finding a suitable replacement.

"So. Do we agree that there are only two main ways to explain what happened?" I asked, tapping my pencil against our group's 300-page notebook for emphasis. John, Darren, and Alicia said varying forms of 'yes' from their lab chairs. The whole gathered group.

"Alright then," I continued, standing in front of them in the lab's central open space.

"That just means we need to decide between the two. Was the amber comet dream just a meaningless side effect, induced by aura saturation in the bloodstream? Or was it a real vision, a subconscious activation of Clairvoyance? The floor's open."

"I'm raising my hand," came Alicia's voice, filtered to sound like a robotic old lady. (Because she wasn't actually in the room). She was at Agwin, joining us through a call between two anonymous burner phones that we planned to scrap sooner rather than later. I'd propped up the phone playing Alicia's audio on a chair that faced my way.

"Go ahead," I replied.

"Okay… I don't want to be a total pessimist, but if I'm understanding things, you never managed to copy Clairvoyance in the past. You made dozens of attempts. Now the source is a whole sector away." Darren quickly raised his hand.

"But I do think it's significant, that he just so happened to be thinking about Clairvoyance visions before he fell asleep last night." We were using the pronouns 'you' and 'he' in place of John's name, just to be safe for the call.

"Sure. It's something," Alicia said.

"But… And correct me if I'm wrong - just thinking about Clairvoyance before falling asleep should not have been nearly enough for you to copy it. Even if there were some weird compounds in your system." John thought for a while and agreed, although reluctantly.

"I have to say that that's true. I've definitely thought about Clairvoyance before sleeping in the past, and nothing ever happened." I nodded, accepting those points. Then I turned toward Darren, who was raising his hand - he seemed to take issue, at least judging by the look on his face.

"The side effect theory is at least equally as unlikely," countered our resident doctor.

"If you evaluate it by stacking all the unfavorable evidence together, then it seems near-impossible… For one, there's no scientific explanation for why aura in the bloodstream would cause his eyes to glow like they did. That's a distinctly activation -based phenomenon. Nothing in the literature or in the research files supports that it was just a random side-effect of the procedure." Through her phone call, Alicia 'verbally raised' her hand. I called on her.

"But his aura channeling system is pretty unique, isn't it? I think there's a reasonable likelihood that he would have some kind of unexpected reaction." Darren shook his head.

"He's only unique compared to us. We've measured him in many of the same ways his mother was measured, and the two resulting datasets differ by nearly nothing. Purely in terms of physical reactions to tests, he's responded to everything in exactly the way she was recorded to have responded originally - so what's the likelihood of such a massive, unprecedented difference?"

"I guess that's fair…" Alicia admitted.

"Alright, I'm doing a helpless shrug right now." Silently, I found myself feeling a little disappointed. Having a group to work with often brought new ideas and approaches, but they were essentially concluding the same thing I had: that both theories seemed like one-percent likelihood long shots. Which was just so great, considering they were our only two guesses. One percent plus one percent was two percent… a lot less than, well, the hundred percent they were supposed to add up to.

If they were truly our only explanations. I turned to John.

"Anything to add?"

"Not in terms of arguments or anything like that." He shook his head.

"I guess - if it was a random side effect, then that tells us basically nothing. But if it was actually a real vision, then that tells us a lot." John stood up and went to a nearby cabinet, rummaging around, and returned to his chair holding our dwindling jar of ability-granting candies. Each of the six remaining pieces shimmered a burnt orange under the lab lights.

"The comet looked exactly like these things, for one." He tapped on the glass jar.

"If my dream wasn't anything real, then that doesn't matter. But if it was real…"

"There could be immense implications," Darren finished.

"I was about to say the same thing." He turned to sweep his vision through the group, addressing all of us.

"Just to understand all the implications of the theory," Darren elaborated, "I think we need to research and study as though it were a Clairvoyance vision. This is the more impactful option, the one we need to understand more about, even if we don't know it's true."

"So the consensus…?" I asked, waving my pencil in a fake-writing motion against our notebook.

"We don't know," Darren said.

"But we should pretend, at least for a while, that we know it was Clairvoyance and see where that goes." John seemed to be in total agreement. I had no body language to read Alicia's reaction, but then her middle-aged robot voice said a very helpful, "I'm nodding." I stand corrected, I thought, and my disappointment at the rehashing of old ground mostly dissipated. Darren's reframing of the issue was a lot more helpful than what I'd been doing mentally.

I wrote 'act like we know it's a vision' in the notebook, then jotted down some preparatory bullet points on one of the few remaining pages.

"Since we're treating this fully seriously…" I looked to John.

"What did you mean when you said that the meteor felt alive? He furrowed his eyebrows deeply, seeming far too confused at what was a simple question. Then he slapped himself on the forehead.

"Sorry," he said.

"I forgot I never got more specific than that… I meant that I felt my mom in the comet. It was like I could see her body inside." The lab's noise level went from constant voices to pure silence, Darren and I blinking wordlessly at John. Alicia didn't have to say, 'I'm staring in surprise at my phone' for me to guess her reaction. I breathed out, shaking my head.

"Okay… How about you describe the vision from the beginning?" John explained what he saw, and then elaborated on a whole host of tangential questions. We ended up discussing deep into the evening. Not just John, but a whole host of each member's independent work needed to be shared: Alicia's spying results, Darren's progress on his enhancement drug research, my own findings and general plans. We always tried our best to be thorough, so it was as mentally straining as always…

Thankfully, Darren no longer broke into wide-eyed freakouts and incredulous questioning through the session. Those kinds of derailments had been common in the first weeks, whenever we brought up something we'd forgotten to tell him. That didn't mean we were able to stay on track the whole time. Darren periodically left the lab to check in on the infirmary, complaining that his MD made him too qualified to work for zero dollars an hour.

John kept whining half-seriously about his lack of study time, things like: "All the teachers are gonna think I'm stupid," and "They'll think my level carried me to admission." I didn't have the heart to tell him that they already did. On my end, I would sometimes stare in exaggerated longing at the lab's big and beautiful whiteboard, whine about the hand cramps my thin pencil gave me, and pontificate on how wonderful writing with a marker would be. (And I really did get cramps, being the meeting notetaker).

Then I would go to write on the whiteboard and John would have to slap the thick crimson marker from my hand. Alicia was possibly the worst at staying serious. She kept using her videoless phone call as a pretext to give increasingly useless 'body language updates.' At six it was: "I'm doing that very serious nod that I do, you know the one." At nine it was: "I'm trying really really hard not to yawn," and at midnight it was: "I'm holding in my piss because I'm so dedicated."

In our first weekly meeting, I'd asked her to use a verbal substitute for hand-raising. Somehow it had become an invitation to blurt whatever unhinged bodily fact she found funny. (Although John and I kept encouraging her by failing not to laugh…) On some level, a surface level, jokes and exaggerated self-caricature were unfitting. Being totally grave and serious almost seemed like the right thing to do, given how objectively momentous our situation was.

Still, it was clear that maximum seriousness over a long enough timescale would burn us out with nerves and emotions. It was more sustainable to act as though we were all working on some small-scale passion project, or something, out of whimsical personal interest or a hobbyist's enthusiasm. Not trying to view the creation of our world through time travel. Not trying to create God through drug-enhanced reality manipulation…

Of course, any amount of joking or even just a comfortable atmosphere would have been impossible, if John hadn't changed. If I hadn't pushed his self into this convenient mold, without his knowledge, without the slightest ounce of consent. It was a very, very difficult thing, to simultaneously acknowledge this while appreciating the results. Finally, at one AM, we were basically done. Alicia hung up so she could wake up in time for school.

John had to do his mother's before-bed ability exercises, so he was also ready to call it a night. When he stood up to leave, he gave a long, extended yawn and then stopped.

"I just realized something," he said.

"We haven't talked about Seraphina today, Meili." Damn, I thought. I had been hoping for recruitment to slip his mind for a few days.

"What about her?"

"I mean, shouldn't we be making a recruitment pitch soon? Since the vision kind of depends on Seraphina? I know you don't share any classes with her, and since I'm in the same P. E. elective…" I pretended to consider it. I hummed in fake thought.

"I think it's just a little bit too soon, John. If she rejects, and we ask again and get rejected again, we start getting into harassment pretty quickly. We hardly know her at all." John raised an eyebrow.

"The whole school doesn't know her. You know as well as I do that Seraphina doesn't let anyone have anything close to a normal conversation with her. If we wait until then…" Then we'll wait over a year, and we won't be in time to make the vision happen. I knew what he was thinking. John was biased unconsciously (and consciously) toward impatience. The 'get it done quickly' side of things. I understood exactly why, so I didn't plan to ever make a big show of pointing it out.

"Just a few days," I said.

"I need a few more days to think things through; at least be normal until the end of the week."

"But-""I know you've tried to be friendly with her and it didn't work, John. Just stick to that for now, and we don't need to expect that it'll work." He looked like he wanted to protest. In John's unofficial/official quest to treat everyone in the Wellston hierarchy with reasonably equal treatment, there were a few issues at the very bottom and very top. Very top meaning Seraphina. So it made sense, in a slightly ill-considered way, that he wanted to start as early as possible.

"I know we're working really hard," I acknowledged, "and it feels like a slog if we don't make any big moves. But you shouldn't do anything crazy or special just yet. Please." He tried to hide his annoyed sigh, but did so with a harsh intake of breath, so it still ended up sounding like a sigh.

"Fine. I guess it would be unfair, if I didn't trust your instincts by now." He headed out for the dorms; we waved and said goodnight. He seemed slightly impatient, I thought, but hopefully not enough to make a deal proposal and ruin what was probably my most promising idea. When John was far enough down the hallway, Darren side-eyed me from his chair.

"Are you going to tell me whatever it is you're hiding from him?" he asked.

"I distinctly remember you saying yesterday that you were ready to start on Seraphina."

"You're right, I did." He looked at me expectantly.

"And…?"

"But let me ask," I went on.

"Do you think John is any good at manipulating people? Or trying to subtly get close to someone while hiding an ulterior motive? And if he defaults to the totally honest, straightforward recruitment pitch, do you think it's going to work?" Darren thought for a second.

"Well. John's pretty socially competent for his age and level, but…" He frowned.

"Don't answer my question with a question. What exactly is the play here?" I gave him a look, like, 'are you really sure you want to know?' He held direct eye contact. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Alright," I said.

"First of all, remember this: the public rankings only updated John to god-tier status today. Starting today, John and Seraphina are the only god-tier students at this school. Right?" Those were simply matters of fact; Darren nodded along.

"Right," I continued.

"Now point number two. Seraphina isn't putting up a social wall just because she's so haughty and arrogant that she deems nobody worth her time." I paused slightly.

"Okay, there's probably a lot of that as well. But I'd like to think that it's also because the students at this school are still having wet dreams about getting her to do something for them. Most of the time it's landing a haymaker on another student. If every conversation feels like a transaction, and you have more to give and less to gain than anyone else, what reason is there to participate?" This was partially a side-effect, I was guessing, of my intervention six months ago.

I had made her hyper-aware of the transactional aspect of every interaction she would have at Wellston. Now we could take advantage of it.

"If John actually 'tries something,' he ends up looking like everyone else," I said.

"Yes, his attempts to start a casual conversation with Seraphina have also totally failed - but the difference now is that he's a god-tier. If, as a god-tier, he only tries to be friendly in a normal, casual way, doesn't that put him far above anyone else? As the only other god-tier student, her only peer at Wellston, the only one who's strong enough to not ask or beg for her help… I haven't done the research, but I bet he's the only near-age god-tier in a hundred-mile radius."

Darren certainly understood what I was saying. He didn't seem so thrilled about capitalizing on a teenage girl's loneliness. I shrugged.

"Someone like that - they might even be worth talking to," I said rhetorically.

"Maybe even worthy of friendship. And wouldn't that be nice, if you don't have any actual friends? To finally make one at school." If I had given this whole explanation to John, then he would have tensed up and acted too artificially the next time he tried to talk to Seraphina. Instead, I'd told him to keep doing what he'd been doing, with the expectation that it wouldn't work. Just as a way to fill time before our 'actual' first attempt. No pressure at all. (All lies.)"Meili…

you don't have to frame everything as a social engineering attempt." Darren stared at me with a mix of exasperation and unease.

"God," he said, "you're the only person who can make 'don't do anything special' sound so… underhanded and tactical."

"I'm just being honest about my thought process," I said honestly.

"You said 'appeal to emotions' yesterday. This is what I settled on." He looked away, rubbing at his temples.

"So by behaving perfectly normally," he muttered, "you're more likely to get someone to act how you want them to, rather than if you explicitly try to manipulate them into it? But doesn't that mean, in a reversed way, that you're still…?" I faked an exaggerated bright smile.

"I don't know why this is so confusing, Darren. You just said it yourself. We're not doing anything special at all." Beautiful After nine weeks, I know less than a fifth of their names, Seraphina thought. She stood alone in the expansive grassy plain behind Wellston High, watching her P. E. classmates practice their abilities in groups.

She was practicing as well, naturally, but through a routine action that required little thought: raising a fist, striking herself on the arm, rewinding the bruising and blood with Time Manipulation. She planned to go to at least forty hits. Strike number five, she thought. Time rewinds removed physical injuries but left the pain from each hit to accumulate in her mind. It was always a dull, manageable throb at first, during which she could watch the other students.

But she felt it rising, with each hit, and knew that the agony could eventually build into the worst she'd ever known – the training was for mental resilience as well. Strike twenty. Her vision started to blur. Her nails bit into palmflesh, and her teeth clenched tightly against each other, saliva turning cold and sour. She kept going. Her parents had started her at a young enough age that it was nothing more than routine. There's forty, Seraphina thought, wincing as she struck down on herself.

She mended the bloodied, oozing bruise and managed two more rounds before her legs spasmed. It was a familiar feeling, when her nervous system seemed to rebel with physical warnings; she typically tried to power through it for a while. But she was aware enough through the agony to recognize the presence of nearby eyes. She didn't want to broadcast the undignified position of her body slumped limply to the grass. So she stopped before that could happen, allowing the cloud of pain to disperse.

In the downtime she watched a sparring match taking place fifty meters away - a boy with Freeze Ray and a girl with Heat Wave in a semi-even clash. It seemed clear that Freeze Ray would eventually win out, though neither ability was noteworthy enough to deserve any special analysis. And anyway, she wasn't watching them to be impressed; she was primarily interested through association. She wanted to see how they'd interact with John Doe.

John granted her wish, inevitably, as he flew into the scene from the sky, flapping massive hands in the shape of wings. The wind ruffled his dark hair and loose uniform as he landed. For a god-tier, he was a slob. John pushed his messy hair back, greeting the two mid-tiers with a smile, and launched into some kind of anecdote. The boy and girl started smiling in return.

Then he started asking them questions - likely about their abilities and fighting technique - even though he was likely to gain exactly nothing by doing so. She couldn't understand why he did it. Through nine weeks of school, John had become more and more incomprehensible. At first she'd thought he was clever, for going around and copying abilities from the whole school. If she shared his ability she would have done the same. But it had surely been long enough that he'd copied every single student…

yet he made huge talkative rounds in P. E. every day, and with a sense of enthusiasm that made it seem like mid-tiers were in short supply. As if it were somehow the first time in his life that he could talk to his classmates. Seraphina had already been baffled by it when John was in the fives. It was even worse, after his promotion to god-tier seemed to have had no effect on his behavior. It doesn't make any… oh, she thought. He's waving at me. She didn't wave back.

But John still flew toward her through the clouded sky, with his seemingly favored copied ability of Devil's Hands.

"What exercise are you doing, Seraphina?" he asked as he landed beside her.

"Simple rewinding practice."

"So are you breaking an object and turning it back, or is that you punching yourself and recovering?" She touched her arm, checking for signs of a botched rewind.

"The latter." A crisp gust blew past them. John paused for an extended moment.

"That's… impressive," he said.

"If you can stare down at your arm and hit it just like that - and actually try your best to injure yourself. That must take a lot of mental strength." Compliment number twenty-four, Seraphina thought. Today. Though I suppose it's at least original.

"It's not worth boasting about," she said, "Just a routine from my childhood." He said nothing, likely anticipating that she'd elaborate after a second. She didn't care to.

"Um," he fumbled.

"If you would rather get back to practicing than talk, I can go somewhere else. I just wanted to say hi and see what techniques you were practicing." She glanced him over, evaluating him. He'd never so much as hinted at wanting anything from her, in over a dozen days of outdoor ability training. The questions he asked seemed to satisfy no purpose beyond his personal curiosity. And what need did he have to ask for anything, really, considering his current strength, his rapid rate of growth?

Meili had been totally correct six months ago: an exasperating number of students viewed her as a potential resource to use. John also irritated her with his irrational behavior… but at least it was in a comparatively interesting way, like a puzzle.

'Everyone's my equal,' Seraphina recalled. Who are you trying to fool?

"Actually," she replied.

"I'd like to understand something from you. What is it that you gain when you ask a level 3. 1 Heat Wave user how they use their ability?" She deactivated Time Manipulation. John stood there, clearly surprised, and stammered over his words slightly."'What do I gain?'""Yes. I don't believe they know a single thing that someone of your mastery does not."

"…I think that's the first question you've ever asked me," he eventually said.

"But it's 2. 8."

"Pardon?" He gave her a strange smile.

"Mairin's a 2. 8, not a 3. 1," he said.

"You might want to practice your level-gauging, Seraphina. It's an important skill." Seraphina huffed.

"More to the point, then. You're a god-tier with a manipulation-type ability." Like me.

"The gap in complexity with a simple projectile ability is enormous." John's actions as 'The Ghost' (and wasn't that a juvenile ploy) revealed that he was far more powerful, more versatile, than he pretended to be. He was capable of copying three abilities at once and enhancing them. At his level of mastery, trying to squeeze knowledge from a mid-tier seemed like a horrible waste of time…

"Can't I just enjoy it?" She felt a jarring, dissonant sensation that was so fierce and thunderous that she shuddered in place.

"Enjoy it?" she bit out.

"You find speaking to Mairin, and - and… whatever his name is - fun?" Seraphina expected self-justification, defensiveness. John laughed a little.

"Maxime. That's his name." His voice pitched with a clear sincerity.

"And seriously, I don't think it's that crazy. One of the benefits of being high-level is that we get to talk to whoever we want. We can start a conversation with anyone, and ask about anything that makes us curious, just because we feel like it. We can talk to thousands of people to find a few who we think are really cool, or have a personality or sense of humor that we like.

""And dignity?" she blurted out despite herself.

"Do you not care for it whatsoever? The expectations of your clan and family? The perceptions of your actual peers?" Actual peers. Not a 3. 1, or 2. 8, or a Mairin or a Maxime or whoever you pluck off the street.

"I don't have a clan," John replied.

"And of course I want to be able to be on good terms with high-level people, too; that's why I keep trying to talk to you. But by your standards, there are barely twenty of us in this sector. There are millions of everyone else." Seraphina shook her head in utter disbelief, looking away to assemble her thoughts.

"The low-tiers and mid-tiers at this school," she began, "would rather beg me for help. Rather than train on their own, or gather allies, or think of other ways to get whatever vengeance or justice they're looking for. Either they're capable of doing it for themselves, and looking for a shortcut, or they're truly so pitiful that they're totally helpless to stand up for themselves." She looked for his reaction. He didn't seem at all bothered by the disagreement.

"They're so… so pathetic," she said, "in either case, that I couldn't even imagine it! I couldn't imagine thinking of them in this undeservedly optimistic sense that you seem to."

"I mean, I'm not trying to say that everyone's great," John replied.

"Probably the opposite's more true. But you're kind of just hurting yourself, Seraphina, if you never have the kinds of normal conversations that can let you know that someone's the exception." Seraphina frowned.

"I think you're misunderstanding something. Even if I wanted to do that, they're the ones who aren't letting me." She felt suddenly unrestrained – by the intellectual stimulation, by the fact that someone was actually challenging her – and the words began to flow outward on their own.

"Take the elite-tiers as an example," said Seraphina.

"They're no better. They're all so full of pride, for being just a minuscule fraction stronger - and they all think they can hide it, in front of me. As if they could really become humble for exactly the same few hours every day. And this might be tolerable, if they weren't trying to influence me at every moment - how exactly am I supposed to interact with any of them in any reasonable way?

"A few weeks ago," she went on, "I thanked someone for letting me taste an African pastry that I'd never tried. From then on, every day, someone has conveniently happened to have a rare snack or dessert to 'share' with the table. Someone always happens to have some profound observation about goings-on at this school. I want to say to them: I understand exactly what you're trying to do! I understand the impressions you're trying to implant in me, that you want me to think in a way that's favorable to you.

But if you're so desperate for power, why not maximize your own ability potential, instead of trying to maximize what I think of you?" Why do you feel the need to do this? Seraphina scolded herself when she stopped, as her own behavior struck her. Why unleash your whole collection of negative impressions about Wellston in such a low-tier way? She almost wanted to punish herself for the lack of self-control.

"... So I don't understand," she finished more reservedly.

"The entire range at this school seems so massively unappealing, and then you say that you enjoy the whole spectrum, John, that you feel privileged to have access to all of it. Talking to anybody, from low-tier to high-tier." He hadn't interrupted or tried to raise an objection. It didn't make any sense to Seraphina, given that they were clearly experiencing the same student body entirely differently.

"I guess that's fair." John shrugged.

"But I wouldn't say we actually disagree that much. I know I'm in a far better situation than you are, when it comes to enjoying myself… I mean, why do you think I'm lying about my ability?" She blinked at him.

"... I don't understand what you mean."

"Think about it," he said.

"People don't think I'm actually that strong - not in the consistent way most god-tiers are, at least. They think I can only copy a single ability at the strength of its user. That's why I don't get the sort of treatment you get, Seraphina. I escape the expectations and responsibilities, but since I'm still a god-tier I keep most of the privileges." Her mouth gaped open for a moment, until she quickly shut it. Many of the things that had caused her to scoff at him suddenly seemed reasonable. John grinned at her.

"You didn't think that was just stupidity on my end, did you?" She fidgeted slightly.

"I- Well, I had no conception of what could have possibly motivated you to do it." So he's actually thought about how he wants his life to be, she realized. And he purposefully put himself in the best position to have it that way. She felt a strange twinge of self-consciousness. Compared to that, I… It was a good choice, she thought, that I decided to humor him this time.

"If there's another big difference, it's that I can actually remember people's names," John added, raising an eyebrow.

"Since after a thousand introductions you only seem to remember mine." She felt her face flush.

"That's-" What am I going to say? That it's only proper for a god-tier to forget the names of mid-tiers?

"... You ought to be more thankful," she managed.

"My existence is the sole reason this nice setup of yours is even possible - if not for me, all the pressure and expectation would go to you!"

"Maybe," he said after considering it.

"I think I'd still do a good enough job at pretending not to be strong." Pretending not to be strong. It was only an acknowledgement of what she'd already known John was doing. The words still clung in her mind like adhesive, repeating themselves. An unknown feeling sprouted in her, some increased consciousness of his perspective – as if she had seen him in muted colors before this, a grayscale human being like all the others, and she'd started using her full vision only now.

From further out in the field, a group of three boys was ambling back to the Wellston High campus. John waved at one of them.

"Looks like the period's basically over."

"I don't think that's right," Seraphina said reflexively. Then the P. E. teacher's shrill whistle registered in her ears, a signal that class was ending.

"... I could have sworn we had more time."

"Yeah, that kind of sucks." With a sigh, John started back to the school building, and Seraphina instinctively matched his steps.

"I wanted to ask you to show me some Time Manipulation techniques that I'm curious about, but no dice, I guess." He paused.

"Hey, if you're not busy with self-healing training tomorrow, do you want to…" As usual, she tuned out the words after 'do you want to' - it was one of her adaptations to Wellston High School. She nearly said no by pure reflex. But she realized, a moment later, that after nine weeks her answer to 'do you want to' was finally yes....

"I have a few homemade popsicles in this icebox. Matcha-flavored. If anyone wants one-""My dad brought this mochi box during his business in the far-eastern sectors. He told me to share it with some friends…" Seraphina ignored every voice at her table, or tried her best to. She had become gradually worse at maintaining her proper posture and demeanor during lunch. She wanted to sigh and rest her head in her palm, but to openly express her aggravation was too humiliating a prospect to even consider.

Your competition to fake being nice to me is making me hate you. I'd rather you be genuinely antagonistic with me instead. Is that what I'm supposed to say?

"Is now a good time, Seraphina?" She blinked, searching for the source of the voice. John was standing behind her, holding a double-sided sheet of notebook paper.

"I wrote down the techniques I'm curious about," he said, "like we talked about yesterday."

"Right now is perfect," she answered quickly.

"Um. Would you like some mochi?" John said yes, so she passed him two pieces. …Then a popsicle, then a croissant, then plantain chips, and finally some chocolate-coated dragonfruit. Every item that 'happened' to have found its way to her. She smiled and stood up to go.