Chapter Text
Chase stretched up to the tower’s ceiling before flopping to the floor and turning to a worn cardboard box. “Didja get anything good?” He picked up whatever book caught his interest first and turned it in his hands to examine it.
Deacon sat down across from Chase, claiming the other side of the box. He crossed his legs and picked through the pile. “I picked up a variety.” He frowned at the state of some of the books in the box.
“Some of them are pretty beat up.” Chase set the book that he’d been looking at aside before digging some more.
“Well, what do you expect from a library used book discount sale? I think the most I paid for one of these was…two dollars. There was something I picked up that looked promising….” Deacon moved a few more books aside before finding what he was looking for. “Here it is.” He pulled it out of the box and presented it to Chase. “I thought we should try a comic. It might go by faster than a regular book.”
Chase tilted his head and accepted the thick paperback book from Deacon’s hold. He sat back and flipped through the pages. “‘Proper compensation must be made for offered goods or services. One must not offer too much for the payment. One must not charge too much for the product. Reasonable. Equitable. And fair. If it isn’t, someone gets hurt. Your body in the material world. Your fortune in the celestial world. Your soul in the heavenly world.’ What kinda mafia book is this?”
“It’s not a mafia book. Does the cover look like a mafia book?”
“Japan can have mafias,” Chase huffed and flipped through a few more pages. “Jack Skellington wants his vibe back.”
“Wrong Gothic.”
“Dracula…? Wants his vibe back?”
Deacon stared at Chase with an unimpressed gaze. “Are those the only two gothics you can come up with? Jack Skellington and Bela Lugosi?”
Chase’s eyes sparkled. “Are there vampires?”
“No.” Deacon plucked the book from Chase’s hands and showed him the cover. “I read some of this online a while back. It’s got a few funny parts here and there, and it’s a little foreboding and spooky but ultimately pretty interesting. I thought you’d like the fashion the shopkeeper wears, and I thought you’d like to try out her fortune-telling powers.” Deacon tapped an index finger against the image of the woman with long dark hair on the cover.
Chase leaned forward to gaze into the shopkeeper’s gold eyes. “You know, I admire her commitment to her butterfly bit. Yeah, alright.” Chase sat back with a grin. “I’d like to try out some cool fortune-telling powers. Hey, Silver, are you up for a good book?” He reached to the window sill with an open hand for Silver to walk onto.
“Yes,” Silver chimed from her spot on the window sill. She set down her thread and paper clip that had been cut and bent into a tiny doll-sized crochet hook. She lifted her skirt and gracefully stepped onto Chase’s palm before kneeling and taking the form of a key.
“I went ahead and wrote down what I remember from this volume while I was waiting in line to pay.” Deacon flipped through the book, its pages flying by. “But it’s pretty intuitive. The main character walks into the shopkeeper’s shop and asks the shopkeeper to—”
“You wrote it down, and the main guy knows what he’s doing.” Chase waved his free hand to hurry along Deacon. “C’mon, let’s head inside.”
Deacon let out an amused huff and reached back to the sacred oven mitt to offer Bronze his hand to walk onto. “Bronze, are you ready?”
Bronze eyed Deacon’s outstretched hand and finished off the pretzel he was working on. “I could be.” He pulled himself to a standing position and stretched before walking onto Deacon’s hand and taking the form of a key.
Chase set the book on the floor, and he and Deacon hovered their respective keys above the cover before disappearing into the comic.
The rush of slipping into a story flooded over Chase as his excitement built at the prospect of a brand new outfit. If the artwork of this comic was anything to go by, Chase would expect beautifully detailed fabrics, a comfortable cut, and a relaxing place to lounge. Once he appeared in the fictional, modern-day city, he looked down, expecting the mesmerizing sheen of silk. Unfortunately, his gaze was met with a matte stiffness he could only identify as one of the story’s school uniforms.
“What?” Chase rested a hand on his chest and then felt his arm to double check that his eyes weren’t failing him. “What the–? I didn’t see the shopkeeper wear a school uniform.”
“Pretty sure she didn’t have curly pigtails either,” Deacon sighed and pulled out his scrap paper with scribbled notes from his own school uniform pocket.
“Pigtails??” Chase reached up to twirl a finger around one of the pigtails. “Okay, clearly, Silver is pulling a prank. I’m sorry, Silver,” Chase called out, “the school uniform looks nice, but I wanted to be the decked-out shopkeeper, not a high school kid.”
Deacon’s eyes narrowed, and he tucked his bottom lip between his teeth as he flipped through the note cards. “The shopkeeper shows up way more than Himawari, so why…?” After a moment’s thought, realization flickered in Deacon’s eyes. “Chase—”
“Yeah?”
“—didn’t you say that Buddy said something about the keys finding any way they can to fit a role? Even if a character thought something bad one time, they have the potential to be used by the villainess key?”
“Oh, no.” Chase met Deacon’s gaze with dread making itself at home in his stomach.
With a nod, Deacon pulled his focus from Chase to fall on the building in front of them. “Looks like we’ll have to head in to see if that’s really how it is.”
The property stood out from those on either side of it similarly to how spun sugar gossamer would if draped over wedding cake between two stacks of dollar store candy bars. Unlike the shiny glass and smooth concrete of the city buildings around them, the seemingly residential property which sat before them had curved, faded-green roofs like an elderly turtle’s armored shell, dark wood siding with glass windows kept in place with iron detailing akin to the curves on an artisan’s violin, and thin crescent moon details perched where a weather vane would be.
“Looks like some storybook architect has a thing for the moon,” Chase muttered, his joke not quite soothing his unease. He stepped past the tall dark wood fence that surrounded the property and took note of the trees, some fluffy with cherry blossoms and others with thick green leaves. His steps on the stone path slowed to a stop. “Hey, do our characters do much in the first volume?”
Deacon paused beside Chase. “Not really. I think mine appears in a couple panels and yours shows up for a few pages, but the first volume mainly shows the protagonist, the shopkeeper, and minor one-off characters. I really thought you’d appear as the shopkeeper, and I’d appear as one of her…helpers?”
Chase gave Deacon a skeptical look. “You seem real unsure about that.”
“I mean, the ‘helpers’ are soulless, so….” Deacon shrugged. “If they’re soulless in canon, can the keys assign them to us as roles? They walk and talk, but is that like making a Lego walk and talk? I don’t know.” He paused as his thought process progressed. “And even then, the characters are all fictional; they don't have an actual real frontal lobe, and they haven't gestated in a physical—” Deacon's words halted as he met Chase's blank expression. “...To sum up, I would think that they really only have as much soul as we perceive.”
Chase worked to come up with a simpler example. “So it's like if a chair has a face, then he's a Lil Guy instead of the chair that doesn't have a design that looks like a face. That second one is just a chair.”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Well, it doesn't matter.” Chase lifted a finger to count their levels of understanding as he verbally listed them. “You're not one of the ‘soulless’ helpers. Buddy is probably the shopkeeper, and since none of us are the main character, we gotta wait for the main character to show up to get this story going. Will this work differently since this is a comic book instead of a regular book?”
Deacon reviewed his notes and tapped a finger against the side of the folded paper. “Definitely in a story structure sense. There's going to be a few short stories in one volume. It's sort of like the anthologies of fairy tales; we do one fairy tale, and the story is over. Except these are—for the most part—standalone chapters.”
“Pfft, we can do this.” Chase shrugged and fixed his school blazer. “Easy peasy.” He took a moment to fix his bangs and brush his pigtails aside. “C'mon. Watch me knock Buddy's socks off.” He strode ahead, hooked a hand around one of the few diagonal black handles of the front door, and yanked the door open.
“Chase, watch your hubris,” Deacon called after his perhaps overly confident cousin. “Shoes off!” He added with a shred of panic in his voice.
“Yeah, I know where I'm steppin’.” Chase headed inside and slipped off his shoes with Deacon following closely behind him.
“Welcome!” Two voices chirped in sync.
Chase's concentration lifted from where he'd nudged his shoes. His gaze rested on the two girls who stood a few feet in front of him. While their hair and clothes were different, their expressions were identically placid, and their eyes were identically empty. “Um. Hi, I'm—”
“Guests for the mistress,” the two girls cooed.
“...Yeah.” Chase hesitantly stepped up from the genkan farther into the vestibule. He leaned back to whisper to Deacon. “Okay, this is starting to be like if the guy in The Shining went to Mt. Fuji instead of to…the other mountain.”
“Oh, the one other mountain?”
“Dorkin,” Chase hissed, “they've got the dichotomy-of-man cosplay going on, and their eyes look like they've got all the life of crunchy dead grass.”
“Hey,” Deacon whispered back, “Relax. The helpers don't do anything scary, and that's not really what the ‘dichotomy of man’ means.”
“One’s a fluffy-haired, purple pig-tailed kid with little bat wings, and the other’s got those little pink ram horn hair dealies, and she’s got little angel wings—they're color-coded, dude.” Chase yanked on Deacon’s arm. “I feel like they're gonna rip my heart out and toss it on the scales of death to decide whether I go to the fun place or the super not fun place—”
“Okay, okay. I'll handle it.” Deacon stepped from the genkan into the vestibule, resting his hand on the half-wall divider as he went. “Good afternoon,” he addressed the two girls, “I and Himawari are here to…see the ‘mistress’.”
“Right this way,” the girls sang and proceeded to turn and hook their fingers into the circular door handles behind them. The doors’ image of a crescent moon among clouds parted as the girls pulled them open.
Chase cautioned a look into the room. The comic panels of the shopkeeper (or ‘mistress’, according to the twin helpers) painted her as beautiful, comfortable, and fun-loving, but it was a whole different vibe to walk into Edgar Allen Poe’s Japanese vacation home to meet her. The light within the room was dim, and there were no sounds apart from a slow inhale and slow exhale. Plumes of smoke lazily dragged around the room as they drifted from the floor to the ceiling. Chase sucked in a gasp and clutched his school bag. “Deacon, stay back!” Quickly, he charged into the room and swung his school bag back and forth to wave the smoke away.
“It's fine,” Deacon called from the doorway. “It's just—”
“Open the doors and windows!” Chase stopped right before the shopkeeper's lounge chair, still vehemently swinging his school bag back and forth. “C'mon, Buddy, let's go!” He reached a hand out to the shopkeeper. “There's a fire!”
The shopkeeper, a young dark-haired man in his late teens instead of a voluptuous young woman visually in her late twenties, watched Chase with his mouth agape and his eyes glittering with anger. “I know,” he growled and lifted an intricate silver tobacco pipe, took a brief puff, and blew the smoke away from Chase and towards the wall before meeting Chase’s gaze again. “It's my smoke.”
“Oh…. Still!” Chase threw his arms up. “Stop smoking! What, you wanna get lung cancer? Gimme that.” He reached for the pipe.
“Hey!” Buddy held the pipe away from Chase and pressed his free hand against Chase's chest to thwart his thieving progress. “This is a story! It's just fiction! Smoking is fine! Now, are you done ruining my introduction?”
Chase huffed when he couldn't reach the pipe. Reluctantly, he stood up straight. “Okay, but could you still stop smoking it? I really….” He looked away from Buddy. “I can't really….”
After a moment of silence, Buddy rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine.” The silver pipe tapped against the ashtray before it settled in its holder. “There. It's out.”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever. Now, take a step back and look at me properly.” Buddy waved a hand as a signal for Chase to back up. “Five feet at least.”
Chase scoffed and stammered, “What's—what? What’re you talking about?”
Buddy lifted an eyebrow. “You want to do this right and get plenty of narratonin, don't you?” He rested his hand, fingers splayed, over his heart. “I am a two-page spread. Step back and appreciate it properly.”
Chase groaned and walked backwards to stand in the center of the room. With his arms crossed and a pout on his face, Chase rested his gaze on the shopkeeper.
Buddy had leaned back and propped his head up by planting his right elbow against the lounge chair’s arm and perched his head on his right palm. His left arm draped over a thick pillow beneath him, and his legs stretched out across the lounge chair. The dark rose-covered kimono Buddy wore fell open at his chest and at his upper thighs. One silk bow tied around his waist was all that kept the kimono fastened. While the original shopkeeper’s hair was long and sleek and her original expression was aloof, Buddy’s hair was tousled and fluffy with annoyance. His eyebrows were knitted together above his piercing blue eyes, and his lips were pulled taut in a tense frown.
This always happened. The heroine was always infuriating somehow—always goofing off and always making a mockery of whatever story they happened to be in. Buddy hadn’t been so quick to jump to annoyance earlier that day.
Just like every morning in his employ under Ex Libris, he woke up and sat up, his back stiff, eyelids heavy, and spine rife with shivers. He kicked off his sheet, jumped out of bed as if it was ready to eat him whole, and tucked the sheet back. Within the ten minutes it took to make it from his assigned bed to his door, Buddy had thrown on his clothes, righted them, and brushed his teeth. The morning routine was brisk because death was inevitable and fast approaching.
Buddy left his room and walked down the hall, over carpet that had long lost its plush pile and past polished dark wood walls filled with oil paintings of long gone keyholders, grand historic events, and lavish landscapes—none of which Buddy had ever witnessed in real time.
Real time.
Buddy breathed out a ghost of a sardonic laugh as he passed doors assigned to the current keyholders. He rounded a corner and treaded down the keyholders’ tight staircase tucked behind attempts at indoor plant life—all dead or fake. What was real time anymore? Every book he entered was a time pocket existing in its own universe. Future, past, fairies, or guillotine—Buddy had witnessed them all.
Only the fictional versions.
Only the fictional versions. Buddy glared for a moment before dropping all expression. Just in case. A lone shiver shot up his back, and he bit the inside of his cheek to ignore it. He rounded another corner and entered the old kitchen. Since 1740, it had stood with its solid wooden counters and island, deep sinks, stone oven, and iron stove. A kitchen of such historic value was ironically only ever used to supply the blandest and barest of minimums when it came to meals. Some days—like this morning—the scrambled eggs left cold and unattended in a ceramic dish were more tap water than eggs, and the bread knocked solidly against the table when Buddy tested its firmness. After a pause, Buddy conceded and choked down the bread and eggs (along with a multivitamin tablet smuggled from his stash of treats in his room). Breakfast was small because decay was quick and never-ending.
With practiced ease, Buddy slipped his dishes under the sink, soaped them, rinsed them, and then dried them. A wince tugged at the corner of Buddy’s lips as his dishes clinked against their neighbors when he put them away.
Buddy dunked his hands under the sink’s running water and scrubbed at his hands with soap and vigor, banishing any fleck of filth or food that dared to remain on his fingers. He took a few seconds to properly straighten his clothes again—smooth a wrinkle here, brush off a speck of lint there, and so on. He breathed in a slow, stabilizing breath and released it just as slowly in the kitchen absent of sound and windows to the outside world.
Buddy turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen, his gut temporarily jettisoning butterflies around in his stomach like hornets in an agitated nest. It wasn’t until Buddy could be sure the hall was empty that his stomach settled. His muted footsteps passed between the intricate threads of the rugs as he headed to the Villainess’s Study. Buddy’s steps slowed to a stop as he approached the highlight of his commute: the atrium—or Buddy’s closest approximation of what an atrium was. If he stood at the center of the round, open room and stared straight up, he could catch sight of sunbeams peeking through the windows just large enough to allow nothing more than a cat to slip through. The beams never reached the polished tile floors of the atrium or even much of the walls at all. Dust glittered as it waved and spun in the sunlight that Buddy could never reach.
The depths of jealousy filled Buddy’s lungs and dragged him onward to the Villainess’s Study, urging him to sink deeper and deeper into the mission laid out for him and to kiss the sunlight goodbye again. After all, feeling the warmth of sun on his pale skin did nothing to earn narratonin for the Old Man and the rest of Ex Libris’s Chosen Cabinet. The commute to the Villainess’s Study was short because responsibility was heavy and forever crushing.
Buddy approached the Villainess’s Study and held up the purple key he always wore around his neck. Gently, he slipped it into the keyhole, and the door opened without resistance. Buddy guided the key out of the lock and stepped into a room with a bare-bones desk littered with glass jars and lids along with a modest bookcase filled with stark-colored spines. The door fell closed behind him. Buddy crossed the small room and stood in front of the podium before him.
On the podium sat a silver book—every book the heroine chose. Each time Buddy lifted the cover, a different story awaited him within the pages of the Heroine Book. Today’s story was in a format Buddy was less familiar with: comic strips bound together with a continuous story.
It was new to him. Buddy turned pages and pages as he sped through the content and only stopped when he’d mentally marked down the careful steps the story took from beginning to end—like any professional keyholder would and especially unlike the current heroine keyholder.
Exactly, Buddy thought as he sized up the heroine standing in front of him in a high school uniform with golden curls glittering like dust through sunbeams. He can’t be here. Not in the sacred time pockets only accessible by qualified keyholder agents. Ex Libris is an elite force, and he doesn’t deserve to be here. The kimono Buddy wore did little to warm him, and the glare he molded to his features did little to soothe the ache in his stomach, but he would remain professional and survive on glances at unobtainable views through unreachable windows, basic nutrients which were squirreled away, and praise for a job well done.
“M’kay, howzhat?” Chase mumbled, a bit distractedly, as his eyes remained locked on the scene before him.
Buddy begrudgingly packed away his memories from this morning and allowed the two-page spread to pass. “Better.”
“Great.” Chase didn’t move from his position even as his cheeks warmed. “Cool, cool. Yeah. S’great. That’s a…sick kimono, dude.” He stepped forward and reached out to rub some of the silk bow between his forefinger and thumb. “S’that 100% silk?”
Buddy lifted an eyebrow, his anger from before cooling ever so slightly. “Weaved by the silk worms themselves.”
“Stooooop,” Chase whined as his eyes widened in jealousy. “That’s so qualityyyy…. And this? This cotton?” Chase pinched at the white under clothes beneath the shimmering berry-purple rose fabric.
Buddy’s jaw locked as Chase’s forefinger brushed against his bare chest. “Also silk,” he answered quickly and broke eye contact, “or—…Maybe a blend.”
Chase paused. “Wait, why wouldn’t it be cotton if it’s supposed to be worn under—”
“Hey, guys.” Deacon spoke up and rested a hand on Chase’s shoulder to try and drag him out of fabric heaven and into the reality where Chase was indeed pinching and feeling up the kimono their ‘enemy’ was currently wearing. “I feel like we’re getting off topic.”
Chase, now mentally broken free of the allure of the silk shackles, immediately released his hold on Buddy’s outfit and took a few steps back. “Right, yeah—yeah. Uh. Appreciation accomplished.” He offered a shaky thumbs up and a stiff smile.
Buddy sent Deacon an acidic glare and huffed, “You’re both really going to see this story through? That’s a surprise.”
“Hey, we’ve seen a lot of stories through,” Chase argued. “I haven’t left any stories for days.”
“You should leave this one.” Buddy stretched his legs and sat up on the lounge chair. “It’s not your style.”
“Uh, excuse you, this comic is totally my style.”
“A gothic horror that shows blood?”
“Right up my alley, dude.”
“Oh.” Buddy mentally rifled through his knowledge of Chase and his preferences. Really, it seemed like putting Chase in the same room as Dracula or a ghost would cause Chase to implode, but either Chase was lying or Buddy didn’t know him as well as he thought. He frowned at the idea. “There’s a supernatural horror aspect, too.”
Deacon shook his head, well aware of Chase’s preferences.
“Stop trying to sell water to a fish, man; I’m here. I’m locked in.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to do your part in this book?” Buddy stood and peered down at Chase, his eyes seemingly darkening due to the dim lighting in the room. “It doesn’t seem like you at all.”
“Hey, I’ll scream and run whenever I have to. That’s no problem. I’m staying, and I’m getting that narratonin. So there’s going to be some blood and probably…some dead bodies…, but I can tough it out.”
“Oh? You’ll just tough it out.” Buddy snickered, and his eyes locked with Deacon’s. “I suppose Freckles didn’t tell you what you’ll have to do, hm?”
Chase paused as the unfamiliar feeling of hesitancy welled up within him. “Okay, this book is rated for teens, and I’m eighteen. If anything really bad happens, it’s gonna be off-screen.”
“It is. Sort of.” Buddy tilted his head, and his gaze fell on Chase again. “But I don’t think you have the stomach for it. You, Himawari, must distract the main character from saving someone’s life.” Buddy leaned forward and curled his index finger around one of Chase’s pigtails. “You, the brat who couldn’t even bear to let the evil step-sisters succumb to their bad ending in the original Cinderella, have to help kill someone.” He flicked his index finger away from the curls and straightened his posture. “Still think you’re up for it?”
At this, Chase went silent as he imagined what could be waiting for him. “Deacon?”
“Hey, we thought you were going to be the shopkeeper, remember? I didn’t have super detailed notes on Himawari. If I remember correctly, all she does is talk to the main character, and since the main character has a huge crush on her, he gets distracted from—”
“The helpless frozen woman about to be run over by a truck.”
“Yeah, thanks, Buddy,” Deacon huffed.
Buddy nodded and watched Chase’s expression dig its way through disbelief and frustration. “So there you go. You can’t handle it.”
As if a light flicked on in Chase’s head, his eyes brightened up with realization. “I’ll just save her. The frozen woman.”
Buddy scoffed.
“No, I will! It won’t be that hard. The main character probably thinks about doing that anyway. I don’t need him to wait to see what’s going to happen, and I’m not gonna distract him from anything.” Chase jabbed a thumb to his chest. “I’ll be the one to pull the frozen woman out of the street, and she’ll be fine.”
Buddy rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “You can’t do that.”
“‘Course I can; my athletic skills are unmatched.” Chase held up a finger for each victory he counted: “My gym report cards? All A’s. My classmates? In awe. My dance instructor? In tears. The Olympics? Probably gonna call any day now. Bam.”
Buddy stared blankly at Chase, really not sure where to begin his criticisms. His gaze passed to Deacon. “Did you even read the book? You usually seem to.”
“Yeah, I read it. A…a while ago.” Deacon folded up his notes and tucked them away in his pocket.
“So then you at least know why he can’t do it?”
With a wince, Deacon started to explain, “We can’t save the frozen woman because—”
“—Her death is the entire thesis of this text coming to fruition,” Buddy interjected, clearly not wanting to waste his time giving Deacon any of the floor whatsoever. “You both chose a story with very strict rules for its world. That’s why I’m surprised. The main setting is a shop that grants wishes which accepts nearly any form of payment be it souls or precious objects and everything and anything in between, and anyone who disrespects that heavy responsibility that comes with making a wish ends up paying for it dearly. That’s why there are so many one-off side characters. That’s why there’s blood. That’s why there’s death. That’s why you, little idiot, wouldn’t be able to handle playing the part of Yûko.” Buddy’s index finger jabbed at Chase’s chest.
Chase gripped Buddy’s hand and shouted back, “I could totally have been Yûko! She helps out the main guy! That’s heroine material!”
“She has all the background knowledge of spells and wish-granting and prices to pay; it’s not something you’d want to deal with when you see just how much sacrifice goes into it. Additionally—,” Buddy leaned close to Chase and hissed, “—she’s not just ‘the shopkeeper.’ Yûko is the Space-Time Witch. Last I checked, witches tend to fall under the villainess umbrella.”
“Witches aren’t evil just because they’re witches; you just wanted to mess with her cool powers!”
“Your brat brain would melt if you had to figure out her powers.” Buddy yanked his hand away from Chase and straightened his posture before walking past the pair. “It’s like being a doctor. You have all this knowledge at your fingertips of how the human body works and what could happen to it based on what a patient does. You warn them. You advise them. You prescribe them a chemical helper. They still do whatever the hell they want and are worse off for it—except it’s not just advising them to stay in bed if they have the sniffles.” Buddy stopped at the open doorway and turned to face Chase and Deacon. “Do yourselves a favor. Leave this book and find a more lenient story that can work with your sensibilities. Trying to save that frozen woman will only stall the story, and something worse may happen to her if you don’t leave her to her fate. Besides, she’s fictional anyway. She doesn’t at all affect the life that you live.” Buddy’s eyes softened before he looked away and held an arm to the door. “Go on. The exit is that way.”
Chase nearly glared a hole through the tatami floor before directing it at Buddy. “You’re wrong.”
Buddy bristled and scoffed.
“No, really.” Chase closed the distance between them. “If you don’t think fiction affects us, you’re dead wrong. If you can look at someone about to die and shrug it off, then something’s wrong with you. C’mon, Deacon,” Chase huffed, shoulder-checked Buddy as he stormed out of the room, and ignored Buddy’s continued warnings about letting the story take its course.
Deacon followed Chase out in silence.
Once they’d both left the wish-granting shop and were back on the sidewalk, Chase turned to Deacon head-on and waved an arm at the shop. “What the hell, man? Why didn’t you back me up in there?”
Deacon held up his hands in an attempt to calm the humanoid ball of anger in front of him. “Sorry, I didn’t want to get between two warring cats, and I really don’t think anything I could’ve said or done would’ve convinced you two not to duke it out with each other. It’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to be Yûko, but this could be a blessing in disguise.”
Chase’s arm fell, and he turned away from Deacon to stretch up to the sky before letting out a deep sigh. He replied, calmer than before, “How so?”
“When I think about how the universe could’ve bit you in the butt for whatever wish thing you would probably mess with as the Space-Time Witch, I feel like I’m developing tachycardia.” At that thought, Deacon practiced a couple slow breaths. “Yûko is pretty much a headliner in this book. Since we’re just playing Himawari and Domeki, we just have to be present for a couple scenes, the story progresses, the book finishes, and we have our narratonin for this one. This volume is probably just going to stay on the shelf for reading material instead of narratonin-gathering material.”
Chase watched as clouds moved at a glacial pace across the sky above. “...Yeah, maybe."