The Doc brought his students back to the dorm with a heavy heart and insisted that they could call him anytime if they needed it. Their poor helicopter teacher struggled to let them fly away. Afterwards, fulfilling the terms of their devil’s bargain, Kari all but dragged Matthew into the dorm’s bathroom to dye their hair.
The ‘ceremony’ went better than Matthew expected. True, Kari was so stressed she almost canceled the whole thing at the last second and almost bit off all of her nails by the time they’d finished, but Matt’s brave and noble capillary sacrifice helped her pull through.
“So?” Kari asked sheepishly once they looked at each other in the bathroom mirror. Her black hair was now a bright shade of scarlet, and Matt’s own hair had turned navy blue. It worked surprisingly well with his yellow shirt. “What do you think? Cute?”
“Cute?” Matt stated firmly. “Girl, we’re adorable.”
Kari blushed slightly, which quickly proved his point. “Thank you for going through it with me, Matt.”
“Don’t mention it.” It was a small price to pay to get a guaranteed date without having to work for it. “It’s the court of public opinion that you should fear, not me.”
“I know, don’t stress me out further please…” Kari gave him a small, ominous smirk. “Soooo, what did you and Amélia talk about earlier?”
“Well, I gave her tips, showed her how to read her way through Crawlnet’s wiki, and promised I would show her the ropes tomorrow after school. You can say I became her… senpai.”
Kari’s smirk only grew more mischievous. Matthew knew that look, and the trouble it would bring. “Are you sure you need my help to find a date, Matt?”
“Can’t a senpai talk to his kohai without inviting gossip nowadays?” Matthew complained with a shrug. “Besides, to nail her I would have to be in another relationship first. So I still need your help.”
“What does that…” Kari frowned and then wisely decided not to dig further. “No, nevermind, that’s not my business.”
How considerate of her. The two of them exited the bathroom to find the dorm’s main hall mostly deserted at this hour. John had taken over the sofa and was busy typing on his laptop. He lifted his eyes from his screen just long enough to laugh at his teammates, which only caused Kari’s cheeks to turn redder than her new hair.
“Oh shut up, John!” Kari complained.
“Don’t listen to him, he’s just jealous,” Matt reassured her. “He just can’t fathom that I look cool, like the sea.”
“Whatever, Maruki,” John replied as he struggled to stifle his laughter. He then turned his computer’s screen at them. “While you were wasting your time on frivolities, I’ve completed our new patrol itinerary through Temple Alley. I’ve included all key locations most likely to have a Dungeon according to Crypto’s analysis.”
“What about the Major Chicken stop?” Matthew asked as he reviewed the path. “They’re doing a promo tomorrow on the family buckets, we can’t miss it.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve taken it into account for dinner,” John reassured him with a snort. “Alongside a pit stop to visit Miss Troublesome Attitude, as you asked.”
Matthew winced at that. He wasn’t looking forward to visiting Maggie again, but he had promised Mr. Chang that he would at least try. He still hoped to talk things through with her.
“I can’t believe we’ll be patrolling without Mr. O’Connor,” Kari complained. “You guys think we got this?”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” John replied with a shrug. “We’ve hunted on our own before. So long as we go in fresh and coordinate, we’ll pull through.”
“Which is why I’m gonna bid you both goodnight early,” Matthew said, much to his teammates’ surprise. “I'm gonna try out a whole new dream-based spell tonight, and I’ll need my beauty sleep.”
“A new spell?” Kari blinked. “Shouldn’t you focus on improving your Art Attack one first?”
“Why?” Matthew asked. “I proved it works, so now I can move on to new projects.”
“But it’s useless in its current form!” Kari insisted.
“All the more reason to try something new and even more exciting!” Matthew waved a hand at her. “Look, Kari, if you want to dwell on the ancient past, then that’s your problem. I’ve got a date with the future.”
“You created your art spell this morning!”
John gave them a bemused look. “So that’s what untreated ADHD looks like. Good to know.”
“You Yellow Crawlers can’t make practical stuff to save your life,” Kari said with a sigh. “Not to mention that you can’t go to bed immediately, Matt. You still have your luck-farming gacha homework to finish, remember? I won’t let you rest unless you stick to the schedule.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Ugh, but it’s boring,” Matthew complained. “You Blues always suck the fun out of spellcasting!”
Kari let out a heavy breath, then swiftly put her hands on Matthew’s shoulders. Both felt far more heavy than her slim and graceful frame would suggest. A terrible and oppressive sensation of being cornered sank into his stomach’s pit.
“I believe,” she said, in a tone that wasn’t ominous in the slightest, “in the industrialization of fun.”
At this point, Matt realized that this whole association had been a big mistake.
Kari’s torture session at least had one silver lining: by the time Matthew returned to his room, he had grown so emotionally drained that he simply collapsed into the bed.
Matt never understood just how numbing free-to-play gachas could become without that sweet dopamine gambler rush. Minutes after minutes of pulling three-star trash units without the relief of a good catch turned the experience into a soul-crushing one. Whenever he ran out of free orbs or tokens to spend, Kari switched the game to prolong the torture.
And the worst part was that she had been right! Grinding gacha games while starving himself of good luck quickly built up Lucky Star’s fortune reserves far more than doing sports. All he had to do was… work.
Was this how office slavery felt like?
“The things I do for money…” Matthew complained with his face buried deep within his pillow. He focused his Yellow Flux around his brain after closing his last eye. “Dreamscape.”
Most spells targeting the brain fell under the Blue or Green purview, so he mostly took inspiration from Kari’s Premium Thoughts for this one. He would coat his neurons in beautiful gilded sorcery and then let it flare upon fading away into sweet slumber. His many experiments with lucid dreaming had prepared him for this day.
Matt had a good feeling about it. Thoughts fell within the Blue purview, but dreams? Dreams were surreal, symbolic, and nonsensical. They were the perfect breeding ground for Yellow spells!
Matt didn’t have to wait long to fade away into the darkness… and then into a gaping tunnel of golden light.
He ‘woke up’ on an island under a watercolor sky.
He felt a peaceful, paint-smelling breeze gently caress his face and the light of a golden sun warm him up. He rested on his back for a moment, watching rainbow-colored clouds and flying fish with clock-scales floating high above. A smile stretched on his lips.
“It worked!” So great was his excitement that he bolted to his feet to better observe his surroundings. “It worked!”
A strange and wonderful universe born of his dreams sprawled all around him, all of it painted in watercolor. Matthew stood alone on a beach of white grains facing a great ink sea stretching as far as he could see under a golden sky. He caught a glimpse of planes and cats flying below the waves, of giant smartphones carried by the currents, of distant inverted castles hovering over the surface, and countless other wonderful sights. He turned around to observe the island on which he stood and saw odd landmarks in the distance: a coral tower, a giant multicolored factory, and even a vertical forest rising into the nothing. A signboard stood nearby next to a piano, each direction adorned with cute feline drawings.
“Take that, Kari!” Matthew boasted to himself, his heart overflowing with pride. “Who’s the most productive now? I can work in my sleep now!”
How much control did he have over his environment? Matthew waved his hand and immediately created a giant cat statue from the white manga sand surrounding him. As it turned out, he had plenty!
Or so Matthew thought, until he tried to fill the hole in his empty socket with a new eye. He felt a sharp surge of pain and resistance, followed by the sting of failure.
How odd. Matt would have expected to control everything inside his own head, but his subconscious probably obeyed its own laws. He guessed his perception of himself affected the spell.
Never one to stand idle for long, Matthew immediately checked the signboard for directions.
Imagination Factory ↑
Museum of Cherished Memories →
Library of Past Jokes ←
Tower of Pleasant Distractions ↓
Gallery of Subconscious Artwork ←↑
Musical Theater ↓←
Grave of Half-Assed Ideas → ↑→ ?
Tomorrow’s Homework ←←↓→↑↑←↓ ↑←→↓←↑↑→ ↑←↓→↑↑↓↑ ←↑↓↓↑↑↑↓ ↑←→→↑→↑→ ↑↑↓→↑↑↓← ↑↑↓↓↑↓↑→
“My dreamscape is a lot more organized than I thought it would be,” Matthew mused out loud before deciding ‘dreamscape’ was too cliché of a name for such a wonderful place. He considered other options and then snapped his fingers upon finding one. “The Sentimental World!”
Now that sounded a lot more grandiose!
After hesitating between the Tower of Pleasant Distractions and the Museum of Cherished Memories, Matt decided to check on the latter. He barely had to take a few steps to his right before the world around him shifted into an open path surrounded by cherry trees, each of them carrying a splendidly detailed landscape photograph within their branches. Matthew smiled upon checking the first, which showed his parents doting on him at the beach back when he was five. Mom and Dad looked so much younger on it, and happier too.
Matthew’s mood quickly turned sour. He had an inkling to what caused his parents’ separation and he didn’t wish to be reminded of it. Ignorance was bliss.
The next few pictures showed moments with his old gang back in their childhood. Jack, Perse, Sam, Ulysses… even Maggie was there, smiling and giggling at everything. Matt’s lips stretched into a smile when he saw the infamous ‘band’ memory when they all tried to play an instrument together. His parents had enough money to buy him a small piano back then, and he recalled carrying the group’s lackluster performance alongside Perse’s singing. Those were good times.
His gaze lingered on Perse’s face the longest. She hadn’t entered her goth phase yet so she wasn’t dying her golden hair back then. She looked so much like her twin brother during that time, to the point Matthew often struggled to tell them apart. He lost himself in her blue-grey eyes and past happiness.
It just filled him with sadness and sorrow.
I shouldn’t dwell on this, Matthew thought as he turned his gaze away from her face. His psychiatrist explicitly warned him to avoid reminders of her to overcome the trauma of her loss. If I do, I’ll end up like Magg–
Something caught his attention.
Matthew focused until he saw it in the background of his home’s living room, far behind the crew: a spot blacker than ink covering an entire pan of the wall.
A hole.
Matthew stared at it in silent disbelief for a moment. What… What was a hole doing here? He was eight in that picture; over three years before he even gained his Key.
Unsettled, Matthew turned away from the photograph and moved on to the next. The next one represented the day his father finally relented in buying him Dungeon & Dragons figurines to play with his friends. Nothing unusual… except for a disturbing detail.
There was a hole in the background, right next to the bed stand.
A dark feeling sank in Matthew’s gut—if he even had one in his current dream state—as he checked the rest of the gallery. He saw black spots almost everywhere he looked, growing bigger with each passing year the more they approached that awful Christmas. Some were so big as to swallow entire pictures.
His mind was riddled with holes.
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