An anthropomorphic chicken and a giant spinach monster fought on a TV screen.

  “It’s over, Major Chicken!” said the creature, its massive green body towering over its opposition. “Soon, all animal meat will be replaced with tofu! Soy shall flood the world!”

  “You underestimate the power of my animal protein, Spinach Master!” Major Chicken let go of his feather limiters, his skin growing a thick layer of crisp crust armor. “Super Fried Mode!”

  “Your cartoon is awful, Maruki,” John commented while slouching on the floor, a soda bottle in hand. “This is just sad.”

  “I’m not seeing you switch channels,” Matthew said while sipping his own Coca-Cola. Kari alone had the willpower to resist the TV’s call; she had taken over Matthew’s bed and was studying on her tablet with her earbuds on. “Go on, try.”

  John grabbed the remote at the very moment Major Chicken lunged forward to the tune of a hype rock song. His crispy fist buried itself in Spinach Master’s chest, causing him to cough out soy sauce. A lengthy beatdown followed, each punch weakening John’s hold on the change channel button.

  “I can’t,” John conceded after surrendering the remote. “It’s so bad I can’t look away.”

  Matthew grinned in triumph. “They all say that eventually. You know that this cartoon has survived every single Timeshift so far?”

  “Not even Dungeons can stop the fast-food industry,” John grumbled.

  The Major Chicken: Tender Generation rerun was mostly an excuse to kill time before the Eurobillion Show. Matthew purchased a lottery ticket while spending all of his hard-won Lucky Star mojo on it. Since he had to be eighteen to enter the competition, the Doc would gather the money on his behalf.

  Matthew was so certain of his victory that he invited his teammates to see the results in real time in his dorm room. Only ten minutes separated him from a well-stocked bank account.

  “I’m surprised you even have good luck left to spend,” John commented. “I thought you would waste it all in the Dungeon.”

  “You’re telling me,” Matthew replied. “My Peak-Doom Sense combo didn’t trigger in the Boss fight either.”

  “Must be because we were covering your ass,” John suggested after finishing his soda. “You weren’t exactly in lethal danger back there."

  Matthew thought along the same lines. The combo first activated when he nearly took a fatal blow during the soccer match, and then when a tougher-than-usual monster exclusively focused on him. Since his team dominated the Boss from start to finish, the lack of danger likely prevented his spells from synergizing.

  “Guys!” Matthew and John turned to Kari, who had removed her earbuds. She presented them with what appeared to be a J-pop group picture on her tablet. Four pretty girls posed in front of a camera, each of them having dyed their hair a different color. “Which of them looks the most attractive to you?”

  “The redhead,” Matthew decided almost immediately.

  “The blonde one,” John replied.

  “I thought the redhead was cuter too,” Kari said, blatantly ignoring John’s input. She smiled at Matthew in a way that felt completely unnatural. “Matt, we’re friends, right?”

  “See that, Maruki?” John pointed at Kari’s face. “That’s her ‘run-away’ face.”

  “Of course we’re friends, Kari.” Matthew rubbed his hands. He smelled an opportunity. “Go on, what’s on your mind?”

  “Well… how to say it…” Kari scratched her cheek and sheepishly avoided Matthew’s gaze. “I would like to dye my hair red, but I’m afraid I’ll look ridiculous if I do it alone...”

  Matthew immediately guessed her devious plot. “So you want to share the shame with me?”

  “Exactly!” Kari set her tablet aside and joined her hands to implore him. “Should the worst come to pass, we’ll be ridiculous together!"

  John appeared more puzzled than anything. “You, dye your hair? Matsumoto, you’re the dictionary picture of boring and straight-laced.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” Kari pouted. “That’s why I’d like to change my image. Show that I can be fun to hang out with too.”

  “Oh, oh, I have an idea!” Matthew snapped his fingers. “What if I dye my hair blue? Since John is blond, the monsters will be so confused when we use spells of different colors than our hair!”

  “They’ll never see it coming,” John said with the most deadpan look imaginable.

  Kari beamed with happiness. “So you’ll do it with me, Matthew? Without question?”

  “Oh no, not without question!” Did she think Matthew was that desperate for approval? “We’re friends, right? I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

  “Ugh…” Kari immediately deflated. “What do you want in exchange?”

  Matthew grinned ear to ear and went for the throat. “You’ll be my date for the Fall Formal.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “What?” Kari choked. “Never!”

  Two Timeshifts ago, a dreadful new celebration entered the school calendar: a formal ball for the third years on the eve of the Fall Holidays. Everyone was supposed to come with a date, which, considering Matthew’s looks and personality, made that an unlikely prospect in his case.

  Most importantly, he didn’t want to look like a dateless loser by coming alone.

  “Isn’t that a bit premature?” John asked with a snort. “You’ve got a month to find a victim.”

  “Yeah, but this year’s schoolwork and Dungeon wrecking will demand all of my precious mental energy,” Matthew replied with a shrug. “I would rather focus on my spellcasting and intellectual development.”

  Kari didn’t believe him. “You’re just too lazy to find a girlfriend.”

  “That too,” Matthew replied cheerfully. “No date, no dye. Take it or leave it.”

  “Oh my…” Kari groaned. “What if I find you someone else? Would that work too?”

  John stifled a laugh. “You think you’ll find a girl desperate enough to go out with this guy?”

  “Shut up, John,” Kari said with a glare.

  “I’m fine with any girl you find before the Fall Formal deadline,” Matthew replied. He didn’t discriminate or micromanage. “Consider yourself like a Ring movie victim, Kari. You’re cursed until you find someone to pass the tape on along.”

  “Did you really have to use that analogy?” Kari sighed. “Deal.”

  “You want to know the secret to attracting girls, Maruki? Besides blackmail?” John taunted him. “You have to be rich, smart, and handsome. Unfortunately for you, you only picked one.”

  “I’ll have two tonight!” Matthew countered. “Watch as I ascend to the throne of Lottery King!”

  Once the Major Chicken episode concluded in a victory for the family-friendly fast-food industry, Matthew switched channels until he happened upon the Eurobillion show. A picture of two machines juggling numbered marbles appeared on the screen, while a voiceover greeted the viewers.

  “Welcome to tonight’s draw, are you ready to get that sweet Eurobillion feeling?! Tonight’s jackpot is a whopping seventeen million! Let’s start the draw!”

  Matthew anxiously waited for the first marble to fall with his precious ticket in hand. Ten, eighteen, thirty-five, sixteen, twenty-two, one, ten. He believed in these numbers picked at random, without sense or reason!

  “All right, I’ve run the probability calculations,” Kari said. Ever the Blue math nerd, she’d drafted a detailed Excel sheet on her tablet. “You have one chance in twenty-two to reach the most basic threshold with two correct numbers, Matthew.”

  “I’m betting he gets three right,” John declared.

  Matthew silenced that pessimistic prick with his own rational assessment. “And I’m betting I win the jackpot! Five numbers and two stars!”

  “That’s a tall order, Matthew,” Kari said with a small chuckle. “Your odds of hitting the jackpot are one in one-hundred forty million.”

  “I don’t believe in math,” Matthew replied. “I believe in magic.”

  “And our first ball is the ten!” said the voice, right before the second marble came out of the machine. “Eighteen!”

  “Two out of seven!” Matthew inhaled sharply. His heart pounded harder in his chest once the number thirty-five came up. “Three!”

  John shrugged. “So far so good.”

  “Your odds for four numbers are one in thirteen thousand and eight-hundred eleven,” Kari noted, her fingers tensing on her tablet. Now she was invested in the game. “Still doable. Afterwards, it’s one chance in three million.”

  “Fourth out lands on sixteen!”

  Matthew clenched his jaw. He had grown so tense that he couldn’t speak out anymore. His eye watched the last marble come out of the machine with such focus, that he could have missed out on John dropping dead in the background.

  “And the fifth and final main ball falls on the twenty-two!”

  Matthew’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. He sensed Kari rush off of the bed to sit at his side in excitement and John spitting out his soda.

  “No way…” John crawled at Matthew’s left, having finally become a believer. “No fucking way…”

  Matthew held on to his ticket like it was his very soul. The screen moved on to a second lotto machine and the twelve marbles it contained.

  “Now for tonight’s lucky star numbers!” the voiceover announced as the marbles began to fly inside their glass cage to a chipper music tune.

  “How much does he win if he gets one more number right?” John asked, utterly dumbfounded.

  “By my calculations…” Kari began to bite her nails. “Over half a million euros.”

  This was it. Matthew could feel it in his bones. The cosmic alignment that would bless him with victory. He had named his spell Lucky Star in preparation for this very moment. Only two marbles separated him from a life of leisure and wealth.

  Once he won millions, he would buy all the properties around the Mall, then have them walled off before Christmas.

  “The first lucky star is…”

  Matthew held his breath.

  “Two!”

  His blood froze in his veins. Matthew’s eye lingered on the marble in case he had misheard, only for that cruel number to taunt him.

  The jackpot had eluded him!

  “No,” Matthew complained as fate snatched defeat off the jaws of victory. “No, no, no!”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Kari reassured him. “You still have a chance!”

  “And the second lucky star to appear tonight…”

  Matthew prayed for his magic not to betray him in his hour of need. The final marble rolled out of the lotto machine too fast for him to see.

  Half a million. Matthew could live with half a million. Please land on the ten, please land on the ten…

  Despair had a face, and it was a double one.

  “Is eleven!”

  Matthew let out a scream of absolute frustration. His millions had slipped through his fingers!

  A knock echoed on the door, followed by the sound of King Coach’s voice. “Stop jacking off in your room, Matthew! Do it in the bathroom like everyone else!”

  Kari blushed and did her best not to make a sound, since rumors would spread if someone found her in the boys’ dorm at this hour. Meanwhile, Matthew felt too crushed and disappointed to answer King Coach anyway.

  He stared at his ticket in utter defeat. His spell failed to live up to its namesake.

  “No jackpot winner tonight!” the Eurobillion voice announced as if to put salt on his wounds. “Tune in next week for a twenty-six million prize!”

  “It’s not that bad, Matthew,” Kari tried to reassure him. She quickly ran calculations on her tablet. “You still won thirty-thousand euros, fifteen after everybody else takes their cut.”

  “Fifteen?” Matthew’s head turned at her in outrage. “Where did the other half go?”

  “Well…” Kari coughed. “Ten percent go to the organizers as profit, operating costs, and retailer commissions; twelve percent go to the government; and twenty-eight to charity.”

  “Charity? But I don’t want to give anything away!” Matthew complained. “I don’t care about the poor, I want to become the Monopoly guy!”

  “Are you whining about winning, Maruki?” John scolded him. “You’ve just won fifteen thousand euros!”

  “You’re right.” Matthew calmed himself and joined his hands in a supervillain pose. It helped him think of his financial future. “Tonight was merely a test of my power. Kari, what did you say were my odds of winning the jackpot?”

  “Uh, let me check…” Kari looked at her tablet. “Almost one in one-hundred forty million.”

  Matthew quickly ran the calculations in his head. Surviving a lethal soccer match let him farm enough good luck to win a one-in-three-millions odd. Winning the Eurobillion jackpot should thus require forty-six matches, each deadlier than the last. The dorm wouldn’t organize enough of these events across the school year, which left the nuclear option.

  “I might have to join a sports club,” Matthew said ominously.

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