A few hours of walking later, Drade made it to the old, unused school that was the Friend’s base. As he passed the best friend’s door, he heard her playing Bite and Smite 2 again. Remembering the scene he’d seen a few days ago made him want to check in on her to make sure she was fine.

He opened the door. Inside, that strange girl who had ‘killed’ the Best Friend on that particularly strange day sat beside her, playing. That strange girl had claimed something along the lines of ‘every day the consequences of my decisions are erased’ after she killed the Best Friend, and true to her word, the Best Friend was revived at midnight.

“Hi,” Drade said, looking between the two carefully

The weird girl looked at him, taking her attention away from the game for a moment. She muttered to herself. “Oh, it’s that weird guy.” She looked back at the game, unconcerned, then spoke quickly in a bored, uninterested tone. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Onei. I’m Faio’s friend. Good to meet you.”

“No, we’ve met. Aren’t you that weird girl I saw two days ago?”

“Yeah, pro-” Onei turned her head to look at Drade, a look of skeptical confusion on her face, then shook her head and dismissed his question. “No, probably not.”

“No, you definitely are, not unless you have a doppelganger. You don’t have a doppelganger walking around the city, do you? Those people always complicate stuff.”

“I most definitely do not have a doppelganger.” She concentrated on the game she was playing for a moment, silent, then continued once things had calmed down on-screen. “I wasn’t anywhere near here two days ago.”

“You’re lying,” Drade said matter of factly. “About one or the other.”

The girl sighed. “Would you like to tell me why you insist you’ve seen me before? The chances you’ve seen me before today are nonexistent.”

“Must be a doppelganger then-wait no, I know why you think I haven’t seen you before. It’s got to do with that thing about nothing you do mattering.”

Onei turned her head back again, skeptical. “I don’t think I’ve told anyone about that today...where did you hear about my curse?”

Faio paused the game, then spoke up. “Your curse?”

“Don’t worry about it, Faio.”

“Sure...” Faio said, feeling dismissed.

Drade continued, “Two days ago, when you were in here, you told me about it.”

Onei’s eyes widened, her voice gaining a spark of excitement. “What did you see two days ago?”

“You were in here, playing Bite and Smite 2, and you did something with Faio...”

Her voice gained more excitement, and she placed her hands onto the ground to support her body as she leaned closer to Drade on all fours. “Did what?!”

Drade made a stabbing motion with his hand. “Y’know, you did the stibbidy stabble.”

A smile started to grow on Onei’s face, and she started bouncing on her arms. Drade wasn’t sure if the smile was murderous or wrought of pure interest. “What’s that mean?!”

“I am referring to when you injected a sharp object into a particular someone.”

“Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!” She repeated out for an unreasonable length of time, “I did do that two days ago!” She leaped onto her feet, a massive and somewhat disturbingly bright smile on her face.

“That’s not the type of thing I’d confess so profusely t-”

Onei had already begun dragging Drade out of the room with haste, “You can go on without me, Faio, I’ve got business!”

“Oh, sure...” the slightly younger girl said, disappointed.

She shut the door behind them, then opened the door to the next closest classroom. “Come in!” she said as she skipped into the room.

Drade sighed, annoyed he’d once more brought himself into other people’s problems, then followed her inside and closed the door.

“Tell it to me again!”

“Tell you what?”

“That you remember me from two days ago!”

“I remember you from two days ago.”

She stared at him with a dumb grin, then walked uncomfortably close to him and grabbed his wrists, shoving her face in front of his. “Say it again!”

Drade reeled back his head and growled a monotonous warning tone as he spoke, despite human vocal cords being unable to do that, “I remember you from two days ago...and could you please step away from my bubble?”

Onei ignored him, absently considering the ramifications of what Drade had just iterated three times. Drade noticed her hands trembling as she held his arms. He easily slipped out of her deceivingly limp grasp and put a comfortable space between them. “Can I go now?”

“Hmm?” She said, blinking as if confused by his statement, then suddenly burst out, “NO! P-please don’t...”

Drade saw a tear falling from her face for some reason. “Are you alright? Why are you crying?” he said with a disinterested tone. He cared if she was sad or happy, but entirely on an ethical basis.

“Because nobody can remember me...”

“Right, you said something about that when we met.”

“But you can!” She held her arms out as if presenting something amazing. “Every day, it’s like I never existed the last. Nobody can remember who I am, no matter what I do! But you’re the first person out of thousands I’ve seen who can! This is amazing! I-I-I can’t...” Her expression froze for a few seconds, then grew dark, and she defensively pulled her hands back near her heart in something akin to fear. “Y-you aren’t the person who...who did this to me, are you?!”

“No, of course not.”

“That’s all, no proof?”

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

“This isn’t a legal procedure.”

“Doesn’t need to be. So why did you want to talk to me?”

“Well, I...I want to talk to you...”

“I noticed.”

She gave him a stern look, letting her arms fall slack. “Well, you don’t say you noticed. I thought you were deaf.” Then she averted her eyes, ignoring her own outburst of sarcasm, falling into a more reserved position. “The reason why I wanted to talk to you was because...” She gave Drade a melancholy smile and raised her shoulders in a strange shrug. “I...I can’t really talk to anyone else...”

“Hmm, from what I remember you said-”

She interrupted him, “-Nothing I do matters, and you’re just gonna forget all this happened anyway, so who cares.”

“Exactly.”

“I rehearsed that line too many lines to count.”

“That’s a little depressing.”

She nodded. “Yep!”

“You say that, but you don’t look so depressed.”

“Because I’m happy, of course!”

“Why are you happy?”

“Because I get to talk to someone who won’t forget me the next day for the first time in four years! I’m excited beyond belief, and I can’t help but pump myself up for some real social interaction!” She punched the air dramatically.

“Uhh, cool, but I’ve got things to do and secrets to keep. I kind of deal with events that determine the fate of tens of thousands on a bi-yearly basis, so I’m pretty busy, at least right now. Plus, it’s dangerous where I am, so I don’t recommend sticking too close to me.”

“Ok, sure! Let’s go then!”

Drade sighed audibly. It was a sign of relief for him, though others usually perceived it as rude. He walked out of the room and continued down the hall.

Drade didn’t turn his head. “So you said ‘let’s go’...but are we just walking the same direction by coincidence, or have I had a miscommunication with you? Because I was pretty sure we agreed to part ways.”

“Why would I part ways with you?”

“To do literally anything else, I guess?” Drade let out a short sigh.

“Does it count as doing anything else if I instead...” She jogged ahead of Drade, then looked back at him with a dumb smile. “Walk ahead of you?”

“Yes, it does, but I invite you to use common sense instead of logic for my request.”

“OOooOoohh, you speak so polite, I’d think you were an A.I.!”

“No, my racial classification is half-eldritch.”

“And here I thought you might be sane.”

“No, by technical definition, I am quite alike a sociopath.”

“Would you get more pride? Calling yourself a sociopath is kind of degen-Oi! wait for me!” Drade had turned down another hallway, and she ran to catch up with him. “Rude. Anyway, if you’re going to tell me to use common sense, someone who acts so norrrrrrrrr...”

She remembered their first encounter and how he had reacted to the death of someone who was supposedly his sister’s best friend. She was silent, placing pieces of the puzzle together:

Drade had mentioned in their first encounter that his sister would make her suffer if she saw the girl, who the strange cult she was a part of called the ‘best friend’. The cult seemed to treat their leader, the ‘great Uffield’, like a good friend they worked for rather than some messiah and were literally called ‘the friends’. Uffield was also apparently a girl, and Drade was clearly magical in some way.

“And on top of that, you called yourself a half-eldritch!” She said, finishing the puzzle in her head.

“Actually, That’s a broad term. I’m one-fourth eldritch.”

“Wait a moment, is your sister the person this cult works for?!” She backed off a little, closing her hands into fists and holding them to her heart again in a manner that screamed ‘I’m defenseless’.

“Ehh, sort of. My father simply hired the Head Friend, Datai, to help out my family. After he learned about my capabilities, he insisted we combine our connections to create a recruitment and talent-finding agency.”

“Wait-wait-wait-wait, too too much info. Who is your father, first?”

“You could call him one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He’s got the backing of several incredibly strong magic-users and stuff. Are you at all familiar with the magical background?” Drade stopped in front of the ‘principal’s office’, also known as Jurai’s study.

“Who is this person I just met!?” Onei said in a comical but serious manner. She walked a few more steps before realizing that Drade had stopped.

“I pretty much just answered your question, so I’ll refrain from repeating myself unless you forgot. In the meantime, consider how weird you’ve acted. From my memory of events, when I first met you, you killed someone so you could play a game on release.”

“Well, I learned from my overly aggravated acts, and I instead asked nicely.” She sounded a little proud of herself.

Anger leaked into Drade’s voice. “Fair enough, but you still inflicted a great deal of pain and fear into someone.”

“She forgot afterward, so it’s not like she-”

“Naive. That’s like saying I can torture someone for any given period of time, then kill them, and say that my only crime was murder. Those presents you created will always exist, forever instilled into time as a mark of your misdoings.

“I-I never thought about it that way-”

“Of course you didn’t,” He said harshly. “you’re just another human who can’t think beyond their immediate present and believes being put through hell entitles them to spread their suffering like a plague.”

Onei hung her head and let out a squeak, “Mmm. I guess I am...”

“Thank you for your acknowledgment.” Drade immediately returned to his passive expression and nodded, admittedly a little impressed by Onei’s ability to acknowledge her flaws.

He, of course, didn’t consider she simply didn’t have the self-esteem to reject his accusation.

Drade walked into Datai’s office, where he was wearing his ceremonial pajamas. It was a red and black hooded robe with a gold outline and long, baggy sleeves covering Datai’s arms down to hands. While it looked ominous from a distance, when seen from up-close, that illusion wore off if one looked closer. It was, in fact, made with a very fluffy material and were undoubtedly pajamas. Datai was sitting at a desk, with the hood down, typing on a computer.

“So about the search for the Brazilian village of elementalists, have you found them?”

Datai looked to Drade and bowed his head before speaking. “We are having troubles. It seems that Regi’s magic is being blocked somehow.”

“That’s no good. What’s the interference?”

“Well, I won’t get into the details, but she said something about ‘anti-radar magitech’”

“Magitech? I don’t recall the elementalists accessing anything like that.”

“Troubling...Anyhow, I believe I can handle this on my own, master Drade, so I’ll digress. I want to know if you are sure the lady we are doing this for isn’t a practitioner of a different root of magic.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, she seems much like the gravitationalist.” He pulled out a folder of papers from a desk drawer and sorted to one. “In your recent report and analysis of Sirla, you described her as ‘a staticmancer with the ability to control electrical charges.’ From what I know about mundane physics, it has much more to do with the ‘non-contact’ forces, rather than the abstract concept of ‘elements’ these elementalists deal with, or more specifically, their lightning element.”

“Go on.”

“There are four known types of non-contact forces. Gravity, weak and strong forces, and electromagnetism. She seems to fall quite nicely into the electromagnetism category, don’t you think?”

“Yes, she does...but if she’s on a level even close to the gravitationalist, she’d have immense power. From what she says, she could, at most, wreck a building.”

“But the gravitationalist is quite well trained, whereas Sirla is not. As you noted, she seemed interested in being trained with other people like her, so she must be capable of improvement.”

Drade nodded hastily. “I doubt your suspicions are wrong, not that I think about. Good job, Datai.” Drade nodded, then put his hand back on the door. “Hope you find the gravitationalist soon.” He began to turn the doorknob.

“No, Drade, you’re going to be the one doing that. I can’t even hope to find an elusive being like her without drastic measures, like contacting your father directly.”

“What would I do to find her?”

“Drade, she was your foster mother for half a year. Are you seriously trying to tell me you can’t find her with your personal knowledge and luck?”

“I mean, I...could.” Drade scratched his head nervously.

“Thank you.” Datai looked back to his computer.

“But I’m not going to.”

Datai looked up, surprised that Drade had just given no logical reasoning to saying ‘no’, only to see that Drade had already closed the door behind himself. It took a moment for Datai to register that Drade had just dipped out on him. He wanted to say something witty to himself, but it was so out of character for the eldritch boy that Datai was speechless.

Eventually, he was forced to shrug and get back to work.