“…raku…?”

A voice in the darkness.

“Hiraku?”

It called to him, pulling on the vestiges of his consciousness.

“Hiraku, let’s go already!”

Ah. What?

The blue-haired boy opened his eyes.

The warmth of the setting sun cascaded through the glass doors, customers freely entering and exiting. The cashier cast a quizzical look in his direction, and a few disgruntled customers urged him to get going. The boxes of food in his hand were lukewarm, condensed water droplets gathering up on the plastic container.

And, most importantly, Shinobu, who should be dead, waved at him, backlit by orange rays from outside the Apple Rabbit.

He narrowed his eyes, flexing his uninjured right arm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

Shinobu took the lead, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she bounced along, humming a circus tune. Streetlamps flickered on as the afternoon gave way to the evening, the canvas of the sky painted with a shade of indigo. Students heading home became students heading for cram school, glued to their phones or studying materials, eagerly working towards the day they become a mindless drone in an office.

If it was a different day, Hiraku would have sneered at their wasted effort. But he ignored them, wrapped up in his own little world as he tried to make sense of what had transpired.

The trigger for the incident was that he had problems with his eyesight. After that, everyone was killed by that spinning beast, which then went on and essentially killed him. Once he ‘died’, everything was normal again.

A hallucination? No, when he ‘died’, he hadn’t moved a single inch.

A dream? No, the pain was too real for that.

Then what was it? A parallel dimension that he slipped into? A vision of the future that he interacted with? A glitch in the world of virtual reality that everyone else is unaware of?

Those were all just wild theories though. The truth could not be discerned, only that it was something far removed from the ‘normal’ life that he had been caged in for his entire life. A sweet taste of the abnormal.

A new world he trespassed on for one transient moment.

Do you wish for a new world?

Hiraku stopped, fluorescent lighting casting dark shadows on his features.

As if sensing that, Shinobu, six steps ahead, stopped as well. Slowly, she turned her head around, so far back that looked painful. A smile graced her lips, a little too naturally.

“Finally found the seed, Hiraku? Took you long enough, but nice job!”

Gently, he set the bags down, freeing up his hands. There was something eerie about her, something that she knew and he didn’t.

“…who are you?”

The cherry blossom girl twirled on the tip of her left foot, curtsying as she faced him. “Didn’t you confirm it yourself? I’m a magician.”

“More specifically,” she continued, “I deal with illusions and charms, all which could be broken if you didn’t believe…but you did. You’re quite naïve, despite painting yourself as a cynical delinquent, eh?”

“Then, what you said about being my cousin…”

“…was just a plain ol’ lie! Really, you didn’t find it weird at all? Girl that you never met pops up in your balcony? Your parents don’t give you a heads up? The landlord doesn’t double check at all?” Shinobu chuckled, not a single trace of malice in her tone.

It was as if she was a child, laughing after pulling off a prank, and that angered him. A flame was burning in his stomach, but for now, he’ll let it smoulder.

“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Nope! You simply wanted something interesting to happen, even if would turn out to just a silly slice-of-life!”

Hiraku glowered, his eyes venomous. “Didn’t I tell you this before? Don’t talk like you know me.”

Shinobu lifted her slender arms outwards, as if inviting him to attack. “You didn’t say that, actually! But that’s beside the point. I don’t know you, Hiraku. But I know myself, and I know that we’re the same type of idiot.”

“Huh?”

“I borrowed your mind, you know? Dropped your consciousness into that massacre to let you test the waters. If you were a truly ordinary person, you would have pissed yourself or something, before trying to hide or run away. If you were, say, an army veteran or something, you would have done the same, without the pissing. But you didn’t! Instead, you charged at that thing and successfully took it down!”

Was it another of her illusions, or was Shinobu actually happy?

“It took you less than five seconds to adjust to your new circumstances! You were able to understand the Doll’s attack method after three incidences! The only reason you failed was because you weren’t able to correlate its scream to the fact that it had a mouth, and even then, you performed admirably! Ultimately, you lack common sense and experience against monstrous foes, but for your first time, without any training, you did great!”

She was smiling, her eyes sparkling with excitement, her voice loaded with joy.

“And you know what’s even better? When I talked about magic, you didn’t even bat an eye! Your desire for something extraordinary is so strong that you’ll believe in it without even any concrete proof! Sure, you try to hide it, but that’s great! That’s just like me!”

The stars began to appear, and the moon shone down on the lunatic, her words ringing in his ears. Hiraku’s anger was dissipating in the face of her ardent excitement, and once again, he found himself thinking that Shinobu wasn’t that bad of a person.

No, that wasn’t it.

It was magic, wasn’t it?

A magic that seized the hearts of those it was cast upon.

He didn’t know how she was doing this, but Hiraku focused, clearing his mind as she jabbered on. He couldn’t trust his impressions of her. Shinobu may be telling the truth. She may indeed be a resident of another world. But, as a magician of illusions and charms, she was not trustworthy.

“Shut up, Shinobu.”

“Hm?”

“The type of person I hate the most are those that hide behind a mask and lie through their teeth. I don’t care about your little act. Just tell me this: is there a new world?”

Her excitement faded, replaced by a bitterness that he hadn’t seen before. “There is.”

“Where?”

She gazed into his eyes, and though they were far apart, he could feel the electric intensity in them. A moment later, a map appeared out of thin air, floating half a meter away from his face. An illusion. Just like that letter from his parents that she had brought out from nowhere.

“Here.”

A red line raced through the roads on the map, acting as directions to an address Hiraku did not notice.

“Thanks,” he said, tersely.

An uncomfortable silence passed, both sides waiting for the other to make a move. In the end, Shinobu turned away.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said, her body melting into the background.

“Tch.”

When had she replaced herself with an illusion?

That smouldering anger warmed his body as he picked up the bags once more. With knuckles as white as bone, he began to follow those illusionary directions into unknown territory.

Overhead, clouds began to gather over the night sky, a cold wind picking up on the autumnal night.

Café Nowhere.

The illusionary map had disappeared when its use was completed, and now, he was standing before a poorly maintained restaurant.

From the outside, Hiraku could only imagine that it was a place that didn’t get any customers. The windows of the wooden building were boarded up with cheap plywood, and half of the neon-lit letters that spelled out the café’s name were broken. The doors were, curiously enough, made of stained-glass, a rainbow lit up by the warm light that came from the inside of the building.

It, really, was the only way anyone would have been able to tell that the place was open. Feeling pensive, Hiraku looked from one side of the road to the other. No one else was on the road.

So he was alone, in an unknown part of town, heading to a location just because a liar told him to.

Ah, this was so stupid.

But Hiraku pushed open the door anyways.

Instantly, a strong, yet pleasant aroma of alcohol of coffee washed over his body. The lighting of the room was dim, incandescent bulbs hanging irregularly from the ceiling, but only one customer sat in Café Nowhere.

Shinobu Kazanari, the ponytailed brunette with cherry blossoms entangled in her hair and eyes of golden lightning.

Her eyes lit up when she saw him.

“Oh, glad you could m-”

In an instant, Hiraku closed the gap and drove his fist into her face.

Convenience store snacks scattered over the wooden floor as Shinobu fell off her chair, crashing against the leg of a neighboring table.

“Now…”

Hiraku dropped the shopping bags on the table, satisfied.

“…we’re even.”