Chapter 50: Chapter 50

"Alright, now's your turn to try the deck out!" Eris announced, smiling nefariously while holding her cards like a fan in front of her face.

We were at the board game store again, sitting at a table tucked away in the corner, behind the main section, bordered by shelves and shelves of manga on their end and countless dice, card packs and figurines on ours. It was early afternoon hours on Tuesday, so there was nobody else in the store besides the manager. Eris had laid out a decorative playing mat in the middle of the table, and next to it what seemed to be a whole binder's worth of cards—cards for a game I had never played before. Her eyes lit up while she was describing the intricacies of the damage and abilities system, and she took special pride in being a "mistress of the Duskbinder deck" and a fan of corruption magic. I had numerous questions about the intricacies she listed, and she beamed with pride at being able to answer every one of them. This, I thought at that point, was her happy place, a spot, or rather a state of mind she could return to, when the world around her was too chaotic and unfair. I couldn't blame her—I envied her coziness, in fact.

"Hey, are you gonna play or what?" she nudged me out of my daze.

"Uh, yes, sorry," I said and pulled a card from my deck. Without much thought, I laid it down on the main area of a playing mat. It seemed like a good choice.

"Ha! Typical beginner move!" she gloated and pulled out a card from her deck, then re-rolled, then pulled another one. Through mechanics that I didn't really understand, she seemed to be able to put both of them in play at once. Having rested her head in her hands and tilted it down while keeping her elbows on the table, she looked at me with a cunning, satisfied smile. "Your move," she announced.

It doesn't need saying that my next move and the moves after that were not very good. Eris kept toying with me, but I let her. It was nice to spend some time on something else than dealing with my otherworldly problems, with someone who was could get equally invested in games.

"So anyway, I think they just want someone to watch the diodes go on and off all night," she said, continuing our conversation from before we entered the store.

"The job you applied for? With your education?" I asked.

"Hah, I don't mind," she snorted. "So long as they don't have me do support tickets from retail cus- oh, hey, a double break! Yes! I can draw two cards and disable your ability for a round!" her train of thought got interrupted by another fortuitous, or perhaps strategic, turn in the game.

Saemlessly, right after dealing another blow to my deck, she managed to segue into how she can't find any good anime to watch this season and is instead marathoning her favorites: those with lots of cute girls, supernatural events and killer robots, not necessarily all at once. There was something strangely refreshing hearing her talk about so many things I held dear not so long ago. I had almost managed to forget about my worries when I heard a strange shuffling noise and, looking up and to my right, witnessed a cardboard box moving on its own. It was almost full of card decks, wrapped in plastic packaging, and while it started firmly planted on the shelf when we walked by, it was now almost half way past the edge. Eris looked up and traced my gaze just in time to see the box tip over and fall on the floor. It slammed down with a characteristic thud, followed by the rustling sound of a lot of plastic wrappers spilling and rubbing against each other.

Eris gasped. "Did you see that?" she asked, then turned back to me. "Holy shit... Did you see that?!"

"Yeah."

I did see it. I also saw what was an annoyed and bored-looking succubus standing next to the shelf, now grinning at me with satisfaction.

"Hey, everything okay in there?" the shop owner's voice came from near the register.

"Yes, we're fine, sorry, a box just fell!" Eris called out.

I got up to pick it up, walking in front of the shelf. Eris stood up too, but as soon as she crouched near me, I heard more shuffling sounds. I glanced back.

"Watch out!" I yelled and stretched my hand out.

Two more boxes, heavier than before, suddenly came raining down on us. One bounced off of my arm, another missed us both, but only by a hair's breadth. Eris shrieked from surprise.

"What the hell is going on there?!" the store owner shouted, his heavy footsteps coming near us.

Eris looked all around us anxiously, still crouched on the floor with hands above her head, before turning to me.

"Was that... Her...?" she looked at me with what initially was fear. Only after a second did I realize she was also slightly smiling. I only nodded, glancing sideways at Ra'zizi, who pretended to stifle a giggle by holding her hand in front of her mouth.

"Jesus!" the owner exclaimed, standing a few steps away from us. He leaned on the shelf next to him. "My cards!" he then seemed to notice Eris crouching low. "Oh... Miss, are you okay?"

"Yes, I- ahh!"

Another box came flying, this time from behind Eris. Some of the dice inside it scattered on the floor, landing in such a way as if to surround her and me. The shop owner immediately turned to the right, to look at the shelf, stupefied. I followed his eyes, but I already knew what, or who, would be there.

"Christ almighty! How...?!" the owner shouted in confusion, walking over to where she stood, trying to see if any other items are positioned precariously.

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"I'm so sorry for this, miss, I thought you..." he turned to us and paused, "No, never mind. I'm sorry, are you okay?"

"Y-yes..." Eris stuttered.

As much as he was in shock, he didn't seem too amused by the possible damage to the inventory, and I didn't want to stick around any longer. I nodded at Eris and, in a few short moments, she packed up her cards off the table and we excused ourselves.

"Oh, right!" she said and quickly went back past the owner, who was trying to collect the dice scattered around. She fetched her phone from the far end of the gaming table, where it was propped against a stack of rulebooks on sale and we walked back out, heading for a cafe-bakery.

"Man," Eris said, looking at her phone, mouth half-filled with a doughnut. "This is so good!"

"Is it?" I said, unsure.

We were sat in a cozy little corner, on an L-shaped pink sofa at a small one-legged table, three doughnuts each, a latte for me, and some bizarre concoction involving whipped cream and sprinkles for Eris. She'd already managed to chomp through most of the first doughnut, leaving chocolate glaze marks around her mouth.

She finally swallowed the portion she was chewing and exclaimed "Totally! It's clear as day, we're sitting here, the box is over there, there's nothing behind!"

"You really think people will believe it?"

"Oh, trust me," she waved her hand and smiled. "They want to believe in this stuff! You won't believe what sort of hokey crap has them lining up!"

"Well..." I wavered.

"Come on!" she complained, biting into the doughnut again, eyes still glued to the screen. "They buy overpriced tarot cards and hope magic will happen! You are the real thing!" She turned the screen to me. "Look, you even walk in front before the other box falls, so there couldn't have been a wire!"

"Yeah... it had better work," my eyes were trailing off to observe Ra'zizi, who, true to her form, was now squatting on the top of the cafe's counter. The barista was trying to prepare a coffee for a customer, and she would persistently move the glass from under the nozzle of the machine every time he turned to fetch something.

"Wait, I gotta send this to my friends," Eris said, thrilled. "Some of them are into this stuff too..."

I wasn't sure how I felt about any of this. Deep inside, I realized that this was probably my last chance at surviving. Having had enough time to look into myself, I realized that part of me wanted something like this. "Why should I even care?" I thought, biting into my strawberry jam doughnut and taking a sip of my latte. "None of those people would have cared about me otherwise. They'd just let me die, shrugging and looking aside, sending me to the asylum if I told them about the succubus. So what if I mess with them a bit?"

My misanthropic musings were rapidly interrupted when I heard a scream coming from my left. I turned and saw the barista rapidly jerking his hand around. Another one came by and they rushed to the sink.

"Fuck!" he yelled.

"What happened? Joe?!" the other one asked while turning on the tap.

"It scalded me!" the pained barista said and proceeded to whine as cold water washed over his hand. The middle-aged lady waiting for her coffee took a few steps back and stared at them with confusion.

"Scalded? But how, did you set it to just hot water? Was the nozzle stu-"

"I didn't set anything!" Joe yelled and proceeded to moan through clenched teeth. "Goood!!"

"Wha? What happened?" I heard Eris ask.

I didn't need to wonder. I glanced a bit further to the side, and my eyes met the succubus's mischievous gaze and proud smile, her head turned to look over her shoulder, her hands still on the coffee machine. I looked away and started drinking my coffee before it could go lukewarm.

I was the real thing. And the stronger I got, the stronger Ra'zizi got with me.

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