Chapter 36: ~Chapter 12~ Part 1

I practically slammed my front door shut in a hurry this morning, though not because I slept in. Not at all. In fact, since technically I didn't sleep, even semantics agreed with me. Anyways, the reason behind my hurried departure was quite prosaic: I forgot to set my alarm clock and I was so busy writing scathing critiques on the internet about a certain B-movie adaptation of a certain famous mystery/horror novel that I was almost ten minutes late with my morning routine. Maybe that didn't sound so bad until one realized that said meticulously planned sequence of day-starting rituals only had an error bar of about thirty seconds. Because of this, my entire day started off with the wrong foot, compounding in my current predicament.

Once I made sure the door was locked, I turned around and rushed down the street. I didn't run though. Doing that would've been as good as admitting that I messed up. Instead I just... marched very rapidly, but in a calm and very casual manner that in no way looked weird or forced. No sir. That aside, I rounded the corner leading to the street with Judy's house, and all of a sudden the air was pushed out of my lungs by a bony impact.

I staggered back (while still maintaining a very casual and in no way frantically rushing appearance) and scanned the area for the source of said impact. It wasn't particularly hard to find the culprit, as Judy was sitting on the sidewalk right in front of me. Let's just say one didn't need to have Sherlock Holmes's intellect to connect the dots at that point.

"Soffy..." she mumbled while rubbing her forehead with one hand.

"I told you to pay attention when you are walking on the street," I chided her half-heartedly and offered her a hand.

"Fhanfs," she mumbled again after I helped her onto her feet, and when she lowered her hand and I could take a better look at her face, I was tempted to get something to drink just so that I could have a spit take.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I started after quickly clearing my throat, "but is that a piece of toast in your mouth?"

My assistant nodded, the brown slice of bread animatedly dangling by its corner in front of her chin like a bell on a string.

"I faf ifn a fhuffy. I fheft ifn."

"Don't talk when your mouth's full."

She nodded again and then a moment later the toast began disappearing into her mouth like a classified document into the shredder, filling her cheeks to the point where she looked like a particularly well-fed hamster. It was about this point that even the last shred of my poise left me and got replaced by an amused grin I couldn't stifle no matter how hard I tried.

Anyways, once my assistant was done devouring her late breakfast, she repeated, "I was in a hurry. I slept in."

"Only a little," I replied while checking my phone for the time. "We can still get to school at our usual pace if we start moving now." She nodded and wordlessly fell in line beside me as I started walking. I glanced over to her, and after some hesitation I told her, "By the way, that was really clichéd."

"What was?"

"The whole ‘running into someone with a toast in your mouth' thing."

"Was it?" Before I could answer she already whipped out her phone and her fingers began dancing on the touch screen like a five-legged ballerina. I would've warned her about doing that while walking, but at this point I gave up on trying to keep her from doing it, so instead I just sighed and resigned myself to paying attention for two so that she wouldn't get herself injured. For example,  by falling into an uncovered manhole. Like the one right in front of us.

I exhaled a soft groan and gently pulled her to the side. She wasn't exactly in danger of falling in even if I didn't do that, but it was better to be safe than sorry. By the way, who leaves a manhole on the side of the walkway uncovered in the first place?! That's just gross negligence. If someone falls into that, they could get hurt really badly.

I was about to stop and start looking for some sort of warning sign I could place in front of the hole when Judy tugged on my sleeve. I faced her, and she had an unusually serious look in her eyes.

"I looked up the toast thing. It definitely wasn't on purpose," she stated quite emphatically.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. And then she nodded again. I figured that meant she was extra-sure. I smiled and waved my hand to dismiss her worries and we began to walk once more.

"Relax, I knew that already. I just thought it was amusing." She was a little puzzled by my comment, so I added, "I mean, I didn't think you would be the one invoking the trope."

"Who?"

"Hm?" I grunted, thrown off by the non-sequitur.

"Who did you think would do it?"

"Well, all things considered, the most likely candidate was--" I got exactly this far when the gods of comedic timing decided they were out for my blood and I was once again assaulted by a hard impact on my chest, just as we were rounding a corner. This time I instinctively braced myself and the person who collided with me pretty much just bounced off and hit the ground with a soft thud. I shook myself and groaned aloud.

"That makes it--" I paused as I finally recognized the girl sitting on the asphalt and my hand immediately lashed out to point a finger in her direction. "That makes it twice today! What the hell!?"

"Faftf mfy fifne!" The blonde girl glared at me from the ground while cradling her head in her hands, a neatly fried French toast defiantly hanging from the corner of her mouth like a particularly clumsy trapeze artist.

"Don't speak when your mouth is full," Judy parroted my earlier line at her. The princess flushed red and proceeded to devour the toast in about three bites. It was a little scary to watch. She didn't even chew!

Once she finished, she jumped to her feet and returned my pointed finger with a scowl that was half offended and half embarrassed.

"I said, that's my line! Pay attention to where you are going!"

"I was!" I answered, deeply hurt, but before I could continue my assistant began tugging at my sleeve.

"You were right about the toast."

"I suppose..." I answered vaguely. I actually wanted to say I thought it was Angie who was most likely to do the cliché with Josh, but hey, I'm not above taking credit when it's freely handed out. It's not like I have high standards.

"So, did you sleep in?" I asked as I turned to the girl on the front with an amicable smile.

"I most certainly didn't!" She sounded about as peevish as I expected.

"If you say so... But then why were you in such a hurry?"

"I was—" she started, but then suddenly clamped her own mouth shut and glared at me as if I asked her a trick question. "It's none of your business."

"She was going the wrong way too," my assistant impersonally noted, earning a glare of her own. It was somewhat reassuring that I wasn't the only one in the crosshairs for a change. Refreshing, even. But then again, Judy's question was actually a good one. While we lived in the same neighborhood, the princess actually lived a little closer to the school than we did. Not only that, we generally used different streets to get there, so the three of us running into each other was unlikely to begin with, but she was also going the opposite way when she bumped into me. I had a few ideas about her reasons, but I decided voicing my suspicions in front of her would've been counter-productive. As such, I simply shrugged my shoulders and nodded towards the street.

"Doesn't really matter. We should get going though, or we'll be marked late."

I started walking, and before I knew it the two girls lined up beside me on both sides. I was about to resign myself to an awkwardly silent commute for the rest of the way, but to my sincerest surprise, the princess cleared her throat and gave us a smile that was only about 80% fake.

"So... What did you do yesterday?"

I raised a single brow at the unexpectedly direct question, but quickly regained my composure and let out an awkward laugh.

"Nothing in particular. I spent most of the day reading this webcomic I was interested in for a while. It's about these space-cowboys with a kickass ship that--"

"Wait! What are you talking about?! You were in town! I-I mean, weren't you in town? You said you two would go somewhere, didn't you?"

"Oh, that?" I smiled and glanced at my assistant.

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"I had a family emergency," she spoke up right away without missing a beat.

"Oh, speaking of which; how was your uncle?"

"He is recovering well. He should be out from the hospital in a week."

"He got lucky. Why was he in the sewer in the first place?"

"Something about ‘everything floating,'" Judy continued without even the slightest bit of hesitation. "He hit his head pretty bad."

"Yeah, something about alien spiders masquerading as mimes, right?"

"No, that was from before he hit his head. He said the mime has been following him since he was a kid."

"Tough."

"He should get better though. He says he defeated it by hitting its glowing underbelly with a silver slingshot bullet."

"Really? Wasn't that only supposed to work on werewolves?"

"I'm not an expert, but he said it worked. He threw it into a big hole and it no longer follows him."

"Well, that's one way to get over paranoid delusions, I suppose..."

"All right, I get it!" The princess burst out (and between us). "Stop making fun of me! I know you are talking about that movie!"

"What movie?" I asked innocently.

"We didn't see any movie," Judy doubled down with a denial of her own.

"Yes, you did! Yesterday, in the cinema!"

"Really?" I smiled wickedly as I leaned closer. "And just how would you know that?"

"I..." She paused, then fell silent, then slowly began building pressure like a volcano, an analogy which she dutifully followed up on by exploding all over us a few moments later. "Shut uuuuuuuup!"

With that, she turned on her heels and dashed away at breakneck speeds. I rolled my eyes and made my hands into a funnel.

"Slow down princess, you are going to hurt your ankle again!"

She immediately came to a screeching halt, though she still managed to reach the end of the street by then. She whirled around, pointed at me, and yelled so hard I could clearly hear it even from that distance.

"Shut up! I hate you! Both of you! And your stupid mime movie!"

With that, she turned away from us and began running away, though at a much less dangerous pace. Let's call that a small victory. I turned to Judy with a small smirk and gave her an appreciative nod.

"Good improvisation there."

She blinked at me (or maybe she just blinked in general, it was hard to tell), but then she faced forwards and gazed at the slowly disappearing form of the princess.

"Do you think she really hates me?"

I grunted dismissively.

"Nah, it's probably quite the opposite. She is contrary because she is shy."

Judy continued gazing after her for a few more seconds before she muttered, "She is complicated, isn't she?"

"A little, but who isn't? Come on, we should get going too."

Judy nodded, but we could only take a couple of steps before we were once again halted by some fresh faces entering the picture in the form of Josh and Angie rounding the corner in front of us. They were looking in the direction where the princess left, so they didn't notice us until we were almost right on top of them. I hesitated a bit, but at last I just shrugged and called out to them, though maybe a bit louder than strictly necessary.

"Morning!"

The two of them didn't really twitch as much as they nearly jumped out of their skins. Angie recovered first and she flashed me an upbeat smile that barely had any visible traces of embarrassment.

"Morning Leo! Fancy meeting you here!"

"What a coincidence," Josh added with much less success at trying to hide his guilty conscience.

"Not really," Judy interjected. "We take the same streets to school."

"Yeah, we only met up a little earlier than usual."

Josh chuckled awkwardly at my comment for a while, at least until he remembered that the ball was in his court and he quickly used the opportunity to change the subject.

"So, was that Elly?"

"Yeah," I answered nonchalantly as I began walking, pulling the rest of the group with me. "She slept in and was in such a hurry she went the wrong way."

"Really? And why did she yell she hated you?" Angie inquired with her head poking over Judy's shoulder.

"Just the usual."

It must say something about our daily interactions that this explanation was deemed one hundred percent satisfactory by everyone present. We walked in silence for a while, until Josh didn't seem to be able to hold back his curiosity any longer.

"So... What did you guys do yesterday?"

I glanced over in my assistant's direction and found her doing the same. There was something decidedly mischievous in her eyes, though in retrospect it might have been just the reflection of me.

"Nothing in particular. I was mostly reading this webcomic about these awesome space-cowboys, and..."

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