I returo my room, and once I built up my will to potentially see Oka. I had prepped by staring down at the ground in case I couldn’t make eye tact with her. When I opehe door, Kalei was there chatting with Iris and Maia. They had a ptop up that had a live stream up that seemed to be on a ercial break.

  “Kalei, e with me,” I said.

  “Why? I’m busy.” Kalei said.

  “Yeah, we’re watg ky Fungus.” Iris said.

  “What is that?” I said.

  “I don’t know," Kalei said. "But they’re gonna be showing a ercial for the preview of the trailer preview for the sed trailer for Hado Diius that’s ing out!”

  “Didn’t you already see that trailer at the vention?” I asked.

  “No, I saw the first teaser, this is a ercial for the preview of the trailer preview for the sed trailer.” Kalei said.

  “I’m…very fused…” I said.

  “It’s gonna start soon,” Maia said.

  “I’ll expin ter, we just want to see this thing so leave us alone for like,” Kalei checked the clo her phone. “Literally fifteen mihen you bug us again.”

  “Fine,” I said. Kalei actually made me leave the room so she could watch her stupid trailer. I expected Oka to show up while I waited in the hallway aally prepared myself for what I’d do if that happened. My best pns there were to either cry or run away or to run away g.

  “Alright, it’s been fifteen minutes.” I said as I burst bato the room fifteen mier.

  “You really timed that out.” Kalei said. “If you didn’t and came in while that teaser trailer teaser previeying, I might’ve locked you out of the room for the night. Well?”

  “Well, what?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how that teaser trailer teaser preview for Hado Diius was?”

  I sighed. “How was the teas—”

  “It was incredible!” Kalei shouted. Iris joined in and the two shouted at me for a few minutes about their weird naked guy ic movie.

  “Yeah, it retty cool,” Maia said.

  “I’m gonna make you read it, Zates,” Kalei said. “Then by the time you read it the movie will be out, and then you see that!”

  “Sure, fine, I’ll read it if you help me here,” I said.

  “’t you just make Iris and Maia do it?” Kalei asked. “I have to post my reas online and argue with anyone who disagrees with me that that was the greatest trailer teaser preview for a trailer ever in the history of all life.”

  I didn’t really want to ask Iris and Maia but before I could even say anything Iris smacked at my hands like a feral child.

  “Maia’s texting, don’t bug her!” Iris said.

  “I didn’t even say anything!” I said.

  “I’m just scrolling through reas to the trailer on my phone, what are we talking about?” Maia asked.

  “Zeta wants to take Kalei away for something, but Kalei told her to make us do it.” Iris said. “But I wasn’t listening for the other part, she was gonna tell us something? Or she already told us something?”

  “I didn’t tell you what I was gonna tell you, I don’t want t you guys into it,” I said. “Only Kalei has to know my pn here.”

  “Why ’t you tell Iris and Maia?” Kalei asked.

  “Yeah Zeta, why ’t you tell Iris and Maia?” Iris asked.

  “Because if I tell you my pn, yonna say it’s stupid and that I shouldn’t do it.” I said.

  “Well maybe you should tell them then because I have a feeling this is a stupid pn, and that you shouldn’t do it.” Kalei said.

  “I’m not telling anyone else about this today,” I said, smearing my fa my hands. “Telling you and Amara robably too much.”

  “You’d tell Amara and not us?” Maia asked.

  “Yeah, what the hell, Zeta?” Iris snapped and spped at my hands again.

  “Ugh,” I said, shooing Iris’ swats away. “Fine, I’ll tell you what happened, but I’m waiting to see your rea before I decide if I’m going to tell you my pn. But you’re the st two people I’m telling this to!”

  I hurriedly told them what happened with Oka and my wanderings afterward.

  “…and then I told Amara and she ran off to her room and basically said she was going to fsh Rain.” I finished.

  “Why didn’t you start with that, we could be listening in on them screaming when that iably goes wrong!” Iris said, standing up. “e on, Maia, it’ll be hirious!”

  “I really don’t wanna—” Maia started. Iris grabbed her arm and ran off, cag madly as she left.

  “I ’t believe they just took off like that,” Kalei said as our front door shut.

  “Don’t uimate Iris’ short attention span or her ability to make Maia do stuff.” I said. “Or her fasation with the love trio.”

  “Well, fine,” Kalei said. “Now that they’re gone, I guess you tell me what this great pn is?”

  “I was in the dorm library, well I went babsp;there because I went there earlier, and I had a great idea reading a book,” I said.

  “I’m really hoping the book was about how to avoid overthinking a minor thing.” Kalei said.

  “Well, first I was looking up if there are i with mind wiping or memory erasing powers, but I didn’t get as.”

  “So you’re taking this really well.” Kalei said.

  “But then,” I said, ign her. “I found this book about cube-based art, and that got me thinking. Remember that cube we destroyed?”

  “Unfortunately,” Kalei said. “But hey, it was actually Oka’s dad that really broke it.”

  “That’s not important,” I said. “The important thing is that we learned we could go into an imagination node and bring stuff out of it.”

  “I’m not following how that at all retes to your problem.” Kalei said.

  “I just want to go find an imaginary me in the void and bme this whole thing on her.”

  “I don’t think that even remotely makes sense.”

  “We did it with the cube! Why ’t we do it here?” I said, drawing an imaginary cube with my hands to really get the point across.

  “Because how many void made imaginary people do you see running around? Has a sieacher ever mentiohat it’s a thing?”

  “Maybe it’s because they don’t want us to do it,” I said. “But listen, we’ve seen guilt chimeras before in the vht? I feel incredibly guilty about what happened, so I just have to go into the void and fight that a a new me to vely bme my problems on!”

  “OK first up, uilt chimera was a monster made up of a bunch of stuff,” Kalei said. “Sed, I’m pretty sure we just got lucky that there was the cube inside of it si’s a bunch of people’s guilts mushed together. Third, it probably wouldn’t even be you in there if this actually somehow worked, it’d probably be a towel. Fourth, if it somehow was you, how do you pn on finding another version of you that would presumably be buaked, bring her out of the void, past the void security people, and all the way back to the dorm? And even if you did, then what? The cube we got poofed away like twenty minutes after we got it, and we didn’t even end up needing that. What do you expect Oka to do if somehow a naked void e of you randomly ends up in our room then poofs away?”

  I squinted as I thought about it.

  “Hm.”

  “Hm? Is that all you have to say to that?” Kalei asked. “Did I actually break through to you how stupid this is?”

  “Hmmm,” I said. I kicked at the ground. “Maybe. When you put it like that.”

  “Zeta,” Kalei said. “Is there something more to this that you’re not telling me?”