Malik sat up out of his bed, frazzled as he woke up. He didn't know where the hell he was, his memory fuzzy as hell.
The room was dim, curtains half-drawn, pale sunlight leaking in through the cracks. The room was nearly packed together, nothing out of place, there were dressers, a fold up chair, a trash can in the corner of the room. And it smelled pretty nice.
Oh, yeah right. This was his temporary apartment. Now all the memories of yesterday were coming back to him.
After encountering a phase 2 sin and almost dying, division 13 had been given a day off, despite them having only been here like a day.
Malik sighed, pushing himself off his bed and made his way to check his phone.
It was 2:39, he wasn't used to sleeping in this late, but he guessed that made sense after what happened yesterday.
He walked into the living room to go grab a bite to eat.
When he did so he noticed ash and liun struggling to fit a large tv box through the door.
Oh yeah, they didn't have a tv yet.
He looked on in annoyance as the duo fumbled, it looked like they had carried the box sideways and got it stuck between the door and now they couldn't get it unstuck.
"I- I got it." Ash said, pushing the box with a good amount of force. This pushed the box through but it also sent liun to the ground.
"You uh, need help there?" Malik asked, staring down at liun.
"Yes please"
"No thanks"
Malik couldn't exactly tell who said what since they both said it at the same time.
Liun stop up, brushing dust off himself. "You're help would be much appreciated." The polite boy said.
"I mean fine I guess, but we're already here with it I don't see what we need help with" ash said, walking into the room.
He did a double take the moment he entered the room, looking around the room in confusion. "Is it just me is this much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?"
"Have you not been in here before?" Liun asked the older man.
"Nah, we didn't have this building in my time as a junior." He explained, still looking around.
Malik sighed in exhaustion, grumpy from having just woken up, "anyway, don't you still have to set it up?"
"Set it up?" Liun asked and ash rubbed the back of his neck, having forgotten that little aspect of getting a tv, tho setting up a tv wasn't exactly the longest practice, all they had to do was get it mounted on the wall, how hard could that be?
Ash opened the box to get the tv out and mount it on the wall, only to realize that there weren't any mounts, so mounting it to a wall was out of the question, and it didn't have legs so they couldn't put it to stand“…Where are the legs.”
Liun leaned over his shoulder, peering inside. “Perhaps they are… underneath?”
“There is no underneath,” Ash said, lifting the foam inserts and shaking them like something might fall out. Nothing did. “There is no top, no bottom, no hidden compartment. This TV has no feet... What do I do here.”
Malik rubbed his eyes. “So what you’re saying is… you bought a floating rectangle.”
“uh uh uh. I bought a 90 inch floating rectangle.” ash corrected.
Silence fell over the room.
Then Liun snapped his fingers. “why not lean it against the wall?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Ash blinked. “That’s… actually not the worst idea.”
They propped the TV upright and gently rested it against the wall.
It stayed there for a good second, tricking them into thinking that it was stuck.. before it slid down and fell on its face.
The two males who knew the significance of the rectangle froze.
“…Is it broken?” Malik asked carefully.
Ash crouched, inspecting it. “Nope. Built like a tank.”
“That’s comforting,” Malik muttered.
"Why were you two so worried?" The white haired boy asked.
"Um cause a tv is incredibly fragile?" Malik said, looking at the Chinese boy in confusion with how casual he seemed to be about a tv dropping.
"So this is a 90 inch fragile box?" Liun asked, looking down at the thing wondering what exactly the purpose was here. "How much did you pay for this?"
"Um 2 million yen" ash said which caused Malik to give him a sidelong glance
"I don't know the conversion rate between the us dollar and yen.. but two million of anything is probably too much." The golden eyed boy said.
"Alright, time to get this baby up" ash started. " Got any ideas?"
--Attempt #1--
this time, they wedged the bottom of the tv between the couch and the wall.
"Okay, nobody touch it" ash said
"Im not touching it" Malik stepped back.
“I am also not touching it.”
The TV slowly tipped forward.
“…It’s touching itself.” the oldest man said.
THUD.
Liun winced. “That was loud.”
Malik stared at the screen, which stared back at him. "I feel like there's a much easier solution here but I'm drawing blanks"
"Really? What is it?" Ash asked which earned a side eye from Malik.
"Did I not just say I'm drawing blanks do you not know what that means?"
"Eh, I think so but.. I'm kinda drawing blanks"
Malik was unimpressed
Attempt #2
Liun dragged over the fold-up chair from Malik’s room. "My mother and I always used to put boxes on chairs until we had a better place for those boxes" the boy said.
"Okay good for you, but does it have to be on my chair?" The boy watched with annoyance.
"Hmm, not really" liun said, but he didn't put the chair back.
He placed it down for ash to put the tv on their, they waited for a second to see what would happen this time around, only to be disappointed when the chair fell.
"What has my life come to?" Malik asked no one in particular.
Attempt #3:
Ash dragged the bookshelf from the corner.
“We’ll just set it on this.”
They lifted the TV together and placed it on top of the shelf.
The shelf leaned.
Malik looked at that confused " how heavy is this damn tv?"
"Idk I don't really notice the weight of things." Ash said, the weight was so negligible to him that it practically weighed nothing.
"It's significantly heavier than a regular box. Which begs the question, what's inside the box?" liun asked, which caused a sweat drop to form on Malik face.
"I still can't believe you don't know what a tv is" he said
"Why is that?" Liun asked.
"Do you live under a rock or something? Cause that's the only explanation that makes sense to me" Malik said.
" I didn't live under a rock, I lived under the shelter of my home. I wasn't aware that people could live under rocks." Liun said, completely unaware of the figure of speech.
Attempt #4.
The group had tied the tv to the ceiling using some rope and string.
"See, told you it would work" ash said, causing Malik to grumble.
"Give it a little time" the chocolate boy looked at his division conductor, who seemed to be prematurely celebrating.
He jumped up in joy, landing hard enough to shake the whole building.
This caused the rope to break and the tv to fall.
"Aww man"
"This is what happens when you celebrate too early old man."
"Why do you keep calling me that, I'm barely older than you" ash looked at him, still not used to being called an old man.
"Cause you are."
"I would barely call him old, he's in the prime of his life." Liun said. "Besides, we should respect our elders."
Ash felt a particular way about being called an elder but he ignored it, choosing instead to focus on the compliment.
Attempt #5:
They had taped the entire bottom side of the tv to the wall.
Then they taped the sides.
Then the top.
By the end, the TV was likely going to be unwatchable with so much tape covering it.
They stepped back.
It stayed.
For five full seconds.
“…I think we did it,” ash said softly
"What did we say about premature ejac-specu- celebration, celebration is the word I'm trying to say God damnit." He said after slipping up twice,
"Wait what DID you say about premature celebration? I wasn't paying attention." Ash admitted.
Then the tape started slowly peeling off the wall as well as tv.
The TV slid down the wall again and landed face-first with a dull thud.
Malik dropped onto the couch. “I give up.”
Ash sat beside him. “No, no, we’re so close.”
“We have been ‘so close’ for the past thirty minutes,” Malik said. “At this point, I’m closer to spiritually ascending than we are to mounting this thing.”
Liun, meanwhile, crouched in front of the TV, staring at it with genuine curiosity. “So… what does it do?”
"And I'm still weirded out by you" he had no clue as to how liun seemed to not know what technology was.
Liun shook his head. “I understand it is a large, expensive, fragile rectangle. Beyond that, I have no data.”
He grabbed the remote from the box, which was next to a big my metal plate. He turned the tv on.
The screen lit up.
Liun flinched, stepping back. “世界上有什麼.”
A bright logo appeared, followed by menu sounds.
Liun’s eyes widened. “It’s… alive.”
“It’s a TV,” Malik said. “It shows videos. Movies. Shows. News. Games. Stuff like that.”
Liun stared in awe. “So… it displays other realities.”
“…Sure,” Malik said. “We’ll go with that.”
Ash plopped onto the floor in front of it. “See? Totally worth two million yen.”
“It is… impressive,” Liun admitted. “But it is still on the floor.”
“Temporary floor placement,” Ash said confidently. “Very modern.”
Malik sighed. “I hate that you’re right.”
Malik groaned. “I can’t believe my day off turned into this.”
Ash leaned back, hands behind his head. “Admit it. This was fun.”
"No, cause it wasn't." Malik said.
"Alright stay grumpy it'll come back to bit you later tho" ash said. "Who wants ice cream?"
"We're not done yet!" Malik interjected.
"Yeah well, we're pretty close to finished, so that's a win in my book" ash said walking out of the room.
"What is ice cream?" Liun asked
"Oh come on you don't even know that!? Where even do you live man?" Malik said.
"Guangzhou china"
"I have no idea where that is" Malik said, " if you want you can stay here or something, but that old man's paying for ice cream and... Well I can't turn down something free" the boy said, walking out of the room.
Liun soon decided to follow behind him.
Just a little bit later, yui woke up and headed into the living room to see the TV and it's box.
"Oh, cool our tv is here." The girl said excited. " Oh and it's one of those magnetic ones." But why was the tv on the ground tho? She dismissed that.
She searched the box, removing a thin metal plate that was about the same width as the tv.
She stuck it to the wall like one would a sticker. Then she picked up the TV and let it stick to the shoot metal like a magnet.
This was so easy to set up even a toddler could probably do it.
She turned the tv on and jumped back into the couch. Ready to enjoy the day to the fullest.
