2103:10:20:12:27:11

  The mall was surprisingly fun. I’d been here before, but that was mostly for practical reasons – although in hindsight, Mom had been trying to get me to enjoy it then too – so it was quite different to do it just for the sake of enjoying it. Instead of selecting clothes that seemed practical or appealed to me on some level, Millie guided me to try out different styles. It was an interesting, if tiring and ultimately pointless experience. Likewise, trying perfumes and make-up had been something new, even if only Millie and Jolie ended up feeling ‘enriched’ – their words – and bought things.

  That had been the takeaway in general. It had been ‘fun’, but I hadn’t liked it – not by itself, at least. The novelty wore off eventually, and the fun came more from spending time with my friends than the activity itself. Still, the day had just begun and while we’d yet to enter a store I picked out, that was because nothing had attracted my attention so far. Maybe I’ll have better luck at the beach.

  But first, lunch. We found a small circular table outside with seats and a parasol attached – not that we needed the latter; the sun wasn’t shining.

  I looked at my square carton filled with noodles, pork and a scant few scattered red and green vegetables, anticipating the taste. I’d eaten Chinese food before, even takeout, but never ‘slop’ – just Jolie’s words this time – like Asia4Now. She’d been excited to let me try, even going so far as to order for me rather than allow me to pick.

  Obviously, something was up, as Jolie wore her excitement openly, without even a superficial attempt at hiding it. So, preparing as best I could for anything to happen, I took the largest bite I could with my barely-sufficient chopstick skills.

  It was spicy, oily and salty. And that was it. No other flavor managed to overcome that combination. Perhaps the term ‘assault’ was too overbearing for what was essentially a bland combination of flavors, but the way it stripped my tongue from its ability to taste anything else could only be called an assault. That, or insulting.

  Whatever. I took another bite of my noodles.

  “No,” Jolie whimpered, and I looked away from my food. She looked devastated and disappointed, as if suffering some great injustice. “Please don’t tell me you actually liked it?” she whined.

  Millie and Saga laughed out loud at Jolie’s crestfallen expression.

  “No,” I replied, taking another bite of my noodles. “But it’s not awful.” Though it tasted like it would feel awful later.

  “Not awful?” Jolie said, affronted. “Just wait until my mom cooks you some real Chinese food. You’ll never say this garbage is ‘not awful’ ever again.”

  “I’ve eaten good Chinese food before,” I countered.

  “Not if you think this is even remotely edible,” Jolie returned.

  “Alright, alright,” Saga interrupted, reaching out to put her arms around us both. “No need to fight ladies, you’re both beautiful.”

  We dodged her attempt, and Jolie swatted the offending arm away. “Ew, gross,” Jolie said, projecting disgust like I’d never seen her do before.

  Unfortunately for her, Millie outflanked her and snuck up from behind and poked Jolie’s sides. Jolie yelped and turned to deal with the sneak attack, but Saga took advantage and began poking her as well.

  I enjoyed the light entertainment as while I ate the rest of my food, and before long they began eating too.

  “So, where we going next?” Millie asked as we slowly wrapped up lunch. “I want a new pair of boots, but like, I don’t need it right now and we still need to go to the beach.”

  “I have a place I want to go to at the Bayside Boardwalk,” Jolie said. “A music store.”

  “Ohhh, open about that now, are we?” Millie teased.

  Jolie sniffed. “Unlike you barbarians, Sam might actually appreciate culture. Besides, I know the owner, and he’ll let Sam play with the instruments for a bit. Maybe you might find something you like?” She directed the last comment at me.

  “I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug. “Haven’t really liked Mom’s music so far, nor the bands and artists I have posters of in my bedroom.”

  Saga looked at me in confusion. “Then why do you have posters of them?”

  For some reason, Millie made an X with her hands and shook her head rapidly, while Jolie sighed in disappointment.

  I ignored them. “They’re from the other Samantha,” I answered. “Along with the plushies, the pictures, the drawings of plants and flowers, and basically everything else in my room.”

  Millie facepalmed as I explained, while Saga looked sheepish. “Right,” Saga said. “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t mind. You can ask questions if you want to.” Yet instead of doing so, silence lingered. Where did I go wrong this time?

  Millie clapped her hands and broke the silence. “Okay, getting back on topic,” Millie said. “Was there something you wanted to do here?”

  I shook my head, then thought better of it. “I did see something, though I don’t think it’s something to visit right now. Some form of a gym and boxing school?”

  I hadn’t really thought about attending martial arts or boxing classes before. Training with Crowsong was fun, so maybe doing it as Samantha rather than Jester would be fun too. I’d tried following video tutorials and the like online, but Crowsong had discouraged me; without someone there to guide me, I’d build ‘bad habits’ as she put it.

  But now that remedials were all but gone and I realized Mom had been worried about me doing nothing but studying, maybe I could turn to martial arts as a hobby? It would be hitting two birds with one stone.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was Saga that perked up at that. “You’re interested in martial arts?”

  I nodded and hmm-ed affirmatively.

  Saga smiled. “Oh, we should definitely go together to my gym! I do sambo there and the teachers are great!” She sounded very excited about it – a rare thing for Saga.

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  “Nooo,” Jolie cried. “I don’t want another brute amongst my friend.”

  “Read ‘em and weep,” Saga said, sticking out her tongue. “Who wouldn’t want guns like these?” She flexed her biceps and kissed them both, causing Jolie and Millie to gag in response.

  “I might still like music?” I offered Jolie. “Besides, now that I only have two hours of remedials, Mom wants me to spend less time studying, so I’ve got plenty of free time. Well, not counting therapy.”

  The three turned silent in shock at my proclamation. Then, Millie and Saga burst out laughing, while Jolie repeatedly started to swat my head in anger.

  To her frustration, I dodged. “Stand still and let me hit you!” Jolie ordered, going in for another attempt.

  I dodged again. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to fix my hair again.”

  “Then don’t just drop things on us like that!” Jolie countered, now deliberately reaching for my hair.

  I stood up from the table, out of reach of her grabby hands. But Jolie followed and when I ran away, she started chasing after me with an angry scowl. And here I thought she was the nice one.

  X

  I pressed a few random keys on the piano, a bland mess of noise coming from the instrument in response. I couldn’t tell whether I liked it or not, because I had no idea what I was doing. The sheet music was unreadable to me, a piece of language that had escaped Malcator’s unification.

  Millie was ‘rocking out’ – her words – on an unplugged electric guitar, a loud scratching noise coming from the bit-too-vigorous strumming of its strings. The shop’s owner and/or manager – a thirty-something year old man – didn’t seem to mind though, if his indulgent smile was anything to go by.

  Saga was messing around with a hand drum, keeping to a rhythmic, if uncomplicated pattern.

  “Shuffle up a bit,” Jolie said, and I went to the far end of the bench. She settled beside me. She snapped her fingers and held open her palm. “C’mon, give me your hand.”

  She maneuvered it to three interspaced keys, while putting her own on a single one further to the left. “Okay. Three, two, one, press.” I did and a more – for lack of better words – music-like noise than before left the piano. “What you did was strike chord called the C major triad, while I added the root C to make it sound a bit better. Alright, onto the next.”

  She took my hand again and spaced it a bit away from before, with two on the black keys this time. “Three, two, one, press.” I did as asked and pressed the keys, striking another chord. “The Ab major triad.” She took my hand again, counted down and we pressed. “G major.” Once more. “F major. Okay, one more time and try to remember the positions.”

  I once more did as asked and remembered where she placed my hands. “Think you got it?” Jolie asked, and I nodded, even if I didn’t really. “Alright then, start when you’re ready.”

  I cheated and played my memcordings of the past second, tracing my hands to the exact positions where they were just a moment. I pressed the C major while Jolie did her thing on the left side of the piano, then the Ab major and G major.

  “And there you go,” Jolie said, smiling brightly. “You just made music.”

  I frowned. “Really? Didn’t sound like much.”

  “It was simple and basic, sure, but that doesn’t matter. Music is music, and people have to begin somewhere,” Jolie stated confidently. An echo of what Crowsong had said during my first night masking.

  “So, did you like it?” Jolie asked.

  I hesitated on how to put it, but eventually gave up. “I don’t know,” I admitted, frustrated. “I don’t even know what music I like, or if I like music at all.”

  Jolie nodded, subdued. “Well, maybe we can listen to music together sometime. I’ve got whole collections of different genres on my phone and back home. Maybe during the next sleepover?”

  I smiled at my friend’s request. “Sounds great.”

  Jolie cheered up again, now smiling as well. “C’mon, let’s go fetch the troublemakers and get out of here.”

  We continued on and made our way further and further down the boardwalk, passing by store after store. Rarely did we go in any of them, and when we did, few things were actually bought. Most of the time it was Millie entering art stores, places people sold their handicrafts, or some kind of cutesy character store and just browsed. Saga tried some sunglasses and Jolie a couple of hats but also bought nothing.

  On my part, nothing enticed me. It was a similar experience as with the mall, where I had fun because the others made it fun, but not because anything was fun for me. It left me feeling dejected and disappointed in myself. Had my life outside of masking always been so hollow? And if so, why am I only noticing it now?

  “Oh! Oh!” Millie exclaimed, dragging me out my head. “Let’s go in there!”

  She pointed at a jewelry store. It were unlike the one they’d came across at the mall in that it had no security guard outside, and the doors were open to all.

  “Can’t we go later,” Jolie complained. “We’ve been walking for hours already. My feet are getting tired and it’s starting to get cold. Why not get some tea first?”

  “Should’ve worn pants then,” Saga accused, then had to dodge a retaliatory kick from Jolie.

  “C’mon, it won’t take long,” Millie pleaded. “I just want to look at some stuff, not, like, buy anything.”

  “Then you go look. I’ll be getting something to drink over there.” Jolie pointed at a coffee shop further down the road.

  “I’ll go with her,” Saga said.

  “Sam?” Millie asked.

  I shrugged. “Haven’t been in a jewelry store before.”

  Millie smiled and took me by the arm. “Great, let’s go!” And marched us into the store.

  The store was brightly lit and mostly white with gold accents. As expected, it contained practically every kind of jewelry – necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings, watches, etcetera – though while some were expectedly expensive, there were many items that had a more reasonable price tag.

  It seemed that I was mistaken in that there weren’t any guards, though. There were two inside, both tall men in suits and wearing a small in-ear earpiece. They looked almost comically stereotypical, sunglasses being the only thing they lacked to complete the stereotype.

  They looked at us as we entered, but dismissed us just as quickly.

  “What about that one?” Millie pointed at a set of earrings. It consisted of a gold string with three large pearls dangling from it.

  “Isn’t that too expensive?” I asked, looking at the price tag.

  Millie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but this isn’t about price. It’s about whether you like it or not. It’s about art.”

  “Art?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the art of window-shopping. The art of ‘would I look good in that’. So, do you think you would?”

  I looked at the earring and decided firmly, “No.”

  “Yeah, didn’t think so. But tell me why,” Millie said.

  “Why?”

  Millie nodded. “Yep. Why.”

  I looked at the earrings again. “It’s too… big,” I said with a frown. “Not in size, but because it draws attention? Or something like that.” My eyes felt to one a tray above it, a simpler looking silver set of earrings in the form of a flower. “I think I like the silver one more, though I don’t like the shape.”

  “Oooooh,” Millie ooh-ed. “Was that an opinion I heard?” She fluttered her eyelashes at me, making doe eyes.

  I frowned in offense. “I have opinions. I have tons of things I like and don’t like.”

  “Yeah, true, but it’s like...” Millie trailed off in a frown, searching for the best way to express her thoughts. “It’s all so disconnected. You like this specific food or that article of clothing, or this movie and not that movie, this song not that song but never something, like, bigger?” Millie hesitated again. “For example, Jolie likes a lot of different music, but likes jazz music in particular.”

  “And I don’t have that,” I concluded. Was my personality matrix broken after all? It had done its job so far, but I’ve begun to find more and more issues with it recently.

  “But that’s the thing, you do have things like that,” Millie denied to my surprise. “Like, you like your hair like that, right? Tight and orderly?” I nodded. “And the subdued make-up? And those clothes you wear, all drab and boring?” I rolled my eyes, but nodded. “Well, there you go. You have a style you like right there! Now all you need to do is do the same with other things you like!”

  I… had never really connected the dots between the different elements of my appearance. As Millie said, I’d just picked the things I liked on an individual basis – sometimes gained through experience, and sometimes as a flash of insight, a piece of the puzzle that had been missing just suddenly there. But ironically, it was that overarching whole I had never really considered.

  “How do I do that?” I asked Millie.

  “Well, like you just did with the earring,” Millie said, gesturing toward the display case. “Gold and large pearl earrings don’t fit your style, but that silver one does. So long as it isn’t in an overly ornate form like that flower, at least.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Millie. “Was this why you wanted to go here?” I accused.

  “Eh,” Millie waggled her hand back and forth. “Got in with half a plan at best, then improvised the rest.” Millie smirked at that, likely because it rhymed. “Besides, I like looking at jewelry, so it was like shooting two hares with one buckshot.”

  That did sound like Millie. However, “That’s not an expression,” I argued.

  “It is now,” Millie chirped in return. “Now, let’s go meet up wi-”

  Two gunshots cut off Millie’s sentence, the two of us flinching at the sudden noise. It was followed shortly after by the alarm blaring and the screams of guests. I went and grabbed Millie before ducking to the floor, but she apparently had had the same idea, so we descended together in an awkward tangle of limbs.

  “Alright,” a number of cheery voices chorused. “No need to panic, I’m just here to rob you blind – not you, citizens, just the store.”

  I looked toward the intruder. They were a dozen total, yet all dressed exactly the same. A shimmering, oil-slick and rainbow-colored cloak covering an otherwise purple outfit, along with a more reddish-purple gasmask serving as face cover. They all had their gun out and a large duffle bag slung over their shoulders.

  It was a masked I recognized from MaskiPedia: Mauvist. A caller that could copy himself an unknown number of times, along with whatever he had on them, albeit only for a short while.

  The Mauvists split up. A few stood watch with their guns pointed at the patrons, store staff and especially the bodyguards, while the rest went toward the display cases, cracking them open with the butts of their guns or simply reaching in from behind the display.

  I was in an unfortunate bind, but also strangely excited. This was a classic scenario, one occurring in many masked media from movies to cartoons, books to comics. A crime takes place while the intrepid hero is in their civilian identity, surrounded by their friends and/or family and thus unable to intervene immediately. What should the hero prioritize: stopping the crime or protecting their hidden identity? It was a war between a hero’s strong sense of morality, their desire for a regular life, and the security of their loved ones versus the wellbeing of strangers.

  And now this was happening to me.

  I looked for ways to slip away. If I could hide for just a second, I could transform into an animal and harass the criminal long enough for the-

  One of the Mauvists yelled in pain all of the sudden, clutching his head as a trail of blood leaked from their nose. A second later, the clone collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, dropping to the floor for a second before disappearing in a puff of purple smoke.

  The whole store – including the other Mauvists – turned to look at the rapidly fading smoke.

  “Oh,” the Mauvist chorus echoed. “Damn.”

  All the other Mauvists spontaneously burst into purple smoke as well, the masked disappearing from the crime scene as quick as they came.

  “Well,” Millie said next to me, looking a bit woozy. Unsurprising; it wasn’t everyday someone got a gun pulled on them. “That was anticlimactic.”

  She took the words right out of my mouth.