“Look at her, Hecate. Look at her dumb grin after doing this behind our backs.”

  That’s… Carol’s voice… I spend so much time with her that she’s appearing in my dreams now… Even in my dreams she sounds angry. I wonder what the problem is.

  “*Sigh…* The evidence is damning, isn’t it? She looks way too comfortable sleeping in someone else’s bed… There’s no doubt as to what’s going on here… I just wish she had told us first…”

  “Not sure why you’re so fine with her getting new girls, but whatever. We can’t encourage her. Let’s pay her back… She can’t complain if we play a prank on her. She deserves it.”

  “That’s a good idea… We can do whatever we want while she’s asleep…” Hecate walked over and grabbed a blonde lock of hair. “Ever wonder what she would look like with a different hairstyle? I’m gonna braid her hair.”

  “That’s enough to satisfy you? I think you’re letting her off lightly after she cheated on us…” Caroll shrugged. “Well, do it. She’s gonna be super embarrassed, and it will be fun to see.”

  Hecate’s fingers worked quickly and skillfully. A beautiful braid was quickly coming together in her hands. “What about you, Carol? Are you leaving?”

  “Just need to grab something. We have eggs, right? I’m gonna get some.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Yeah. To wake her up. I’ll smash them on her head!”

  At some point, my consciousness returned, and I sensed a very dangerous energy around me. “Please don’t…” A meek voice escaped my mouth as I slowly sat up and opened my eyes. “What did I even do?”

  “Oh… Now you wake up. How very convenient.” Carol stood at the bottom of the bed with her arms crossed. Hecate was crouching next to my face.

  The two of them stared in silence, and I took a look around… A braided lock of hair flowed down over my shoulder. That wasn’t a dream? How embarrassing… “Did you have fun?” I shot Hecate a side glance.

  She gleefully nodded. Sigh…

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what you’ve done. Whose room is this? Whose bed is that? You look so comfortable in there that I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought it was yours. Is this a recurring thing? Since when have you been sleeping with her?”

  Her…? “…?” Oh! Narumi! This is her room, isn’t it? I curled up into a ball while blushing and pulled up the sheets for defense. “Wait wait wait! There’s a good explanation for this! I swear!”

  “We don’t need your excuses. Narumi already told us everything.” She tossed her hair with a confident grin. “That’s right, Iroha. She sold you out!”

  Narumi sold me out? Now that she mentions it, I don’t see her anywhere. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that she told us everything. You weren’t in your room when we woke up, and Narumi showed up just as we were about to go looking for you. She heard us talking about you and said that you were in her bed. Did you think you were gonna get away with it?”

  “She’s right, Iroha… If you and Narumi have feelings for each other, you should have told us first. Sneaking around is not right… The truth always comes out in the end.”

  “And you wanna know the funniest part? You almost got away with it. Were you planning on telling Narumi to keep quiet in the morning? Unfortunately for you, she woke up before you. And the only reason she did is because she was hungry. There was not a single ounce of thought behind it.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  That does sound like something Narumi would do…

  “How dare you, Iroha?” Carol climbed on the bed and crawled closer. Hecate leaned over too, cornering me. “I should have seen this coming with how much you were clinging onto each other yesterday. Why didn’t you tell us? Personally, I’d still be mad, but this is actual cheating… I won’t forgive you.”

  Carol’s voice and expressions had a possessive anger to them, while Hecate followed up with a chilling gentleness. “Cheaters like you have a place in hell reserved for them, but there’s hope. You just need to show remorse… The least you can do is repent and atone…”

  How scary… Though at the same time, maybe I wouldn’t mind dying like this… “Hear me out, okay? You may think you understand, but you really don’t know what happened here! It’s true that I slept with Narumi, but nothing happened… I didn’t even sleep with her as… a lover… There’s nothing going on between us!”

  Carol and Hecate neither approached nor relented. They fixed their gazes on me and kept the tension exactly as it was.

  “It was to help Narumi with her… guilt? You should know this better than me. There are things she doesn’t want to think about, and I kinda forced her to confront them directly yesterday. She said she wanted to stay together for her peace of mind, so we slept together. That’s all…”

  Their expressions grew sympathetic, and they gave me some space.

  “So Narumi opened up to you…” Hecate sighed with a subtle smile.

  Carol sat back on her heels and shrugged. “If you were just helping her, I guess it’s okay…”

  …

  They let me go with a slap on the wrist, and I went back to my room to get changed. I put on some light clothes, and we finally went downstairs.

  “Narumi! You sold me out!”

  She was about to take a bite when she heard my voice and froze. “What do you mean?” Her head tilted to the side. “Oh… Your hair looks cute like that…”

  “Wha!?” I blushed… Damn you, Hecate. I forgot to undo it!

  Carol and Hecate followed close behind and passed me when I froze in place. “Good… These reactions are what we like to see…”

  “Fufufu… It’s a delightful way to start the day.” Carol stopped to gaze at my face, and the other one did the same. I need to undo this, or they won’t stop teasing me!

  “Calm down, Iroha! Don’t do that, or you’ll damage your hair!” Hecate panicked and grabbed my hand in a hurry. “I’ll help you take it off after breakfast. Wait a bit.”

  She turns nice as soon as my hair’s well-being comes into play, huh?

  Narumi was still confused. She didn’t know we’re dating, so from her perspective, she didn’t do anything wrong. “*Sigh…* Forget what I said, Narumi.” She completely forgot about it after I waved and resumed her bite.

  I sat down together with the others as Katja observed me. “Good morning, Iroha. How are you doing after yesterday?”

  “I’m alright… Chilling wake-up call, but other than that, totally okay. Ahahahahaha… Guhh!” Carol sneakily elbowed my side. She knows it’s true.

  “I see… Well, you do seem to be in good shape. That’s good.” The way Katja was sitting was more reserved than usual. Her shoulders were a bit slumped, and she had a sorry look on her face. “I need to apologize to you for yesterday. It was my fault, not yours…”

  “Again with that? I was completely on board, so we’re both to blame. We don’t need to talk about this anymore…” Katja may not have been happy with that, but the others agreed.

  Passing the blame helps no one… I’ve learned from my mistakes. My decisions involve more people than I realized, and I have to stop being so reckless. From how she’s acting, she’s probably been reflecting on this too.

  We engaged in some light conversation while eating breakfast when a sound in the background grabbed our attention.

  “Our first news today is a follow-up to yesterday’s coverage. The same mall where a sculpture disappeared earlier this week was suddenly closed yesterday in the early afternoon following a gas leak.”

  “Th- that’s about us, isn’t it?” They answered me with just their eyes, and we listened in silence.

  “The suddenness of the situation caused great confusion among the surprised customers, leading to many rumors spreading online from mistaken eyewitnesses.” We were down to our last bites, so we finished breakfast and moved to the couch. “Claims about ghosts, aliens, and mannequin robots coming to life confused people online, leading many to ask: Just what is happening in Three Records?”

  “A gas leak, huh?” We all knew that was definitely not what happened…

  “The PSF must be working with the news station.” Katja said. “To keep information from leaking. They’re trying to spin this as a mass hallucination event, but… the fact that they have to address it this much is a bad sign for them…”

  “To explain the situation and clear all doubts, we have an official in the studio with us for an interview with exclusive information.” The news anchor introduced a guest. “Can you tell us how things started yesterday, Daisuke-san?”

  “Bad sign?” What happened yesterday was known to us, and we tuned it out with our own conversation.

  “Some people at the mall managed to take pictures and videos and posted them online. It has all been purged by now, but seeds of doubt they spread cannot be removed. If the PSF’s plan works, these people will be treated like they’re crazy if they try to talk about it, but one thing’s certain…”

  “The world has noticed.”

  There was a moment of silence on the couch as we processed those words.

  “What’s going to happen now? Is something going to change?”

  “I don’t know…” Katja shook her head. “For now, these doubts are nothing but murmurs…”

  “*Sigh…* Every secret’s bound to come out sooner or later.” With a shrug of her shoulders, Carol weighed in. “Especially one like this… There’s no way they really thought they’d be able to keep all the monsters that have been showing up under cover forever.”

  “Right?” Narumi giggled to help us loosen up. “What’s important is how they handle things. We’ve kept things under control so far. Why would that change just because people now know about it?”

  “Could even make our jobs easier.”

  Hecate spread the optimistic sentiment, and even Katja couldn’t help but smile. “Maybe… Let’s hope that’s the case. Our job hasn’t changed, so let’s keep doing our best together.”

  Her eyes passed over each of us, and we answered back in unison. “Understood!”

  It was a secret capable of changing our lives—changing the whole world. We chose to cling to hope, unaware of how much a small crack in normalcy could change our days. At the time, we had no way to know what the future held for us. No one did…