Chiral

  Oka, Kalei and I were trying to get our void practi, but we were close to our void monster number goal for the day and were kind of phoning it in. We were wandering around the field of flowers, not particurly looking that hard for more void monsters. We could do a challenge room and be done for the day early, but we hadn’t spotted any challenge room doorways.

  "Dalliance. Delicacy." Kalei said randomly.

  "He appears like a swan quasar." I answer on reflex.

  Kalei and I burst out ughing immediately after to Oka's fusion.

  "Wait, what is that? What are you saying?" Oka asked.

  I had to sit down from ughing so hard as Oka looked on, desperate for our random words to make some kind of sense.

  "It's from this movie,” I said between heaving ughs. “Kalei just imitated it perfectly.”

  Kalei smirked, clearly proud of how hard I was ughing.

  "Dalliance. Delicacy. He appears like a swan quasar." She said again, causio start basically scream ughing.

  “I don’t get it,” Oka said.

  I couldn't stop giggling, whibsp;unfortunately made Oka more frustrated. But Kalei’s impression was so spot on.

  "What movie is this? What does it even mean?" Oka asked.

  “It’s called You Were the Darkest Darkness,” Kalei said.

  “Alright, AND?” Oka said. “What’s it about? Why do they say that delicacy thing? Why’s it so funny?”

  “It’s about…” I said, trying to get my bearings back. “Like this gothic poet guy goes to this dreary old timey vilge as this vampire guy.”

  “And falls in love with him.” Kalei added.

  “Right right, it’s a grim romance,” I said.

  “What even is a grim romance?” Oka said. “Do they die or something?”

  “Well vampires are teically dead already, I think,” Kalei said.

  “Shut up,” Oka said. “Just tell it to me, I feel left out!”

  “You have to watch it, I’m not gonna spoil it!” I said.

  “Fi least expin this dalliance or whatever part.” Oka said.

  “Well, Zio, he’s the vampire, he’s hanging out in this bell tower that lets him spy on the vilge in the daytime. So he doesn’t get exploded, right? Theher guy, Edwi, he’s the poet, his st name is even ‘Thepoet,’ arrives in his carriage, and Zio sees him and it does this big zoom in thing and his like mental narration is like—”

  "Dalliance. Delicacy. He appears like a swan quasar." Kalei and I say at the same time, causing us both to ugh again.

  “But what does it mean?” Oka said. “Why’s it so funny?”

  "I don't know!” I said. “And they act like it's so profound!"

  “It is profound,” Kalei said. “Maybe. I dunno. We're watg it whe back."

  “So we should actually try and , then,” Oka said. “We thinking some more void monsters or try to find challenge rooms?”

  As if on cue, we rounded a bend oh we were on and found three strange doorways, much like the ones in Oka’s void vision. These were uhough. Wherange doors popped up like that in our void meant they were challenge rooms, short procedurally geed challenges desigo give us a brief test of our abilities.

  “Oh perfect,” Kalei said. “Let’s get these over with so we watch. Zeta, you take left, ht, I take middle, same as usual.”

  “One day maybe I’ll see what a left challenge door is like…” Oka said wistfully.

  “They’re catered to us no matter which door we gh, so it doesn’t matter. Now scoot.” Kalei said. Whenever we ran into challenge doors in void practice, she was in charge of getting us to gh the doors as quickly as possible, as Oka and I would frequently begihinking whik door to pick.

  I stepped through the left door and was greeted with bright lights and bring sounds of blooping maes. The door behind me vanished, meaning I had to plete whatever challehis room asked of me, then ter write down a short essay expining what I thought it meant.

  The challenge room looked like a o ihat I had walked by ond Stel covered my eyes so I wouldn't see either the X-rated posters oside or the gambling maes aempted to do gambling. I quickly realized I wasn’t alone.

  This happened sometimes; because we were required to split up from roup if we found challenge room doorways, usually in a challenge room I’d end up w with anirl in my grade I didn’t know very well, which was generally an awkward and unpleasant experience. Seated at one of the slot maes was a girl that I hadn’t spoken to yet but had seen around school. Oka frequently referred to her as ‘The weird gremlin child,’ because it was hard to describe her otherwise. The weird, gremlin-like girl kept pulling the lever on a slot mae, plunking after into it. I wondered if I could plete the challehout her notig me.

  "You, tall one," she said, not turning away.

  "Who, me?” I asked. “I’m not tall.”

  "Join me,” she said. “So we do this challenge room or whatever.”

  I made my way over to her slot mae, which had cartoon drawings of muscur dog Kanibari on them ahat read ‘Volleyball Muscle,’ which sounded vaguely familiar for some reason.

  "I'm Zeta," I said, extending my hand to her.

  "Chumbler," she said.

  "e again?"

  "Ny name is Chumbler," Chumbler said and sighed. "What is the average IQ in this school? It has to be exceptionally low."

  "Hey, are you calliupid?" I said.

  Chumbler ignored me a pulling the lever on the slot mae. It didn’t seem like she’d won anything since I got there.

  “Normally, I’d have my sidekick/minion with me,” Chumbler started. “But they don’t let us bring our partners in, stupidly.” Chumbler looked me up and down. “So you’ll have to do.”

  “What exactly to we have to do here?”

  “What I crave.” Chumbler said quietly.

  “Huh?” I said.

  "I crave gamble." She said, staring me dowe being a good foot or so shorter than me.

  "O-OK..." I said, really wishing I could be w with someone I knew.

  Chumbler kind of reminded me of Roux. But while Roux seemed retively harmless, there was a mad glint in Chumbler's eyes that made me terrified at what she was really capable of.

  Chumbler spped the top of the slot mae.

  “I’ve figured out this is the only ohat works,” Chumbler said. “I tried all the others already.”

  There had to be at least two huher gambling maes in there. How did she have the time to try them all?

  “Oh, I’ve been at this for a long while.” Chumbler said, seemingly reading my mind.

  “Wow…” I said.

  “Right?” Chumbler said, before adding some words of self-praise that included too many swear words for me to ever want to repeat.

  “But besides my awesomeness,” Chumbler said, pounding on top of the slot mae much harder this time. "I think we o win the 500 prize. Get it?"

  "I don't..."

  Chumbler raised her little hands in the air as if she couldn't believe that I wasn't followiest bizarre ta.

  "500 dolr is a lot of money, what's not to get!"

  “Wow, 500 dolrs,” I said. “I could buy so much Raina merch.” I blurted out, then instantly regretted as Chumbler started to get really upset for some reason.

  "500 doollrrr!” Chumbler said in a weird tohat was like yelling, but also like not, all drawn out and slowly spoken. “Do you get iiiiiiit? A lotta monneeeeeeyyy. And more importantly, it allows me to gamble."

  "We don't get to keep mohat's in here, do we?" I said. I remembered how things brought out of the void didn’t st in the real world.

  "Shut up, that's not important!” Chumbler said.

  "I just—"

  "Shut up!"

  “Fine, whatever, what do you need me to do?” I said.

  Chumbler pulled on the slot mae lever again and didn’t get a prize. She groaned, put another in, aed that a few times without answering me.

  “Chumbler?”

  “What?” Chumbler said.

  “I just…what do you wao do here?”

  “Just stand there, whatever, who cares!”

  I sighed and sat down. I had done some dumb challenge rooms before, but this was even stupider than the one where I had to try to hook up a DVD pyer upside down.

  Chumbler tio pull the slot mae lever and tio lose. I thought about asking her where she was getting the s from, but I knew I'd just get a weird and rude ent in response. I wondered what I was even supposed to do here. I actually got out my bloodsaber and ed it, something I never had bothered to do so far.

  “Only a one bder, huh?” Chumbler said.

  “What?” I asked.

  Chumbler pointed (with her non slot lever pulling arm) to her bloodsaber, which appeared to be two bloodsabers taped together at their handles.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess,” I said. “Why is yours…like that?”

  “Cuz it’s badass, you know?” Chumbler said. “I desig with my best friend/minioc.”

  I stopped myself from blurting out “You have a friend?” Which was good, because Chumbler seemed actually happy to talk about her friend, who arently named Z.O.K. She didn’t tell me what the initials stood for, but she actually brightened up as she talked all about her friend, how they met, what shoes they liked, pced they’d gambled, and more.

  “You know, you’re not a bad listener,” Chumbler said.

  That actually got me a bit red faced. Maybe Chumbler wasn’t so bad.

  “Aw, thanks, that’s actually o hear—"

  “You’re like a dumb cat, or a pnk of wood with a tail.” Chumbler said. “I think it’s the tail that makes me think that.”

  “Sure, yeah,” I said. Maybe Chumbler was that bad.

  Somehow, after what felt like hours, Chumbler got the 500 prize on the slot mae and we could finally leave. I don’t know if it was some time distiltion thing in the void, but only forty-five minutes or so had passed by the time we got out. Oka and Kalei were waiting for me in the front area of the building where we go in and out of the void (which was tragically actually hat norincipal Peam had proudly added a sign to the front of the building that said ‘The Building Where We Go In and Out of the Void” and made us sit through a long, long presentation expining why and how he chose the he week before).

  “Alright, movie time,” Kalei said as I approached them.

  “You guys weren’t waiting too long, were you?” I asked.

  “No, we just got out,” Oka said. “I had to py this game."

  "Yeah, and?" Kalei said.

  "I'm not gonna expin it anymore since you didn't expiupid delicacy movie thing." Oka said.

  Oka saw me looking in Chumbler’s dire. Chumbler met up with her friend, a Kanibari girl who must have been Z.O.K. I wasirely sure if she was real from Chumbler's description, so it was good to firm she was.

  “I had to do my challeh her,” I said.

  Chumbler looked my way and waved.

  “Did you actually make friends with the weird gremlin child?” Oka asked.

  “Apparently,” I said, my mouth a bit dryer than I was expeg.

  "Hey, we're friends now, got it?" Chumbler called over in a weirdly threatening way.

  I nodded as I waved baot wanting to tempt fate any more than I already had.