Outside, her thoughts were all jumbled, and she kept running until she was nearly back at her high-rise. She rested her hands on her knees when she finally stopped to catch her breath. She wasn't sure what she was running from, but something about that whole place seemed… wrong.
When she straightened, she noticed a peculiar sight in her peripheral vision. She turned to see that a storefront that used to be a noodle shop (as of yesterday?) was now a generic cafe with a sign that read "The Basement."
But it's a walk-up on the second floor, Tisha noted. It should really be called The Mezzanine.
On the second-floor window in big block letters: NOW OPEN. FIRST DRINK FREE. "Well, I'm not too proud to pass up the word 'free' when it comes to coffee," Tisha said out loud and saved across the street to climb the stairs.
Inside was the scent of coffee, cakes, bergamot, and stale cigarettes wafting from the clientele. She looked around the room and saw a sea of laptops. Ahh… my people. Writing Squatters.
Before she reached the counter, a practical-looking woman put a cup of coffee on the counter with a small madeleine next to it on the saucer. She smiled warmly and nodded to an empty table near the window, just under the sign.
"Oh, uhm, at least let me pay for the cookie."
The woman shook her head. "You can pay by telling others about us and coming back often."
Tisha smiled back. "Sold," she announced and took her marketing bribe to the empty table. As she sipped her coffee, she pulled out her notebook and recorded her morning observations.
It was like an Irish all-male review…
But her concentration was thwarted once again by her peripheral hearing. Behind her, two young men, barely above a whisper, were discussing some secret rendezvous to receive a package. The "courier" was running late, and the men were feeling anxious.
"I never should have let you talk me into this," one of them said.
"You begged me to reach out to my contact for this," the other man argued. "You can't just back out, now."
"I don't know anymore. Maybe meeting at the cafe is too risky. Too public. This place is a lot more crowded than I expected," said the first man.
"Look around. Everyone is buried in their laptop or their phone…"
Tisha quickly pulled out her phone and pretended to be engaged with something as the men surveyed the room. She held her hand up to her ear and began to bob to a non-existent rhythm as if she had headphones on and was engrossed in the non-existent music. She felt their eyes land on her for a moment, which caused her to exaggerate her movements a little more and direct the air with her index finger.
She only stopped when she was sure they had turned back around. Then she resumed listening and writing the conversation down in her notebook.
Tisha adjusted her grip on her pen, her heart rate elevating slightly. This is it, she thought. This is the gritty realism I need. A daylight hand-off. Narcotics? Stolen military tech? State secrets on a flash drive?
The door to the cafe chimed. A man in a heavy trench coat walked in. He was sweating profusely, despite how cold it was outside. He clutched a brown paper bag to his chest as if it contained a human heart.
"You're late," the first man hissed.
"I had to dodge a patrol," the courier whispered, sliding into a chair at the table behind Tisha. "They're cracking down on imports. Customs is checking everything from Osaka."
Tisha stopped breathing. Imports. She grabbed a compact mirror from her bag and slowly tilted it, pretending to check her teeth, but angling it just enough to catch the reflection of the speaker behind her.
"Let me see it," the anxious buyer demanded. "I need to know it's the real deal. The gold contacts have to be clean."
Gold contacts. Tisha's pen hovered over the paper. Electronics. Maybe a detonator chip?
The courier looked left, then right. He slowly opened the brown paper bag. The crinkle of paper sounded like a gunshot in the quiet cafe. He slid a translucent plastic case across the table. Inside was an old-school gray cartridge with Japanese kanji on the label.
"It's the prototype," the courier whispered reverently. "The unreleased 1998 build. Before the localization team censored the beach level. It even has the debug menu enabled."
Tisha froze. The mirror slipped from her hand and clattered onto the table.
The "buyer" gasped, clutching the plastic case like it was the Holy Grail. "Oh god. Magical Princess Ray-Earth: The Dating Sim - Director's Cut. I've been looking for this ROM dump for twelve years."
Tisha stared at her reflection in the fallen mirror. She looked like a clown.
"It's... a video game," she whispered to her coffee. "I just performed a clandestine surveillance operation for a waifu dating sim."
She slammed her notebook shut. The noise made the three men jump, but Tisha didn't care. She stood up, downed the rest of her free coffee, and marched out of "The Basement," leaving the underworld of high-stakes retro-gaming behind her.
*****************************************************************
Some time later, Tisha opened her apartment door. "I give up, Miuty. The world is boring."
She threw her bag onto the floor and face-planted onto her bed. It was 8 p.m. She had spent the entire day hunting for "Mafia Inspiration" and had found nothing but a thirst trap gym and a nerd exchange program.
And the rest? An embarrassingly normal Italian restaurant. The most confusing dim sum menu she had ever seen. A public bath, she was too afraid to go into.
Miuty scratched at his ear and walked over her back, kneading her spine with his paws.
"Ow. Your pressure per square inch is surprisingly high for a ten-pound animal," she mumbled, rolling over.
She looked at her computer. The screen was dark. The contest deadline was looming like a storm cloud. She groaned and pulled her phone out of her pocket. The pink icon with the handcuff-hearts seemed to glow in the dim light of her apartment.
Mafia Chick 2.
"Well," she sighed, tapping the app. "Reality failed me. Let's see what badly scripted fantasy has to offer."
The goose-saxophone solo blared again. She skipped the splash screen, tapped [New Game], and watched the opening cinematic.
It started with a black screen and the sound of screeching tires. A red sports car animated in janky 3D graphics drifted around a corner, pursued by three black SUVs.
Bang! Bang!
Muzzle flashes appeared on the screen, looking like yellow clip-art stars.
"Okay, first of all," Tisha critiqued, holding the phone above her face. "Those muzzle flashes are inconsistent with the caliber of weapon shown. A Desert Eagle produces a ring of fire, not a star."
On screen, the red sports car hit a ramp that hadn't been there a second ago. It launched into the air. The driver—the pepper-haired Don—leaned out the window and fired a single shot at a fuel tanker parked conveniently in the middle of the road.
The tanker exploded. Or detonated with the force of a small nuclear warhead. A massive, slow-motion fireball consumed the screen, turning the night sky purple. The Don's car flew through the fire, unharmed, and landed perfectly on the other side.
Tisha scoffed so hard she choked.
"Oh, come on! That is physically impossible!" She gestured at the phone with her free hand. "The shockwave from a detonation of that magnitude would have propagated at supersonic speeds! The overpressure alone—likely exceeding 50 psi—would have liquefied his internal organs and shattered the car's chassis instantly! He shouldn't be looking cool; he should be biological soup!"
The game ignored her. The Don winked at the camera. Text scrolled across the bottom: "Danger is my middle name. And you are my next target."
"Your middle name should be 'Thermodynamic Anomaly,'" Tisha muttered, her eyelids growing heavy again. The heavy carbs from the Italian lunch and the Dim Sum dinner, combined with the emotional exhaustion of the day, were pulling her under.
She watched the text box scroll. The dialogue was a mess of clichés.
"I will capture you, little bird. And I will clip your wings."
"Ornithologically speaking... clipping wings... doesn't stop... hopping..." Tisha mumbled.
The phone slipped from her hand, landing on the pillow next to her ear. The game continued to play, the loop of cheap jazz mixing with the sound of the rain outside.
[System syncing…]
[User identified: Tisha Cezanne.]
[Trait: Hyper-Analytical.]
[Difficulty Level: Chaos.]
[Transfer Complete.]
Tisha didn't hear the voice. She was already asleep, dreaming of a world where physics actually worked.
When she finally woke, it was to the cloying smell of roses. Her apartment usually smelled like old coffee and Miuty's litter box. Roses—specifically, synthetic roses, like a cheap air freshener—were wrong.
Instead of her water-stained popcorn ceiling, she was staring up at a fresco. A literal fresco painting of cherubs holding machine guns.
"What in the Renaissance..." Tisha whispered.
She sat up. She wasn't in her bed. She was lying on a four-poster bed the size of a small island, covered in red silk sheets that felt like polyester. The room was an assault on the eyes—gold leaf trim, velvet curtains, and a chandelier that looked dangerously heavy hanging directly over her shins.
She looked down at herself. Her "Time Dilation" hoodie was gone. She was wearing a flimsy, lace-trimmed nightgown that offered zero thermal insulation.
"Okay. Lucid dreaming," Tisha said, pinching her arm. "Ow. Pain sensors are active. That's not good."
She swung her legs out of bed. Her feet sank into a carpet so plush it felt like she was walking on soft sand. She walked to the window, pulled back the heavy velvet curtains, and froze.
Outside was a skyline that looked like New York, Tokyo, and Paris had a baby and then set it on fire. Neon signs advertised "CASINO" and "DANGER." A blimp floated by with the face of the silver-haired guy from the app.
And then, a text box—a translucent, pink, glowing rectangle—materialized in the air right in front of her face.
[Chapter 3: The Bird in the Cage]
[Current Objective: Wait to be Kidnapped.]
[Reward: +10 Romance Points]
Tisha stared at the text. She reached out and poked it. Her finger went right through.
"Wait to be kidnapped?" She read the text again, her voice rising in pitch. "I have a deadline! I have a cat! I don't have time for felonies!"
Before she could process the absurdity, the sound of breaking glass shattered the silence.
CRASH!
A grappling hook—black, sleek, and defying gravity—smashed through the window she was standing next to. It dug into the expensive carpet. As she backed away, a figure swung through the broken window, landing in a crouch.
He stood up, shaking off shards of glass that somehow didn't cut him. He wore a leather vest with no shirt, an eyepatch, and a grin that was all teeth. He pulled out a combat knife and licked the flat of the blade.
It was the Knife Guy from the loading screen. Viper, the game called him. But he suspiciously looked like her new next-door neighbor. "Found you, little bird," Viper growled, his voice a gravelly attempt at sexiness. "Prepare to scream."
Tisha didn't scream. She looked at the rope he had swung in on. She looked at the glass shards on the floor. She looked at his boots.
"Stop," she said, holding up a hand.
Viper blinked, his grin faltering. "What? No, you're supposed to scream. Then I knock you out."
"Based on the angle of entry and the friction of the glass shards against that rope," Tisha said, pointing at the window, "you've compromised the tensile strength of the climbing line. And that looks like a standard nylon blend, which is only rated for one person. If you try to rappel down with my added weight plus the shock load of the initial jump..."
She looked him dead in the eye.
"...the friction coefficient will snap in mere seconds."
Viper looked at the rope. He looked back at her. "The friction co-what-now?"
SNAP.
The rope severed at the windowsill with a loud twang, whipping back outside and vanishing toward the street below.
Viper stared at the empty window. He stared at the piece of rope still attached to his belt.
"My exit strategy," he whispered.
"Physics," Tisha said, crossing her arms. "It's a law, not a suggestion. Now, do you have a plan B, or are we taking the stairs?"