The next day at school Gumball and Darwin had a hard time digesting what happened the day before. They walked around in a daze, not paying attention, not interacting with anyone, not even getting into their usual mischief. Ever since their TV show revelation they began seeing their world in a whole new way. It was hard to get invested in anything now that they knew it was fake. They had also begun to notice things, little things they had never noticed before. For example, as they walked up to the school building Gumball began to hear some strange music.
"Darwin, did you hear that?" Gumball asked.
"Yeah, where's that music coming from?" They looked around but they couldn't find any discernable music source.
"This is really weird" Darwin said.
"Yeah, maybe we better ask someone." Gumball replied. "Hey, Banana Joe! Do you know where that music's coming from?"
"What music?"
"You know, the music that's….." Gumball suddenly stopped talking as he had finally figured out what was going on. Since Banana Joe couldn't hear the music, but he and Darwin could it was probably a TV show thing. After all, all shows needed background music, right? Darwin had seen the look on Gumball's face and had quickly figured it out too. "Oh, uh, never mind, it was just my...uh...cell phone." Gumball said in a nervous tone. "Yeah! My cell phone! I changed the ringtone recently and can never remember. I should….just...go answer it!"
"But, you don't have a cell phone." Banana Joe said, but by then Gumball and Darwin had run away.
"Whew! That was close." Gumball said.
"Yeah." Darwin replied. Neither one was saying it, but they were both thinking the same thing, ignoring this was going to be a lot harder than they thought.
As the day went on more and more people noticed their strange behavior. They were unusually unenergetic and barely talked to anyone, and when they did they weren't making any sense, asking people if they noticed things that weren't there. There were some people who were glad about this as it meant that the two weren't making trouble, but most people were concerned about them, the most concerned of all of them, aside from Anais, was probably Penny, who cornered Gumball in the hall earlier that day.
"Hi Gumball!" She said.
"Oh, hey Penny." Gumball said listlessly, for once not lighting up when he saw her. Penny noticed this and gave him a strange look.
"Gumball, are you ok? You seem pretty down."
"What, me? No, I'm fine." Gumball said. It tore him up inside that he couldn't tell her what was going on, but she probably wouldn't believe him anyway. And besides, she wasn't real, and neither was he, for that matter, so it's not like any of this really mattered anyway.
"Are you sure? Because you've been acting kind of strange all day."
"Yeah, I'm fine, just didn't get enough sleep last night, that's all." Technically this was true as their revelation did keep them up at night.
"Well, ok." Penny said, skeptically "But just know that if you need someone to talk to, I'm here, ok?"
"Ok" Gumball replied, thinking instead "If only, If only it were that easy."