Chapter five: look upon my works ye mighty
Sometimes, things happen. Sometimes they have clearly obvious causes; you fell because I pushed you, Sayaka drinks because she is lonely. Sometimes they do not.
But everything has a cause, if you look hard enough.
The western dormitory buildings were built in 1921, when architects favored solid brick walls, with few windows, and lighting was harder to do right. Each of the dormitories were named after Greek gods, in the poetic, if pretentious, fashion of the times. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hephaestus, Athena, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, and Hermes. The girls dorms are named for goddesses, the men's for gods. They would be integrated in 2021.
The Great Depression hit the college hard, and the subsequent war stripped the college of most of its students. The school almost died, strangled by its rapidly emptying purse, but the dean implemented a number of sweeping financial reforms, and it endured. Of course, in order to survive, they had to slash the budget to almost nothing, and it was never increased again. Not on a wide scale, at least, even after the hardships had passed, so they put off renovating the dark, oppressive dorm buildings for years, mostly deterred only by the hassle of the paperwork required by a budget increase.
In 1983, there was a fire, and most of the dorms suffered extensive damage. Ironically, Hephaestus was spared, with only minor soot stains. It made sense to update the burned out buildings while they were being repaired, but these renovations never found their way to the relatively undamaged hephaestus.
Both Mike and William live in Hephaestus, so Sayaka and her friends usually hang out in the dorm's common room; after all, Sayaka lives off campus somewhere, and it makes sense to meet nearer the majority. But the rarely repainted walls are slightly darker for the now faded smoke stains, and the room smells odd. Like week old pizza, unwashed bodies, and faintly, the smell of smoke. The room has only two flat windows, high up in the walls, and half a dozen half-globe light fixtures of a sort of semi-opaque white plastic, fogged with age. The carpet may have been replaced some time since the building's construction, almost a hundred years ago, but if so, no-one alive remembers it. It is vacuumed seven times a week, when all the students are supposed to be asleep, but there are still decades of beer stains and ground out cigarettes that no amount of cleaning can ever remove.
In short, the room is subtly unpleasant. Not enough to really mark, but enough, certainly, to leave its occupants with a vague sense of unease. Of course, it would be demolished in 2067 by the CIM who feared, correctly, that it might inspire thought crime.
Four weeks after Sayaka first sung at Golgotha, the four friends are in the Hephaestus common room, studying quietly as normal, but a sense of restlessness percolates the unpleasant space, and it is not long before Jennifer is proposing that they go "somewhere, anywhere, else. Anything to get outside."
And that is how they find themselves at an ice cream parlor a few blocks from campus.
Some days, Sayaka forgets that she can wield magic. Not the sort of forgetting, where if someone were to ask her, she would say no, but the sort where you just never have occasion to think about it. She often forgets to carry her wand, or else, leaves it behind under the assumption that she won't need it. Strictly speaking, a wand is not necessary to the use of magic, but it helps to have something familiar to focus on- helps enough, in fact, that most witches carry their preferred focus with them at all times. Usually a wand, token, or fetish; something small and easily concealed. In ages past, they favored staves. Sayaka uses a wand, because most of what she knows was learned from novels and movies.
That morning, she hadn't had the thought "I can use magic; I'm special," so her wand stayed in its little blue shoebox under her bed. She couldn't know it was a poor choice; she had never before needed her magic pressingly enough for her wand to be a part of her morning routine.
The ice cream shop is small and cramped; there are only three tables inside, and another two outside that Seattle's omnipresent rain keeps anyone from ever using. The linoleum flooring has come off near the edges of the shop's single room, and small piles of dust and grit crouch in the corners like loathsome grey toads. The room is brightly lit, but the long fluorescent bulbs aren't all the same color, and a few near the back flicker, or else, have gone out entirely.
The serving counter has room for maybe a dozen different flavors, but there are only half that available, and only one type of cone. The server and owner are the same person, and several days stubble dots his cheeks. He can't be more than forty, but his hair is almost completely grey, and his lower lip is torn and bloody from where he has been gnawing at it.
The shop is otherwise deserted, but then, that's why Sayaka and her friends come here. That, and loyalty to the owner.
"Hi," Sayaka says brightly, stepping up to the counter and smiling. "How're you today Mr. Morris?"
The man at the counter shrugs. Sayaka smiles brightly, and orders a simple vanilla ice cream with gummy bears, sprinkles, and chocolate chips. She likes to engage all of her senses when eating. Her meal should look appetizing, it should smell good, it should taste good, but it should also have an interesting texture.
The man scoops out her ice cream and lovingly mixes in her toppings, but he scowls as he accepts her money. Sayaka smiles cheerfully, and moves on.
When Sayaka was three, her mother had told her "you never know when someone is having a bad day, so smile as often as you can. You have no idea how much a smile can cheer someone up, and a smile doesn't cost you anything." She was right, but a smile isn't always enough. Sometimes nothing is. When you're in a foul mood, other people's disputes seem so meaningless, so shallow, but their happiness is just as grating.
Sayaka's friends order, pay, and join her at one of the empty store's three tables. The one farthest from the door, since Jennifer likes having a wall at her back.
"Alright," William says. "The winter ball. Who's everyone going with?"
"I'm going with Sayaka," Mike declares triumphantly. Sayaka scowls.
"Sayaka?" Jennifer asks. "Our Sayaka?"
"Yup!" Mike says.
"Nope," Sayaka replies. "You're not."
"One day," Mike promises. "One day, you'll say yes. It'll be just like a movie; you say no all the time, but I just have to be persistent enough."
"That's something I actually have a huge problem with in movies," Jennifer says. "I don't know if they're implying that women don't really know what they want, or if they think that asking someone out over and over again when they've already rejected you a dozen times is cute somehow? It isn't. It's stalking. I'm sure Sayaka wants you to stop, but she's always so nice. She's probably just trying not to hurt your feelings."
"Wow," Mike replies. "Chill out Jen. It's not a big deal. If she feels that strongly about it, she would have told me."
"Actually," Sayaka says with a sort of awkward smile, like she's not really sure what to do with her face when the situation doesn't require a smile. "I would kind of prefer that you stop. Sorry."
"Oh." Mike says. He blushes with embarrassment. The ice cream cone slips from his hand and the unbitten rim cracks on the hard linoleum. Ice Cream splatters across the floor.
"So William," Jennifer says suddenly, in an attempt to break the tension. "How about it. Want to go to the dance with me?"
"Really?" William grins like a child that just learned that broccoli will be replaced with candy at every meal. "Of course! I'd love to go with you!"
Suddenly, the shop's owner is standing over them. "Really?" He asks. His voice is dead and monotone, like a minor chord to William's major. The lights aren't any dimmer, but the usually cheerful ice cream shop seems dreary and faded. The bright colors seem like a sad parody of themselves, and the tubs of ice cream seem less meaningful than the empty spaces beside them. "Do you know how hard I work on each cone?" His voice still doesn't have any inflection. "I make each cone by hand. Do you know of any other ice cream shop that does that? They all order bags of cones premade, or make them in a machine in the back. You know I mix the toppings in, right? Everywhere else they just throw them on top. I wanted each one to be special, and you just dropped it on the floor. You didn't even care. You didn't try to clean it up, you didn't even notice. You were too engrossed in your meaningless little discussion 'who will you go to the dance with?' You're still just kids. It's not like you're going to marry them. It's not like your stupid dance is going to actually matter to any of you in thirty years, but I guess it doesn't really matter what you do with your ice cream since the store is closing tomorrow. Bankruptcy. That was probably the last ice cream that will ever be served here."
There is something behind him now. It's almost formless, like a small patch of static hanging in the air, but a single white eye stares unblinkingly out of the center.
"Eeeeeeeeee," it says, and Mr. Morris the ice cream man falls over dead. He drops, like all of his bones have turned abruptly to liquid.
-AN: Gee it sure is convenient that Kyuoko explained how nightmares work just in time for Sayaka to meet her first one. It's almost like someone planned that out…. Hmmm…
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