The alarm went off. It was 8am. The sunlight blinded me between the curtains that I forgot to shut the night before. I stumbled out of bed and washed up, listening to the blaring of the morning news on the TV downstairs. The big topic was the same as it had been these last few weeks, and I only had to hear the one name to confirm it.

But today was different. The reporter had a different tone as he spoke. I couldn't hear what he said, but sounded more urgent, more concerned. As I shut off the water and dabbed my face with a towel, I realized why when I heard him say what we all had been dreading to hear.

"The mayor of this city has ordered a full city lockdown."

That was when I heard a loud noise downstairs. I ran down the steps as quickly as I could.


I had to shout at Mimi to stop her from screaming any longer.

"This can't be happening!" Mimi cried. "A lockdown?! How am I supposed to survive?!"

Palmon was by her side, comforting her. "It's not the end of the world…" she said.

"It totally is!" Mimi fell onto the couch and sobbed into her palms. "I can't go to the beach, I can't see any of my friends - I can't even go shopping!"

I looked to Palmon and we both frowned. I knew Mimi would take this pretty hard, and I only wanted to figure a way to cheer her up.

"You know…" I said as I sat next to her. "We can always look at pretty beach pictures over the internet. And you can still shop online."

Mimi sniffled. "It's not the same."

"But you can still do it! And sometimes, there are even better sales, too…"

"I… I like sales…"

"There's also video chat whenever you want to talk to the others, so no one's really too far away."

"And you know you can talk to us," added Palmon. "We're your friends, too!"

Wiping her eyes, Mimi smiled. "Of course I know that."

Then, Mimi pulled both me and Palmon in for a hug. "You guys are the best! I'm glad I have you both to talk to all the time during this whole mess!"

Palmon smiled cheerfully, although I felt my own smile fade.

"All the time, huh?" I said with a nervous chuckle.

Mimi looked at me with sparkling eyes. "That's right! You know, we haven't talked much lately, so we can totally catch up! We can have spa nights and we can paint our nails together! We have so much to talk about. Wanna hear the juicy gossip that Miyako's been telling me? I've been dying to talk about my new shoes! And how's it going with those guys that you've been dating?!"

I didn't want to talk about any of these things.

It was my turn to scream.