The front desk usually let us figure out when we needed to pick up our packages, but that day, the staff member called my name out before I could cross the lobby and get to the elevator.
"Hey, Laryn? We got something for ya," the woman said. She was one of the friendlier attendants who worked the desk, but I was slightly annoyed at getting stopped. I really needed to pee.
"Yes?" I said impatiently and stepped up to the sliding screen.
"Message came with a package that said it was…" She paused to find the note and read it out to me. "'Urgent—notify recipient of delivery immediately upon receipt.' That's all. Oh, and it's fragile, too," she said and slid a box from the other side of her workstation to the open section of the screen. "I'll mark that you picked it up. Have a good one," the woman said and slid the window shut as a landline started ringing. I picked up the box, thinking it would be heavier than it was for some reason, and resisted the urge to shake it. FRAGILE was stamped all over the damn thing in big red letters.
As I rode the elevator up to my apartment, I looked over the rest of the box but couldn't find a name on it anywhere. All it said for the recipient was APT 7734. Once inside my apartment, I set the box on the kitchen counter and headed for the toilet. I didn't have anyone to fight for the bathroom over anymore, and it was still a strange sensation to get used to—living alone after being notified that my roommate and best friend of over ten years was missing.
Or dead. And so was the boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend.
For the first couple weeks, that story was the only thing I could think about. I'd call my friends in the middle of the night with my own theories about what happened. I researched every aspect of The League and its stakeholders, sometimes staying up through the night to jump down an Internet rabbit hole. I stopped going to work and ignored calls from people who said my fixation on the case was unhealthy. I never actually thought I'd be able to solve it, but it felt like the right thing to do to devote all my time and energy to—to finding out what really happened. I even tried playing some of the Pokémon games to see if it'd give me some insight. It obviously didn't.
Nintendo and Game Freak immediately cut ties with The League in a very public but small way. There was one press conference on the day when the so-called "survivors," as the media painted them, told wild stories of what happened inside the park afterhours while attending a special event for premium-paying members. A man named Doug Bowser addressed the event, referring to it as a "tragedy reeking of foul play" and that all ties to the park would be immediately cut. Afterward, any mention of The League was scrubbed from all their websites and social media. Even past posts on platforms like Instagram were deleted, whether they mentioned Nintendo, Game Freak, Pokémon, or not.
The park was closed the day after, and refunds were reportedly issued quickly. I tried looking into who the other partners were and only found expectable things—Global Amusement Consulting, which apparently managed amusement parks in California; HoloFutur, the small tech company responsible for the ground-breaking holographic technology that made The League an authentic experience; and a litany of other companies and businesses that could have really benefitted from the collaboration had it been allowed to continue longer. There was one name on the list, though, that I didn't recognize and couldn't really find any information on, The Delta Group. The only thing that came up from multiple searches (on different web browsers) was that they were an investment firm representing the interests of a select group of private companies and businesses. I wasn't tech savvy enough to dig any deeper or find out anything else about them. I'd considered asking for help, but at that point, most of my other friends were sick of me talking about The League and had vowed to ignore me until my fit of obsessing was done.
Many conspiracy theories sprang up overnight after Nintendo's withdrawal, ranging from accusations of human trafficking to collusion with aliens to abduct test subjects. I didn't believe any of them but did feel something was off about the whole situation. Aside from Nintendo and Game Freak, the park officials (maybe representatives of The Delta Group?) tried to play it off like there was some reasonable explanation for what happened, except that they weren't able to provide any details because it was being investigated by "higher authorities." Many speculated the FBI was involved, and apparently, the staff who resided on the island were forbidden from leaving, pending the investigation. Oddly enough, though, the people that had made claims against the park eventually stopped trying to peddle their unbelievable tales. There were plenty more conspiracy theories that they'd all been bought out or murdered, but even those theories were quickly debunked by hackers who found no other connections between the victims and The League. A popular video then began circulating on the Internet from some unknown person who somehow managed to sneak onto the island and into the park. Someone had visited the island at night to shoot the footage. Most of the video was dark and blurry due to the nighttime and quality of the camera so a lot was difficult to make out, but everything in the park seemed to have been destroyed. The video ended abruptly, causing even more rumors to appear, namely that the recorder was attacked or captured after managing to upload the footage to a person web page. Speculation on the fact that the video had been uploaded at all, though, fueled more conspiracy theories. So the arguments continued.
After some point with all the research and theorizing, though, like a light switch, I just turned it off. I had to be realistic. All those people, my roommate included, might have been gone, but I was still there. I couldn't let myself get stuck. Thankfully, most things fell back into place over the span of another couple weeks. The world's obsession with The League seemed to explode in flame and then quickly extinguish, and they moved onto the next big scandal. Part of me felt someone was driving that narrative on behalf of The League, but it was a lead I knew would be better left to someone else.
While I washed my hands after peeing, my thoughts swirled in my head like a maelstrom. The idea of cleaning out the apartment somehow managed to mix itself in, probably from staring at all the shit my roommate had on the sink counter. Again. Or moving out. My family was long dead or estranged, so I didn't have anywhere else to go. It had been just me and… Well, I had other friends, too. We had other friends. They were devastated, too, when they found out the news. All they could do was piss and moan about the closure, though. How we couldn't get any because we'd never know what actually happened, yet they had shamed me for trying to figure it all out. I cared more about having my best friend back, alive and well. Most of my life, I was used to being a loner, and it wasn't that I was afraid of going back to that. I was already there anyway. No, it was more that something felt unresolved to me.
The morning of the alleged disappearances, I'd woken up to a number of strange texts. A couple of blurry photos. In one of them, I was able to make out Hector's face. He seemed scared and confused. I couldn't tell what anything else was in the pictures, though, but I knew they were connected somehow.
When I got back to the kitchen, I grabbed my package-opening scissors and tore open the box on the kitchen counter.
"Let's see what mysteries you're hiding…" There was a bunch of thick paper that immediately burst from the box. Wrapped inside were two smaller boxes. The first one was larger and had a card attached to the lid. The second one was flatter and clinked lightly when I picked it up. I opened it to find a tea set, unsure why anyone would send something like that to me. Then, a twang of familiarity tickled my brain. I pulled out my phone and looked through the pictures I'd gotten from my roommate. In one of the pictures, my roommate stood next to Hector, holding up the very tea set sitting in front of me and wearing a strange veiled hat. I tore open the other box to reveal the same hat from the photo. A sigh escaped me. What the fuck was it supposed to mean? "Maybe Hector bought it as a surprise and had it shipped… Mmm, that's probably it." I sighed again as I popped the lid back on the hat box, thinking it might have been a very romantic gesture had it been properly received. Then I remembered the note attached to the top of the lid.
I picked up the note and stared at it. There was a note inside the plain white square envelope, nothing written on it but a winky face, written as a semi-colon and close parenthesis.
"Well, who's gonna know if I read it?" I rationalized aloud to myself and pulled out a single piece of white cardstock paper. The note appeared to have been hand-written hastily.
Hey!
By the time you get this, it'll probably be about a month after our trip! I would've gotten expedited shipping, but that was a little out of my price range, if you can believe! Anyway, this is really a thank you present for taking a chance to come out with me this weekend at The League. I was so surprised when you agreed to meet me out here but was unbelievably happy that we'd get to spend more time together. I know we both decided on how things would end when we were dating, but I've missed you so much these past 6 months that I feel like such a fool for not fighting harder to keep us together. I know it's only been a day, but so far, this trip is proving to me that we deserve another chance. I hope that when you receive this, you'll agree with me, too. And not because I bought you these very pricey (but lovely) gifts.
Here's hoping we have an amazing rest of the weekend together! And I won't go easy on you the next time we battle!
Love,
Hector
Tears started to well in my eyes, even though I was smiling and laughing.
"Well, that was kinda too fucking cute." I laughed again and wondered if they actually would've gotten back together. I used to worry if I had inadvertently encouraged their split up but could never land on a concrete answer in my own reflections. "Hmm," I hummed as I quickly reread the note to prolong the fleeting joy and fanned myself with it to dry the tears that were about to leap from my eyes. Then I noticed something was scribbled on the back of the card, as well.
P.S. There's another great surprise on the way soon! And I can't wait to see your reaction underneath it all…,
Laryn.
See you at Pierpont. ;)
My eyes bulged when I read my name scrawled across the bottom of the card. I immediately knew something was wrong about the last part of the message. Something about it was premeditated. And Pierpont was the name of the festival that happened downtown every year at the beginning of summer. They had variations on their main theme of "come get drunk in public and eat over-priced, greasy food on the boardwalk!" and for the past several months, the addition to their theme was "Expect great surprises." As calmly as I could, I called a friend. The line rang four times before going to voice mail.
"Hey, it's me," I said in a surprisingly normal voice. "When you get this message, come to my place. Don't call or text ahead of time. Just get your fucking ass over here." I ended the call and set my phone on a clear part of the counter. Then I walked into my bedroom so I could change my clothes.