First there was the sound of a key turning the lock, then that of the apartment door opening, finally a relieved voice called out as the young woman entered her home. "I'm back! Renko, where are you?"
"Over here. Still chipping away at it..." Her houseguest, partner, and fellow failure of a necromancer, Usami Renko, responded dejectedly as she typed away at a keyboard. She had hoped working on her research paper at her partner's home would provide the change of pace she needed in order to finish it faster. That had proven to be a false assumption. "...Merry, I'd love for something else to look at right now."
"Unfortunately, the only thing I have to show is a whole lot of trash." The owner of the apartment, Maribel Hearn, or just 'Merry' as Renko called her, set down a box on the table where Renko was working.
"You say it's trash, but you're placing it right in front of me?" Despite that, Renko was still amused and grateful for the distraction. "What is all this?"
"A whole lot of old mail. I used to be so much worse about throwing things away, but even finding these now, I can't help but feel nostalgic. Like look at this, a flyer for a concert from when I was practically a baby." She said while picking up the half-torn flyer, with patches missing their long fallen-off glitter. "This might be the only thing tethering me to that memory."
"You're always so sentimental over the smallest things. These have to be ancient… They haven't made physical mail in this region in what, a decade? I didn't know you were this much of a hoarder…"
"Just keep crushing on my nostalgia, why don't you?" Merry didn't actually seem to mind, and she knew Renko wasn't only indulgering her because she was bored, but because she was actually interested.
"Hey, look at this." Renko picked out a particularly worn piece of paper, skimming it and reading various parts out loud. "Don't throw this away. If you do not send this to five other addresses. The clown will come get you. ...Why'd you keep this?"
"I had completely forgotten about that. I must have been five or something..." Merry laughed as she pushed down the letter in Renko's hand to the table. "I think when I found it in my mailbox, I was so scared of it that I just buried the letter deep in the house somewhere, and put it out of mind."
"That's really cute. I don't know if I could even read yet when I was five." Renko couldn't help but laugh as well. "So, do you still believe in chain letters like these?"
"Not that one, anyway. But… they're a bit nostalgic in their own right, aren't they?" Merry picked up the letter warning her of a clown that might attack them on the streets, and smiled fondly at it. At that moment, she had to agree with Renko that she got sentimental over such the smallest things. "Chain letters aren't too far off from myths or scary stories people tell on forums, I think."
"That's an interesting comparison, because when I think about it, something like this had far more chance of circulating than just a usual rumour, right? Even someone who dismisses it entirely as a hoax might wonder at the back of their mind: 'What if there is the smallest chance something could happen to me', or something like that."
"Right? Even if they decide to throw it away, they must have been gripped for just a moment. After all, letters like these are typically constructed specifically to feed into superstition, or draw superstition out of someone who wouldn't have thought of such things otherwise."
"When you put it like that, it's like saying a chain letter is a physical embodiment of a superstition…" Renko suggested, but was just as quick to dismiss her own words. "That might be giving too much credit to spam mail though meant to annoy people though. Either that or rope them into a pyramid scheme."
"I think you're right. Regardless of the original source or intention, once a superstition like this starts circulating, you have people believing in it to various degrees, and just like that you have a phenomenon on your hands, a shared imagination of sorts." The thought of people's imagination, entirely on their own, simply all believing in the same improbable tale… It was something Merry liked to think of as romantic.
"I'd say getting even more than one person to believe they might get attacked by clowns on the street would be considered a phenomenon."
"Right, well… Imagine a more pleasing scenario than that. Even if it's just between two people, it would still be a shared fantasy. And for those two, it would be as good as reality." Having said that, Merry found herself smiling wistfully. "...Honestly, it almost makes me sad this kind of thing just can't happen anymore."
"Merry, don't tell me you think more people should be made to fear feral clowns on the street?"
"You are really hung up on that, aren't you? But no, that's not it. I think there can be such a thing as… a positive chain letter, maybe. One that's like 'send these to five other people and all of you will have good health'. I bet people would be more willing to send something out like that."
"Well, I doubt anybody is in the business of producing such a thing."
"Yeah, I suppose not." The two of them went quiet for a bit as they stared at the amusing letter on the table. At that moment, a similar thought struck them both, and shared a look and growing smile, with Merry being the first one to speak. "Maybe you should finish your research paper first."
"I always manage, on the night before the deadline anyway. Let's talk about what we want to put in our letter."
Following on a complete whim as the pair are wont to do, both of them had spontaneously decided to construct their own chain letter for the sake of adding some more superstition into a world that they believed severely lacked in them. Thus, they sat in front of Renko's computer and began typing up something in a word document.
It was Merry's suggestion to make it a letter concerning romance, something to encourage the circulating of the letter as the sender's personal yet anonymous expression of their feelings. It was Renko who thought of the stipulations to further incite someone to forward the letter further, threatening any who refused with the fate of spending their days alone.
A line was written about having to send it to five other addresses, but Merry pointed out that it was somewhat unlikely for the average person to have that many people they had even an inkling of romantic feelings for, so Renko agreed to lowball the requirement and reduce it to sending it to just one.
"Wouldn't it be funny if the letter just went back and forth between two people, though?"
"It would! But it'd also be kind of romantic, a shared fantasy between just those two."
Renko made the touches to the prose, doing her best to capture the kind of attention-grabbing text one might find in a magazine article or the like. Merry had an artistic heart of her own, or perhaps just fond of arts and crafts, picking out the bright colours that would accompany the text, and ambitiously suggested opening a second word document in order to make a custom envelope.
"What if on the envelope, it said to only open it when alone? I think then, there's less of a chance of them being convinced by a skeptical friend that it's just nonsense."
"I'm the skeptical friend you're talking about, right? Well, I agree anyway."
After making use of the printer and some deft folding, they had prepared an almost 'professional' looking piece of spam mail. Renko even added an appropriately-shaped stamp in the form of a red heart for added character.
Their home-produced chain letter sat on the table, and both of them were giggling over their frankly absurd use of the last thirty minutes, but it wasn't that much stranger than what they typically did for their activities in their wonderful failure of a club.
"Alright, we've got our 'carrier of superstition' ready." Renko said with a satisfied smile.
"Stop trying to make it sound like something grand, I'll get even more embarrassed." Merry responded with a similar smile. "So… Where do you want to send it?"
"You're asking me? I don't know. We'd have to go pretty far to send it to a region that still uses physical mailboxes."
"Oh, right… That sounds troublesome, now that I think about it." The prospect of taking a train all the way towards some dingy postal building immediately soured Merry's mood.
"Wow, you're so quick to have second thoughts." Renko was quick to chide, even if she was thinking the same thing.
"I'm not saying to just scrap the whole idea or anything. How about we just put it on our to-do list for now."
"You sure? We've been putting off a lot of things on that list." Renko sadly admitted, though it was perhaps inevitable when some of the things on said list, which only existed in verbal form between them, included things such as 'go to the moon', 'obtain boat to search for boundary in middle of river', and 'replace water heater in Renko's house', all of which seemed very far off.
"If you still believe we'll get to everything on the list eventually, then I'm not worried. Merry candidly stated without any worry. "One more thing to make a club activity out of."
"It's great that we're not running out of ideas anytime soon, at least." Renko said with an affirmative nod, before glancing at the letter again. "...Say, Merry, you believe that subjectivity is as true as objectivity, right?"
"I do." To be specific, she believed that the subjective mind was even more true than what they saw as reality. Merry was about to ask when she noticed Renko glancing at the letter. "Oh, were you going to ask if I believe in the superstition that we just made up ourselves?"
"Well, the whole point of chain letters and superstition as you suggested, is that believing in it makes it as good as reality? Aren't you afraid then, that having that letter with you will…"
"...Am I afraid, or are you?" Merry couldn't help but ask with a wide grin. "You think if I don't send out that letter as soon as possible, then I'll end up 'alone' for the rest of my days?"
Renko however, just averted her eyes and played it off with a laugh. "Don't be silly… I just know you put a lot of stock into that kind of thing."
"That might be true, but even if I was foolish enough to believe all that… I still wouldn't be worried about that piece of paper."
"You wouldn't worry even if you believed it?" It sounded like a blatant contradiction to Renko.
"Of course I wouldn't." Merry answered with a confident and warm smile. "I don't need any letter or superstition to know that I'll be spending the rest of my days with you, Renko."
Several long seconds passed as Renko registered the comment. The sudden, simultaneous shock of earnestness and flirtation was too much for her to remain collected. She let out an awkward cough, her lips quavering into a grin she was trying to keep from being too broad. "...Are you going to seal the deal now by handing me that letter?"
"I'm pretty sure you'd just hand it back to me and the loop would never end."
"Nothing wrong with a 'shared fantasy' between just the two of us, right?"
"Well, I have a better idea. Forget about this for a moment…" Merry picked up the letter, and slid it into a nearby box of other miscellaneous items, before turning her attention back to Renko. "I know you probably won't be able to do anything about your research paper, until you've had a relaxing evening to sort yourself out."
"Woah, you almost sound like an expert in Relative Psychology there." Renko teased.
"It doesn't take an expert in anything to know you're not going to get anything done while you're cooped up in my house. Let's head out someplace."
"You have a place in mind?" Renko was already looking for both her and Merry's coat, ready to agree with whatever Merry suggested.
"A couple of places too. I'm open to suggestions too." Merry happily took her coat from Renko.
"How about the moon?" Renko candidly said. "It's about time we got around to checking that off our list."
"Oh, sure. Why not? We can buy a boat while we're at it too." Merry chuckled as she headed to the door and opened it again.
"...Hey, Merry?" Renko spoke up from behind her, a tinge of uncertainty in her voice.
"No, I'm not serious about the boat. Of course I-"
She had turned around, and was caught by surprise by the sudden kiss from Renko. Not a brief peck on her lips either, as Renko took the moment to truly feel their shared warmth.
Merry briefly murmured something out of surprise at first, but quickly shifted into leaning into the kiss as well. She was even a little frustrated when Renko was the first one to break it off, after going through the effort of sneaking up on her.
The first thing Renko had to respond with was an upbeat grin, before shrugging her shoulders. "...What? I'm in a romantic mood, after just now. Come on, don't want to miss the bus."
"...Right. Which one of us is really the sentimental one?" Merry watched with a small smile as her partner walked past her.
Merry quickly headed out, closing the door behind her. Both she and Renko were actually quite bad at throwing things, and they were also prone to forgetting smaller details if it wasn't that important to either of them.
As such, the chain letter that they had worked together to create on a whimsical impulse, would be put aside for days, then weeks, then months, until slipping entirely out of their minds. Neither would even notice if it fell into some border somewhere along the way.
"...Wait, the bus? So you do have a place in mind?" Merry caught up with Renko along the outside corridor.
"A couple." Renko cheerfully answered. "Will you come with me, no matter what it is, though?"
"I thought that goes without saying by now." Merry responded with cheer to match.
It was easy for her to forget about 'shared fantasies' or the like, since the reality she shared with Renko was already plenty wonderful.