It was three days before we ended up hearing from Ryona again. I hadn't even figured out what to do about the weird transfer student situation yet, and wanted to think of a plan before having to deal with the Hebijo girls again. Of course, Tris was more eager to see Ryona again, for obvious reasons. But either way, it seemed like Ryona was determined to ram herself back into our lives immediately, whether we were ready for her or not.

We'd been home from school for like half an hour that day, and were both sitting in the living room decompressing. Tris was scrolling through her phone when it buzzed. And a minute later, she looked up at me.

"Ryona just texted me. She wants us to go hang out with her and her sister and one of their friends. I told her we could probably get there in like half an hour?"

I ended up facepalming so hard it hurt.

"What?" Tris asked, seeming genuinely oblivious. I said nothing, as usual, and dashed into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I flung myself at the bed, then pulled out my phone. There was no way I'd be able to get words out verbally, but there were things Tris needed to hear. So I texted them, way faster than normal, leaving behind a string of typos in my frustration.

"all i can say is cna you pleas not with yuor weird bsdm relationship with literaly the enemey?"

"She's not the enemy," Tris texted back, seconds later. "Also, stop kinkshaming me."

"frist of all im not kinkshaming second it donest matter evne if she is good she is close neough tto the emeny that we have to wory about them usign her against us."

"I think she's smart enough that she'll choose to be on our side even if shit does go down. Which by the way we're not sure if it will or not. You're basing this on literally a dream."

"prophetioc drems are definaltey a thing"

"If you say so. Also why can't you spell today?"

"im just FURSTTATED"

"Apparently." I heard her laugh at me from the other room.

"stop lauhging."

"Whatever. I still think you should come with me to hang out with them anyway. I know you don't trust them, but think of it like this. If we're nice to them, maybe they will choose to side with us later. If they end up against us, we at least have intel on them."

She had a point. I buried my face in the pillow.

"well ok fine tell tehm yes we wil go but if anything bad hapens im going tto blame you and do somthing mean to you"

"Okay, be ready to go in like fifteen minutes. We're going to get noodles. Also, you don't have a mean bone in your body."

"dont test me i will swtich the salt and sugrar when you least expet it and your cookies wil be awful"

I got up and brushed bed fuzz off my shirt, then went to go straighten out my hair, which was a mess from repeatedly mashing my head into surfaces out of annoyance. When I went back out into the other room, she was laughing at me again.

"Oh no, not my cookies," she said, between giggling. "Anything but the cookies."

I gave her a sharp nod as I grabbed my bag, confirming that yes, I am an abnormally nice person, but also yes, my threat to her cookies would still stand. And with that, we headed out to some noodle place in the run down neighborhood where we met them in the first place.

"You need to try to communicate more," she said, lecturing me the entire time we walked there. "I know talking out loud is hard for you, but the least you can do is type the things you want to say into your phone. Then you can show the phone to us, or I can read them out loud for you, or something. Just try, okay?"

I nodded. I would try.

We got to the noodle place, and there was Ryona, sitting outside on the patio and waving enthusiastically at us to come sit at the seats they'd saved. Next to her on one side was Ryobi, who was still giving me dirty looks. And on the other side was a girl with dark eyes and deep purple hair. She was clutching a weird purplish blue teddy bear like her life depended on it. I tried not to judge. I didn't know her, so I had no room to think anything.

"Hiiii, Tris and Linkle!" Ryona said, squealing with glee. "You guys already know Ryobi, but let me introduce you to my other friend. Her name's Murasaki, and she goes to Hebijo too. Say hiiiii, Murasaki!"

Her tone toward her own friend was like she was trying to get a toddler to do something. I immediately felt bad for Murasaki. As someone who has trouble speaking, I know what it feels like to get the constant assumption that I'm stupid. But I could look at Murasaki and tell she wasn't stupid. She had a look of deep sorrow in her eyes, but definitely not the look of vacancy you can see in the eyes of someone who is truly, genuinely stupid. No, she just looked... uncomfortable. And getting increasingly more uncomfortable given how she was being condescended to.

"H-hi, and, um, this is my bear," Murasaki said, holding it up. "Her name is Bebe-tan. She says hi too."

' Tris gave me a look. I stomped on her foot under the table, and waved enthusiastically to both Murasaki and Bebe-tan. She gave back what looked like a genuine smile. But other than that...

Tris and Ryona were making eyes at each other across the table the whole time. Like not just lovey eyes, but "in my head I'm undressing you" eyes. By the time the waitress had come and gone, those eyes had clearly escalated into "in my head I'm groping you" eyes. I wondered if by the time we got our noodles, I'd find out what "in my head I'm intensely *bleep*ing your *bleep* with my *bleep* until we both *bleep*" eyes looked like. I hoped not.

Ryobi was glaring at me like I did something to her, besides just hop over the fence at her that one time. Judging by the fact that every insult she'd ever slung at me had something to do with my breast size, along with my percieved lack of intelligence and sexual activity based on said breast size... Well, she didn't have much, so I wonder if what it was I did to her was have boobs. I didn't get why it mattered. All they do is get in the way during combat anyway.

Murasaki honestly looked super miserable to be sitting out in public with her condescending "friends" as well as two people that were complete strangers to her. She was burying most of her face into Bebe-tan, and from what I could see of her eyes from over the bear and under her hair, there were tears in them, threatening to spill out. I smiled at her, and she looked genuinely taken aback. Like, what kind of friends were these, anyway, where she looked so shocked to get a smile?

So, yeah.

There wasn't much conversation, and what there was...

"Hey, Tris, when's the next time we can go—"

"Don't talk about that in public, it'll gross people out," Tris said.

"Well, can we talk about the fighting part at least?" Ryona asked.

"No, 'cause that'll get you just as worked up as talking about the dirty part."

That was their conversation. It was a huge relief when noodles came, because then instead of sitting there feeling super awkward, I could eat while sitting there feeling super awkward. Naturally, though, the amount of awkward was not reduced.

Murasaki kept looking like she was about to burst into tears. I thought of what Tris had said, so I pulled my phone out and started typing into it.

"You don't want to be here either, huh? I bet they had to drag you out. Not sure why they bother doing that. It's not like they're making an attempt to talk to us."

And I slid my phone over to Murasaki, who picked it up and read it silently. She gave the tiniest of smiles, and typed back into the phone, before sliding it back over to me.

"exactly! they just do it so they can feel good about themselves. and also wtf is with ryona and ur sister? ryona is a weird sexual masochist all the time but didnt think shed ever find someone as into her bs as she is. um no offense to ur sister... but if theyre all into each other like that why do they gotta invite us?"

I couldn't help but snort in amusement as I typed back.

"Yeah, Tris is a good person, but... she does take a weird level of pleasure in other people's misery. It wasn't until now that I unfortunately found out that level of pleasure extends to... yeah..."

When I got her response, I actually laughed.

"not to be crude but i feel like an extra in whats gonna be a porno. can they leave and fuck so i can go home and play video games with bebe-tan?"

Pretty vulgar for someone who toted her security teddy bear around and constantly looked about to cry. But I didn't consider that a bad thing. She seemed like she'd been through a lot, and probably had her reasons to be a bit bitter. And she gave me a genuine smile when I laughed at what she'd written. But maybe I shouldn't have laughed out loud, because, uh...

"You two big titty dumbasses got something you wanna share?" Ryobi asked.

Murasaki looked upset all over again, like a student caught passing notes and about to get a detention. But I gave Ryobi a look, like I dare you to intercept the phone. I dare you to read it out loud to everyone. I probably wasn't doing myself any favors at making her not hate me. But if she was going to humiliate Murasaki, I would fight her.

Ryobi snatched the phone from me anyway, and read what was on the screen. But instead of being pissy, she laughed too.

"Oh my god, you nailed it. Really, that's my life."

By then, both Tris and Ryona were looking at us. Murasaki looked scared again, but I gave Tris the same look I'd given Ryobi. Except worse. Like, "I dare you to talk shit. I would have stood up to Ryobi politely if she talked shit, but you're my sister, so I won't hesitate, bitch. I know you don't think I have a mean bone in my body, but I will ruin your cookies. I will destroy your cookies. Destroy."

Tris snatched the phone anyway, and read it quickly, before showing it to Ryona. Now, that was a problem, because I didn't think there was anything mean you could say or do to Ryona that she wouldn't literally get off on...

"Are we that bad?" Tris asked. Ryona just giggled.

"Yes," Ryobi said, all too quickly.

I snatched my phone back and typed into it again before holding it out for them to read.

"If we're going to hang out as a group of five, let's do something as a group of five. And before you even suggest it, nothing sexual, nothing violent that ends up sexual, and nothing illegal."

"Nothing sexual, nothing illegal. What's left? Why do you always have to be such a buzzkill?" Tris threw her hands up in the air. But I could tell she was mostly joking, so I huffed in amusement, before continuing typing.

"It's my job. I am the goody two shoes. It is my destiny, throughout every reincarnation, and so I have been born once again, to ruin your fun."

Tris shook her head with a laugh.

"I know I said before I'm not sure if I believe your reincarnation prophecy thingie, but if you say you're reincarnated to be a buzzkill, I might believe you. Like, remember in sixth grade when I was mad at my French teacher, so I was going to bring her laxative laced brownies? And you threw them out before I could even bring them to school. Then in sleep-away camp when that one prissy girl was getting on my nerves, so I mixed craft paint into her shampoo? You threw that out too."

I typed a response again.

"Well, we're twins, so maybe it's a shared destiny. You're a buzzkill to me all the time too."

"When?!"

"Practically ever since preschool, when I'd try to climb things and you would freak out. Or when we went on that camping trip and I wanted to go hunting with crossbows and you kept saying we were going to get arrested. Also, whenever I get a lighter, you take it away."

"Lighters are for people who smoke. You don't smoke."

"Lighters have lots of uses."

"Like when I find you standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night with a bag of Chex Mix, lighting the individual pieces on fire? Did you fail kindergarten fire safety?"

"I couldn't fall asleep, and I wanted to see which ones would burn the fastest."

Between Tris sassing me, and my frantic typing of sassing her back, which Tris had started reading out loud dramatically so not everyone had to look at the phone... all three of the Hebijo girls were giggling at us.

"Why don't we have sisterly love like that?" Ryona asked Ryobi.

"Because you can't last five minutes without being a masochist, you dumb f—never mind, not giving you the satisfaction right now."

"Aww, man..."

"See what I mean when I said this was my life?" Ryobi asked. "Every day. All she cares about is her crazy masochism fetish, and you can't do anything about it, because it just feeds it like gasoline. Can't tell her to fucking stop it, because that counts as yelling at her, and that's something she likes. Can't hit her, that's something she really likes. All I can do is be nice to her and hope she stops on her own. Ugh."

The whole time Ryobi ranted, Murasaki nodded silently, and gestured with Bebe-tan to make her nod as well.

Before long, we'd finished our noodles, but we lingered on a bench near the noodle place, and kept chattering. We only parted ways when it started to get dark enough that apparently we wouldn't want to stay in this neighborhood if we wanted to be safe. That, and it'd be hard to find our way home. Because if it were me, I could probably take a whole gang of muggers easier than I could walk home and not get lost.

After all that... well, it was something. It took some time, but all five of us seemed like we enjoyed ourselves. Even me. Yeah, I genuinely enjoyed hanging out with girls from the "evil" school, which... kind of made me wonder things. Like, maybe this school wasn't as evil as I thought? It almost seemed like her school's idea of evil was so... watered down? That they wouldn't know real evil if it killed them.

Not that I would know what real evil was either.

But those dreams... something told me that the version of me that existed in those dreams had seen real evil. And lost everything he had, just to fight it. To him, Ryona and her "evil" would register on about the same level of threat as a mosquito. Except I'm pretty sure a mosquito stops sucking when you slap it...

Before we left, Murasaki grabbed my phone and typed something in it fast before shoving it back in my hands. She'd given me her number, and left a note for me to text her later, so we could stay in touch on a daily basis. She even noted that Bebe-tan told her she likes me too.

Judging by how upset she'd been at the start of the afternoon, I felt like I'd done something good.