Chapter 2: The Beginning
"We need to ask you a favor,"
"Yes?"
"To speed up the process, we will need you to… tip the scale a bit,"
"How so?"
"Forget the boy. He's not important. It's the girl we need you to manipulate… she's beginning to show the signs already…"
Tohru finally stopped dancing on the machine, exhausted and short of breath. In terms of the game, she really had not done very well. Although the boys comforted her by using the excuse of still being delirious, they knew that that wasn't the real reason that she had performed so badly. She had managed to get a decent score, but she really had no sense of music or rhythm at all.
Transfixed by the game, Kyo and Yuki both said,
"Let me try." The two boys glared at each other, and immediately started to bicker.
"I'm going first," announced Kyo.
"No, I will go first, because if you went first, I'd have to stand behind you and make sure you didn't slip and hit that thick head of yours, you stupid cat!" replied Yuki.
"Damn rat! Why would you even care if I hit my head? You slam it on the ground almost every day, anyway!"
"Because… because it's the floor I'm worried about!"
"That doesn't even make sense, girly boy!"
"If I'm so girly, why do you want to play a game that Tohru's friends play?"
"Well, you wanted to play it just as much as I did!"
"Um… actually, I know a lot of boys who play it…" said Tohru, who was unnoticed.
"You know what, I'm sick of you, stupid cat. Let's just play at the same time."
"…Uh…. okay…." Said Kyo, looking at Yuki like he was crazy, "so, uh, Tohru… how do you work this piece 'a junk, anyway?"
"Oh, just press the green button," she said with a smile.
Yuki pressed the button, and the screen lit up again, with the familiar flashing lights. Tohru showed the two how to work the game, and soon, the boys were dancing.
Although they were not used to the machine, their rhythm was perfect. They followed every arrow, with perfect, graceful steps. They were so mesmerized by the machine that they completely forgot where they were, what had happened the night before, and… Tohru. Tohru, with her usual smile, was watching the screen, with the arrows and the flashing lights. But did her smile seem just a tad different? If it was, it was unnoticed. There was no one to see that her hands, although folded so perfectly on top of one another, were clenched into tight fists, her fingernails digging into her hands, making marks on the insides.
Finally, the mesmerizing techno music drew to an end, and the boys' scores flashed on the screen, much higher than Tohru's. The boys scanned the screen frantically, attempting to discover who had won. However, to their dismay, the scores were exactly the same. They each had not missed a single step.
"Wow," said Tohru, "you two are so talented! You can do everything better than me!" And she laughed her silly laugh, with that ear-to-ear grin once again plastered on her face. But somehow, her laugh seemed a little different; forced, like she didn't quite mean it…