Laying down in bed on a Sunday night shouldn't have felt like a strange experience. It was the last night of the weekend before I had to head back to school, I knew what it should have felt like. A familiar mix of melancholy and vague sense of disappointment.

Instead I was busy about the sudden genre shift my life had done over the last few days.

I called the card again, not to summon Lamia, but to just sort of look at it. I raised it up, holding it above my face as I moved it around in my hand.

I still couldn't get over how nice it looked. It was made from thick and stable cardboard and laminated with a nice gloss… at least until I tried to crush it. As soon as I did that, the card crumpled like paper.

A good thing too or summoning Lamia would have been much harder.

Speaking off, the morning after the incident I had learned that I could indeed summon Lamia in the… I would say real work but I didn't want to think about what that implied about the library.

The point was that when I summoned Lamia in my room, she came. She couldn't use her… my magic, but it was still enough proof that what had happened was real. Not that I would probably want to use her magic in my room even if I could.

So far I could make a fireball, make a curse that made stuff more breakable, and could stab things to poison them. In short, nothing that I would want to test out even if I could.

What I could do, was get a better look at my Persona. In the light of my room, I could see that Lamia's human parts were not as much of a mirror copy of me as I thought. Her eyes were narrower and her skin was a few shades darker. Nothing that you would notice in the heat of the moment, but enough to tell us apart if the elf ears, wardrobe, and snake parts weren't enough.

Speaking of, I had spent a small chunk of my Saturday looking up everything I could about Lamia and the results had been… worrying.

I mean… I may not like kids but eating them is a bit of a step up from that. At least it had helped finalize my decision to never have kids.

If magic was real then there was no way I was even going to risk tempting fate and learning that the Greek Gods were real too. The last thing I need is Hera showing up and giving me snake parts to match the original Lamia.

I dismissed the card and turned on my side, looking at my chair as other thoughts came to mind. My parents had been nice enough to get me a little gift on their way back from their meet up. Laid down on the chair was a dark red hoodie.

I wasn't too sure what to think of it. On one hand, it was nice that they were buying me the only type of shirt that I usually wore… but it was such a bright color. There was nothing like it in my closest.

Nothing at all.

I got out of bed and opened my closet door and really took in what I was seeing. On the rack was what felt like an endless stream of gray, dark gray, and black hoodies…

"Why shouldn't I be mean? It's not like I'm talking to someone worth talking to in the first place. Such a pathetic little thing. Secretly wanting friends but too scared to reach out to others. Too scared to do anything but put up your paper walls to keep the world out,"

Rude choice of words aside, my shadow had had a point. I did have a tendency to put up walls to keep others out. My books did a lot of that but did my clothes do the same?

I glanced back at the red hoodie on the chair. It wasn't that different from my normal wear, not really. But it was a warmer color, and it was better than nothing.

"Baby steps," I told myself as I patted the hoodie before going back to bed.

Besides, I could shoot fire now. Pretty sure I was contractually obligated by the universe to at least wear at least a little red.

The next day I stood in front of the mirror and took in my new look. I had been right when I had thought that it wouldn't be much of a change, but it had been a change nonetheless. Still, there was something about this red hoodie with these black pants that felt… both right and kind of familiar.

I scrambled my brain for a bit before it hit me.

I called the card forth again and crushed it as Lamia appeared in my room. I walked up to my other self and compared the colors of my clothes with the rings that went down her tail.

"We match," I said with an amused huff.

I dismissed her before my parents could walk in and see me with the big snake girl that almost looked just like me.

I walked out of my room and headed to the breakfast table as my dad set two fried eggs down on my plate.

"Morning," I told them as I took a seat and got to eating. It honestly wasn't as good as the pancakes that Robby had made Saturday morning, but they were good enough.

And all it cost me was the guilt I had felt when I lied to his face about trying on the TV legend. In my defense Robby didn't look that broken up about it, probably because he had admitted to falling asleep before 1:23 anyway.

"Hey, isn't that a good look for you," My dad said as he sat down next to me.

"We were so worried that you weren't going to wear it," Mom admitted as she beamed at me. I shrugged my shoulders and tried my best to pretend that my change in wardrobe hadn't come from a life-altering event where I had gotten magic powers.

"Oh, you know… just felt like a red hoodie kind of day," I told her as mom reached out to touch my shoulder.

"And such a nice color too. See isn't this better then what you normally wear?" She said as I felt a vein pop in my head.

"Keep making a big deal about it and I'm going right back to wearing nothing but black and gray," I told her as Mom pulled her fingers back like my hoodie was hot enough to burn them.

"Let the girl be Carol," My Dad said with a chuckle. "You know how much you hated it when your mom kept badging you about your clothes. I would know, I was there," He barked with laughter after that part.

"Oh yes, the awkward boyfriend sitting in the living room listening in on his girlfriend getting into a screaming match with her mother," My mother said before letting out a nostalgic sigh.

I just rolled my eyes. I had already heard the story of my parent's first date enough times to quote it word for word. Especially the part where my mom got into a screaming match with grandma and then swore to 'never do this to my own child when she brings a boy home'.

Now that I thought about it, why exactly did mom always emphasize that part? Oh well, it probably didn't matter.

I finished breakfast and said my goodbyes before walking out the door. As I did, I noticed how weird it felt wearing a bright color out of the house for the first time in a while. I was so used to the bottom of my sight being something dark that the red was super noticeable.

The trip to school was peaceful… and by peaceful I meant that I waited for the city bus for five minutes and then spent the rest of the trip reading. Partly because I wanted something to distract myself from how weird it was to walk into school with magic powers at my beck and call.

Also it was a really good book.

New outlook on life or not, I still needed to know what would happen with these three werewolves.

By the time I got off the bus, the number of werewolves had gone down to two and I was feeling dead inside.

"Why… why would I read that right before school?" I asked myself as I stared at the school gates. In my head, the same scene played in my head over and over again. Eril standing over his best friend's corpse with madness in his eyes as his love interest Jesini watched on in horror.

And the chapter ended with the strangest moment. Eril stands at the edge of a cliff and then just jumps off. And after getting to the bottom he ends up joining the bad guys.

How exactly was the story even going to go from here? Was Jesini the new main character? How were they going to wrap this all up in the two chapters they had left?

Well if I wanted to distract myself from the magic thing, I had managed it. Now my brain was filled with thoughts of insane werewolves and broken hearted girls who now officially deserved better.

By the time I saw Robby later that day. I was still feeling it.

He took one glance at me and leaned back on the wall and waited for me to walk up to him.

"One of your fictional characters die?" He asked despite knowing the answer. I gave him a quick explanation before leaning on the wall next to him.

"So basically that's what happened," I told him. "Probably going to spend all of lunch reading it to the end,"

"Okay then… so what's with the red?" He asked as I glanced down and fully took in the giant amount of red filling my vision.

"I don't know," I lied with a shoulder shrug. "My parents bought it for me on the way back from the thing and I figured I would wear it,"

"Huh," He said as he got back to his feet. "Okay then. I'll leave you to your book,"

"Thanks," I told him "Talk to you later,"

He started walking away when he suddenly stopped and looked back at me.

"Oh right, almost forgot," He said sheepishly.

"You've been doing that a lot recently," I pointed out, getting a weak chuckle out of him.

"Well you're not wrong," He said before putting on a serious face. "Did you hear about all the people that went missing last weekend?"

I blinked and looked at him carefully. He didn't look like he was kidding and Robby wasn't the kind of person to joke about that kind of thing in the first place.

"No, no I haven't," I admitted as he grimaced.

"Yeah a lot of people just kind of up and vanished. The news has been freaking out about since this morning," He explained as I understood why I hadn't heard anything about it. My parents tended to only watch the evening news and I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff at all. "Just be careful out there,"

"Don't worry, I'm not about to disappear anytime soon," I told him as I tried not to think about what could have happened to me if that snake had managed to beat me.

We split off from there and soon enough I was in one of the quieter parts of the school courtyard with my book in hand. I opened it up to where I had left my bookmark when I heard someone walk up to me.

I glanced up at the approaching boy and raised an eyebrow at him. He was skinny, about my height with flat black hair that covered one of his eyes. He was wearing a graphic tee of something that may or may not have been a band and a pair of blue jeans.

"Can I help you?" I said before wincing on the inside. Just got done telling my shadow that I had a problem with talking to people and I'm already botching my first conversation with someone besides my parents and Robby.

"Mind if I ask if that book's any good?" He asked, not looking too put off by how rude I had just been. "I like to read a lot and an aunt of mine just recommended it to me,"

I glanced down at the book in my hands and let out a small sigh of relief. At least the topic of conversation was something that I could deal with.

That being said…

"Honestly, if you had asked me yesterday I would have said yes, but now…"

"Bad ending?" He asked with a wince as I shook my head.

"Less bad ending and more unexpected events two chapters right before the ending," I explained. "I guess I just don't know where it's going to go from here,"

"You think you'll be done with it soon?" He asked.

"Yeah I think I will," I told him as I sat back a bit. "I always read around here for lunch so feel free to stop by tomorrow for my recommendation,"

"Thanks, um… my name's Zach,"

"Sure thing, mine's Rita," I told him before he went off on his way.

I glanced down at the book again and saw just how close I was to the end. I would have to find a new book to take its place after this.

Maybe I could spend the time looking into the stuff about my Persona and whatever happened on Friday…

Nah, what were the odds of running into something like that again anyway?

Case 0 end