The internet was a wonderful place!
You could find all kinds of cool things on the internet, like purple sauce. Nobody knew what it tasted like, or really what was in it, or where the recipe had originated from, but that didn't matter! It was cool and it probably tasted like…like something purple! Plums or grapes or eggplant or ube or…or something! At this point Rei would take literally any flavor…stupid mom's stupid diet of stupid boiled food…this was going to be great!
Or at least it should have been.
Rei's purple sauce had come in the mail that morning. It had been expensive, twenty five thousand yen plus overseas shipping and handling, but it was worth it. This was going to be delicious. It had to be…even though the future had been telling her, all day, that there was a pretty good chance that it was going to be the worst thing that she had ever had in her life…
The odds of it being good went up if she stuck it in the fridge.
So that was what she had done. She had stuck it in the fridge and covered it in sticky notes that said 'Rei's' and 'don't eat' and 'that means you, Riko'. It had even been untouched by the time she had gotten home from school, which was weird since her sister normally stole everything that gave her joy in this world.
'I wouldn't eat that garbage if you paid me.'
Riko was just trying to use reverse psychology or something, this was going to be great! She had even decided to invite her two best, and honestly only, friends over to share it with her…and it was going to be great. Even though the future told her otherwise. There was still a pretty big chance that this was going to be downright terrible….
The future wasn't written in stone.
It would have been so much easier for Rei if it had been. She could have played the lottery and gotten rich. She could have known all the answers and been at the top of her class, no, her entire school. She could have known when mom and dad were going to say 'yes' and when it was better to not ask them because they were fighting. She even could have known, beforehand, if she was wasting her hard earned allowance on something that had looked really, really, really good in her feed but now didn't look nearly as good in real life.
It didn't smell nearly as good, too, or at least not nearly as good as she'd imagined it.
"You seriously spent twenty five thousand yen on this?" asked Tome as she poked the plastic bottle of purple sauce that Rei had, in fact, wasted twenty five thousand yen on. It had looked so good in her feed, and it was supposed to be good for her too! It was supposed to be full of purple…ness…and it was supposed to taste good too!
She didn't know what, exactly, it was supposed to taste like but at this point she honestly didn't care.
"Plus shipping and handling." Muttered Rei. The bottled began to float up in the air and rotate. It looked kind of cool, actually, especially when it caught on the light. Maybe that was going to be a good use for it…
There was a five percent chance that Mob would drop it and it would explode on everything.
"I hope you didn't spend a lot of money on that too, this bottle is cracked." Said Mob as she spun the bottle around in the air.
"I know, I can tell." Said Rei, hanging her head down so low that one of her curlers fell out. Great. Now she was broke and her hair was going to look super bad tomorrow…there was a twenty five percent chance that it was going to look bad either way, it depended on how she slept on it.
There was also a fifty percent chance that they were going to be up all night again watching the skies with Tome.
And a twenty five percent chance that if she fell sleep she would wake up with drawings on her face.
And a ninety percent chance that her sister was going to eat all of the good, name brand cereal.
And an eight percent chance that-
"Rei, hey? You with me?" asked Tome as she snapped her fingers in Rei's face. Rei blinked. The world came back into focus. That had been…she glanced at her clock. A little more than a minute. Not that bad, not as bad as other times she'd gotten totally lost in her powers.
Not as bad as sitting up all night and trying to find a future where you wound up with someone who you knew for a fact would never want to go out with you for pretty obvious reasons.
"I'm here, I'm fine. I just…zoned out for a little bit." Said Rei
"Your powers again?" asked Mob. She looked worried…of course she did. Rei had been there that day with the explosions and the broccoli tree and all of that. It had been kind of scary…kind of really scary…but things were ok now and she wasn't going to lose control like Mob had. She didn't even have the same powerset!
It would have been so cool, though, if she had. At least then her powers would have been useful.
"Yeah, but it's nothing. I was just looking up probabilities again, nothing serious." Said Rei
"Are you sure? I know how hard it can be to control your powers and how scary it can be when you lose control…" said Mob
"I'm fine, really." Said Rei, putting her hand on Mob's arm. She was careful not to smudge the marker tattoo that Tome had done of the cat in the red suit thing.
"If you're ever not fine then you can always talk to me." said Mob
"You sound like Reigen." Said Tome, rolling her eyes.
"That's a good idea, you can talk to Master Reigen too. She doesn't have any powers but that didn't stop her from helping me control my powers and I bet that she could help you with your powers too." Said Mob. Tome clicked her tongue.
"Hey, watch out, those are hard to draw." Said Tome, pushing Rei's hand away from Meow Kitty Evangelion. Mob gasped and pulled her sleeve down.
"Seriously. My hard work, my god given and god honed talents-" said Tome
"Sorry, ok? I'm sorry. There wasn't a chance…a big chance that I would have messed it up and even if I did and you didn't want to fix it there's a chance that, I mean not that I would ask, but Sho's really good at drawing-" said Rei, playing with a piece of her hair. She knew that he was gay, and dating Ritsu, but he was also really sweet and he liked animals and he had naturally red hair and his eyes were super blue and his freckles were cute too…and also he was a good artist which was the only reason she would have bothered him in the middle of the night like this.
"Sho, draw me like one of your French girls!" said Tome as she climbed up and leaned back on Rei's bed before spreading out like the girl in that movie. A pillow fell from the bed and hit Rei on the head.
"I think that Sho would rather draw Jack than Rose." Said Mob
"Don't remind me." said Rei as she tossed the pillow aside.
"Sho, draw me like one of your French boys!" laughed Tome. Mob shook her head.
"Sho doesn't like to draw people from life. He mostly draws animals, ok?" Muttered Mob
"Those are just the drawings he shows people." Said Tome as she slid down from the bed.
"Sho doesn't have secret sketchbooks." Said Mob as she scooted over and made room for Tome. Rei pulled the sauce closer to her, there had been a seventy percent chance of this stuff tipping over and spilling into her rug…and then another seventy percent chance of mom noticing and getting super mad at her.
"You sure he's never drawn Ritsu?" said Tome, elbowing Mob in the side.
"I don't know…I don't want to think about it." Said Mob
"I mean they're alone a lot. It'll be like, what was the manga called? Love and art…the one about the guys in the art school who fall in love and sculp each other nak-" said Tome
"Sho only sketches because sketching is the more, the most! The most pure medium of art and also the cheapest and-and I don't want to think about my brother like that! And also not Sho since he's practically my brother and-and I don't know why you guys want to think about that!" said Mob. She picked up a pillow and hid her face in it. The comforter on Rei's bed began to float away. Tome pulled it back down and tossed it over Mob's head.
"I'm not the one who thinks about it, that's all Rei. They're way too young and immature for me." said Tome
"I don't think about them either or like them or anything." Said Rei quickly. Nobody needed to know the truth. She would keep the chance of them figuring the truth out at a total and complete zero, or even less than zero if she could find a way.
"Sure you don't." said Tome
"I don't, I know that I don't have a chance with either of them even though they're the nicest and least immature boys that I've ever met and…and anyway they like each other and I accept that with grace and maturity." Said Rei trying her best to sound graceful and mature but just wound up sounding vaguely British.
"Sure you have, sure." Said Tome
"I really have!" said Rei, her voice getting kind of loud and whiny towards the end…but she'd made her point just the same!
"Guys, can we just try the weird internet sauce now and stop talking about my brother and his boyfriend? Please?" asked Mob. Tome rolled her eyes and pulled the blanket off of Mob's head. She still kept the pillow over her face.
"What are you hiding from?" asked Tome
"This conversation." Said Mob. Tome sighed.
"Fine, fine, before Mob dies of embarrassment and we have to put sunglasses on and pretend that she's still alive like this is an 80's movie or something." said Tome
"I like that movie but I think that it would have been better if their friend hadn't died." Said Mob, her face still buried in the pillow.
"Mob, after we either die or give ourselves superpowers…those of us without powers, remind me never to watch another eighties movie with you again." Said Tome
"Alright…" said Mob
"Rei, since this is your idea you should do the honors." Said Tome as she passed Rei a bag of plain chips. She took one out of the bag and rested it on her leg. Then she picked up the sauce bottle and opened it…
So far so good.
She poured some on the chip and…and she had never seen sauce like this. Why was it lumpy? She picked the chip it. Mob and Tome were staring at her. She was staring at the chip. She wondered who would win first…there was a ten percent chance that it would be a stalemate and they'd get bored and do something else.
But a sixty percent chance that she would wind up tasting this on her own…and not liking it.
"You guys should try some too so you can, uh, share in my joy….yeah! That's it!" said Rei as she kicked the chip bag. Mob and Tome looked at each other before reaching into the bag.
"We die as we lived, in our pajamas in Rei's bedroom. My one regret is never going to Nintendo Land." Said Tome
"My one regret is never…um…with Teru." Said Mob, turning red. Rei tried her best to look sympathetic.
"I'm sure he wants to with you, he might just be shy." Said Rei. There was a zero percent chance that she was secretly happy that she wasn't the only one who hadn't done it yet. Yup. Zero percent. Even less than zero. Zero point zero.
"I can't believe you guys haven't 'ummed' yet. Did you at least 'uh' yet?" asked Tome. Mob shook her head.
"No, we haven't done anything but kiss and hold hands and cuddle…maybe he just doesn't want to with me." said Mob
"Maybe he's just not ready yet. It's a really big step for a couple and one that you're not supposed to make until you're sure that you're mature enough to-" said Rei
"You sound like a health class." Said Tome
"I do not!" said Rei
"You do too. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a box of condoms under your bed and those weird wooden-" said Tome
"The sauce is getting cold! I mean warm! I mean-I mean let's just try this sauce already!" said Mob before she took her chip and practically shoved it in her mouth. Tome shrugged and did the same. Rei went last.
And wished that she hadn't gone at all.
Wrong. This was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. It was lumpy and chalky at the same time, and it tasted liked ranch, but also it tasted funny and it smelled funny and for some reason there were seeds in it and…and Rei had to chew and swallow. This had been twenty five thousand yen. This had been…this had been a mistake.
There was a chance that she was going to throw up…but she pushed through anyway.
"What the fuck!?" shouted Tome as she spat purple and chip down onto Rei's rug…and there was a pretty good chance that mom was going to kill her….great. Maybe the sauce would kill her first.
"Rei…I don't mean to be mean but that was the most horrible thing that I've ever had in my life…and one time when I was three I ate an ant on accident." Said Mob
"You weren't being mean. That was…that was awful." Said Rei before she reached over and picked up her water bottle…and somehow water made it worse!
"God, I've had alien blood that tastes better than that!" said Tome as she wiped her tongue on her sleeve.
"What's alien blood?" asked Mob
"Water, green food coloring, and the insides of glowsticks microwaved for about thirty seconds." Said Tome as she held out her hand. Rei passed her the water bottle. She knew that there was a one hundred percent chance that Tome wouldn't believe her about the water making things worse.
"That doesn't sound like something that people are supposed to eat." Said Mob
"That didn't taste like anything people are supposed to eat! Rei, what's even in this stuff?" asked Tome Rei picked up the bottle and turned it around…the label wasn't helpful. Under ingredients it just said 'secret ingredients' which….maybe wasn't how labels weren't meant to work….
"It just says 'secret ingredients' here…but it tasted kind of like ranch but…lumpy? But I think that the lumps might have been seeds…so I don't know. what's ranch made out of?" asked Rei
"Milk." Said Mob quickly
"So maybe it's just ranch and purple dye…what a rip off! We could totally do better than that!" said Tome
"But we don't know how to cook." Said Mob
"Rei does. She's always making weird stuff like, uh, what was that thing you made last week? The rainbow popcorn skittles thing?" asked Tome
"My mom says that I'm not allowed to do food hacks anymore, she says that they're bad for her diet." Said Rei
"Well, this isn't a food hack, this is a business venture. If we could make this, but edible, we could get rich! And we'll charge thirty thousand a bottle." Said Tome. Rei did some math in her head. At thirty thousand yen a bottle they could get rich in…a few thousand bottles? She didn't know exactly how many but she knew that this was kind of a good idea…or maybe she just wanted to recoup her losses from the sauce. There were so many other things that money could have gone towards.
"We can use my kitchen so your mom doesn't find out…she's been kind of scary lately." Said Mob
"That's just because she's hungry all the time." Said Rei
"Ok, so we have a plan! Tomorrow we think up a recipe and make it in Mob's kitchen and then market it and get rich! But tonight we discuss Mob's depressing sex life at length!" said Tome. Mob gasped and pulled her hair down over her face.
"Please don't, please…and don't use that word." Said Mob as she pulled her hair tight around her face like she was that girl from the ring movies. Rei could have told her that there was a one hundred percent chance that Tome was going to talk about this all night…and she did.
Even though there wasn't much to talk about.
Rei kind of wished, sometimes, all the times, that she had someone who loved her as much as Tome and Mob had people who loved them. But she didn't. All the boys she knew were either gay or very immature. Sometimes it felt like it was her fate to be alone. She couldn't see anyone for her in the future no matter how much she looked….but it wasn't the end of the world. Reigen had said so and she knew a lot of things about a lot of things. There were more important things than guys, like future business ventures, and there were worse things than being alone for the rest of your life, like terrible bottles of very expensive sauce. Yeah….
The future wasn't set in stone…even though sometimes it felt like it was.