It's now four days after Maya's first drinking experience, and... they have not been good on her. As previously stated, all of her troubles were haunting her all the time as usual, her social anxiety was still there, and she almost never felt amused by anything. Overall, she was her usual miserable self.

She kept thinking about that day. Although she has promised herself to not do that ever again... she just kept thinking about how awesome she felt at first. Although the night was horrible, the day was just so incredible that she could almost forget about it. In fact... she felt as if she needed to get drunk again.

So, in the next morning, she did some digging on the internet about how to treat hangovers and took notes. At school, she asked to go to the bathroom in the middle of class and sneaked into Vera's office, where pretty much everyone knew she hid some alcohol, and opened shelf after shelf, finding nothing but papers and other students' possessions. Then, after opening a specific cabinet, there they were: bottles. Maya scanned through them all. Non-alcoholic. Non-alcoholic.. non-alcoholic... Does she even drink real alc-

No, wait. There was a dark purple bottle right at the back of the shelf. And there was an ABV indicator on it. Finally!

She put the bottle in her backpack and continued her school day as usual, and, back home, she took it out and began to analyze it. 1L, 11% alcohol. That'll definitely take some measuring. But with what?

Then, Maya remembers: she forgot to throw away the energy drink can from that morning. She got the 1 pint can, pulled the cork out of the wine bottle and carefully poured the wine into the can, and stopped when it was half-full. She took a deep breath and then took a sip.

While it initially just tasted like sugar-free grape juice, she was then taken over by a mild burning sensation on her nose and a noticeable taste of alcohol. She coughed a bit, and decided that she couldn't drink it completely straight, so she got to the kitchen and looked for some actual grape juice in the fridge. She eventually found a bunch of small boxes of it that are definitely Mymy's.

"Well, I guess Mymy wouldn't notice if two of her juice boxes disappeared, right?", Maya thought to herself.

Just as when she picked up the juice boxes, however...

"Hoi, Maya!"

She then quickly turned around, only to see Coco right in front of her.

"Oh, hey, Coco...", Maya awkwardly replied.

"What are you doing?", Coco asked.

"Just... seeing, if I can... find something to eat."

"Oh. By the way, you were very talkative a couple of days ago. What has gotten into you?"

Maya was thinking of making a random response, but she did not want to deal with the stress of having a potentially lengthy conversation, so she distracted Coco by pointing to a random part of the house, screaming "SPIDER!", and then bolting back into her room.

There, she punched holes into the juice boxes and emptied them in the can. Then, after gently shaking it a bit, she took a sip. It still did not taste good, but it's definitely better than pure wine. She quickly gulped down the mixture, hid the wine bottle and waited for it to kick in while using her computer.

It quickly kicks in, and Maya realizes that she over-poured, as this rush is even stronger than her first one, and she's way more giggly and disoriented than before. But that didn't matter a single bit to her, and she did much of the same that she did during her first time drinking. Every second of it was the best thing ever to her. It put even the best moments of her life to utter shame. This is the place where she wanted to be, forever and ever.

During comedown, she grabbed a whole bunch of water and drank it as the effects of the alcohol faded away. She still felt terrible by bedtime, but, because of the water, it was way less brutal on her than last time. While trying to fall asleep, she could only look at the wine bottle under her pillow. It was like her new best friend, someone who could understand her, someone that made her life not utterly miserable. She knew that drinking heavily regularly is like gambling your life, but she didn't care. This is what she wanted for her life, and there was nothing that could change her mind.