Antoinette sat on her chair, sliding her fingers down the edges of the small stack of paper sheets resting on her desk, on top of a notebook in which she had been working on an assignment not too long ago. She still wasn’t done with that, but she just couldn’t resist her reading any longer. She had been enduring the sting from the moment Masao came to her with the manuscript in his hands, written in elegant English calligraphy, containing the continuation to the story she had asked for. In all honesty, it wasn’t as much as a continuation as it was a parallel expansion of the general story. It began with a brief exposition of the world and its history, and then continued as a wide frame of the story, exposed at times through a much smaller scope in the form of short tales involving actors of various degrees of importance, yet all in a way relevant to the world as a whole. It was a very enthralling reading, and she was enjoying it so. Such was her state of abstraction that she only noticed the knocking on her door a minute after it began.
"Ah?" she unknowingly exclaimed at the intrusion which was drawing her back to the real world. "Who is it?"
She shot a quick glance at the alarm clock on her nightstand, but found the task of reading the time particularly difficult, for some reason. A second later, she realized it was because of how tired her eyes were from all the working and reading. It also explained why she was taking so long in processing all of this. After blinking a few times and rubbing her eyes, she tried reading the time once again, succeeding this time, and saw her tiredness justified. It was a quarter past midnight. Just who could be calling at this time of the night?
"Antoinette?" a male voice answered. "It’s me, Masao."
"S-senpai?" Antoinette exclaimed as her eyes shot open.
The name cut through her mind, pushing her into a state of lucidity. She jumped to her feet, forgetting for a moment where her hands were resting and almost sending half of the objects on her desk flying all over her room. Panic stung her for a moment and she hastily tried to put some order back onto her desk, before giving up and deciding to leave it for later. She gathered her bearings, this time making sure she didn’t knock anything over in the process, then marched over towards the door.
"Senpai!" she said again. "But, but... What are you doing here? Is something wrong?"
There was moment of silence, only broken by her breathing and the very audible sound of what seemed to be his head knocking and resting on the other side of the door.
"Yes, I mean not really. Or yes, but it’s not-" he seemed to trip over his own words for a moment. "Wait. Okay, look, there’s something I need to talk about. We need to talk about. It’s... It’s important. Now."
His words gave her pause. It just felt odd, for some reason. The kind of thing that wasn’t meant to happen, or that shouldn’t normally happen to anyone. She didn’t know why, it wasn’t something extraordinarily unreasonable, but she didn’t really think Masao was the kind of guy to do something like this. Dozens of hypothetical scenarios which would push Masao to something so brash and unbecoming flashed through her mind, but she found she couldn’t focus on any of them enough to make any sense out of them. Realizing she had been taking way too long to reply, she simply turned the deadbolt and opened the door.
The one waiting behind was Masao, sure enough, but he certainly wasn’t looking his best. He was still wearing his school uniform, for some reason, but his glasses were nowhere to be seen. It felt a bit odd to see him without them. His hair seemed particularly ruffled and his eyes had clear signs of tiredness. He gave her a small smile as a greeting and walked in without saying a word. Antoinette closed the door behind him.
"Could you please lock the door, please?" Masao said just as she was about to turn.
Antoinette was taken aback by his words, mostly out of surprise, but still followed his request without thinking about it too much. She finally turned to meet him. An awkward silence hung between them for a moment, before either of them dared speak another word. When Antoinette looked for his eyes, he found him averting her gaze, as if startled. She decided to break the silence.
"So... About this thing you wanted to tell me..."
"Yes, yes, that’s right!" he said, startling her once again. "Here’s how it is. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, but I’ve been keeping myself from it because... That doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is what I have to say now. I’m not going to hide anything from you anymore."
He slowly but surely walked towards her. His eyes met hers at last, and he took the chance to take her hands in his with her barely noticing. When she did she froze on the spot. She remembered doing something like this the first time they met. She hadn’t really meant to do it then, or perhaps she did, but she didn’t consciously decide that at the moment. She wondered if this is how Masao had felt at that moment. Taken by surprise, paralyzed like a deer in the headlights. She could do nothing more than look at the man standing before her. And then he told her. His words echoed within her mind seconds after he spoke them. He was saying it all, everything he had inside him. It was an emotional cascade and she was caught beneath it.
And then she heard it. It was but a snap, a sudden clap of hands. Then she felt his fingers limply let go of her hands and saw Masao slowly plummeting to the floor.
She stood where she was for less than a second, before the adrenaline rush kicked it and her senses started burning, urging her to act. There was danger behind her. She turned and she saw Masao. It was him, there was no doubt. He saw it in his eyes. It was the same man who earlier that same day had nervously handed her a stack of papers, but he look very different. His hair was shorter, his glasses were broken in the middle and hastily mended with a piece of duct tape, he was wearing a black jacket, thick denim pants and sturdy boots. However, the biggest change she saw in his eyes. It seemed like he had grown older very fast in the last few hours. He had changed, but she could have recognized him by his stare alone. Once the initial shock had come and gone, he saw something in his hand. It looked like a long black rod, but he hid it away in his jacket before she could take a better look at it. Only then did he acknowledge his presence.
"Annie," he said. "I’m so glad you’re okay."
Annie. He always called her Annie. She should have picked up on that before.
"M-Masao!" she struggled to find something fitting to say, but she had no idea what would be appropriate, so she just repeated his name with a broken voice. "M-Masao! Masao! Masao!"
After fumbling for a moment with something under his clothes, he gave a long step towards her and put his hands in her shoulders. He then pulled her close to him and held her in a tight embrace that silenced her panicking speech. For once she was able to close her eyes and breathe slowly in reassurance. After a few seconds he pushed her back and lowered himself to her eye level.
"Annie. Listen to me," he began. "I don’t have time to explain, but you have to do as I say. It’s imperative you do so. This is not the time to panic. I can explain everything later, but we need to get out of here now. I can give you five minutes to gather whatever you need, but no more. Remember. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Now go."
Antoinette felt herself shivering as she listened to his words. Whatever sort of courage which seemed to fill her just seconds earlier had suddenly left her and she felt like crying. But she didn’t. She just swallowed her fear and nodded. It took her a moment to gather her bearings when Masao let go of her, but she quickly got her wits together and set off to do as he had asked, trying as hard as she could not to think of what the stranger had told her earlier. She felt tempted to look at the man in the floor that had pretended to be Masao, but she fought against it. Something inside her told her she didn’t’ want to see, and so she didn’t. She felt a wave of relief when he heard Masao drag the thing to a corner and away from her. In a few minutes he had her essentials in a small backpack and swung the thing over her shoulder. Quietly and still a bit shaky, she voiced her readiness to Masao.
They left the room without a word and locked the door. The hallway was nearly pitch black, but Masao didn’t seem to mind. She took a hold of his sleeve and let him guide her until her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. As calm and collected he has seemed to be before, Masao seemed on his nerves as they slowly made their way to wherever he was taking her. Any sound they heard brought them to a stop. He had her crouch quietly in the shadows and told her to hold still while he moved forward to investigate. He always returned after a minute or so and they went on. After about fifteen minutes of this, Antoinette realized she hadn’t really said anything to him ever since she rescued her. Because that’s what he had done earlier, now that she thought about it.
"Masao," she whispered ever so quietly. "Who is…? Who was that man in my bedroom?"
Masao didn’t answer right away. He waited until they reached a doorway before coming to a stop. He looked around and stayed quiet for a moment, trying to sense any danger, but seemed satisfied after a moment of this.
"Alright, let me find a way to explain this," he said. "They’re… Let’s call them doppelgangers. That’s a pretty good way to describe them. They take the form of a person and try to… Contact the people they were close to. They came here because of me. They got to me, and so they came here to find the people I talk to the most. You were one of them, and so I came too, so I can take you somewhere safe while we sort this out. There are others there already, as well as my associate."
Annie took all of this in silence. It didn’t explain much, but it was enough, or so she told herself. She wondered if she even really wanted to know about this. It all seemed so unreal. One moment she was reading a science fiction story and the next some sort of monster knocked on her door and told her all those heartbreaking things. It felt like a dream. She wished it was a dream. For a moment she thought of pinching herself to check, but she discarded the idea as stupid. Once again, she nodded and silently urged Masao to continue. And so they did.
Five minutes later they heard their voices. They didn’t sound human. It certainly wasn’t any sort of noise Antoinette had ever heard a human make, or any animal for that matter. It chilled her to the bone. Masao, however, seemed unfazed. He simply told her to stay in the dark, very still and quiet, and to wait for her. She faced the wall as he walked away. When she knew Masao was right next to those things, she shut her eyes so hard it began to hurt. Even thought the things weren’t human, even thought one of them had tried to hurt her, she didn’t want to think of what Masao was doing. But she knew. And she knew very well what he was hiding under his jacket. But she didn’t want to think about it. After what seemed like hours, she felt Masao’s hand on her shoulder.
"Come. It’s just around the corner. "
And so it was, apparently. It didn’t look like much, really. Antoinette thought she ought to be puzzled by it, but after the night she’d been through, she doubted anything would ever surprise her again. It was a tall metal bin, with a stainless matte finish and a round lid covering it. Masao simply walked towards it and pulled the lid open, then offered her his hand, as to invite her inside.
"Come on," he said with a smile that she now found strangely unbecoming of him. "Trust me."
And once she did, Antoinette found she had been wrong. This was certainly enough to surprise anyone, not matter the circumstances.
"It’s bigger on the inside," she couldn’t help but saying.
Antoinette couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed there were other people in the bin. A couple of them were students; she recognized them from the classes she shared with them. She saw a perky girl with pink hair, a woman with a pinstriped suit and a tall boy with blue hair and round glasses. The librarian was also there, for whatever reason. However, who caught her attention was the person who had spoken to her when she entered the place. She was wearing a long brown coat, resting her bare feet on some sort of control panel in the center of the room, holding a long metallic device between her lips and staring at her direction with a large pair of dark green eyes.
"Is she the last one?" the person asked, apparently unimpaired by the object she was holding with her mouth.
"Yep, I got to her just in time," Masao said, having entered the bin and closing the lid behind him. "Now let’s get this over with."
