For the Content 1
Aeon Mall, Kyoto
The stream goes live with a length-wise view of Aeon Mall’s front entrance. A girl with bright red dyed hair fluffs her curls and poses in front of the door. “Hey, chatters! We’re here at the Aeon Mall today,” she holds up the phone camera to give the sign a clearer view. Her hand raises into the frame and forms a ‘C’ with the curvature of her fingers. “Like, Aeon Mall! Sponsor me!” The girl giggles to herself and holds the phone in front of her. The view visibly rises and falls with her steps while she walks, but remains steady. People pass by on either side.
“So chat you will not believe who I saw going into the mall just now,” she narrates, moving through the sleek interior. “I saw The Hive. So, for those who don’t know,” turning to walk backwards, the girl barely avoids bumping into some other patrons. “The Hive are this group of gaijin girls who have made and posted, like, a whole bunch of content in Kyoto. I’m gonna see,” she brushes some hair out of her eyes, “If we can find them in here,” she leans in closer and smirks. “And if we’re lucky, catch some hot drama for the QurikTok clippies. Yaaaas!” Leaning back, she makes her signature ‘C’ again and returns to her place behind the camera.
The corridors of the mall twist and turn until the host allows her audience to leer into a clothing store. Block letters above it spell out ZAR: a Spanish fashion chain. Among the other customers milling through the store, one cluster of dark-haired girls stick close together, like a family of meercats. “Omigod,” the host’s voice fake-gasps behind the camera. “That’s them. We got ‘em, chatters! Let’s listen…” her voice goes quiet, as she shuffles behind a stand of jeans the girls are looking at.
“Check this out,” one of the unseen girls says. The host tries to catch a glimpse of them through the gaps between the jeans, but only catches hints of the metal stand. Some muffled words in Korean can be heard. “This is totally the brand Xpresso wears. Look, these are her exact ones.”
“No way,” another girls’ voice argues, “Do they even have her size here?” There’s a communal tittering between the wild teenagers, in their natural habitat. The host’s fingers twitch where they wrap around one of the pairs of jeans, and a small chuckle can faintly be heard behind the phone.
Just a glimpse is all it takes. Feigning interest in the clothing, Yoko sears holes into every sliver of visible skin and hair beyond the display. Many of these girls carry a mean streak. She can feel it, temptation already simmering beneath the surface, old grudges stewing and yearning for an outlet. Her mouth twists into a cruel smile.
Yoko doesn’t know which one it is. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they have enough latent cruelty to tap into. Maybe they even have your size. Over and over, a thought drilling itself into the girl’s head, in her own internal voice.
When she opens her mouth, it spills out. “Maybe they have one that’ll fit you.” A pause follows. None of them can believe she just said that, not even the one who let it slip.
It’s the victim of the comment who finds her words first. “What’s that supposed to mean?” the sharpness in the reply fills Yoko’s heart with sadistic glee. Already, shades of anger are flaring. These two are the sparky ones. Just waiting for an excuse to ignite.
“Seriously, Hailey, that was out of nowhere,” a voice of reason tries to spoil the fun. Flexing her quirk again, Chat finds one of the others with tinges of suppressed bitterness. Long paved over, water under the bridge. But the right psychic nudge and the bridge cracks…
She says what we’re all thinking.
“She’s not totally off,” another voice comments. “I mean, you have been going a little hard on the ice cream lately.” Oh, good. A misplaced comment vaguely in the sickly greens of concern. Narrowing her eyes, Chat pushes for more. We’re just worried about you. “… I mean, I’m worried. Your metabolism is going to bottom out one of these days.”
Delicious hurt curdles under the surface of the target’s consciousness. Chat feeds her more and more recursive negativity. Self-doubt: maybe you are getting fat.
“I am not getting fat,” the girl on the receiving end of the comments turns away in a huff. Resentment: You’re always such a bitch, Hailey, Chat stabs into her thoughts, making use of the newly learned name. “Hailey, you can be a real bitch sometime.”
Another of them sighs in exasperation. “Seriously, you two?”
“Tch, whatever. It was just a joke,” the mean one looks the other way and waves her hand. A cloud of fear and hurt swirls between the two of them, and Chat drinks it in with a shiver of satisfaction. When the girl who’d been insulted leaves, shrugging off a hand from another and any comments trying to assuage her, Chat casually follows at a distance, pretending to scroll on her phone. When the girl is isolated, that’s when she’ll capitalize on those fears.
“Wow, that was a show,” looking down into her phone at the scrolling text box beside her stream, Chat drinks in the attention as greedily as she drank of her victims’ misery. “Put up a poll for our chatters, what would you say to her right now if you could?”
Sitting on one of the long mall benches, Minerva Kim folds her arms in front of her and stares down at her stomach self-consciously. It’s not even the putting on weight that bothers her. It’s who was saying it.
It’s what we’re all thinking. That’s what they said.
The thought plays over and over in her head on replay. Are the other girls she thought were her friends really thinking that about her? Are they… talking about it behind her back, when she’s not there? Sucking in a ragged breath and then letting it out, Minnie tries to clear her thoughts and push the destructive spiral away. But it just. Won’t. Stop. Clenching her jaw, she grinds her teeth together.
No one even cares enough to follow- this latest loop of thoughts is suddenly cut off by someone sliding onto the bench next to Minnie. She looks up to see Faith there, twiddling her fingers. “Are you alright?” Unable to answer yet, Minnie just looks away and shrugs her shoulders. Faith leans in closer and speaks in a lower voice, in Korean, “Hailey and Max don’t mean it. They just run their mouths sometimes.”
“The thoughts are still theirs’,” Minnie counters, bitterly.
“Everybody has intrusive thoughts. Some people are just bad at holding them…” voice trailing off, Faith looks up. The sudden shift brings Minnie’s attention up, and she notices a girl leaning on a wall across the corridor from them, with her phone out and pointed at them. “Are you recording us?” Faith asks, holding up a hand to cover Minnie’s face. “Turn that thing off.”
The nosy bitch across the corridor rolls her eyes and walks away, pretending to be on the phone. Taking another deep breath, Minnie finally feels the spiral of negative thoughts start to break up and fall away. “Thanks, Faith.”
Running a hand through her hair, the host looks into her camera and smirks at her audience. “What a couple of lesbos, am I right? Like if you don’t want people looking,” she swings a hand and shakes her head from side to side, “Get a room, amiright?”
Eyes perking up, the host raises her head and switches the phone back to the back camera. They’re approaching the Food Forest, the large food court of Aeon Mall. Just ahead of them, a familiar group of three other girls is looking around for a good table. They start to gravitate towards a larger, empty one, then make faces at it and carry on. As the camera gets closer, it picks up some stray crumbs and sticky residue on the surface yet to be cleaned.
“It looks like they’re stopping for a bite. Let’s see if we can overhear anything else juicy,” the streamer whispers to her chat through the phone’s microphone.
Staring out at the food court, Hailey leans back in her seat. Max and Edie are sitting across from her, the former with her phone out and the latter looking at a menu pamphlet for some pseudo-nice mall restaurant. “Why are we sitting here?” she looks at the plastic table between them with disdain, trying her best not to imagine all the filthy children who’d spilled sugary drinks on it, nor the apathetic wagies who’d left the residue to ferment. Their shopping bags rest on the tiled floor, absorbing the ambient filth.
“So it’s easy for them to find us when Minnie cools off,” Edie answers absentmindedly, eyes trailing through the menu.
“What is that? Mall food disguised as somewhere nice?” stretching her arms, Hailey yawns. “If we’re bothering with takeout food we could hit Hifumi’s uncle’s place. I don’t think it’s far.”
“It’s this new Indian-Japanese restaurant Faith wanted to try,” Edie turns the menu over to show the cover to Hailey and Max. It’s covered in bright red flames, and named The Feel of Fire. Hailey’s mouth curls into a flinch of apprehension.
“Girl’s a masochist, I swear.” Footsteps approach the table as Hailey mindfully avoids touching the food court table when she lowers her arms, trusting only the sanctity of her own lap. Faith leads Minnie back to the group like a lost sheep. She avoids looking Hailey in the eye. There’s a pang of regret, but it’s buried under the need to save face. “Edie told us where you’re dragging us,” she tells Faith, “Is that the whole reason you wanted to go to the mall in the first place?”
“Yeah,” heaving her own shopping bag onto her shoulder, Faith cocks her head towards one of the hallways out of the food court. “This place is supposed to be really good.”
At least it won’t be as fattening as fast food.
“Beats fast food I guess,” looking around at the brightly lit storefronts of the miniature food court eateries, Hailey scoops up her own bag and struts into the lead. “That’s the last thing we need.” A little more edge slips into her voice than she intended, tilted in Minnie’s direction as their eyes brush across each other. Minnie’s feet stop for a moment, as she questions whether the comment was really meant for her.
Hailey tightens her jaw. What’s with her damn mouth today? The first time was one thing, but now the thought is overstaying its welcome.
Tall-backed booth seats, embroidered with patterns of gold and red. The nostril-tingling smell of spice smoke in the air. Love songs in foreign tongues, nonetheless identifiable by the DNA of their core, weave seamlessly into the background ambience. The Feel of Fire does everything in its power to project the image of something exotic and noble. “What a pretentious place,” the steam’s host whispers into her phone, back to the restaurant’s entrance in the mall. She touches up her hair, using her own recording as a mirror. “It looks like the Hive are stopping here to eat. Let’s see if we can slip in without touching any of that gross food.”
Sliding into a corner booth near the windows with a view of the rest of the restaurant, the streamer sets her phone on the table. The stream briefly goes dark, but audio continues to play. A quiet click of ring-bindings can be heard beside the phone as a menu is set down in front of her. “Domo arigato!” she politely thanks the server who delivered it. After they go, she raises the phone and records the menu. “Wow, I don’t even know what half of this is. If you’re going to open a restaurant in Japan, like, make it readable in Japanese maybe?” She completely fails to acknowledge the smaller text beneath each name explaining what the dish is, pushing her menu aside.
What the host’s stream is really hungry for is across the room, sitting in fine wooden chairs around a table.
“At least the décor isn’t awful,” one of the more charitable girls says, optimistically, opening the menu.
“What even is half of this?” another asks, echoing the streamer’s own complaint.
Another quickly directs her, “There’s text underneath saying what it is. Do you need granny glasses already?” The comment makes the streamer giggle under her breath.
“Eff you, Edith, you’re the one who’s got the grannie name.” The exchange of barbs turns into a bubbly laugh between the girls, causing the streamer to huff. Visible in the frame of the stream, her hand resting on the table clenches up in frustration.
A server returns to the table, and the host pretends to be looking up menu items on her phone. “Uh, I’ll just get some of this bread stuff, I’m just like, feeling like a snack yeah?” the host points at one of the items on the menu and hands it back. Through the continuing stream, the employee can be seen moving on and taking the order of the Hive girls using a notepad.
Around the table, there’s a presiding sentiment of ‘pretend it didn’t happen’ towards the previous incident. Edie looks up repeatedly from her phone at Hailey and Minnie, who are still avoiding looking at each other. Just pave it over and hope the pavement never swells up. Bottling it up feels like a bad idea, but a nagging thought in the back of her head urges her not to get involved.
Glancing down at their shopping bags, Edie tries to strike up a conversation, “I didn’t know Spanish stuff was so popular in Japan. I guess that’s why Ms. Xpresso was invited to come teach here?”
“She has an actual last name,” Faith points out.
“Yeah, but I never remember it.”
“Same to be honest.”
Drinks are brought out. Only Faith bothered to order one of the foreign drinks, some white drink that looks like fancy milk. Edie picks up the cup of chai tea she ordered and inhales the fragrant steam, then softly exhales to cool it off. “So Faith,” she asks, causing the other girl to perk up above her weird Indian milk. “Chris still running around at all hours of the night?”
“Egh,” letting out a sigh, Faith takes a sip from her glass and swirls it around in her mouth, exploring the flavor like it was some kind of fancy wine. “I think it’s worse than before the break. He’s barely able to awake during the day.”
Leaning forward on her chair, a glass of iced tea in front of her, Max looks at Faith through mischievously narrowed eyes. “Think he’s cheating?”
“Psh,” an unconcerned whistle of noise escapes Faith’s teeth. “He can barely spare time for one relationship, you think he can manage two?” Then her mouth curls into a frown, as if other gears were turning in her head. “Joon sneaks out too. How do you know he’s not cheating?”
“He knows he’s already above his league,” Maxine answers confidently.
While the two girls have their exchange, Minnie stares at the middle of the table and lifts a canned soft drink to her lips. Edie can see Hailey’s mouth opening to say something, but she manages to hold herself back. Unfortunately, Minnie catches it too. Her eyes twitch up and she clenches her can. “What? Do you have something to say?”
It would be too much to hope it was an apology. No, from the way Hailey’s hackles raise at the challenge, Edie can tell things are about to get worse. “Lot of calories in that soda.” It’s all Hailey needs to say for something in Minnie to snap. The soda can is off the table and flying through the air, showering Hailey’s head in carbonated, chemically dyed sugar water. Pushing back out of her chair, Hailey stands there in shock, water dripping down her hair and onto her new top.
“You bitch!” an enraged rush off telekinesis throws the rest of the drinks on the table into the air, splattering them all over the front of Minnie’s body. Only the bolts keeping the table attached to the floor keep it from flying too, but Edie can hear the metal screeching in protest. She scrambles away before she can get caught in the crossfire. Faith wasn’t so lucky, sitting next to Minnie and getting a splash of milk down one of her arms.
“Get a hold of yourself!” Faith shouts. She turns to check on Minnie, but she’s already running for the door. Hailey screams and runs after her. “Wait!”
Edie takes off after them.
It’s a glorious disaster. Chat is grinning from ear to ear as the last girl walks lazily out behind the rest, and a wagie staff member goes to find a mop. “Holy cow,” she says, looking into her phone camera. Leaning in, she whispers, “Get it? Cause like, India,” she giggles to herself. Leaning up in her chair, she angles the camera out the window. The girls are out on the sidewalk now, shouting at each other. It’s too bad she can’t record what they’re saying through the glass.
Then, she sees it. The potential for some real hardcore content. Along the main street, a delivery truck is on the way. “Ohmigod, no way,” she says to her phone, while focusing all her attention on the one victim. Drenched in various drinks, humiliated, betrayed. Run. Run. Run! Chat injects a commanding mantra to overpower her other senses and thoughts.
Wet hair hanging in front of her face, the girl turns to dash into the street. Yoko feels her entire body tense in anticipation.
“You were never really my friend, were you?!” Minnie shouts the accusation, feeling her emotions surging at a fever’s pitch.
“Oh come off it, we barb at each other all the time!” that bitch Hailey counters her, as if she’s gone soft or something. “Why’s it bother you so much today?” It’s a good question. A rational question. But Minnie’s head isn’t in a rational place right now. The words that had been spiraling around in her head since they arrived at the mall are still there, like a scar that won’t go away. Feeling full to the top of her skull, she feels an overwhelming need to be somewhere else. Run. Run. Run! her thoughts scream at her. And she turns, eyes blurred with tears, drink-stained hair sticking to her face. The moment she dashes out into the street, Minnie hears a blaring horn and twists her head into glaring headlights.
Just enough time to stop and stare like a stunned deer, her frayed thoughts struggling to catch up to this last moment.
Invisible force wraps around Minerva’s entire body, and wrenches her away. Wind whistles past her face as the large trailer of the truck flies past, swerving in the narrow street in an attempt to avoid her. Minnie’s knees give out immediately after she’s set down, but hands reach out from behind and take her by the shoulders before she can topple to the pavement. “Holy shit. What are you doing?” Hailey asks, but Minnie just grabs her pounding chest and tries to get her breath back.
Chat is fuming. And her little chatters are too, murmuring with disappointment about the ruined show. “Well that’s lame,” she laments. In the end, the bitchy girl had stepped in and averted the disaster. Turning in her seat, Yoko finds that the basket with her bread in it is just sitting down. “Oh, thank you!” she quickly shifts into a sickly sweet voice.
“Enjoy!” the server says, before leaving.
Turning in her seat, Chat points over her shoulder at the greasy bread in the basket, cut up like pizza. “Like yo,” she points down her throat and mimes throwing up. “Gag. Zero stars. Screw this place, I am so out of here.” Without touching the food, she gets up and slips back out.
Shiketsu Hero Academy, Principal’s Office, the Next Day
Drumming her fingers on her desk, Karaburan fixes a stern gaze on the five girls sitting across from her. “We can’t have incidents like this involving our students,” she finishes, after summarizing the disruption they’d caused at the mall the other day. “Never minding the narrowly averted tragedy, your actions reflect on this institution, and your families’ institutions. Do I need to ground you? Is that where we need to go from here?”
“Come on, we dealt with it already,” Maxine groans.
“In-house,” Hailey adds, hands folded in her lap.
Curling her lip in plain displeasure, Karaburan shakes her head. She’s about to lay down the law on a punishment when Faith raises her hand. “I think it’s more complicated than that.” Karaburan closes her mouth and nods her head for Faith continue. Chewing at her lip, the girl looks up at the office windows. “The whole time we were at the mall,” she says distantly, in thought, “I kept getting these odd intrusive thoughts. Egging me on to make things worse. Everyone gets those yeah, but I mean, these didn’t feel like me. I mean- they felt like me in the moment, but looking back they were off.”
“Now that you mention it…” Minerva speaks up, hands wringing in her lap. “I felt like I couldn’t get the bad thoughts out of my head. By the time I… I-I ran into the street, I could barely think.”
“So you’re saying,” looking at Faith, Hailey narrows her eyes. “What I think you’re saying, right?”
“I think someone was messing with our heads,” the other girl affirms.
“That’s a serious issue if so,” years ago, Karaburan might have dismissed the excuse. Now, she can count on her hand potential threats that can and would try to sabotage Shiketsu and its students. And that’s just off the top of her head. “Did you notice anyone strange watching you?”
Most of the girls shake their heads, but Minerva lifts hers’. “There was this girl with her phone out. I thought she might have been recording us, but I just thought it was a- a nosey busybody.“
“Recording blackmail?” Hailey guesses.
“Maybe they’re a fucked up fetishist,” Maxine responds.
“Maybe,” Faith interrupts them by standing and slapping her hand on the desk. “But if they put this online somewhere… they’re going to find them. And they’re going to rue the day they nearly killed my best friend.”
Standing as well, Karaburan meets the girl’s eye. “You are still students. Ah-” she raises her finger before objections can come. “Let me finish. Your sensei, Rosethorn, is more keen on these technological social media things than I am,” she waves her hand around. “And she’s a professional hero, which means she is able to supervise your investigation. Report to her. Find who did this. I expect a report on my desk by the end of the week. Dismissed!”
“Okay, drill sergeant,” Maxine mumbles under her breath, turning out of her chair. Karaburan’s eye twitches, but she doesn’t say more as the clique of Koreans file out. Only after they’ve left does she ease back down into her chair.
“I bet it’s one of that rat’s students,” she whispers to herself, in rightful fear of conspiring rodents.