Arcade's Dungeon

Hunter\Hero 8: Learning Normal

"What's with you these days?" Savannah looked at me like a bug on the bottom of her shoe while slouched back over the bench. My lunch sat beside me as she dumped her bag beneath the bench, scooting it over enough to sit beside me. "Why are you so...normal?"

     My eyes rolled over to the girl as she lifted a finger to poke my shoulder. She about jumped when I smacked it away, more terrified that I'd actually responded rather than having resorted straight to violence.

     "I'm bored."

     "What do you mean, you're bored?"

     "I already did all of my homework for next week, and I only have club meetings twice a week. I'm bored."

     "What about your job?"

     "Gonzo."

     Savannah's jaw dropped. "That wasn't...English! That was lazy teen slang! Nita, come quick!"

     "What?" Nita asked, still walking from the cafeteria, tray in hand. "What happened?"

     "She's normalizing!"

     "What?" Nita trotted a little faster, coming over like she wanted to see the plague descend herself. "How? Why?"

     "She lost her job, so now she's becoming a normal high schooler. Quick, tell me, what do you do in your free time now?"

     My head rolled to the side on the back of the bench, looking listlessly over at Savannah who pulled out her phone to record me. "I study Korean and I read comics."

     Savannah screamed and began to jump up and down. "It's working! It's working!"

     "The first one is iffy, but...we'll take the second. Didn't you used to read a lot back in the day?" Nita asked, sitting on the other end of the bench. Savannah, blonde braid jumping up and down on her back, was far too excited to sit down, so we could all see each other. She put her phone away and reached forward for a soggy fry to just chew on while standing in front of us.

     "Yeah...but I can't remember any of my websites or the names of things, so it's just lazy scrolling right now."

     "You're becoming one of us!"

     My face scrunched at that as I finally sat up. That was not a happy thing for me to hear. I need to find something to do with myself.

     "What do you say," Savannah began, slipping her phone back out of her pocket where she'd put it only a moment before, "we go out this weekend? Saturday, the water slides? It's been so long since we've gone."

     "Sure," Nita shrugged, picking up her own soggy fries. They were orange even without the ketchup packet squeezed all over it. "We can go to the football game tomorrow night, too. We should be kicking off a little earlier this year because of the whole dungeon thing in Korea."

     "Huh?" I really decided to sit up for that. "What do you mean? Why would a dungeon opening make the season start earlier?"

     "How do you know everything about dungeons, but you don't know about this?"

     "Savannah, just tell me."

     But Savannah went back to her phone, scrolling for something. So Nita answered.

     "A lot of pro football players are awakened that just don't use their abilities on the field. With all of the little dungeons that are about to start opening in a month, around the time when the S-rank dungeon opens, they're going to leave to go be heroes instead. Even though it'll be an incomplete season, people still want to see at least half of it. So they moved the season from early September to mid-August to get some play time in."