Breakfast with Amber

November 2021: The Phantom Thieves Letter Paper

Aside from the Haunted Hall, there were many other activites being held by the Swashbucklers. There were the weekly hall dinners and the game nights and the movie nights, but there were also the one-time events such as the roleplay murder mystery they held every semester and, as we are going to learn about in this chapter, the spoon assassins.

I turned this idea into an episode of WarioWare, Inc., so I'm just going to let 9-Volt do the talking: "You get a spoon and somebody's name. That person is your target. You have to hit them with the spoon! Then their target becomes your next target. The last person standing wins . . . You're supposed to memorize your target's schedule, follow them around, catch them off-guard, all while you're paranoid about the person who's targeting you." For some reason that is a mystery to me two years later, or maybe because I thought it just sounded like fun, I decided to sign up.

My first target was Amber Carlson, who was an active member of the Swashie community. The problem was I had no idea what classes she had or where she would be at any given time of day, and there was a rule that you couldn't hit someone while they were inside their room. I had no idea how I was supposed to figure that out, and it wasn't like I had the time to because I had classes to attend, homework to do, and chapters of my new book, Myriad, to write. On the evening of the 8th, while I was busy watching videos or wondering how to tackle this spoon assassins program, I saw a note slide underneath my door. I went to see what was going on, and I found a note with the Phantom Thieves logo from Persona 5 with the caption "Take Your Heart" on a red and black background. I flipped it over and found a message typed on it in a ransom-note font:

"Daphne Tett,

"You have been allowed to roam free for far too long. Be fearful and paranoid, for soon, your heart will be stolen for my very spoon.

"-The Phantom Thief"

There were a lot of things going through my head. First of all, I need to post this to Tumblr because this looks sick. Second of all, how do you get Phantom Thieves letter paper and then find a ransom-note style font to type on it? Also, how did you get this in a printer? How did you even find a printer on campus? Did you get this from the print shop? I don't remember how much time had passed between now and when the game started, but how did you get this done so quickly? Third of all, how were you able to get this all done, and I'm still on square one? I left the note on my desk and got back to my video. Actually, I took a picture of the note, posted it on Tumblr, left it on my desk, and got back to my video. This would have to be a problem for another day.

That other day would have to be November 9. I was in dance class with Tristan Arias, who was one of the captains of the Swashbucklers and one of the presidents of our school's swing club, the Swing Bums. We were all getting our stuff together when Tristan snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder with his spoon. I was about to get mad at him, but then he said it was just a joke. He certainly could have fooled me, though. Tristan seems like the kind of person to have Phantom Thieves letter paper.

Now I was mad at him for a different reason. Still, if my assassin had a class with me with the perfect opportunity to strike me, that would have been so unfair.

That same day, I was walking up the stairs to my Toni Morrison class when I felt something tap me on the shoulder. I jumped and yelped so loudly that I could have attracted the attention of the entire staircase. I turned around and saw Roberto Aguirre standing behind me with a spoon in hand. He gave me a quick apology for scaring me and let me continue on my way to class.

After I got settled down, I got my laptop out to "take notes," wink wink, when I noticed a DM on Discord that said, "I'm sorry again! I do truly hope I didn't scare you too badly. Good luck with your classes."