six | a momentary lapse of reason [pt. one]

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a/n: don't forget to vote!

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a/n: don't forget to vote!

It had started to rain outside. It was a heavy one, banging against the window of Joyce's room.
But the outside rain wasn't what surprised Joyce that evening. The surprising element was inside her room.

The typewriter she'd bought at the Lobby's Mall was sitting on her desk among all the clusters of paper. The books she'd bought along with it were perfectly organized in her bookshelf, as well.

And not only that, but several other items from the mall that she saw but never bought had been carefully set up around her room, too.

She contemplated the idea of asking Kuni if someone had been in the house, in her room, during her absence. But she knew it'd serve no good. It would only arise Kuni's never-ending questions barely related to what she asked in the first place.

And as much as Joyce wanted to keep the denial act going, there was actually no doubt in her mind that those objects really did appear out of the blue in her room when she threw them into the Reality Fountain's imaginary water.

At that point, the idea of someone coming into her room and carefully placing the items around seemed to be the absurd one.

She tiptoed around her room, inspecting every single change. There was a mental sense of tidiness in her clutter, so she knew exactly what didn't belong where.

For instance, a number of cartridges of video games she liked or had heard of had been placed randomly around her bookshelf in front of her many books. She didn't even know what console she could play those on.

Among her collection of books, the ones she previously owned and the ones she bought at the mall, was one book she bought but did not take. The first edition of Peter Charming's "Dear Future", which she'd given to Chase.

She wondered if he still had that book with him or if he accidentally thought about her room when throwing it in the fountain. So she got her phone with the idea of texting him. But, when she unlocked it, she remembered that she never exchanged numbers with him.

The last thing he had said to her before leaving was, "I'll text you," so that meant that even Chase thought for sure that they had each other's numbers when in reality the thought of exchanging them never crossed either's minds.

Damn it, Joyce thought, looking at her phone's home screen. The Camera app's icon reminded her of the glitch-out incident that occurred in the bookstore, when she tried to take a picture of what she'd written and the camera wouldn't work.
So she tried it once again in her room and, this time, it worked.

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