My Favorite Person (Boyf Riends Fanfiction)

Chapter 20

  Michael held his phone. "Uh, where do I look for him?"

  "I have no idea. Just take a look around." Rack scratched his head. "Maybe in the messaging app? Or there might be a new program just installed into the phone."

  "Man, okay." Michael unlocked his phone. He swiped through his home pages, searching for anything unusual or different. On the farthest page, a new program sat.

  It didn't have a title, and the display icon was simply a black square, like there wasn't enough programming to load an image. Michael's phone wallpaper almost seem to have a square chunk taken out of it.

  "Look." Michael tilted his phone so Rack could see.

  "Yeah, I see it. Go on and open it." Rack said flippantly.

  "Okay." Michael turned the phone back to himself. Inhaling, Michael tapped the unlabeled application.

  When it opened, the screen turned black. Michael almost thought his phone turned off.

  "What happened?" Michael tapped his phone.

  "Dude, be patient. Just wait." Rack said.

  Michael did as instructed, and after a few seconds, text appeared.

[19:15:57]<user1>こんにちは

  "What? I can't read this!" Michael squinted at the green text on the black background. "What is he saying?"

  "I don't know, I'm not fluent in Japanese. Use a translator or something." Rack sighed. "You figure it out. I'm going home."

  "What?" Michael turned to him. "You can't just leave me."

  "Yeah, I can. I did everything my squip asked me to. It's your issue now."

  "Jesus." Michael wasn't sure of how to respond otherwise.

  "Hope it works out, I guess. See you around." Rack promptly returned to his car and left the lot.

  I probably won't see you around, honestly.

  Feeling awkward for just standing around alone, Michael got back in his car. He decided he couldn't wait to return home to investigate the application, so he continued his examination right there in the lot.

  The text hadn't changed. It filled a small portion of the bottom of the screen, resembling the beginning of a digital messenger conversation. Michael took Rack's advice and decided to search up a translator. He hesitated when he wasn't sure how to exit the program. His phone's home button wasn't appearing at the bottom of the screen like usual. Michael randomly tapped and swiped near the bottom in hopes that something would happen. Unexpectedly, a message bar showed up, implying he could reply. It shone the same green hue as the Japanese text just above it. While useful information, it didn't help Michael decipher the message. After tapping around like an idiot and trying different methods to exit the app, Michael shut off his phone. He quickly turned it back on, revealing his lock screen. After inputting his passcode, Michael was relieved to see his regular home screen. He quickly made sure that the bizarre application was still on his home screen before going to his search engine and finding a Japanese translator.

  Dammit, what did he say?

  Michael underwent a tiresome process of re-entering the program to memorize the characters, then turning his phone on and off to get back to the translator, then repeating the process when he couldn't remember the next character. Finally, he finished the whole word and looked to see what it translated to. "Hello".