The Main Character girl wraps her hair back up in the
netting and fixes her blue wig back in place. She takes a seat in the nearby
desk chair and explains why she’s here. She’s suspected for a while that she and MC-kun are the
same, both normal-looking people masquerading in this candy haired world. MC-kun
had seemed just a bit too distraught during the Naruto-kid incident. That was when Main Character-chan first noticed him, and when she recognized his shade of candy pink hair by its bottle
brand.
MC-chan explains that she had lived a very normal and
unassuming life. She did Stage Crew in middle school for the drama club, always
the unnoticed extra in the background, sweeping in silently, covertly, under
darkness to handle the scene changes and wardrobe transformations. She honed her skills making props and costumes
for the drama kids, til she was a master of needle and thread, dyes and combs,
and props built from paper and plastic.
She thinks it was that attention-to-detail she cultivated in
prop-design that let her finally See what MC-kun had seen—the Candy Haired
world around her that constantly overshadowed whatever she did.
One day, she put on the wig. And she never looked back.
But she doesn’t know who the hair assassin is either, any
more than MC-kun. There’s still strength in numbers. And she figures if they
work together, their odds of survival are greater.
MC-kun agrees.
…
The next day is a free day for the kids competing in this
International Competition. The morning passes with most of the contestants
montaging through a romp in the city, tasting local cuisine and window-shopping
around the market area and getting into Kodak-moment worthy shenanigans.
MC-kun and MC-chan steal away to a quiet park, sitting at a
picnic table, putting pink- and blue-heads together to talk through all the
info they have, and what options are open to them. They don’t get very far. A
glasses-wearing girl appears from behind the bushes and stops them cold.
Glasses Girl is small and wiry, mousy in her frame. She has
orange hair that poofs around her head, cropped at chin level, in a way that
reminds MC-kun vaguely of a roosting chicken. Her glasses are enormous on her
freckled face, and they capture the light, obscuring her eyes behind their
glare.
“You two… you’re fakes, aren’t you? Both of you.”
MC-kun stops cold. MC-chan spins around in her seat,
wide-eyed. “I don’t… I don’t even know what that means! Go away before we—”
Glasses Girl pulls an immaculate, highly stylized laptop
from her bag. She flips it open with one hand, propping it on the table and
typing furiously, too fast to even see her fingers. Audio begins to play from
the laptop speakers.
“We’re not going home
yet. Not you, and not me.”
“I hacked into your phone last night,” GG-chan states
simply, head tilted toward MC-kun. “I’ve heard the whole conversation.”
“How?!” MC-kun asks. He holds his phone at a distance, like
it’s suddenly venomous.
GG-chan shifts. Suddenly the glare of her glasses is no
longer obstructing her eyes. Behind the coke-bottle look is an expression of
pure brow-knitted confusion. “I don’t…. I don’t actually know. I just could.”
GG-chan was an art student. A not-very-good-at-all art
student. And a very-much-below-average competitor in sculpting competitions. She
was plain, and unassuming, and inconspicuous, and jealous of the
better-established art students around her with their own flashy styles. Her
peers wore giant non-prescription glasses; they dyed their hair bright colors
and cropped it short to perfect hipster chique.
GG-chan tried to imitate that. But as a truly-not-fantastic
artist, she couldn’t even pull that off. She dyed her hair, picked out glasses,
overshot “hipster”, and landed firmly in “geek”.
She landed so
firmly in “geek” that internationally-acclaimed hacker abilities spawned with
her makeover. Suddenly she could break into anything, override anything, hack
or fix or erase anything over a permanent wifi connection that followed her as
its hotspot.
Her laptop never loses charge. Her bash scripts never fail.
Her glasses always glint in the slightest bit of light and slide down her nose
so that she has to keep her middle finger pressed firmly to the bridge at all
times.
She’s afraid of being sent home in ruin, sent back to her
life as a mediocre art student.
GG-chan wants to join the effort to not be eliminated.
…
A day passes. GG-chan has hacked all the email accounts of
the registered contestants and has found nothing suspicious. MC-chan has spent
her time crafting shorter-cut wigs to give to MC-kun and GG-chan as backups.
MC-kun has been trying his best to understand what he’s gotten into. He bought
a few extra obnoxious bandanas to bolster his obnoxious outfit, as if that
might help.
They’re sitting quietly at lunch, eating in silence, with no
new information to share and no desire to attract unwanted attention from the
contestants around them.
“Ohhhhh my what is
this? Has this pathetic posse of plebeians
formed a little club oh how quaint!”
MC-chan chokes on her noodles. GG-chan startles. MC-kun
groans.
The voice belongs to a platinum-blond boy, dressed to the
nines, who’s sidled up to the table unannounced. He reeks of ambition and money
and arrogance and a very particular high-end cologne, and he laughs heartily at
his own joke. He flicks a lock of blond hair from his face, which all but
sparkles.
MC-kun recognizes this kid. He was one of the first Candy
Haired kids to declare an eternal rivalry with him.
“What’s it to you?” MC-kun challenges, already ticked off.
And the Rich Blond Rival Boy deflates. Comically. Pale and
hollow-cheeked and exhausted, suddenly leaning against their lunch table,
speaking in a rasp. “Please let me join you. I’ve been wearing this Gucci suit
for two weeks straight I don’t have any others.”
No one answers immediately. No one has anything resembling an answer.
“Then buy another suit!” MC-kun says.
“Do I look like I’m made of m o n e y to you?!”
“YES.”
“Ah ha! Yes that is the point, well you see–”
and RBR-kun pulls out a soggy PB&J from his bag, slumps into an open seat at the
table, his eyes dull and matte, solemnly chewing his lunch. “Can one of
you spot me like $1.50 for the bus ride to the competition arena tomorrow? I
spent the last of my money on this bread.”
MC-kun: “What?”
RBR-kun: “I don’t have money!”
MC-kun: “Why are you ACTING like a rich boy if you DONT
HAVE MONEY”
RBR-kun: “LOOK IT JUST KIND OF HAPPENED OKAY.”
MC-kun: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT JUST KIND OF
HAPPENED.”
And well, it just kind of happened. Rich Blond Rival Boy is
as fake as they come. He grew up in a modest household, making money over the
summer by doing yard work for neighbors. He was fairly frugal and quiet and
unassuming, until his grandma bought him a nice tux for the school dance, and
he dyed his hair platinum blond on a dare, and suddenly the world was in his
pocket.
Suddenly he had connections in high places. Suddenly he
could have wait staff doting on him at a moment’s notice. Suddenly he could summon
helicopters at the snap of his fingers, and have any product imaginable, legal
or not, air-lifted to him on a whim. Everyone was his pawn. Everything bent to
his will. Ever since then he’s been unstoppable in his ambitions.
He just doesn’t have any of the actual money to maintain this. All his cards are overdrafted. His
credit is in the toilet. Several different loan sharks technically own the
rights to his immortal soul.
Rich Blond Rival Boy wants in on the League Of Background
Characters, because he is utterly afraid of the ruin he faces if he is exposed.
If the others get assassinated, they get sent home. If RBR-kun gets
assassinated, the debtors will drag him out by his toes.
A scuffle erupts over by the lunch line before anyone can give RBR-kun an answer. It’s over in an
instant. A shriek, a clatter, a tray and knife hitting the ground. The biker
ruffian boy with the blue mohawk lies on the floor. His shorn-off mohawk spikes
lie on the platter, as if being served to the cafeteria at large.
Worried murmurs break out in the crowd.
No one had seen the knife-yielder.
No one had seen anything.
As if the act were committed by someone impossible to even notice.