My day with Willow was quite strange. It was the first time it was just the two of us together. The only time I had spent with Willow in the past was with Mia, whenever she asked me to do something, Willow would come with us.

 

Though, I did often notice Willow around town, and like I did today, and I would say hi to her, like I did today. But normally she just said hi back and we would go our separate ways.

 

But today she asked if we could spend the day together. I felt weird about it since I wasn’t friends with her sister anymore, but I also didn’t know how to say no.

 

So we spent the day together, just going to shops and hanging out. It wasn’t very eventful but Willow seemed very happy about spending time with me.

 

Close to the end of the day, we made our way to a small cafe popular with people from school. I don’t like bitter things so I didn’t get anything to drink, but I did get a piece of cake. Willow got a cup of something like coffee and we sat together.

 

It was awkward because neither of us seemed to be the talkative type, but she still seemed very happy.

 

But while we were sitting together in silence, someone came over to our table.

 

“Oh, hi Zenith. I haven’t seen you in forever” someone said to me. When I look at them, I see Noah’s older sister, Liliana.

 

“Liliana, what are you doing here?” I asked. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Willow wasn’t happy with her appearance.

 

“I was just in the neighborhood and saw you and wanted to say hi” Liliana explained. “And what are you doing here, and who might this be?” she asks, now noticing Willow.

 

“I'm Willow. I’m pretty sure that my sister is dating your brother” she said.

 

“Oh, Mia’s little sister. What are you doing with Zenith?”

 

This made Willow stutter, probably because she couldn’t really explain what we were doing.

 

“I ran into Willow earlier and we spent the day together” I explained to take the pressure off of Willow.

 

“Oh, so are the two of you friends” Liliana asked.

 

“... Maybe” I said, receiving looks from both of them.

 

“How do you not know if your friends?” Liliana asked.

 

“I’m not sure what I would call a friend.” I explained. “I mean, do you consider me a friend?”

 

“Yes” they both say in unison.

 

“But, what does that mean, how do you know your friends?” I ask them.

 

This seems to stump them, until Liliana spoke up.

 

“I don’t know about Willow here, or anyone else for the matter, but I consider you a friend because I enjoy our time together. Do you feel the same?” she said, then asked.

 

“I mean, I think I enjoy it. I enjoyed today at least” I said.

 

“And would you do it again?” Willow asked.

 

“Sure” I said in response.

 

“That means you are friends. And what about me, would you be willing to call me a friend as well?” Liliana asked.

 

“I guess so? I mean sure, I don’t care” I say, laying my head down on the table, getting exhausted by this day.

 

This was an often occurrence for me, and the reason I only hung out with a few people outside of my family. If I have to deal with others for too long I get exhausted and decide to just give up on thinking.

 

And instead of getting mad at me like some people have, Liliana says “I’ll take it. And since we are friends now, I'm going to add my contact to your phone” and she grabs my phone from on the table.

 

She fiddles with it for a while longer than what someone should but I really didn’t care that much. Outside of using my phone to contact my family and Mana, I only use it for music or TV, nothing too special or important. She eventually put it back down on the table. Our time together didn’t last long after that, but I did feel good about the day.

 

I had made two new friends, something I hadn’t done since I was 6.

 

✾

 

The amount of things that had happened that day that Zenith didn’t notice was numerable.

 

Firstly, Willow and him did not run into each other by accident. Willow, having heard her sister had started to date Noah, decided to finally try to get closer to Zenith. Whenever Willow would see Zenith around town, whatever she was planning would get thrown out the window, and she would spend the rest of the day following him.

 

She would fill her phone with pictures of him. She had thousands of them. She knew this wasn’t right. She knew her sister liked him, so she never went any farther, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing that.

 

That was what she had started doing today as well, but when he came to say hello, something he always did, she decided to make her move. Asking him to spend the day together.

 

And from there she had the best day. Being able to go places with Zenith, not just follow behind him was amazing. She was upset she wasn’t able to get new pictures of him today, but she would gladly give that up for the day.

 

The second thing Zenith missed was Liliana’s appearance in the cafe. Or more the fact that that was also not a coincidence. It was not as planned as Willow’s but Liliana was looking for him after leaving the hunters association for the day. Having learned that her brother had started dating Mia, Liliana thought back on the crush she once had on Zenith, that she put behind her because of how she thought he felt about Mia.

 

When Noah told her about the feelings between Mia and Zenith, she had decided to stop doing a lot of things she had planned. This she was now going to put into action. The first step to her plan was to get access to Zenith's phone.

 

This was possible when Zenith was exhausted with the complex emotions being brought up. She grabbed his phone, added her contact info and found something.

 

Her goal was to install an app to track Zenith. This was so she could create “coincidences” like today. She would also be able to figure out what he does day to day.

 

But when she brought up the app page, she found it had already been installed. She didn’t know who had done this, but it meant that someone was already ahead of her. She had backup plans she could move to, but whoever installed the first app could be a problem to her.

 

During this time was also the third thing that Zenith missed. That would be his fork from his cake disappearing. He never noticed it was gone after everything. The fork itself was taken by Willow. On top of her following and semi voyeuring him for some time, she had also stolen a number of his things. These were mostly small things he would never notice missing, like pencils or pens. She had been daring before and taken things like forks from him, mostly whenever he had a meal at Mia’s home.

 

After leaving the cafe, the three of them all went home, happy with how the day went. Willow was able to move forward with her relationship without having to feel bad about her sister anymore. Liliana was able to finally put her pent up emotions towards Zenith to work. And Zenith was able to make two new friends.

 

✾

 

The rest of the day went by after I got home. I got a text from Anthem for a list of things to pick up from the store. Thinking that meant that he and Aria would be going to get groceries together, I sent them the list of things we needed around the house.

 

But my assumptions were proven wrong when Aria got home before Anthem did, which meant that she made him drop him off then go back out to the store. We spent the time while he went to the store hanging out.

 

He got home and I made dinner for the three of us. When I tried asking them about the group they were brought in to give the orientation to, they said it was some borning group of highschoolers and that I should think about it, since they don’t think they are going to join the association.

 

After dinner I quickly got ready for bed and fell asleep pretty quickly, since I was still mentally exhausted from the day. I didn’t notice until later that Aria and Anthem didn’t ask me what I had done during the day, something that always happens.

 

When I wake up the next morning I am still alone, meaning that either Aria stayed in her own room, or she had already woken up.

 

When I made my way downstairs, I found both of my siblings waiting at the table for me.

 

They asked me to sit because they had something they wanted to talk about.

 

Eventually they handed me a packet explaining something for my school.

 

Since the first outbreak, people in the US have been able to register as hunters when they turn 16 and pass a test.

 

But there are special cases. It is a hard rule that no one under 16 can register, but for special cases, they can be exempt from one other aspect of the requirements. If you register at 16 you must finish your highschool education. And if you wait until you turn 18, you need to prove you finished your highschool or passed a GED test.

 

But for special cases they waive the highschool requirements. You need to pass a test equivalent to the GED, and you still need to do the hunter test as well. They offer this for people who have a powerful intrinsic skill. But they also do it for people who believe that they don’t need to finish highschool. I don’t know what my skill is going to be, or if I’ll even have one. But Aria and Anthem were talking about the other option.

 

They told me that since I was no longer friends with anyone at school, since I was told not to hang out with Mia anymore, that it didn’t matter if I stayed in school.

 

I followed so far but there was one problem with this plan.

 

“I don’t think I am smart enough to pass that test” I told them.

 

“But Zenith, we both think you are. You have long since passed the regular levels for math and science for highschool, and as much as you aren’t good at it, you're still way above average in English.” Anthem explained to me.

 

“But…” I tried saying, but couldn’t think of anything. As much as I was never confident in my grades, I knew that my teachers always said I was one of the best students. Back when I was younger, they had even told my parents to move me up in grades, which I often said no to because I wanted to stay with Mia and Noah.

 

So everything they were telling me was true. The only reason why I was staying where I was was gone.

 

“Can… Can I think about it?” I ask them.