After everything calmed down, John explained to Ben what the ruckus was all about and after some consideration, Ben decided to come. He said he could enjoy a simple walk through the campus. Although, he gave a harsh stare at Patrick between words, which felt like an ice cube dropped down his back.

Despite saying yes, Patrick and John had spent 15 minutes waiting for him in the common room to change. The two of them twiddled their metaphorical thumbs in an awkward mood. They didn’t want to leave the common room and abandon Ben, but they didn’t want to talk either as Ben could hear them.

“Psst… Pat… what do you think’s taking him so long?”

“I… erm… changing?...”

“Perhaps Ben’s exploring all the looks that plain colour shirts can create.”

“W-what’s wrong with that?”

John gave Pat a hip check, knocking him and the table behind him over slightly. The two of them halted for the noise to dissolve, heard that Ben had no response, then went back to whispering.

“How many different t-shirts with random images on them do you have Pat? Did you get them blind from a bargain bin?”

“Well… so what if I did!?”

“A light blue t-shirt with the word ‘Avalanche’ printed three times in three different colours, doesn’t exactly match with your denim jeans.”

“I just like t-shirts! I bought them all yesterday after my old ones no longer fit!”

With that, Ben’s door slammed open with a backpack hoisted over his shoulder.

“Are you two ready now?”

He wore a patterned blue shirt, but the pattern on it looked like one you would find on an old bus seat. This was paired once again with denim jeans.

John looked at Ben, back at Pat, then back at Ben. “You two are made for each other.”

“What?”

“Nothing! Nothing!” John skipped his way merrily out of the common room, leaving the two puzzled fashion illiterates together to follow behind.

As the group left the house, John spotted something peculiar up high.

“Pat, Ben, do you see that?”

“See what?” The both of them said, before following his gaze up to the roof.

What loomed down from above caught the sun’s spotlight behind it, and both of them lost their even footing. Someone got a shopping trolley up there.

“I didn’t steal it. You couldn’t have stolen it, Pat. Did you steal it?”

“No?!”

“Well then, the true culprit lives among us!” John started giggling to himself. “Oh, don’t tell anyone about this, I want to find out who did it by surprising them.”

“John.” Ben presented his open palm to the shopping trolley directly above the front entrance. “There is no way anyone is going to miss that on the roof.”

“Did you notice it when you moved in earlier, Pat?”

“Erm… no…”

“See! Hidden in plain sight! Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there!”

Patrick felt his hand cupping the crystal under his shirt, before he noticed what he was doing and quickly snapped his hand back to his side.

In the meantime, John pulled out his phone and searched up in which direction the shops were. “Where is the nearest… okay, it’s that way.”

The shop was a simple 15 minute walk. To Ben, it was the perfect return trip length for a relaxing walk and leaving his thoughts behind. He had enjoyed wandering campus for the past week without a map, seeing how the sun’s light meandered its way through the buildings at various points in the day, and feeling the autumn breeze against his skin.

It was this simple joy that was on his mind when he accepted the invitation earlier.

Perhaps his higher judgement was clouded for a second. There was no way this rowdy rag-tag was going to stay silent.

“Hey Ben, do you want to get another one?"

“Another what?”

“Another trolley of course!”

“No.”

“No?”

"No, I am not stealing a trolley. Not only am I not going to bother wheeling it back through campus, but I am almost certain you aren’t allowed to."

As he said that, going past them were some first year students carrying their shopping back to their halls on a trolley.

“At least… I think you aren’t allowed to. You almost certainly have to return them.”

Patrick looked a bit further, and saw them lift the groceries out of the trolley, and enter their hall leaving it outside. “They don't look like they are returning it.”

“You are definitely not allowed to do that.”

“Pat, join my side. You want another trolley on the roof, don’t we? I mean, we already have one, so why not another!”

"Erm… are you sure we're allowed to?"

“Of course we are! If everyone is doing it, it must be part of the rules!”

They then walked past a sign which said ‘no trolleys beyond this point.’

"If everyone is breaking the rules, they can’t catch all of us!"

Approaching the superstore, Patrick was a little overwhelmed. Colours, lights, action, people. Despite John’s trolley eagerness, Ben picked up a basket, and said this is all they were bringing in.

“I will leave you two together while I grab some stuff, aite?”

Before either of us could reply, he had already taken off towards the back of the superstore. Left behind with Ben, Patrick reflexively folded his shoulders into himself.

Ben looked at him, looked straight ahead, and sighed. “Patrick, follow me."

With his eyes to the ground, he had no alternative but to follow. After a couple minutes of shuffling through the aisles together, Ben spoke up.

“John is a bit much, isn’t he?”

Patrick holds his silence, unwilling to risk saying the wrong thing.

Ben sighs at his feeble attempt at small talk, and gets straight to the point. “Do you know anything about dimensions, or did the university actually send someone unable to defend themselves?”

He shook his head.

“I…” Ben seized his breath for a second, then calmed himself down. “Look, I hate to break it to you, but if you are staying around me, you are going to get hurt.”

“W-wait… is John not safe? Is everyone else in our hall not safe?”

“You *really* have no idea.” Ben rubbed his face with his free hand in disbelief.

The two of them walked for a little while longer. Each one of Ben’s footsteps echoed into Patrick’s mind, as he continued staring downwards. With every successive sentence, he could feel his voice sharpen, as if his patience had already run dry and had begun forming cracks in his phrasing.

“Do you know why these things are called perception crystals?” Ben said, while reading the back of an item off the shelf.

He lightly tapped his chest through his shirt. Patrick felt a shudder flicker through him on contact.

“Magic is all about what you can see, and what you can’t. If you told John I was the son of Death, he wouldn’t understand. No work arounds are possible, his consciousness itself is prohibited from knowing. Not only does this apply to people, but to reality itself. Without a crystal, there is nothing someone from another dimension can ever do which will affect this universe.”

Ben dropped it into the basket. It hit with a thud.

“Imagine now, how just like how one’s existence can be tethered to reality, how simple it could be to cut it?”

Patrick gulped.

Before Ben could continue, John came running around the corner with two bottles of vodka, some amaretto, off-brand cola and a 6 pint jug of milk.

“Hello you two! Hey, what’s the gloom mood?”

“Hello John. What have you gotten for us today?”

“Loooook!” John presented the colourful liquids in his arms. “Alcohooool!”

“That’s quite nice of you John.” Ben said, beaming with definite support definitely.

“Also Pat, you don’t have to worry about buying your own stuff as I have enough to… what is that Ben?”

“What?”

“Why do you have ten boxes of tofu in your basket?”

In his basket was 10 different brands of tofu, each one about half a pound in weight each.

“Jesus mate, I was going to make a tofu joke, but that would just be tasteless right?” John started laughing at his own joke.

“Hey!” Ben began to blush. “I just like tofu okay?”

“Wait wait wait wait wait, are you vegan?”

“Yes!?” Ben raised his voice. “And!?”

“I’m fine with that choice man! If you want to be vegan, please do so!” John looked down at the basket again. “I’m just not fine with that *specific* choice!”

Before Ben could retaliate, John quickly pivoted to Pat. “Oh wait Pat, I just realised. You don’t have an ID right?”

“Ah, who, what?” Patrick started back into conversation.

“ID? ID with age? You never got one right?”

“Ah! I… think not?”

“If you don’t know if you have one or not, you probably don’t. The checkouts here ask the entire group for ID when one person buys alcohol, so you can’t come with me. Just go along with Ben for his stuff alright? I’ll see you two in tofu-ture!”

With John’s departure, the silence returned as the two of them started queueing. The cashier looked quite impressed with the agricultural scale of soy products in his basket, and started scanning them slowly, one by one. As Ben put them in his bag, one by one. Afraid Ben might report him out of pure anger, he tried to find some way of improving his mood.

“I-I… erm… you really like tofu right?”

“I just like tofu! Okay?”

Ben shouted back, causing Patrick to stumble back into the person behind him, embarrassing him enough to pull his shirt over his face and crouch.

“Ah, sorry. I… I didn’t just mean to scare you earlier, but I just don’t want you to… you know…” 

Ben extended a hand to Pat once again. “Here, how about after today, I just hang back. You won’t have to do anything different, and I will stay out of *your* way. How about that?”

Feeling the warm words from when they first met, Pat felt his hand reach for his. “O-okay.”

After the two got up, the cashier snarkily commented at them for holding up the line.

When they exited the store, John had already wandered off from the exit, running serpente between the parked cars for fun, and annoying the cars on the road.

Pat almost chuckled to himself at the surreal situation.

He stepped down from the pavement into the road to cross over to Ben, who was already yelling at John to calm down, when…

He felt his foot fall into the road.

In the sudden vertigo, he blinked.

Suddenly, everything was black.