Make Them Love Me Or They'll End The World-Chapter 151: The Prep

A couple of days had gone by. The play prep was underway, lines were taped to mirrors, and costumes were pinned into rough shape. Thankfully, neither Kentaro, Tenka, Yura, nor the rest of the cast had much to do beyond drilling scenes and not tripping over the prop spindle. Which is how, on a Saturday morning, Kentaro found himself in an… interesting situation:

Standing in his living room, facing three girls who, yes, were beautiful, but that was just the packaging. Inside, each carried her own gravity, her own fault lines. To the world, Alberlines were walking disasters dressed like girls. To Kentaro, they were just… Girls who never asked for the storm stitched into their bones.

He held out three slim boxes. Three very normal, very human devices.

Reactions were instant and hilariously different.

Serica's eyes lit like someone flipped a switch. "OHHH!"

Yura narrowed her gaze at the box, as it might explode. "Suspicious."

Aria stared at hers in perfect confusion, expression flat, thumbs hovering. "…What do?"

On the kitchen table, Tenka and Kentaro's mugs steamed. Tenka sipped quietly, watching the chaos with a small grin that said she'd seen this exact brand of chaos before and, secretly, loved it. The ring/dream situation had been shelved, for now, but the feelings Tenka kept trying (and failing) to flatten were not. She tucked one leg under herself and leaned her cheek into her palm.

"You're telling me you girls don't know how to use a phone?" Kentaro said, doing a terrible job of not laughing.

"NO! What is this device?! What can I do with it?!" Serica bounced on her toes, already peeling the lid off.

"Hmph. Don't fall for it, Serica. Understand this is some kind of weapon he's giving us that will cause us harm," Yura declared, opening her box from arm's length like a bomb tech.

"Umm… How do I work this?" Aria murmured, so earnest it hurt, managing to drop half the packaging onto the carpet.

Kentaro pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to keep a straight face. "Hehe… First off, it's for communicating from far away. Not a weapon, Yura. For communication." He glanced over at Aria, who was dutifully tapping the back of the phone case. "And Aria… It's not on yet."

"Oh. Sorry." She flipped it over with both hands, as it might bruise.

The phones matched theirs: same model, same clean feel. Colours chosen to match them without anyone saying so out loud: purple for Yura, blue for Serica, red for Aria. After the last mess with Shaula, Tenka had quietly pushed for this. Sometimes there weren't cameras to track, and sometimes the only thread you could pull was a ringtone.

Startup screens bloomed. Accounts linked. Wallpapers set (Serica chose a snowflake, Aria a tiny duck with a leaf on its head, Yura… A void-black gradient that felt like a dare). Then came the final step: adding Kentaro's number.

Serica shouldered to the front like a kid at a festival stall. "ME! ME!"

"Right, Serica." Kentaro thumbed his number in. "Now with that you can call me from anywhere in the worl- Nngh!"

His pocket buzzed. On his screen: "Incoming call... Serica."

"…"

He looked up. Serica stood less than a foot away, phone pressed to her ear, eyes huge.

"WOAH, KENTARO, I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICE! I'M GONNA CALL YOU BUT FAR AWAY, OKAY?!" She shouted, as if they were on opposing mountaintops.

"Wait-!" he tried.

Too late. The door thudded; her footsteps pounded the hallway, a flurry of delighted squeals trailing behind her.

Tenka's laugh slipped out, warm and helpless. "She's already starting to look like her old self."

"Yeah." Kentaro couldn't help smiling back. He turned to Yura, whose purple phone sat on the kitchen table like an accusation. She hadn't touched it.

He picked it up and approached.

"BEGONE, FIEND! DO NOT TRY TO CAST YOUR HUMAN MAGIC ON ME!" Yura boomed, stepping back as if he'd brandished a cross instead of a smartphone.

"Yura, trust me. It's just so I can reach you. You've been staring at it ever since I opened the box, so you clearly want it."

"NO!"

Tenka set her mug down and pushed to her feet. The playful glint left her eyes as she adopted her Commander voice, gentle, flat, unquestionable. "Listen, Yura. If you don't take that phone from Kentaro… You'll lose all your hair and be bald for the rest of your life."

Kentaro turned with a "there's no way she'll-"

"OKAY, GIVE IT, HUMAN!" Yura snapped, snatching the phone so fast the box tumbled.

Kentaro blinked. "I… What."

His pocket buzzed again.

"Incoming call, Serica."

He lifted it to his ear. "Hel-"

"OMG, KENTARO, I'M SO FAR AWAY RIGHT NOW, AND I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICE!" Serica screamed into the mic like she was shouting over a hurricane.

Kentaro flinched, holding the phone a safe inch off his ear. "Serica…"

Silence for half a second. Then, a crisp quack.

"Yes?" She replied, suddenly small, suddenly unsure.

"Where are you..." Kentaro replied, his face flat. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

There was silence.

"I Dunno..." She said with another quack in the background.

Kentaro met Tenka's eyes. She was already tapping her comms. "Haruka, locate Serica, please."

"On it," came Haruka's clipped reply. A flurry of keys tapped the faint hiss of air through a nose. Then: "Western Oshawa, near a park on the outskirts. Twenty minutes on foot. I can send Yumi with the van."

"Thanks," Tenka said.

"Serica," Kentaro asked softly, "how far and how fast did you run?"

"I Dunno…" Her voice shrank with each word. "I just ran really far so I could test the phone thingy…"

Kentaro pinched his brow, equal parts fond and horrified. Tenka shouldered her satchel and went for the door. "Honestly. Well, it is the weekend. Aria and Serica have been busting themselves helping with prep. Let's go get her."

Kentaro turned to the two remaining. "You guys coming?"

Yura folded her arms. "Fine. Only because you're dying without me."

Aria's hand shot up. "Sure! I heard a quack. I want to see a duck."

Seven minutes later, thanks to Yumi and the van's temperamental AC, they rolled up to the park. The world outside the sliding door was a slap of green and light. Kentaro stepped down first; the sun flashed, the air smelled like cut grass and damp soil, and a light breeze licked the back of his neck. Somewhere, a tennis ball pocked against a string bed; somewhere else, a child squealed, chains on a swing set creaking rhythmically.

The park wasn't huge. A couple of fenced courts on one side, a pocket playground on the other. And beyond the low hedge line, half-veiled by a small, scraggly stand of trees, a hill rose like the back of some sleeping thing. At its crown stood a tree so massive it seemed to drink the sky, a trunk wide as a car, bark old and furrowed, branches thrown out like an open hand.

"That's one big tree," Kentaro said, shading his eyes. "And how is Serica lost here? Did you tell her, 'Go to the big tree'?"

Tenka didn't answer at first. Her gaze was fixed on the crown for a long breath and then another, like the silhouette snagged on something inside her.

"Tenka?" Kentaro asked, leaning a little.

She blinked and came back. "Yeah. Sorry." She glanced toward the court, then back to the grove. "Ring her again. You find her; I'll keep these two alive."

"Sure."

He ducked into the strip of little trees, calling Serica's name as he went. The mini-forest muffled the park's noise until it was just a hush, a curtain of leaf-shade, the smell of leaf Mould and faint sweetness from tiny white flowers tangled in the underbrush. Dappled light puddled on the dirt, cool on his arms. His shoes scuffed through last fall's brittle leaves.

The phone rang.

And rang.

"Come on, Serica," he muttered.

No answer. He walked faster, weaving between trunks, shoulder brushing a limb that shivered dry leaves. "Serica, answer your phone, dammit." He thumbed redial. Birds shifted high overhead; a squirrel darted and froze, eyes like beads. His heartbeat picked up stupidly fast, just a trickle of adrenaline at first, then a small flood as call after call went unanswered and possibilities he didn't want began lining up in his head.

Tenka's voice nudged his memory: We'll keep comms open. He could ping Haruka again.

The trees thinned ahead; light burned bright through their last veil. One more step, and the grove opened into a small clearing at the hill's base where the giant tree's roots shouldered out of the ground like knotted muscle.

His ringtone died in his ear. The quiet that followed felt thick.

The tree dominated everything. Up close, it was bigger than it had looked from the playground, bark ridged and cool under his palm when he reached out without thinking to touch it. The wood was warm in the sunlit places, cool in the shadows. He could smell sap, green and resinous, and something like rain caught in old grooves.

And then, oddest of all, a feeling coiled in his chest, something like déjà vu, or the memory of a memory. Familiar. Wrongly familiar.

"Strange…" He murmured, looking up through the lattice of branches. "This place feels familiar, but I swear I've never been here. Or maybe I have?"

A rustle snapped to his left. Not wind. Something is pushing through the brush.

He turned fast, mouth dry. "Who's there?"

The rustling paused. The air held its breath. He took a step back, phone cold and slick in his hand.

"Serica?" He tried to thread softly and steadily.