CHAPTER 23 – Karma Police

Together with the cold, October 23rd arrived with a snap.

With kitten care added to their schedule, the students arrived at the second half of their academic semester with nary a practice session spared.

Before the sun even rose, feral hordes of future actors and musicians assembled at the Quest Board, their eager eyes scanning the printouts for their names and assigned rooms. Phones of every shape and colour snapped up the notices, struggling with the yellow fluorescence of the old tungsten strobes.

Eppie Fontaine, room 102.

“Good luck, Fontaine,” a voice announced beside her. Eppie looked up to see the elegant chin of Madison, her rival, giving her the side eye.

“Good luck, Maddy,” she replied with more earnestness than her rival, because she really did need the luck.

When news got around that Eppie had a whole ten seconds on a syndicated television show, her class was once more in an uproar, cementing the rumour that she had to be the nepo child of somebody somewhere. Even her theatre teachers had taken an interest, asking her how she felt about her experience on set. To Cooper, Costello, and Seyrova, she gave earnest answers about how she would seize every equal opportunity, to which her teachers responded with praise.

Madison’s rivalry had since then quietened, leaving Eppie to deal with the more pressing problem of a far crazier rival.

Across the hall, where the Seniors read their notices, she could see Valorie Sanders staring daggers in her direction. She still had no idea why this was even the case, or why Valorie seemed to hate her with every fibre of her being, but here they were, only ten odd meters apart, ready to joust.

As her own friends took down their rooms and numbers, Eppie seriously considered making a run for it or standing her ground to witness what Valorie dared to concoct in public. With her “healing factor” and her [Causality], she shouldn’t be in danger, unless of course, Senator Sanders’s daughter was hiding a Glock in her bag.

She moved.

Valorie moved.

Her friends moved with her.
As did Valorie’s crew, including the skittish African-American dancer Valorie used as a bag stand.

Eppie could hardly believe that, finally, their confrontation was about to happen when, seemingly out of nowhere, a pale hand with a long, slender finger arrested Valorie’s right wrist.

“Temper, temper, princess. What has gotten you so riled up in the morning? Don’t frown, it’s bad for your complexion.”

The boy who spoke looked more like a college kid than a High School Senior because he wore du ponte ankle pants and a preppy Hugo vest, and, in his lifted Oxfords, stood well over six feet. He was Asian, that much was obvious, but also wore a shocking head of bleached-blonde hair that was almost platinum. His limbs were long and well-toned, and his face had a touch of the feminine that added to his bookish air.

The young man hooked an arm around Valorie, then gave her a peck on the cheek, eliciting a few squeals from the onlookers nearby.

If Eppie were truly fifteen and had a predilection for mid 2010s K-Pop, she would have screamed like a banshee. But as she was an old soul, all she could see was a very guileful scholar-bureaucrat with the air of a mythical fox demon, like in those popular Asian web-dramas from BilliBilli.

This, she surmised, must be the famous William Chen of the cinematics department, Playboy extraordinaire and future “ethnic film” director.

From across the room, their eyes met with a sizzle.

Her friends’ eyes darted from Eppie to the boy, then to Eppie again, their minds alive with possibilities.

In Valorie’s place, William approached.

As he made his way to her, the young man positively loomed.

Eppie knew this was because she was five-three in ballet flats, but even so, she had never met a more aggressively unpleasant aura, except in her dealings with AI founders.

As a catatonic deer—for such was the natural reaction of her borrowed body—she watched in slow motion as the man’s hand landed gently on her hair and delivered a well-meaning, brotherly pat.

“Good luck—”

WHAT THE FU— Her heart rate shot to 190 in the blink of an eye.

“—Euphemia Fontaine. We’re expecting great performances from you.”

She stared at the flawless complexion of the man towering a head above her, mouth open and eyes wide, pupils shrunken to a pinpoint—or at least, that’s what she looked like, when in fact, Eppie Fontaine stared at the [Quest].

Of course, there was a [Quest]. If there was a [System], then there were quests. It seemed silly now that she had assumed the [System] just allowed her to free roam in a sandbox.

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When she finally waved away the projection, William was gone, and so was his redheaded viper, and so was the gazelle carrying Valorie’s enormous designer luggage. She was alone with her friends, who had waited while she mentally recovered from being head-patted by a popular Cinema Senior.

“So…” Lucy’s face was all sour. “I guess Senior Chen likes you? Are you going to be in his films?”

“I don’t think that’s a good thing,” Chelsea’s observation was far more sage. “Valorie has a… reputation.”

“Rather than film me,” Eppie shook off the stiffness of her body, then objectively denied Lucy’s fancy. “It felt more like he was going to eat me.”