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“I am going to go and commit arson.”
“Hm?” Amelia asked, not looking up from her laptop. It probably wasn’t the best reaction for what she’d just heard, but she had been in a wikidiving trance instead of studying, and it all seemed to blur together.
Cymothoa exigua. General Motors streetcar conspiracy. List of animals awarded human credentials. Han dynasty. Arson.
“Is that like a figure of speech for something?”
“Yes.” Mumei took a seat at the foot of Amelia’s bed. “It describes the problem of Spirit Coffee House not being burned down. By me.”
Amelia turned to look at Mumei. She could feel the quiet violence in Mumei’s eyes that suggested she was being entirely serious about this, though she would also admit that Mumei was more inscrutable than most.
“Da-mn, ” Amelia said, drawing out the word. “I didn’t know their coffee was that bad, holy shit!” Mumei burst into a giggle, and Amelia couldn’t help but grin.
“I’m not laughing. No, it’s for - it’s for the crimes. They have to pay for the crimes they’ve committed against Kronii and me.” Mumei’s tone of voice was serious again, her eyes squinted as she stared past Amelia. For her part, Amelia was resisting the urge to laugh at how Mumei was making Kronii and herself sound a little like mob bosses with a petty grudge. Wait, shit, don’t get distracted by how good Kronii would look in that kind of outfit.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, the building is vacant right now,” Mumei interjected. She had picked up the ‘Small Ame’ plushie that Kiara had made for Amelia and was now playing with it absentmindedly. “They went out of business last week and the “For Lease” sign is still up. So like, we wouldn’t be ruining anybody’s lives or anything, unfortunately, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Mumei said candidly, as if this was a normal thing to say.
“Wait, we?” Amelia suddenly realised. “You’re making me an accomplice?”
Mumei tilted her head a little, somehow making Amelia feel like she was the weird one here for asking the question.
“I thought this payback thingy was between you and Kronii.”
Mumei shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell her. I think she wouldn’t approve.”
“And in your mind,” Amelia was laughing now, “I would approve of arson? Huh? Amelia Watson, consulting criminal? Is that what I am to you?”
Mumei fell into another burst of giggles before stopping abruptly. “Yes.”
Now Amelia’s heart was laughing too, and for a moment, the stress of being very, very screwed for her exam next week — just what the hell was she thinking, talking about attempted arson instead of studying — seemed to fade into the background.
“Damn. You’ve really got me pegged, huh?” she grinned. She hadn’t made up her mind yet, but if she was honest, part of her brain was already churning in the background, thinking about the logistics of it all. We’ll need a good opsec protocol if we have to talk about it around the other girls; oh — I wonder what our municipality’s average response time for fires is; hmm, would it be better to get away on foot or by car?
“Yeah, I would’ve liked to do it a lot sooner,” Mumei said with a sing-song lilt in her voice, “but I wanted to ask you for help, Ame, and so I waited until there wouldn’t be people in the store.”
If Amelia hadn’t loved and known Mumei so well, it could have come to her mind to suspect Mumei of suckering her into a terrible idea by exploiting her greatest weakness: someone in need of her help. Ah, but she did know and love Mumei.
“Alright, alright Miss Nanashi Mumei, first of all, how about we start by hearing your story?” Amelia whipped a pointed finger at Mumei. She was having fun now. “You know, see if your case is worthy of my super special accomplice skills.”
“Okay, wait, I don’t remember how much I’ve told you before.”
Amelia looked on as the poor ‘Small Ame’ plushie had her face punched in over and over while Mumei stared blankly at her, trying to recall where to begin.
“Oh gosh, well, I think you know that I used to work stupid morning shifts there last year. I was a barista. Wait, but I was on an evening shift when Kronii and I first met. Sorry, I’m really bad at telling stories. You’re probably going to want to sit down for this.”
Amelia had been sitting.
—
Mumei was not having a good day, to say the least. She hadn’t had a good day in a while, what with being swamped by midterms, worrying about Animal being sick, a friend ghosting her without explanation, and now being asked by her manager to cover someone else’s shift at the last minute. It didn’t help that being stressed and distracted at work, as she was finding out, was a very handy trick for making a lot of customers very angry at you. And the espresso machine wasn’t working — again.
Someone was yelling at her, but Mumei was quite busy discovering a new secret emotion between being on the verge of tears and the verge of second-degree murder.
“Hi ,” Maggie said, tapping Mumei on the shoulder. “So what’s the problem here?” Maggie was the owner of Spirit Coffee House. Mumei was grateful to have known Maggie, because otherwise Mumei would never have known that it was possible for someone to know so little about a store they owned.
“Okay, the espresso machine broke again, and the ice machine is being very silly. I’ve already tried cycling the power on both, and as we can both see, that hasn’t worked.”
“Hmm.” Maggie paused to think, even though she could clearly not care less. “Well, you’re just going to have to figure it out and make do. That is what we pay you for, right?”
Mumei pulled her lips in tight — she didn’t know why she even tried to explain the issue.
“Ooh, and if we could see more of a smile on that face too, hm? I’ve received a few too many customer complaints about your attitude today for my liking, Momo.”
“Wait, your boss called you the wrong name?” Amelia asked. “How long had you been working there by that point?”
“Mm, I don’t remember. Does it matter?”
Ah, point taken, Amelia noted to herself.
“Sorry, the espresso machine is broken.” Mumei was exasperated. By this point, she couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort to say it differently every time.
“Wow, it’s just like me for real for real.” The customer’s voice was completely deadpan. That convinced Mumei to look up.
It was a girl, with dark-blue hair — Mumei thinks she might have seen her once or twice around the Cover U campus before. The girl looked away, but Mumei could still see the subtlest smile of self-satisfaction at her own bad joke that the girl wasn’t able to hide.
Mumei thought she was going to say something back, but instead she started giggling, and then wheezing hysterically. She liked how her wheezing made the girl’s eyes widen in panic. “Oh shit , are you alright? I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-” Mumei still laughs when she thinks about it.
When she got home, she remembered the name she had written down on the cup of spearmint tea that girl had ordered. She found herself tracing it out again.
Kronii.
“Ugh, disgusting, it makes me sick!” Amelia stuck her tongue out in jest. Bubba soon crawled into her lap, and she placed her fingers over his furry ears. “Bubba! Don’t listen!”
“Ma’am, put the dog down. You’re violating his rights as a citizen to hear the free expression of others.” Gura was standing in Amelia’s doorway, holding a cereal box that she was eating out of with a spoon.
“Yes, they have to - the little children must learn these things, Ame. I want him to possess this knowledge, this power. I’m keeping him safe.” Mumei smiled.
Now it was two months later, and Mumei was enjoying the sight of Kronii sulking after Mumei caught her using her phone to google ‘how to tell if im attracted to a girl or if her weird personality triggers my attachment issues reddit.’
“Man, you know what?” Kronii whined, covering her face. “Let’s just, let’s just get back to the movie. How does that sound?” Mumei didn’t let her get back to the movie.
Now it was five months, and Mumei was in the back, changing out of her uniform and humming a show tune. It had been another terrible shift — surprise, the cold brew maker was broken — but she and Kronii had made plans over text for Kronii to pick her up after work. They were going to bus to the grocery store and buy ingredients to cook together, and she was looking forward to seeing how they would make each other laugh that day.
There was a pebble that she had been keeping in her coat pocket, and she took it out now to gaze at it as it rested on her palm. Mumei had spotted it on her last walk with Animal, and when she crouched down to first look at it more closely, she squealed quietly in delight. The pebble looked like Kronii, or at the least, it felt like Kronii.
Mumei stepped out of the backroom with her pebble in hand, hoping that Kronii would like it just as much. It was then that she saw Mason talking to Kronii near the front door, standing a little too close to her. Mason was none other than Maggie’s son, and it was obvious. He was also a part-timer at the cafe, one to whom Mumei had learned to give a wide enough berth. From what Mumei could see, Kronii was giving him the most terse of replies possible — Kronii somehow made the silent act of looking at her phone very loud.
“I couldn’t actually make out what he was saying, but he was being frickin’ rude. He was- he was looking at and talking to something other than her face, that's for sure.” Mumei began to mutter and grumble and growl.
“No,” Mumei declared, stepping in between Mason and Kronii. “Too bad, she’s busy being with someone else.” She took Kronii’s hand into hers. “I’m talking about me, by the way.”
They stepped out, leaving both cafe and Mason behind. As they walked towards the bus stop together, Mumei very much enjoyed the sensation of swinging Kronii’s arms back and forth, back and forth.
“Hey Mumei?” Mumei’s ears perked up. Kronii had a kind of smile in her voice that Mumei doesn’t remember hearing before. “You were really cool in there. Thank you.”
Mumei could feel the birds in her heart slamming into the windows of her heart. She squeaked.
The next day that she came into work, Maggie surprised her by forcing her to choose between her ‘lifestyle choice’ or staying employed at Spirit Coffee House. “Look, I’m sure you and that girl are very nice people, but we uphold certain values here, Momo.” Mumei swore that she could see Mason snickering.
Mumei dutifully assured Maggie that yes, she understood, of course, she would break up with Kronii as soon as possible, and then carried out the rest of her shift.
Today, she was the one assigned to both bathroom cleaning duty and closing duty, and she made the most of it — emptying out every bottle of cleaning chemical they had on-hand into the toilet bowl, one after another. She wanted to go behind the counter or into the kitchen to look for more things to flush down, but there were surveillance cameras everywhere aside from the restrooms. The restrooms it’ll have to be then , she thought to herself as she took out her metal water bottle and slammed it into the drywall, over and over again.
She wondered about being found out, but — as she suspected — the cafe was so poorly managed that in the end, nobody ever traced the vandalism back to her.
Mumei stopped showing up to work after that. She’d sleep in instead, having dreams that smelled like gasoline.
—
“What the heck? That’s messed up!” Amelia furrowed her brows, her face hot. Now it was her who was squeezing Small Ame’s body tight like the plushie owed her something.
“Oh, me thinking about burning down a building?”
“Them!” Amelia gently set Small Ame down on her desk before the urge to throw something became irresistible. “Any stuff between you and Kronii is zero point zero zero zero percent of their business anyway! What, are they cops or something? Fuck that! Fuck cops!”
“Should I be more upset about that part?” Mumei asked, entirely innocently. “I think I could excuse them being homophobic, but don’t,” she growled in a low voice, “don’t call me Momo. That is not my name. Don’t be rude.”
“Respect the moom,” Amelia nodded sagely.
“And don’t hurt people I care about,” Mumei added, her voice quivering.
Mumei suddenly jumped to her feet and began pacing the bedroom. “And Ame, for this whole past year, whenever I’d pass by, I’d just stand by the window and glare with this angry frown. I couldn’t do anything myself because I didn’t want Kronii to have to worry about me, so it was like the universe was holding me back.” Amelia wasn’t sure how to break it to Mumei that the ship of Kronii not worrying about Mumei had already sailed long ago.
“But if I glared hard enough, maybe a ceiling tile would fall on Maggie or Mason would slip and break all of his bones, and then I could pretend like it was me who caused it. And then I’d laugh about it. Tee hee.”
Amelia was smiling so hard, she swore she was starting to tear up. She was thinking to herself. Damn, Kronii… your girl’s real unhinged. But I guess you must be into that, huh?
“Oh, cause you’re one to talk,” her mental image of Kronii retorted, pointing to a mental image of Gura screaming over a pile of tax forms.
“Shut up, Kronii.”
Mumei stopped pacing. “Then they went out of business, all by themselves! It’s like the universe itself- I think it likes me, basically.” Amelia was still smiling. Of course the universe loved Mumei. That must be the most obvious fact in the whole wide world, she thought to herself.
Amelia patted the empty space on the bed beside her, inviting Mumei to look at her laptop screen together. As Mumei hopped back onto the bed, Amelia took notice of the quiet tune she was humming, the soft smile she was wearing, the way she leaned forward towards Amelia’s screen, eager to see what Amelia wanted to show her. There was so much worth noticing to her.
It seemed to Amelia that if Mumei had any worries, absolutely none of them were related to the prospect of committing a felony within the next week. She supposed that she would do enough worrying for the both of them, then.
She switched over to a different web browser, one which had been designed for private and anonymous browsing. It was slower to use, but Amelia had never planned something this illegal before, and she thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
Amelia turned to Mumei with a big grin on her face. “Criminals,” she whispered.
—
The night seemed to fly by in a flurry of moments, like embers glowing in the wind.
“Right, so you can see here that it’s pretty out of the way from everything else. So it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Mm.” Amelia rubbed her chin as she zoomed in and out, panning the map.
They even had fun pretending to be watching ‘Fire Force’ on the rare occasion that one of the other girls walked into Amelia’s room and asked what the two of them were up to. Amelia was really proud of coming up with that alibi.
“...Molotov cocktails?”
“Yeah yeah, don’t worry, I can teach you! It’s an old classic, Watson Family recipe!”
It was weird, Amelia thought, to realise that there were some sides of other people that you would only ever get to see in the event that you planned a crime together — parts of each other that would otherwise stay unbeknownst to the both of you, for better or for worse.
“I’m just nervous about one of the girls coming in here and finding what, like a dozen cans of gasoline in my closet. They might call the feds or something.”
“I’ll vouch for you,” Mumei chirped. “Besides, the girls would totally believe you’re weird enough to stock gasoline in preparation for an apocalypse.”
“Weird?!” Amelia gasped in feigned offence. “That’s it! I’m calling off the operation.”
“No,” Mumei stated. “You would know too much, Amelia Watson.”
Amelia shivered.
Together, they filled a Word document with many bits of relevant information, copy-pasted from what must have been dozens of different forum threads and wiki pages. There were many tangential rabbit holes throughout the night, and Amelia made a note to thank Mumei for sitting through her infodumping about thermogenic plants for twenty minutes.
Amelia thought about how it was nice to not wikidive alone, once in a while.
“Our parents must have been really bad at their jobs,” Amelia chucked. “Guess neither of us ever fully internalised the ‘Don’t play with fire’ lesson, huh?”
“But we’re not playing, we’re working with it!”
—
It must have been past three in the morning when Amelia closed all her tabs and pulled her laptop lid down with a sigh. She was unusually tired for this hour of night, but then again, she had been doing a lot more than her usual routine of scrolling through slime videos.
“Al-right then ,” she declared in a faux British accent. “I think that’s everything!”
“Okay, yes. I feel ready.”
They now had a day (next Tuesday, after Amelia’s exam) , a time (2 A.M.) , and a plan (arson) . There were still a lot of details to be filled in, but they had time. Amelia liked keeping her plans open anyway.
“Mm, I guess I’ll see you around then, partner,” Amelia squeaked as she yawned her way into a backstretch. She saw Mumei look directly at her open mouth before yawning herself.
“I got something in my teeth?” she asked, covering up her mouth.
“No.”
“Oh, okay.”
Mumei picked ‘Small Ame’ up from Amelia’s desk and placed her on Amelia’s head.
“Oh god, no!” Amelia panted quickly, as if fearing for her life. “Oh my god, I’m being ratatouille’d! I’m gonna cook!”
No reaction from Mumei. Amelia thought she looked a little sleepy too, maybe.
Amelia was trying to keep ‘Small Ame’ balanced on her head as Mumei got up and headed for Amelia’s bedroom door. “G’night, Mumei! Love you,” she called out.
“And goodnight to you… ” Mumei drew out the word as she stood facing the door. “Amelia… Ar- son!” Mumei spun around with a wink and a laugh.
As Amelia groaned loudly into her palms, Small Ame fell off of Amelia’s head, plopping onto the floor. “Ehe-ehe-hehe,” she fake-laughed at Mumei as sardonically as she could — trying to suppress the genuine laugh that was threatening its way into her mouth.
“Love you too,” Mumei giggled, peeking behind the door.
“Obviously,” Amelia grinned.