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Being the game master was great. It was everything Sho had always expected and wanted it to be. He got to make the rules, he got to boss everyone around, and he got to do whatever the hell he wanted. And really, that was the thing he’d always wanted most.
Well, besides one thing.
And unfortunately for him being the game master, being almost completely free, was making his second greatest ambition far harder to achieve.
“Seven, they close at seven,” Sho hissed as he raced through the familiar streets. He was going to be late; he wasn’t going to make it, and it was all because of his game master duties. Every day he had to set up the game, to make a challenge for the little factoring hectopascals to face. Plus, he had to collect scrap and build his sculptures. And then he had to mark out the sigils for the taboo noise too. Well, he didn’t technically have to do all of those things. Some of them were definitely optional, like his sculptures he supposed. But if he half-assed his plans, if he even 33.33333 percent-assed his plans, he’d feel like he was admitting defeat. Like he was admitting he wasn’t good enough. He had to do everything 100%, not a decimal under or over.
Which meant that by the time he was finished with everything, it was nearly seven in the evening, and the shop he liked to visit, that he needed to visit every single day, would be closed.
And even in the Underground, even as a Reaper, Sho wouldn’t be able to break in to get his fix. Not that he would do that. He respected the shop too much. He needed them to stay in business. He needed their business to be booming! Hell, when he was officially in charge, maybe he’d even be able to change their hours, to make them stay open for all 24 of them. But he’d have to become the composer first, to truly be the one making all of the rules.
But could the composer even affect the store hours of a real business?
Sho had no idea. He couldn’t think, not without his fix. And it was almost seven. If he didn’t make it to the shop, he’d be without the goods for a whole sixteen hours. For nine hundred sixty minutes. For fifty-seven thousand six hundred seconds. He couldn’t handle that. He hadn’t been forced to do something like that since he’d first found the shop two years ago. Twenty-six months ago. Seven hundred ninety-four days ago. Nineteen thousand sixty-two hours ago. One million one hundred forty-three thousand seven hundred twenty minutes ago. Sixty eight million six hundred twenty-three thousand two hundred seconds.
Sixty eight million six hundred twenty-three thousand two hundred one seconds.
Sixty eight million six hundred twenty-three thousand two hundred two seconds.
He needed it.
And sure, he could try and see if there were any other shops in the area that had marks on their doors, that sold those kinds of goods to Reapers and players, but it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be what Sho was craving, what he was used to.
What he needed.
Glancing down at his phone, Sho gasped and began to run faster, phasing through the living people on the street and knocking down any unlucky players or Reapers who got in his way. The shop closed in exactly two minutes and thirty-six seconds. Sho only had two minutes and thirty-three seconds to get there. Two minutes and thirty seconds.
He wasn’t going to make it.
He didn’t.
“Fuck!” Sho shouted, dropping to his knees in front of the closed shop rather dramatically. Well, it may have looked dramatic, but it was very serious for him. He’d been late by sixteen seconds. Sixteen! He could even see the back of the day’s last remaining store clerk walking away down the street. He couldn’t call her back though, he couldn’t force her to come back to reopen the store and allow him to buy his usual.
Fuck, he’d have to go without.
“Hey,” an annoyingly familiar voice said behind him.
“What do you want?” Sho growled without bothering to look away from the store. He could see the neat rows of product inside, the precious little pieces of bliss wrapped up carefully in their fragile, immaculate white paper.
Each of them perfect and precisely numbered to their specific flavor.
All twelve flavors.
Twelve flavors he now had to go without.
“Just wanted to know why you were on the ground,” Hanekoma said, stepping in front of him this time, blocking Sho’s view of bliss and filling it with Hanekoma’s annoyingly amused mug instead. Sho wanted to punch him, but the last time he’d tried that, it hadn’t gone well. Well, it’d gone well in a certain way, but not in the way he was currently interested in. Sex was nice and all, but without the goods the shop sold, Sho was more in the mood for a fight than a fuck.
“Mind your own business,” Sho said before he got to his feet, not bothering to wipe the dirt off his pants.
“You ran past my business,” Hanekoma said. “So I figured I’d come see what had you so worked up. Should have known it was this.”
Sho just glared at him, not liking the way the bastard said ‘this’ like he thought Sho’s need for this shop was silly. Hanekoma as a coffee shop owner, as someone who sold an equally addictive substance, should understand Sho needing to get his fix.
And luckily for Sho, Hanekoma did.
Hanekoma shook his head with a weirdly fond sigh. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a white box, a familiar white box, one with an equally familiar black ribbon crossed over it.
“Here,” he said, before he tossed the box over, and Sho scrambled to catch it, to clutch it close to his chest. “I didn’t see you come by today. Figured you were busy as the game master this week, so I popped over on my lunch break and made sure to grab you a box.”
“Why?”
“I thought you’d be even more of a pain if you didn’t get your daily candy fix,” Hanekoma shrugged, before he pulled out a cigarette, lighting it up and taking a deep drag. “Or maybe I like the little noises you make when you sit in my cafe and eat them. Maybe I didn’t want to risk not getting my fix of that.”
Oh.
“Come on then,” Hanekoma continued, already walking back towards Cat Street. “Number Sugar might be closed, but WildKat’s still open. You’re going to need your hot chocolate to go with those candies.” And he turned the corner, leaving Sho to gape after him. Leaving Sho with a box of his favorite caramels in his hands.
And the expectation that Sho would follow after him.
Sho hated living up to expectations. He didn’t want to follow anyone's rules but his own. But it was true that he usually had hot chocolate at WildKat while he ate the first few numbers of his caramels. It was true that WildKat didn’t close until ten. That left him with three hours until Hanekoma got off work.One hundred eighty minutes. Ten thousand eight hundred seconds. Sho could use that time to do whatever the hell he wanted. And in the time after that he could do whatever the hell he wanted too.
Holding the little white box close to his chest, Sho began walking towards the coffee shop.
