Chapter Text
The morning hit her like a truck, she wasn’t ready to wake up yet; she wondered if she ever would be. But she knew there was no way she could fall asleep again, so she forced herself up. She managed to get to the door, but her hand refused to turn the knob.
It shouldn’t affect me this much, she thought, yet her hand didn’t budge. She knew that his stupid portrait would be the first thing she saw, if she dared open the door. He’s so full of shit. She knew that, but that didn’t make his words hurt any less.
Before she could contemplate her options for the umpteenth time, she heard a door open from outside her room – the one directly across hers. Great, she thought. Now she can’t even brood about her little dilemma.
“Oh, good mooorning, Raggy!”, she could hear the grin in his voice, even through the door.
“...good morning, Jax.”
“Aww, what’s the attitude for, Raggy, aren’t you so happy to live in this wonderful digital world?”
Ragatha didn’t entertain him with a response, and Jax, seemingly not in the mood, didn’t comment on it.
Knock knock!
Pomni basically jumped at the knock on her door, despite how gentle it was.
“Pomni?”, Ragatha said in an unsure voice. “Are you... awake? I, uh, have some news to share if you’re up!”.
“I’m up...” she replied with a dead voice, not bothering to mask her mood. After all, she had already slipped up about her fight with Jax and ended up having to tell Ragatha the whole story.
“May I come in—? Ah, I mean it’s totally alright if you don’t want me to! I can, uh, tell you from here—”
“No, it’s okay....” she said, while turning the door knob.
When the door was shut once more, Pomni was faced with a girl whose eyes were overflowing with both concern and relief.
“How are you holding up?” she asked, and then quickly added “I-if you don’t mind me asking.”
“I’ll live...”, she didn’t want to talk further about it. She had already told her pretty much everything anyway. “What’s the ‘news’?”
“O-oh! Right, the news!”, her eyes grew in scale and her eyebrows both smoothed and curved upwards when the topic changed, “Caine’s sending us to the Digital Carnival today—not as an adventure though! Apparently today’s adventure will start after dinner.”
“...Great.”, her voice let on to Ragatha how damn done she was with everything. “Is the ‘not-adventure’ mandatory?”.
“N-no, but you should really come along! The carnival rarely ever opens and has some actually fun activities!”, as she started her next sentence her arms curled up and she lowered her head a bit, eyes darting around as if checking if anyone is listening in, “The last time someone skipped out on it—well more so left in the middle of it, they um...” she suddenly looked very panicked. “Well, um, anyways! The point is that you should come along!”
Ominous, extremely so, but she knew better than to ask.
“I’ll, uh... consider it.”
“That’s fine! I, uh, hope to see you there!”
Just before she left, she shot Pomni a concerned face, which she promptly forced herself to ignore. She wanted nothing more than to sleep the whole day, and maybe magically feel better. She knew that’d never happen though, nevertheless she still wanted to do nothing but sleep.
She threw herself to her bed, and let a small grunt escape as she hit the mattress. Urgh, I really don’t want to find out whatever the hell she meant. For the second time this morning, she was stuck in between two options. One of them was really tempting, but also felt dreadful... urgh, it’s all because Ragatha just had to be so ominous like that!
Whatever, I’ll go if I can’t sleep. And with that she finally reached a decision.
“Urgh, is the adventure over already?”, the voice came from a toybox, whose lid was freshly removed.
“H-hi Zooble.”, said the masked tied by ribbons, not looking surprised at the location of the speaking building blocks unlike the doll character next to her. “A-and no, we, um, were told to go to the carnival!”
“O-oh, Zooble, there you are!”
“Gangle! What the—” muttered Zooble while being lifted by ribbons. “Wait, carnival?”
“Y-yeah! You know, the one outside the tent? Didn’t Caine give you a tour?” asked Ragatha.
“I’m sure he did, but I was too busy having an existential crisis.”
“O-oh, I guess you couldn’t really pay attention when... um, yeah!”
“The carnival is pretty fun!” said Gangle. “I’ve only been there once though... Why don’t you come along?”
“As long as it’s not another s[#&%!]y adventure, I might just manage.”
“Oh, good!” Ragatha commented, then her pupils immediately pointed in a different direction. “I’ll, uh, go and get Pomni! Why don’t you two head out first!”
“Ah, sure.” said Zooble as their body grabbed their head. “Gangle?”
“Ah, yeah! Let’s go.”
An hour had passed, yet Pomni wasn’t about to give up on sleep just yet—! Argh, who am I kidding, I’m not gonna be able to go back to sleep. She pushed herself up alarmingly fast, making her dizzy. She didn’t wait until it passed, and just threw herself out of her room.
“Great. Just the person I want to see.”
Fuck. That was the last voice she wanted to hear right now.
“Where is everyone?” the owner of the voice asked, as if he didn’t know she didn’t want to speak to him right now—who’s she kidding, she wants to speak, to clear it up, to make him confess to being full of shit. But that wasn’t going to happen, so she condensed all of those emotions into spite.
“Carnival.”
His eyes widened, pupils doing the opposite, and he raised his head just slightly. All in all, he looked mildly shocked. Why is he so surprised? He didn’t think what he said wou—? Oh, he’s surprised at the carnival.
Slightly embarrassed of her original assumption, she mentally apologized to Ming, and fast-walked out of the corridor to hide her face.
R-right. Carnival. How do I go there?
Before she could figure out an answer, she noticed loud footsteps behind her. It seems she didn’t notice the sound until it was too late.
“Tch. Do you even know how to go there?”
“Did you just—?”
“Yeah, yeah, do you know or not?”, he asked while rolling his eyes, “I don’t want an angry Ragatha blowing my ears out if I let you get lost.”
..? This fucker. He’s the fakest idgafer. “I do not.”
“Well, then you better keep up, because I’m not waiting for you.”, he said after he already started walking.
Unbeknownst to him, Pomni’s lips curved the smallest bit.