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It started, like most disasters, with Isen.
"Okay, but hear me out!" they said, raising their arms in surrender.
"I don’t trust you with anything," Blyke remarked "Much less your type."
"Ok, but Cecile could step on me and I would thank her—"
"Ew," John added, arms crossed, leaning against the fence. Next to him, Remi made a face.
Isen paused. "Ok, so she’s kinda mean—"
"Only kinda?"
Isen pointed a finger at Blyke’s small smile. "You, shut up. I like mean people. And Arlo is objectively hot—"
Remi choked, grabbing the fence for support. "Arlo?"
Seraphina frowned from next to her. "You like Arlo?"
"N—no!" Isen defended. "He’s just kinda . . ."
"He is not," Blyke said. "That’s four against one."
"John still hasn’t said anything," Isen pointed out.
Everyone turned to see John very deep in thought, ears slightly pink.
" . . . No," Sera grimaced. "John, don’t."
John opened his mouth.
"If you say it, we’re not friends anymore."
John actually paused at that, then shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry. He is hot."
Isen pat him on the back. "Thank you!"
John shrugged him off. "Don’t touch me."
Seraphina leaned forwards. "I’m going to ignore that you guys like Arlo—who, one, has a terrible personality, and two, is not that hot."
Isen opened their mouth.
"Shut up, Isen."
They closed it.
Sera sighed dramatically. "What I was going to say was, since we’re all up here skipping class, we might as well do something with the time." She glanced around the group, something mischievous already creeping into her expression. "Kiss, Marry, Kill?"
Isen brightened immediately. Even John, still leaning against the fence, looked faintly interested despite himself.
"Remi, want to go first?" Sera offered.
Remi blinked. "Oh, okay! Ummm . . . okay, kiss marry kill . . . Cecile, Arlo, Zeke?"
Isen choked. "You hate me."
"It wasn’t for you," Remi shot back. "John?"
"Okay, so you hate me, then?" John finished, deadpan.
"You're the one who called Arlo hot two minutes ago," Remi said. "I'm just working with what I've got."
John opened his mouth, closed it, then sighed in defeat. "Fine. Kill Zeke, obviously. Kiss . . ." He hesitated just a second too long. "Cecile, marry Arlo."
The room went silent.
"You'd marry him?" Isen said, delighted.
It's a hypothetical, Isen."
"So you’d hypothetically marry Arlo."
"My turn's over," John said, a little too quickly, clearly eager to move the spotlight. "Isen. Kiss, marry, kill: Arlo, Vaughn, Zeke."
Isen's face did something complicated. "That's not fair, you put Arlo back in—"
"That's the game."
"I know how the game works, I just—" Isen stopped themself, and Sera, watching them far too closely, raised an eyebrow.
"You just what?"
"Nothing." He cleared his throat. "Kill Zeke—obviously, everyone's killing Zeke, I don't know why we keep including him. Kill Vaughn, no wait, I can only kill one —"
"Pick," Blyke said, clearly enjoying this.
"Fine. Marry Arlo." It came out fast, like ripping off a bandage. "Kill Vaughn, I guess, sorry sir, if you can somehow hear this. Kiss Zeke, and I’m drinking bleach immediately after."
Nobody laughed right away. Remi and Blyke exchanged a look.
"You went with marry," Sera said, wide-eyed.
"It's just a game—"
"Nobody's making fun of you," Sera said, and put a hand on their knee, which shut them up more effectively than any of the teasing had.
"Speak for yourself," Blyke muttered, and Sera shot him a look.
Isen cleared their throat like they could clear the last thirty seconds along with it. "My turn to ask. Blyke. Kiss, marry, kill—" Isen paused, weighing their options with the particular cruelty of someone still recovering from being on the hot seat themself. "John, Cecile, and me?"
"Easy. Kill Cecile." Blyke didn't even blink.
"You have to actually think about the other two," Remi said.
"I don't, though. Kiss Isen."
"You'd rather kiss me than—" Isen started.
"I didn't finish," Blyke said, mild. "Marry John."
The room went quiet in a completely different way than it had for Isen.
"That was fast," Sera said, after a beat.
"It's a hypothetical." Blyke's voice was doing the thing where it stayed perfectly level on purpose.
"You didn't even pause," Remi said. "You paused for Cecile, who's obviously the kill, and you didn't pause at all for John."
"Because it's obvious," Blyke said. "Marrying him is way less commitment than kissing Isen. He’s so damn clingy."
"That's not—that's not why you didn't pause and you know it," Isen said, delighted, sensing blood in the water after their own turn.
John, for his part, had gone very still on the other side of the room, ears pink again, very deliberately not saying anything.
"John," Sera said, far too innocently. "You have thoughts?"
"No," John said, in the exact tone of someone who had several.
"He agrees it's not a big deal," Blyke said, at the same time John said nothing at all, and the overlap made it worse, not better.
Isen looked between them, grinning like Christmas had come early. "Oh, this is the best day of my life."
"Your turn's over," Blyke said, redirecting fast. "I pick Remi. Kiss, marry, kill: Cecile, Sera, Arlo."
"Kill Arlo," Remi said easily. "He’s like my older brother."
"Okay," Blyke said. "And?"
Remi didn't answer right away.
"That's it," Isen said, delighted, still riding the high of not being the only one squirming anymore. "That's the pause. There it is."
"I'm thinking."
"You didn't think for Arlo."
"Arlo's obvious, this isn't obvious—" She stopped herself a half-second too late, hearing exactly how that sounded.
"Not obvious," Sera repeated, carefully neutral, like she was testing the weight of the words.
"I meant—I mean they're both—it's just hard to pick between marrying and kissing two people I actually like, that's all, that's a normal thing to find hard—"
"Nobody said it wasn't normal," Blyke said, entirely too pleased with himself for someone who'd just been on the receiving end of this exact treatment two minutes ago.
Remi buried her face in her hands. "Marry Sera."
There was a beat of silence.
"That leaves kiss for Cecile," John said, unhelpfully narrating what everyone had already worked out.
"By elimination," Remi said quickly. "Not because—"
"You said it was hard to pick," Isen pointed out. "Not because Sera lost. Because you didn't want to say it."
Remi went very red, very fast, and said nothing at all, which was somehow more of an answer than anything she could've said out loud.
Sera, for her part, just looked thoughtful—not upset, not smug, just quietly filing something away.
"My turn to ask," Remi said, clearly desperate to get the attention off herself. "Sera. Kiss, marry, kill—" She scanned the room like she was choosing a weapon. "Isen, Blyke, John."
"Oh, that's just cruel," Isen said. "You're doing to her what Blyke did to you."
"I'm aware."
Sera didn't even flinch. "Kill Isen."
"Hey—"
"You'd have done the same," she said, unbothered, and Isen, unable to argue with that, subsided.
"Kiss Blyke," she continued, easy as anything, like it cost her nothing at all. Blyke made a face but didn't protest—there was no weight behind it, and everyone could tell.
"That leaves marry John," she finished, and said it exactly the same way she'd said the other two—flat, unbothered, not even a flicker.
The room waited for the reaction. It didn't come.
"That's it?" Isen said, almost offended on everyone else's behalf. "No pause? No blushing? You're supposed to react."
"I don't have anything to react to," Sera said. "It's John."
"Rude," John said, without much heat.
"You know what I mean." She shrugged. "We've been through too much together for it to be weird. We’re basically already platonically married."
"Somehow that's worse than if you'd hesitated," Blyke said.
Sera just looked pleased with herself, entirely immune to the chaos she'd just watched everyone else go through. "My turn. I pick—" She paused, actually thinking this time, glancing between the four of them like she was deciding whose turn it was to suffer next.
That was when the door opened, which could only be one of the two people.
Arlo stepped out of the stairway and looked around at all of them—the five of them seated in a circle, lunch trays abandoned half-eaten, Isen frozen mid-flinch, Remi bright red, John pointedly staring at the wall, Sera looking entirely too smug for someone who'd started all this.
"Why are all of you skipping class?" Arlo scowled.
"We're playing a game," Sera said, perfectly serene, like nothing at all had just happened.
"That doesn't answer my question." Arlo looked, understandably, unconvinced. "What kind of game makes Isen look like they’ve seen a ghost?"
"Kiss, marry, kill," Blyke offered helpfully.
Something in the room shifted. Isen was suddenly very interested in a spot on the floor.
"Who's up?" Arlo said, either not noticing or choosing not to.
"Sera. She hasn't picked yet," Remi said, a little too fast, clearly relieved to have somewhere else to point.
"Actually," Blyke said, with the particular tone of someone about to do something deeply unwise, "You should play."
Arlo raised an eyebrow. "I don't play . . . whatever this is."
"Come on," Remi said, seeing the opportunity and lunging for it with the desperation of someone who very much wanted the spotlight to land on literally anyone else. "One round. You're already here."
"I came here to ask why you're all skipping, not to—"
"Scared?" Isen said, before their brain apparently caught up with their mouth, and then looked immediately horrified at themself.
Arlo looked at them for a long moment. "I'm not scared of a game."
"Then prove it," Blyke said, already grinning like this was exactly the outcome he'd been engineering the whole time.
Arlo sighed, the specific sigh of someone who knew he was being tricked and didn’t care. He took a seat between John and Remi. "Fine. Give me the rules."
"Kiss, marry, kill, three names," Sera said. "We'll even go easy on you, for your first round."
"Somehow I doubt that."
"Isen, Cecile, John," Sera said instantly, before anyone else could pick, with all the confidence of someone who'd clearly planned this three moves in advance.
Isen made a small, strangled noise.
Arlo, mercifully oblivious, actually seemed to consider it. "Kill John."
"Hey," John said, without much heat, too busy watching the rest of this unfold to be genuinely offended.
"Kiss Cecile," Arlo continued, "she'd probably kill me for it after, but that's fine."
"And Isen," Sera prompted, entirely too pleasant.
Arlo looked at Isen, who had gone rigid in a way that was rapidly becoming impossible not to notice, even for someone as oblivious as Arlo generally was about this sort of thing.
"Marry Isen, I guess," Arlo said, easy, unbothered, clearly not thinking about it the way everyone else in the room was thinking about it. "They’d be the least annoying to be stuck with long-term."
The silence that followed was different from every silence before it.
" . . . Thanks," Isen managed, in a voice about an octave higher than usual.
Arlo frowned slightly, finally catching something in the room's temperature. "What."
"Nothing," five voices said, far too quickly.
"My turn, then," Arlo said, apparently deciding that if he was playing, he was playing properly. He looked around the room like he was choosing a target with actual strategy. "Blyke. Kiss, marry, kill—John, Remi, Sera."
Blyke didn't even hesitate. "Kill Sera."
"Excuse me?" Sera said.
"You'd survive it, you're annoyingly resilient." He said it like a compliment, which somehow made it worse. "Marry Remi. Low maintenance, no drama, perfect."
"Flattered," Remi said dryly.
"Which leaves kiss for John," Arlo said, watching Blyke closely now, some of the obliviousness from a moment ago apparently wearing off.
"Yeah," Blyke said. Just that. No hesitation, no joke tacked onto the end, nothing to hide behind.
John, next to him, had gone very quiet again.
Arlo looked between the two of them for a second too long. "Huh," he said, and didn't elaborate, which was somehow more unsettling than if he'd said something.
"Don't," Blyke warned.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say congratulations, actually, on being the least subtle person I've ever met," Arlo said, and Blyke threw a balled-up napkin at his head, which Arlo caught without even looking.
Isen, still recovering from their own turn, seemed to find sudden, immense comfort in the fact that someone else's chaos had eclipsed his. "Okay, so it’s not just me, then?"
"Never was," Sera said, entirely too pleased with how this had all gone.
Remi, watching the whole thing unfold, had gone quiet in her own corner—the kind of quiet that came from realizing the game had circled all the way back around and there was nowhere left to hide.
"My turn," Blyke said, grinning, clearly not done milking the last round. "Remi. Kiss, marry, kill—Cecile, my mom, and Vaughn."
"Where did your mom come from—"
"The names are getting worse as we go, that's the rule now," Isen said. "We're all suffering equally."
"Kill Vaughn again, I'm sorry sir," Remi said quickly. "Marry—okay, this is unfair, marry Blyke’s mom, I guess, she makes good soup." She barreled forward before anyone could react to that. "Kiss Cecile." She said it fast enough that it almost blurred into the sentence before it, like speed could disguise it. It didn't. Nobody commented, though—there'd clearly been enough of that for one period.
"My turn," Remi said, desperate to move the spotlight anywhere else, and her eyes landed on Arlo. Something in her expression went a little sharper, a little more mischievous. "Arlo. Kiss, marry, kill—"
"Please be normal," Arlo pleaded.
"—Rei, Kuyo, and Valerie."
The room actually gasped—a real, collective, delighted gasp.
"You can't put his aunt in there," John said, half-laughing, half-horrified.
"The options are unhinged now, we established this," Isen said. "Those are the rules."
Arlo had gone very still. "Absolutely not. I refuse to answer that."
"You have to," Blyke said. "That's the game."
"I'm not killing my aunt in a hypothetical scenario in front of five witnesses!"
"Then don't," Sera said. "Kill someone else."
Arlo's jaw worked for a second. "Fine. Kill Aunt Val, because I’m not insane."
"That leaves Rei and Kuyo," Remi said, watching him closely now, and it was clear from her face that this hadn't been a random pick at all.
Arlo was quiet for a beat too long.
"Kiss Kuyo," he said finally, careful, controlled. "It’ll kill me inside, but I’m not marrying that asshole."
"And?" Isen prompted, when Arlo didn't finish.
"And marry Rei," Arlo said, like it cost him something to say out loud, even now, even as a joke. "Which—everyone would've picked that, don't act surprised."
"Nobody's acting surprised," Remi said, gentle under the teasing. "I think half the school had a crush on him when he was here."
"He absolutely was hot," Sera agreed. "I’ve seen pictures."
"This is a weird thing for all of us to agree on," John said, but he was smiling.
Arlo didn't say anything else, just looked down at his hands for a second, something soft and old passing over his face before he shook it off. "Can we move on, please?"
"We can move on," Remi said, quieter now, letting him have that.
"Fine," Arlo said, clearly eager to hand the spotlight off before anyone could dwell on his answer any longer. "My turn. Sera. Kiss, marry, kill . . . me, John, and Remi."
Sera didn't even blink. "Kill you," she said breezily. "No offense."
"None taken, I guess."
"Marry John, we've covered this, it's basically a given at this point." She said it the exact same flat way she'd said it the first time, like the answer hadn't changed one bit in the last twenty minutes because there was nothing underneath it to change. "Which leaves kiss for Remi."
Remi startled. "Wait, what—"
"You're fine, it's platonic," Sera said, already moving on, entirely unbothered by the fact that she'd just casually thrown Remi into the mess everyone else had been drowning in. "I don't feel a thing about any of you like that. It's very freeing, honestly. You should all try it."
"We can't all just decide not to have feelings, Sera," Blyke said.
"That sounds like a you problem."
" . . . Shut up and play."
"My turn, then," Sera said, and opened her mouth to pick someone—
—when Isen cracked their knuckles, cutting her off entirely. "If the names are unhinged now, I'm going all in." They surveyed the room with the energy of a person about to commit a crime, ignoring the fact that it wasn't even their turn yet. "Volcan, Brims, and Fury."
"That's not how this works, it's not even your turn," John pointed out.
"I'm making it my turn."
"You can't just—"
"Watch me." Isen straightened up, dead serious, like this was the most important decision of their life.
"Those are EMBER agents," John tried instead. "They’re actively trying to kill us."
"The rules said unhinged," Isen said, entirely unbothered. "I'm just following the rules."
"You made the rules up!"
"And I'm respecting my own rules. That's called integrity."
Arlo pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not doing this."
"You have to, that's the game," Isen said, delighted to finally be the one saying it instead of hearing it.
"Fine. Kill all three, if I could."
"You can't kill all three, pick—"
"Kill Volcan, kill Fury, and if you make me pick a third option I am ending this game permanently," Arlo said, with the flat finality of someone who meant it.
"Okay, fair, that's valid," Isen conceded, backing off with unusual speed for once. Then they smirked. "Remi. Same three."
Remi opened her mouth to protest and then, visibly, decided against it. "Kill Brims. Kill Volcan too, actually, I don't care if that's not the rules, some names deserve two kills." She paused, and then, with the specific energy of someone about to say something deeply unwise: "Okay, but, hear me out on Fury—"
The group turned on her as one unit.
"What," Blyke said.
Remi looked at him like he was crazy. "Fury. The EMBER agent. Remember?"
"The one who almost killed Isen?" Blyke said, like he didn’t know what to think. "That Fury?"
"She's just . . . pretty," Remi said, gesturing vaguely, entirely unbothered by the betrayed looks aimed at her from every direction. "I'm just saying, objectively, as an enemy combatant, she’s doing something right."
"You're the one who was setting Arlo up for failure," Blyke said. "And now you're defending a war criminal's bone structure."
"It’s an objective fact, Blyke," Remi huffed.
"You're unwell," Isen said, but they were laughing, and so was everyone else, the whole group dissolving into noise.
"Okay," Arlo said, holding up both hands like he was trying to physically stop the conversation from continuing. "We are never doing this again."
"You joined voluntarily," Blyke pointed out.
"I was manipulated."
"You joined because Isen called you scared," Sera said.
"That's still manipulation."
"That's just peer pressure, which you're an adult enough to resist, theoretically," Remi said, and Arlo shot her a look that had absolutely no real heat behind it.
The wind picked up across the rooftop, scattering a napkin off someone's abandoned lunch tray, and for a second nobody said anything, just let the quiet sit there the way it did up here—the one place in the whole school that felt like it belonged to them and nobody else.
"We should play something else," Isen said, apparently unable to stay quiet any longer. "Something less— " They gestured vaguely at the last half hour, "—that."
"Never Have I Ever," Blyke suggested, already grinning in a way that promised this was somehow going to be worse, not better.
"Absolutely not," Arlo said immediately.
"Truth or Dare, then."
"Also no."
"You don't get to veto every game, Arlo, you're one vote out of six," Isen said.
"I get to veto games that are clearly designed to humiliate me specifically."
"Everything humiliates you specifically, that's not a special category," Sera said, and Arlo opened his mouth to argue and, visibly, couldn't find the energy.
Then the door to the roof creaked, and every head turned at once—braced, out of pure skipping-class paranoia, for a teacher.
It was just Cecile, arms crossed, looking mildly annoyed at having climbed the stairs. "Press club needed the room you were supposedly using for your little club meeting," she said to Remi, "Except nobody was there, so I'm assuming you're all up here instead, being—" She took in the scene, the abandoned trays, Arlo sitting cross-legged on the ground like a person who belonged there, Isen still slightly pink around the ears, "—whatever this is."
"We were playing a game," Remi said, a little too quickly.
Cecile's eyes narrowed, sensing blood, the way she always did. "What kind of game?"
"Nothing," six voices said, entirely too fast, entirely too together, and Cecile's expression made it very clear she didn't believe a single one of them—but, mercifully, decided not to push.
"Whatever," she said instead, already turning to go. "I’m going to assume I can use the room today." She nodded. "Bye, Remi."
The door shut behind her. Nobody moved for a second.
"So," Isen said, breaking the silence. "Truth or Dare?"
"I said no," Arlo said, but he didn't get up to leave either.
"Please?" Remi made a face, the one she used whenever she needed to make someone do something, which was supremely unfair, considering she looked just like Rei when she made that face.
"Fine," Arlo said, finally, dragging a hand down his face like he was already regretting it. "One round. That's it."
"You said that about Kiss Marry Kill too," John pointed out.
"And I meant it that time as well."
"Truth or Dare rules," Isen said, sitting up straighter, delighted to have a fresh format to work with. "Standard. Truth, you have to answer honestly. Dare, you have to do it, no backing out unless it's, like, actually dangerous or illegal."
"Who died and made you the rules committee?" Blyke asked.
"I appointed myself. Someone has to keep order around here, clearly, since the last person who tried got possessed by a Kiss Marry Kill trance and started defending war criminals." Isen nodded at Remi.
"It was Fury specifically, don't lump her in with the others, she's different—"
"She is not different, Remi, she works for the people trying to kill vigilantes," Sera said.
"I never said she was a good person." Remi defended. "I said she was pretty. Those are unrelated categories."
"They're really not," John muttered.
"I'll go first," Blyke said, cutting through it before Remi could mount a full defense. "Isen, truth or dare?"
Isen considered this with far more gravity than the question warranted. "Dare."
Blyke smirked. "Call whoever's next in your contacts and tell them, completely deadpan, that you love them and you're not sorry."
Isen’s eyes widened. "That's—who's next in my contacts is completely random, that could be anyone—"
Blyek shrugged. "That's the fun of it."
"I retract my earlier statement about my reputation, I would like to be the boring one now—"
"No backsies."
Isen, visibly regretting every choice that had led to this moment, pulled out their phone, tapped dhte screen, and went pale. They hit call anyway, put it on speaker with shaking hands, and when it picked up said, with the flattest, most devastated voice imaginable: "I love you. I'm not sorry."
A confused pause. Then, tinny through the speaker: " . . . Isen? This is your dentist's office."
The rooftop dissolved into hysterics as Isen hung up so fast they nearly dropped the phone. They dropped back down onto the ground beside Sera, scanning the group for their next victim with obvious malice. "Arlo. Truth or dare."
Arlo looked deeply suspicious of the question itself. "Truth."
"Coward."
"Strategic."
"Fine." Isen's grin turned sharp. "Who in this circle would you trust to save your life, no hesitation, if it came down to it?"
The rooftop went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with teasing this time—a real question, dropped into the middle of all the noise.
Arlo didn't answer right away. He looked around at all of them—Remi, practically his little sister; Sera, who'd fought beside him more times than either of them liked to count; Blyke, a strong, capable leader; John, volatile and unsteady, it was almost surprising how easily the answer included him too; Isen, watching him with none of the usual teasing in his face for once.
"All of you," Arlo said finally. "Which is a stupid answer, probably, since it doesn't actually answer the question, but it's true."
Nobody made fun of him for it. Not even Sera.
"Okay," Isen said, quieter than before. "Good answer."
The moment held a second longer than it needed to, and then Arlo, visibly needing to move past it, turned to the group at large. "My turn. Sera. Truth or dare."
"Dare," Sera said immediately, unbothered as ever.
Arlo considered the request with more focus than it probably deserved. "Do an impression of literally anyone in this circle. We'll guess who."
Sera stood without hesitation, straightened her spine, crossed her arms, and adopted an expression of deep, long-suffering patience. "The hierarchy is the most important thing to ever exist," she said, in a flat, dry monotone that immediately sent Isen into hysterics. "Wow, I sure do love authority. And the hierarchy, can’t forget that. And dragging people out to fields and ambushing them."
"That was one time," Arlo scowled.
Sera shrugged. "Still happened"
"That was amazing," Blyke said, wheezing.
Sera sat back down, entirely pleased with herself, and turned to her next target with the calm of someone who had never once lost at anything in her life. "Remi. Truth or dare."
"Truth," Remi said, still recovering from laughing, and immediately regretting the choice the second Sera's expression turned considering.
"What's the most embarrassing thing you've done in front of Cecile."
"That's not fair, you know I can't say no to this game, you've weaponized my own rules against me—"
"Answer the question."
Remi groaned, dropping her head into her hands. "Fine. I tripped over literally nothing in the hallway and she started laughing at me."
"That's not that embarrassing," John said.
"You didn't see her face, John. She looked like Christmas came early."
"Oh, that's devastating," Isen said, delighted. "She's never going to let that go, is she."
Remi groaned. "She brought it up again three weeks later completely unprompted, so no. Never."
"I like her more every time you tell a story about her," Blyke told her.
"Nobody asked you." Remi turned, scanning for her next victim with the specific vengeance of someone who'd just been thoroughly exposed. "John. Truth or dare."
John, who had been quietly enjoying not being the center of attention for a solid ten minutes, visibly deflated. "Dare."
"Do the thing where you talk in Blyke's voice. You do it sometimes without noticing and it's very funny."
John look offended. "I don't do that."
"You absolutely do that," Sera said. "You did it this morning. You said 'that's objectively wrong' and it came out in his exact tone, I heard it happen."
Blyke frowned. "I don't have a tone."
"You have several tones, and John's apparently absorbed at least one of them through prolonged exposure," Isen said.
John, red-faced, cleared his throat, and in a flat, slightly bored voice that was—undeniably, embarrassingly—an exact match for Blyke's usual register, said: "This is a stupid game and I regret everything about today."
The rooftop erupted. Even Arlo, who'd been trying very hard to maintain some dignity since his own answer a few minutes ago, lost it.
"That's uncanny," Sera said, wiping her eyes. "That's actually terrifying."
"I don't sound like that," Blyke said, though he didn't sound entirely convinced of it himself anymore.
"You sound exactly like that," everyone said, more or less in unison, and Blyke put his head in his hands, defeated.
John, satisfied with the chaos he'd caused, turned to the group. "My turn. Isen. Truth or dare—again, I know, but you're just an easy target."
"I accept my role in this ecosystem," Isen said. "Dare."
John considered his options with the calm cruelty of someone who'd been sitting on this idea since Isen's last dare. "Let Sera pick your next hairstyle. Whatever she says. No arguing."
Isen's face fell instantly. "That's not a dare, that's a hate crime."
"Those are the rules."
Sera's eyes lit up with an intensity that hadn't been present at any other point during the entire game. "Oh, I have so many ideas."
"I take it back, I choose truth instead—"
"You already picked dare, no backsies," Blyke said.
Ten minutes and a truly unreasonable number of bobby pins produced from somewhere in Sera's bag later, Isen sat with two uneven braids sticking out at odd angles and what appeared to be a single flower—plucked from the rooftop planter someone had installed in the last month—tucked behind one ear.
"I look insane," Isen said, catching his reflection in the window glass. "Blyke, put down the phone."
"This is my new lock screen," Blyke said with a grin.
"You—"
"You look devoted," Sera reassured. "Like a woodland creature that's chosen violence."
Isen groaned. "That's not comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be." Sera sat back, admiring her work with genuine pride. "My turn. Blyke. Truth or dare."
"Dare. I'm not walking into whatever trap you’re setting up with 'truth' today."
"Kiss the ground and confess your undying love for it, dramatically, like it wronged you."
Blyke stared at her. "That's oddly specific."
"I've been saving it."
He got up, walked to the center of the rooftop with the exaggerated solemnity of a man approaching an altar, dropped to his knees, and pressed both hands to the concrete like he was addressing royalty. "Ground," he said, gravely, "I have loved you since the day I first stepped on you. You have held me up through everything. I'm sorry for every time I complained about gym class being outside."
"More feeling," Isen coached from the sidelines.
"I can't give more feeling, this is already the most feeling I've ever put into anything."
"That explains a lot, actually," Arlo said, and Blyke flipped him off without looking up from the ground.
He returned to the circle, dusting off his knees, entirely unbothered by his own dignity at this point. "My turn. Remi. Truth or dare."
"Truth."
Blyke considered for a second, something more careful in his expression than the question usually got. "Tell us something none of us know. About you and Rei."
The rooftop went quiet in that same particular way it had twice already today—the kind of quiet that came from the game accidentally cracking open something real instead of just something embarrassing.
Remi was quiet for a moment, picking at the hem of her sleeve. "Well . . . we—when I was younger, during his last year at Wellston, he’d always visit me on the weekends. He'd bring these awful vending machine coffees, and we'd just sit. We didn't even talk, most of the time. He said it was good to watch the sky do nothing for a while." She smiled, small and private, not quite for anyone else in the circle. "I still have one of the coffee tabs. From the last time. I don't know why I kept it. I just didn't want to throw it away after . . ." She trailed off.
Nobody said anything right away.
Sera bumped ger shoulder against hers, wordless, and she leaned into her, comforted.
"Okay," Remi said, after a moment, clearing her throat and visibly steering them back toward lighter water. "My turn. John. Truth or dare."
"Dare," John said. "Please, anything but truth right now, I don't think I can handle another one of those."
"Fair. Do the thing where you narrate everything Arlo does in a nature-documentary voice. For the next five minutes."
"Absolutely not," Arlo frowned.
"You don't get a vote, you're not the one who has to do it," Isen pointed out.
John cleared his throat, dropping into a low, hushed, deeply serious tone. "Here we observe the elusive Arlo in his natural habitat: mildly irritated, perched on school property he does not technically have jurisdiction over anymore."
"I regret everything about today," Arlo said, putting his head in his hands as the rooftop dissolved into laughter all over again.
Sera leaned over toward Remi, cupping a hand near her ear, and murmured something too quiet for anyone else to catch. Remi's eyebrows shot up.
"You want to do both? Right now?"
"Efficiency," Sera whispered back.
"I love that for us." Remi's grin turned conspiratorial. "Okay. I'll take Isen and Arlo, you take the other two."
"Deal."
"What are you two whispering about," Isen said, immediately suspicious.
"Nothing," they said, in unison, with the exact same too-innocent tone that had failed to convince Cecile twenty minutes earlier and failed just as badly now.
"That's not comforting," Arlo said.
"It's your turn anyway, John," Remi said, smoothly changing the subject.
"Alright," John said, and turned, apparently oblivious to the plotting that had just occurred four feet away from him. "Isen. Truth or dare."
"Dare, obviously, I haven't backed down once."
Remi's eyes lit up. This was, apparently, exactly the opening she'd been hoping for. "Actually, can I steal this one? I have a good idea."
"That's not how the game works," Isen protested.
"It's basically how the game works. John, do you mind?"
"Go for it," John said, already sensing entertainment was imminent.
Remi turned to Isen with the calm, deadly focus of a predator. "Let Arlo redo your hair. Since Sera's version is, respectfully, falling apart."
Isen's hand flew up to touch one of the lopsided braids. Their hair was too short for the hairstyle Sera had picked, and the braid had already started sliding loose. "That's—I don't think Arlo knows how to do hair—"
"I don't," Arlo confirmed.
"Doesn't matter," Remi said. "Dare doesn't require competence. Just participation."
Arlo looked deeply unenthused about this development, but reached over anyway, tugging the remaining pin loose with far more care than his expression suggested, fingers working slow and careful through Isen's hair like he was handling something breakable. Isen had gone very quiet, very still, staring straight ahead like maintaining eye contact with anyone would be a mistake.
"You're overthinking this," Arlo muttered, redoing a section.
"I'm not thinking about anything."
"You've stopped talking. That's never happened before in recorded history."
"I contain multitudes," Isen said, weakly, and Arlo almost smiled.
Across the circle, Sera had already turned her attention to her half of the plan, watching John and Blyke with the calculating patience of someone who'd been planning this for weeks and was finally getting to execute.
"My turn to ask something, since Remi stole John’s," she said. "John. Truth."
John frowned. "First of all, shouldn’t it be my turn? Second of all, I didn't pick truth yet."
Sera stared at him. "You're picking it now."
John sighed, already resigned. "Fine. Truth."
Sera didn't even pause for effect, just asked it plain, the way she asked everything. "What do you like most about Blyke?"
The rooftop went quiet, save for Arlo's fingers still working through Isen's hair a few feet away.
John opened his mouth, closed it, and visibly considered lying, deflecting, doing literally anything except answer the question directly—and then, apparently deciding the game had earned enough honesty out of everyone else today that he owed it the same, didn't.
"He never gives up," John said, quiet, looking somewhere just past Blyke's shoulder rather than at his face directly. "He fought back against me, even when he definitely shouldn’t have. He’s really strong. And . . . he gave me a second chance."
Blyke, beside him, had gone very still.
"That's not a small thing to say," Sera said, gently, into the silence that followed.
"I know," John said. "That's why I don't say it very often."
Blyke didn't say anything back—just, after a moment, knocked his shoulder gently against John's again, the same wordless gesture from earlier, except this time John leaned into it instead of just letting it happen.
Isen, still very still under Arlo's hands a few feet away, watched the whole thing with an expression caught somewhere between delighted and deeply, personally moved.
"We're all so soft today," he said, quiet, mostly to himself.
"Don't ruin it," Sera warned.
"I'm not ruining anything. I'm just observing."
Arlo finished combing through Isen’s hair and sat back to survey his work. "There. Much better than Sera's."
"Excuse me," Sera said, offended.
"It's structurally sound. Yours was falling apart within ten minutes."
"Mine had artistic vision."
"Yours had a flower that was quite literally dying."
Isen, hair now genuinely well-done and sitting a little too close to Arlo to be entirely accidental anymore, just smiled, quiet and pleased, and didn't say anything about it at all.
"My turn," They said, clearly eager to redirect some chaos back onto someone else after his own moment of quiet a minute ago. "Because apparently there's no order to this anymore. Remi, truth or dare?"
"Dare. Absolutely dare. I've learned my lesson about truth today."
"Smart, but too late." Isen's grin was pure mischief. "Text Cecile something completely normal, right now, in front of all of us, and let us watch you do it."
Remi scoffed, pulling out her phone, but her cheeks were bright pink. "That's not a dare, that's just texting someone."
"It's a dare because you're going to overthink every single word and we get to watch it happen live."
"I don't overthink texting people—"
"You've been holding your phone for eleven seconds and haven't typed anything," Blyke pointed out.
Remi looked down at her phone like it had personally betrayed her. "I'm thinking about what to say."
"It's supposed to be normal," Sera reminded her. "Something you'd say to literally anyone."
"I know that."
"Then say it."
Remi's thumbs hovered. She typed something, deleted it. Typed again. Deleted it again. The rooftop watched in near-silence, several people visibly fighting laughter.
"Just tell her the sky is a normal color," Arlo suggested. "That's a sentence. Send that."
"I'm not sending her a text about the sky, Arlo, that's insane—"
"More insane than the four minutes you've spent not sending anything?"
Remi groaned, dropped her head back, and typed something fast, clearly just to make it stop, before hitting send and immediately turning the phone face-down like it might explode. "Done. Happy?"
"What did you send?" Isen asked, delighted.
"I asked if I could borrow her notes."
"That's it? That's the sentence that took four minutes?" Isen stared at her. "Also, aren’t you two in different years?"
"Uhm, well—" Remi stammered. "It needed to sound casual . . . ?"
"It is objectively the most casual thing a person could possibly say," John told her. "But the fact that you needed four minutes for that is . . . really sad."
Before Remi could argue, the phone buzzed, face-down on the concrete, and Remi flinched like it had physically struck her.
"Read it," Isen said.
"No."
"Remi."
"Fine." She flipped it over, read the screen, and went a color that had no business appearing on a human face. "She—uh, she said sure, and then—" Remi stopped.
"And then what," Sera prompted, entirely too interested.
"Nothing. It's nothing."
"You're holding the phone like it bit you."
Remi, very reluctantly, turned the screen around. A single line sat under Cecile's first reply: you looked like you were having fun up there. never thought you of all people were such a rebel.
The rooftop erupted.
"That's flirting," Isen said. "That's actual flirting, from Cecile, unprompted—"
Remi flushed. "It's not flirting, she's just being—"
"Mean? That tracks. That's her whole thing," Blyke said. "But that specific kind of mean, at you, unprompted, after you sent one boring text? That's flirting."
"I hate all of you," Remi said, phone clutched to her chest like a shield, face still fully red. "This was supposed to be a dare about texting, not a referendum on my whole life."
"Everything becomes a referendum on your whole life when Cecile's involved," Sera said. "That's just how it works now."
Remi buried her face in her hands, and from somewhere in the pile of limbs beside her, Isen patted her on the back with the exact same energy as someone petting a cat.
"Welcome to the club," they said all too brightly.
Remi groaned into her hands. "I hate the club."
"Nobody hates the club. We're all just pretending to."
The bell rang somewhere below, muffled through the rooftop door, and for a second nobody moved—the sound registering slow, reluctant, like leaving would somehow undo the last hour.
"School’s over," John said, not making any effort to get up.
"We're aware," Blyke said, equally unmoving.
Isen was the first to actually stand, stretching with a groan, one hand automatically going to check that their hair was still intact. "We should probably go before someone actually notices we've been gone all day."
"Cecile already noticed," Remi pointed out. "She just didn't care enough to report it."
"Cecile cares very little about anything that isn't press club—or you, apparently," Sera said, and Remi threw a balled-up napkin at her, which Sera dodged.
They gathered up abandoned lunch trays, wrappers, the single sad flower that had wilted entirely out of Isen's hair sometime in the last twenty minutes, moving with the unhurried ease of people who weren't actually in any rush despite the bell. Arlo was the last one up, brushing dust off his uniform, looking faintly embarrassed about something other than the game itself.
"For the record," he said, to no one in particular, "I'm still never doing this again."
"You said that an hour ago," Isen said.
"I meant it more this time."
"You always say that."
"One of these times it'll be true."
"Sure it will," Isen said, entirely unconvinced, and bumped their shoulder against Arlo's on the way to the door—casual, easy, exactly the kind of touch that would've meant nothing an hour ago and now meant something neither of them was going to talk about.
Blyke held the door for John, an old habit that had stopped meaning nothing a while ago too, if either of them was honest about it, which neither currently was.
Remi lingered a second longer than the rest, phone still warm in her pocket where Cecile's message sat unanswered, and Sera, waiting by the door, just raised an eyebrow at her.
"I'm coming," Remi said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it very loudly."
"That's a you problem," Sera said, echoing herself from earlier, and held the door open until Remi caught up.
"So," Isen said, falling into step beside them as the door swung shut behind the group, hair still miraculously intact, grin still incorrigible. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Absolutely not," Arlo said, already several steps ahead.
"That's what you said about today."
"I hate you all."
"Love you too, Arlo."