Chapter Text
Bear in mind that X never uttered a word of complaint. He existed in a state of profound, unassuming acceptance, utterly satisfied with the life he had carved out for himself. Day after indistinguishable day, he inhabited his own careless version of a "Groundhog Day," a seamless and endless cycle of home-to-work and work-to-home. And this rhythm, this quiet monotony, suited him utterly.
His life was a study in quiet routine. The 9-to-5 office existence was a symphony of muted sounds: the soft click-clack of keyboards, the low hum of the central air, the distant murmur of a conference call from a glass-walled room. His days were measured in cups of lukewarm coffee, spreadsheet cells filled with data that held no meaning outside those walls, and the soft sigh of his office chair at 5:01 PM when he finally logged off. It was a life of comfortable insignificance, a cog in a vast, silent machine, and he found a strange peace in his own irrelevance.
On his way home, he would often stop at the supermarket to procure his dinner: a single-serving package of instant ramen for himself and a small bag of fertilizer for the lone plant on his windowsill. The new cashier, a girl with tired eyes and a practiced smile, would inevitably glance from the meager dinner to the plant food with a flicker of suspicion. He could almost hear her internal monologue: Doesn't anyone make him a real meal? He would offer a polite, vacant smile and a slight, dismissive shrug, a gesture that conveyed a lifetime of chosen solitude. She would watch him until the automatic doors swallowed him whole.
Other evenings, he would forgo the supermarket and instead stop at a brightly lit fast-food joint near the metro. There, he would indulge in a greasy burger and an overly sweet milkshake, sitting alone by the window. He’d observe a boisterous crowd of teenagers at a nearby table, their conversation a vibrant, chaotic buzz about topics utterly foreign and incomprehensible to him.
And if the day had been particularly good – a vague, internal metric only he understood – he would allow himself the small luxury of a longer walk. He would meander through the streets of the city, his gaze drifting up the endless concrete-and-glass towers of office buildings, their facades illuminated by the colossal, glowing billboards of various heroes.
Ah, yes. The heroes.
If you were to suppose that the life of a hero is somehow superior to his own measured and tranquil existence, one could only profoundly disagree. The mantle of a hero is for someone else – for those with loved ones who would mourn their absence, friends who would feel the void of their laughter, a faithful dog waiting patiently at home. X was not such a man. This was the familiar refrain in his mind as he walked his well-trodden path through the city's veins.
Stability is the cornerstone of success.He measured his journey in steps – exactly five long strides from the rusted manhole cover to the newsstand, no more, no less. He counted the lampposts – sixteen on this street, each one flickering to life precisely at 7:00 PM, as if obedient to his internal clock. To the left, around the corner, stood the vending machine, its fluorescent glow a beacon of predictable satisfaction. This was the map of his world, simple and effortless in its design.
"Excuse me! Please, wait!" A voice, sharp with urgency, cut through the evening air. It belonged to a woman who appeared to be in her early twenties, though her exact age was as irrelevant to him as the brand of her plain black office suit or the way her long hair fell across her shoulders. She was, in every observable way, unremarkable – another face in the endless procession of corporate foot soldiers. X did not notice her; his world was flat, abstracted into patterns and numbers, a defense mechanism that made the maintenance of routine effortless.
That is, until a hand seized his shoulder, jerking him back into the dimension of the immediate and the unplanned.
"Just wait, would you? Ugh, for heaven's sake, you're impossible to catch!" The woman finally halted before him, bending slightly at the waist as she tried to catch her breath.
X finally regarded her. An unfamiliar variable.
"Can I read you a fortune? I can see the future," the girl blurted out, seizing his wrist with a grip that was surprisingly firm. X was utterly taken aback by such brazen audacity. He placed no faith in magic, let alone the unsolicited services of a stranger, but before he could muster a tactful refusal, she was speaking again, her words tumbling out in a frantic, breathless cascade.
"No, wait! What I mean is... I need to read your fortune. I won't charge you a thing, but you have to believe me, it's an absolute necessity for you," she insisted, her eyes wide with a disconcerting intensity.
"Excuse me, I believe you're mistaken. I'm not—" X began, his voice a low attempt at reason, but it was futile. She tugged insistently on his arm, pulling him off his predetermined course and steering him in the exact opposite direction of his intended destination.
"Please, you have to trust me! I know how sudden this must seem, but it's vitally important! It won't take long, I promise," she pleaded, her tone a strange cocktail of desperation and conviction. Without waiting for further protest, she guided him through the first doorway they passed – a small, warmly lit coffee shop – and ushered him toward a secluded table.
Once seated, she immediately flagged down a waitress. "Order anything you like, it's on me," she said, turning her intense gaze back to him. "Consider it a guarantee that your time won't be entirely wasted."
X released a weary sigh, the sound swallowed by the gentle hum of the café. He picked up the menu, his eyes scanning the options without truly seeing them, his meticulously ordered world having been thoroughly, and inexplicably, upended.
The girl herself ordered a simple black coffee, no sugar. Her request was swift and automatic, devoid of any deliberation, as if this were a ritual performed a thousand times. X hesitated for a moment, a fleeting internal debate on whether politeness demanded he also order coffee to blend in. But a deeper, almost rebellious desire for something more indulgent won out. "One strawberry milkshake, please," he added. The waitress nodded and departed.
"And what, precisely, am I supposed to do? And who are you, anyway?" X finally addressed the girl, his tone a blend of weary skepticism and genuine curiosity.
"Oh! How rude of me, I didn't even introduce myself!" she exclaimed, offering a small, apologetic bow of her head from across the table. "Though my name isn't terribly important. You can just call me Fortune Teller."
As she spoke, she began rummaging through the pockets of her suit jacket, her movements quick and practiced. After a moment, she produced a small, lacquered box, no larger than her palm, its dark wood polished to a soft sheen. With a quiet click, she opened it and tipped it over, spilling a deck of ornate, slightly weathered cards onto the table's surface. Their edges were gilded, catching the warm café light. At that very moment, the waitress returned with their drinks, placing the stark black coffee and the frothy, pink milkshake before them. She offered a polite smile and retreated, leaving them in their bubble of peculiarity. The moment she was out of earshot, Fortune Teller's demeanor shifted. Her hands, now free, moved with a swift, fluid grace. With a single, deft motion, she fanned the cards across the table in a perfect, practiced arc, their intricate symbols and figures creating a cryptic mosaic between them.
"You have nothing to fear," she said, a note of gentle amusement in her voice as she began to shuffle the tarot cards with a soft, rhythmic whisper against the table. "I won't cast any hexes or lay a curse upon you, in case that's what you were thinking." Her tone was light, almost apologetic for the very suggestion.
With a ritualistic grace, she stopped shuffling and laid out the cards. Her movements were deliberate, each placement a silent punctuation in the strange conversation.
The first card she drew and set before him depicted The Fool: a vibrant figure, a small bundle on his shoulder, stepping blithely off a cliff into the unknown, a small dog yapping at his heels. It was an image of boundless potential and naïve, perilous beginnings.
The second card followed: The Chariot. A powerful warrior stood in a ornate, canopied vehicle, pulled by two sphinxes – one black, one white – straining in opposite directions. It spoke of triumph through sheer willpower, of a fierce conflict of opposing forces held in a tenuous, controlled balance.
The third card was The Wheel of Fortune. A great, mystical wheel turned in the sky, adorned with alchemical symbols and mythical creatures. Figures rose and fell with its rotation, a stark emblem of fate's inexorable, cyclical nature, of destiny's dizzying ups and downs.
Finally, she placed the fourth card with a soft, definitive tap. The Devil. A horned, monstrous figure loomed over two naked, chained figures, their bonds loose enough to be slipped off, yet they remained, heads bowed in apparent submission. It was a card of bondage, of unhealthy attachments, of self-imposed limitations and primal temptation.
X fell into a prolonged silence, his mind processing this theatrical display. He was a man of logic, a skeptic of the highest order who placed no stock in magic or mysticism, and yet…
"You assured me you wouldn't curse me," he said finally, his voice dry and level, though his eyes remained fixed on the unsettling quartet of images before him. "But I must say, this… looks quite distrubingly."
The girl’s lips parted in a soft gasp as her eyes darted from the ominous spread of cards back to X’s impassive face. “Oh, blimey! But… please understand, this is only a prediction. Just one thread in a tapestry of millions of possible futures!” she exclaimed, a guilty, placating smile touching her lips. “It may come to pass, or it may not. It all hinges on the choices you make. Or perhaps… on how the dice of fortune happen to fall for you.” Her expression was earnest, her eyes clear of any malice or deceit. Though X was no master of human nature, he could detect no trace of an enemy in her guileless gaze.
“So, let me be certain I understand,” he said, his tone flat. “None of this is real, and I have simply wasted my time?”
“No, not at all! You at least, um… enjoyed a bit of sunshine and a lovely milkshake!” she insisted, her hands fluttering slightly. “Look, if the prophecy doesn’t come true, then no harm done, right? But if it does… well, then you’ll at least have been forewarned. A head start, of sorts.”
X took a final, slow sip of his drink, the straw scraping the bottom of the glass. “One more question. Why, out of the entire crowd, did you single me out? There were surely dozens more receptive to… magical nonsense. Yet you seemed to target me with a specific purpose.”
A faint blush coloured her cheeks. She stared into the dregs of her coffee, stirring the dark remnants. “I… I can’t fully explain it, even to myself. It was a feeling. A sudden, certain pull. It was as if I saw something… more in you.”
Something more. The words landed with a weight X had not invited. He was self-contained. Stable. That was all he had ever required. Yet, that night, sleep was a reluctant guest. He lay awake, the Fortune Teller’s words and the haunting images of The Fool, The Chariot, The Wheel, and The Devil circling in his mind like vultures against a moonlit sky.
***
Despite the Fortune Teller's seemingly harmless prediction, a creeping tide of misfortune began to plague X's every move, as if the universe itself had developed a personal vendetta. It was no longer mere bad luck; it felt like a fundamental rewriting of physical laws, applied solely to him.
The world seemed to curdle in his presence. He would exit a building under a perfectly clear sky, only to be instantly drenched by a sudden, localized downpour that vanished the moment he found cover. His phone, fully charged moments before, would abruptly die the instant he needed to make an urgent call. Motion sensors on automatic doors became inert slabs of glass as he approached, forcing him to awkwardly push his way through.
Technology developed a special animosity. His computer would crash with a gleeful blue screen only when he had neglected to save hours of meticulous work. Every printer he encountered would shudder, groan, and spit out jammed paper. The urban environment conspired against him: every traffic light, without fail, would blaze red right in front of him.
Even small comforts became sources of irritation. He would finally select the last, most perfect-looking pastry from a bakery case, only to bite into something rock-hard. Any liquid he carried – be it a full cup of coffee or a nearly empty water bottle – would inevitably slosh over the rim with a perverse precision, leaving a dark, embarrassing stain on his crisp white shirt. Now it seems as a fundamental law of physics that applies only to him. The water pressure in his shower will unpredictably fluctuate between a freezing trickle and a scalding deluge the moment he's are covered in soap.
And so, when X arrived at the metro station only to find the trains suspended – another "technical failure," the third this week – he didn't even flinch. He simply released a heavy, world-weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of all his recent misfortunes. Turning on his heel, he began the long, dispirited trudge towards the exit. It was hopeless. He would indeed be faster on foot.
His walk home was a journey through a city that seemed to mock his very existence. He moved through the familiar streets as a ghost, the vibrant life of the evening crowd flowing around him without acknowledgment. The neon signs of storefronts flickered as he passed, and the laughter from open café windows sounded distant and alien. He kept his head down, his hands buried in his pockets, each step a quiet surrender to the absurd, malevolent logic that now governed his world. The usual ten-minute walk stretched into a seeming eternity of heightened awareness of every minor, grating imperfection in his path.
After what seemed like most of the way, his eyes fell upon a vending machine, its fluorescent lights a garish beacon in the dimming twilight. A soda… exactly what he needed. A bitter thought crystallized in his mind: if not for that girl, he would have simply bought a can of the sweet, fizzy drink, consumed it on a smoothly running train, and been home by now. That was how it was supposed to be. Stable. Predictable. Understood.
But now, he was apparently, and truly, cursed. There was no other explanation for the relentless cascade of absurd misfortune that had dogged his steps since the moment he met the Fortune Teller.
Driven by a stubborn refusal to be entirely defeated by a machine, he approached it. With a sigh of resignation, he fished a coin from his pocket and inserted it. Instead of the satisfying clunk of a selection being made, the coin was immediately spat back out, rolling to a stop just at the base of the machine. Annoyed, he bent down to retrieve it, his fingers brushing against the cold pavement. As he crouched, his eyes level with the delivery hatch, he saw it. There, waiting for him as if it had been there all along, was a single, perfectly chilled can of his preferred soda – the one he had been about to select.
X stared, disbelief freezing him in place. On any other day, such an inexplicable gift would have been a delightful surprise, a minor stroke of luck to be appreciated. But now, after the relentless, nightmarish weeks of chaos and failure, it felt less like fortune and more like a deliberate, celestial offering – a single, perfect note of grace in a symphony of discord.
Slowly, almost reverently, he retrieved his rejected coin from the ground and then the miraculously manifested soda from the hatch. The cold aluminum felt alien and significant in his hand. He continued his walk, the can growing damp with condensation, a tangible anomaly in his cursed existence. His path soon took him past a young girl with hair the color of seafoam, strumming an acoustic guitar on a street corner. The melody was simple and sweet, a fragile counterpoint to the city's din. At her feet, the open guitar case lay perfectly, heartbreakingly empty.
Without a second thought, almost as if guided by an impulse not entirely his own, X reached into his pocket. His fingers closed around the very coin the vending machine had rejected. He paused for only a heartbeat above the velvet-lined void of the case before dropping it in.The coin landed with a soft, definitive clink.
The girl’s singing ceased abruptly. She looked up, her bright green eyes meeting his, and offered him a smile of such genuine, unguarded happiness that it seemed to momentarily eclipse the gloom of the evening. "Thank you!" she called after him, her voice clear and bright, before she resumed her song, the notes now infused with a new energy.
X had not taken five more steps when a jolt, like a raw electrical current, seared through his entire body. The world did not just brighten; it saturated. Colors became agonizingly vivid, edges sharpened to a razor's clarity as if the entire city were a meticulously hand-drawn animation. The sensation was overwhelming, a sensory overload that was both terrifying and sublime, stripping away the familiar filters of reality. It lasted only a handful of seconds, but when it passed, X found himself standing rigid on the sidewalk, his eyes squeezed shut. He gasped for air, his heart hammering against his ribs, as if he had just surfaced from the depths of a startlingly different dimension.
***
And would you believe it if I told you that X came to regret ever complaining about his streak of bad luck? For after that singular incident, these bizarre "episodes" began to multiply in both frequency and intensity. The minor irritations of canceled trains and jammed printers faded into utter insignificance, becoming trivial background noise against the terrifying symphony now unfolding within his own mind.
He was struggling with a nascent, burgeoning power of which he had no name or understanding – a latent ability to perceive and manipulate the very fabric of spacetime itself. Yet for X, it was not a controlled art, but a chaotic, terrifying affliction.
He would be walking down the street when the pavement before him would suddenly fracture into a shimmering mosaic of geometric patterns, the buildings around him folding in on themselves like images in a kaleidoscope before snapping back into place with a nauseating lurch. In the office, his computer screen would dissolve into a swirling vortex of light, numbers and text bleeding into the air before his eyes. Once, while reaching for a cup of coffee, his hand passed clean through the mug as if both were made of mist, the hot liquid crashing to the floor a moment later in a burst of ceramic and brown spray.
These ruptures in reality often seized him in the dead of night, jolting him from sleep with a silent scream. He would sit bolt upright in bed, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, the darkness of his room still pulsing with the afterimages of impossible architectures. Sleep would then become a distant memory, chased away by the primal fear of what his own mind was capable of.
The most disquieting episodes were not the dramatic shatters, but the subtle, fleeting dropouts. In the middle of a conversation, the face of the person speaking to him would momentarily pixelate and glitch, revealing for a fraction of a second a glimpse of something utterly alien staring out from behind their eyes. Or he would run his fingers over a brick wall and feel the texture dissolve, giving way to a cold, smooth surface that felt like polished obsidian from another dimension. He was not just seeing glitches; he was feeling the seams of his universe strain and tear.
The mundane misfortunes that still dogged his steps were now a mere nuisance, a petty comedy compared to the growing paranoia and profound disorientation that gripped him. The constant, low-grade stress from his job, now compounded by these psychic assaults and the residual bad luck, was sanding down his sanity.
He began to exhibit the subtle, telltale signs of a man slowly coming unmoored. Colleagues would find him staring intently at a stationary object, sweat beading on his temple, as he mentally fought to keep it from unraveling. He developed a slight tremor in his hands. He would sometimes laugh at entirely inappropriate moments – a short, sharp, hysterical sound – when the sheer absurdity of his situation overwhelmed him. The world had become a funhouse mirror, and he was the sole attendee, slowly losing his grip on what was real and what was a terrifying trick of his own fractured perception.
And yet, despite the terrifying fragmentation of his reality, X clung to the vestiges of his ordinary life with a desperate, almost religious fervor. For him, stability was the sole cornerstone of success, and routine was his only salvation. He moved through his days with a mechanical precision, a conscious rebellion against the chaos simmering beneath the surface.
He finished another day of inputting data, the rhythmic clack of the keyboard a mantra against the static in his mind. At precisely 5:30 PM, he logged off, gathered his things, and joined the river of suits flowing toward the elevator, toward the exit, toward home. But the universe, it seemed, had other plans. The moment he stepped out of the revolving doors, the familiar cityscape erupted into pandemonium. A villain – a hulking brute known as 'Tecton' for his ability to manipulate earth and concrete – was in the midst of a rampage, ostensibly to rob a high-security armored truck that was now half-swallowed by the street.
Debris flew through the air. A section of the pavement erupted mere feet from X, and a geyser of water from a shattered main shot into the sky. Then, with a groan of shearing metal, a fire hydrant was torn from its moorings, launched into the air like a missile, and began its deadly arc directly toward X’s head. Paralyzed, he could only watch its trajectory.
In that split second, a figure slammed into him, shoving him out of the path of the crushing impact. But the violent, panicked contact triggered X’s unstable power. The world didn't just move – it unmade itself.
For a single, horrifying heartbeat, they did not simply fall to the sidewalk. They were ejected from reality itself. The screaming crowd, the roaring villain, the soaring skyscrapers – all of it dissolved into a blinding, silent vortex of shimmering, non-Euclidean geometries and impossible colors. It was a place of pure, terrifying concept, a glimpse behind the curtain of the universe. Then, just as instantly, the world snapped back into place with a concussive force that knocked the air from their lungs.
They landed several yards away, a tangled heap on the wet asphalt. X was drenched from head to toe by the spraying hydrant. The man who had shoved him was now lying on top of him, a solid, heavy weight.
Almost on cue, the blaring sirens of the Hero Commission’s response team cut through the chaos. Recognizable heroes in bright costumes descended, efficiently engaging Tecton and containing the threat in a matter of moments, their practiced moves a stark contrast to the raw, accidental chaos X had just unleashed.
"Damn it, get off me. You're heavy," X grumbled through clenched teeth, his voice muffled by the stranger's jacket and the residual shock of his brief, unwilling journey into the void.
The man on top of him stared down, his mouth agape and his eyes wide as saucers. Then, he scrambled off X with a jolt, springing to his feet as if electrified. "What in the world was that?!! Was that you?? What did you just do?" he practically shrieked, seizing X by the shoulders with both hands, his grip frantic and unyielding.
"Wet... Get off," X gritted out through clenched teeth, attempting to push himself up from the soaking asphalt.
Finally, it seemed to dawn on the stranger that he was looming over another person in the middle of the street. He released his grip and took a step back, brushing ineffectually at his own damp clothes. "Oh! Sorry about that! I've just... I've never seen anything like that! It was... incredible?! Mind-bending!" The words tumbled out of him in an excited rush. He offered a hand to help X up, his gaze then darting around to survey the scene. His expression sobered slightly as he took in the already-subdued villain and the departing heroes, a flicker of disappointment crossing his features at the realization that his own role in the drama was over almost before it began.
X finally got to his feet, his own eyes following the retreating forms of the official heroes. "Tch. Once again, instead of actually saving someone, I just ended up causing a nuisance," the young man said, a note of genuine chagrin in his voice. "I'm Hero Nine, by the way. Nice to meet you." He extended his hand again, this time for a proper handshake.
"I wouldn't exactly call this a nice meeting, but... thanks for the attempt..."
"I'm honestly so sorry!! It's the same thing every time," Nine sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping as he hung his head in a gesture of theatrical despair. Then, he perked up abruptly, a new idea sparking in his eyes. "Let me make it up to you! I'll buy you a drink! Or, well—" In a swift motion, Nine shucked off his own eye-searingly bright colorful windbreaker and draped it over X's soaked shoulders. "There! That's better. We can go sit somewhere while your clothes dry out. If you don't mind, that is." He beamed a brilliant, 32-tooth smile, an offer of friendship extended amidst the chaos and the puddles.
X’s mind recoiled at the thought. Once again, he had been violently thrust into a narrative that was fundamentally at odds with his core philosophy of stability. This was precisely the kind of chaotic, unpredictable entanglement he had spent a lifetime meticulously avoiding. Yet, feeling the weight of the garish jacket on his shoulders and the persistent, almost desperate friendliness radiating from Nine, he found himself offering a curt, reluctant nod. "Fine. Lead the way."
Nine, buoyed by the acceptance, immediately launched into a cheerful, seemingly endless monologue as they walked. He chattered about everything and nothing: the impractical design of modern hero costumes, his favorite brand of energy drink, a stray cat he’d befriended near his apartment. X walked beside him in silence, a island of damp, brooding stillness in the face of a torrent of words. Their path, dictated by Nine’s aimless navigation, felt unnervingly familiar. When they finally stopped, X’s blood ran cold. They were standing directly in front of the very café where he had sat with the Fortune Teller. His feet rooted themselves to the pavement. He stared up at the innocuous sign as if it were a portent of doom, his face a mask of stunned recognition.
“Hey, everything okay?” Nine asked, his cheerful stream of conversation halting as he noticed X’s abrupt stillness.
Inside X’s chest, a cold, tight knot of dread twisted violently. His hands, hidden in the pockets of Nine’s jacket, clenched into white-knuckled fists. This was no coincidence. It felt like a trap laid by fate itself, a cruel joke designed to dismantle the last vestiges of his control. He took a sharp, steadying breath, forcing down the rising panic.
Just as he and a still-oblivious Nine stepped across the threshold, the world did not merely glitch – it shattered.
Unlike every previous episode, this was not a fleeting, nauseating flash. The familiar café interior did not snap back into place. Instead, it dissolved around them, the walls melting away into a breathtaking, terrifying panorama of impossible architecture. They stood not in a coffee shop, but on a shimmering pathway that seemed woven from light and geometry, suspended amidst swirling nebulae and crystalline structures that defied all known physics. The air hummed with a palpable energy, and the laws of reality felt… malleable.
For the first time in weeks, the sensation was not accompanied by a wave of vertigo or a desperate urge to vomit. The strange, vibrant world did not vanish when he blinked. It held. It was solid, tangible, and – most astonishingly – responsive to his will. A profound, eerie calm settled over him. He moved slowly, almost reverently, afraid that a sudden movement might shatter this fragile, newfound dominion over the chaos that had tormented him. For the first time, he wasn't a victim of the rupture; he was standing at its very center.
"Whoa!! Are you doing this? Are you a hero, too? What kind of ability is this? I've never even heard of you!" Nine's voice was a mixture of awe and unbridled excitement as he spun in a slow circle, taking in the familiar café rendered in an utterly alien perspective. It was as if they had been flattened into a two-dimensional sketch of their former three-dimensional world, every line and color hyper-defined yet utterly surreal.
Suddenly, from the far end of the distorted café, a familiar voice cut through the strange silence. "And so the Wheel of Fortune turns!" A girl with long, dark hair cascading over her shoulders was waving them over enthusiastically. It was none other than the Fortune Teller herself.
"What the hell are you doing here?" X demanded, striding over to her table and dropping into one of the chairs with a force that felt real, even in this unreal space. Nine, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically silent, followed his lead and sat down without a word.
"Doing? It's my favorite café!" she retorted, puffing out her cheeks in a theatrical pout. She was absentmindedly shuffling a deck of tarot cards with practiced ease, the cards seeming to float between her fingers.
"I mean this place," X pressed, his voice low and tense. He leaned forward, his knuckles white on the table. "Did you do this? Is this your fault we're trapped here?"
"My fault?" She leaned in as well, her eyes flashing with challenge, until their faces were mere inches apart, like two bulls about to lock horns over a disputed truth. "This is your handiwork, hero. Don't you dare try to pin this on me."
Nine could no longer bear the crackling, hostile atmosphere thickening the air between them. He physically inserted himself into their space, a living buffer zone of bewildered optimism. "Hey, hey! Can someone please explain what's going on? Do you two know each other?" he asked, his head swiveling between them. His face was a perfect picture of confusion, a literal loading symbol etched into his features.
X and the Fortune Teller let out a simultaneous, weary sigh, the shared exasperation a rare moment of accord.
"This witch cursed me," X declared, his voice muffled as he let his forehead fall onto the table with a tragic thud. "Ever since, my entire life has been hurtling off the rails. I'm hounded by misfortune, and now... this." He made a vague, dismissive gesture with his hand, encompassing the impossible space around them – the café, familiar yet rendered in a completely alien perspective, a reality folded and refracted. "Although, I suppose the worst part of today was still getting drenched by that fire hydrant..." he grumbled into the tabletop. At this, Nine flushed a deep crimson, as if the malfunctioning infrastructure were entirely his personal failing.
"So, you tell fortunes?" Nine abruptly changed the subject, turning his full, earnest attention to the girl. "Can you predict when I'll find the girl of my dreams?" He scooted his chair closer to her, his expression one of hopeful fascination.
The Fortune Teller didn't even bother to look at a card. She simply raised one eyebrow and said, "Never." Nine's face immediately fell, morphing into an expression of such profound, puppy-dog disappointment that it was almost comical.
"But, seriously," she continued, her playful demeanor evaporating in an instant, replaced by a stark and genuine seriousness. "I truly don't know how this happened. I've never seen anything like this... It's unprecedented, and I... I would like to understand it more." She looked from Nine to X, her gaze intense. "My predictions work more like... creating a probability. I nudge a potential future into existence, but I have no control over how it ultimately manifests. It seems you must have wanted something incredibly powerfully, and I merely gave that desire a tangible probability... But even so," she admitted, a look of deep perplexity crossing her features, "I still don't understand what wish and probability could cause this."
X turned her words over in his mind, examining them with the cold, analytical precision he applied to everything. In a strange way, there was a brutal logic to it. She told fortunes to people who sought her out, individuals already primed and desperate to hear a specific answer, a prediction they could latch onto with blind faith. And because they believed it with every fiber of their being, they unconsciously shaped their reality to fit the prophecy. It seemed to X he was witnessing the most fundamental example of a trust-value system in action. People believe you can predict the future, they believe your predictions, and thus, they manifest. Simple. As straightforward as two plus two.
Yet, a crucial piece refused to fit into this neat equation. "Then why, after our meeting, was I hounded by a relentless string of misfortunes?" X frowned, his voice tight. "That, specifically, feels precisely like a hex or a curse."
The girl suddenly burst into laughter, a bright, unburdened sound that seemed out of place. "So you probably believed I could give you the evil eye, and so I did!" she blurted out, and in that instant, X realized with a sinking feeling that he had, in fact, played himself. He had walked away expecting calamity, and his own mind had diligently delivered it.
"On the other hand," she mused, adopting a more philosophical tone as she shuffled her cards with a practiced flick of her wrist, "perhaps your incredible streak of bad luck was the very catalyst that led you to an even greater fortune. Paradoxes are such fascinating things, aren't they?"
"Whoa, can you do the same for me?" Nine interjected, his eyes still wide with puppy-dog hope. "Maybe I'll get a cool power, too, and finally stop messing everything up."
"You idiot, I'm not a cheat code for you!" the Fortune Teller retorted, giving him a light, playful swat on the back of the head. The corners of X's mouth twitched involuntarily, betraying the faintest hint of a smile.
"Oh! So you can smile! I knew you were a good guy deep down!" Nine sprang to his feet, pointing an accusatory yet delighted finger at X.
"I don't believe one's character is defined by the frequency of their—" X began, but Nine cut him off, leaping from his chair with explosive energy.
"I've got it! Fate brought us together here, right now! There's no way it's a coincidence that the Fortune Teller is in this very café. We'll help each other figure out our abilities! We'll become the strongest heroes ever!" he proclaimed, striking a dramatic pose as he pointed at X and then the Fortune Teller.
The other two sat in stunned silence for a second, then simultaneously erupted into laughter. X's was a low, incredulous chuckle, while the Fortune Teller laughed so hard she clutched her stomach. Nine stood there, bewildered by their reaction. "Hey, I'm serious!"
But the pair couldn't stop.
"I don't think we're in some kind of hero novel or anime." The Fortune Teller was wiping tears from her eyes, and X had slammed his palm on the table in a rare display of unfiltered amusement. And in that exact moment of shared, unexpected levity, a brilliant flash engulfed them.
The world snapped back into focus with the subtlety of a drawn curtain. X realized he had just stepped over the threshold of the café, Nine standing beside him, his face a perfect canvas of awe and admiration. Then, almost in unison, their gazes were drawn to the far corner of the café. There, seated by the window, was the girl with long, dark hair, sipping her coffee and watching them with a knowing, mischievous smile.
***
X had been profoundly, utterly satisfied with his life. But if that placid existence had continued uninterrupted, well – we wouldn't be gathered here now, would we? Fate, it seemed, had not finished with him. It was a force that did not grant its favor easily, and it was precisely this divine disfavor that had landed him back in that infamous café, now a permanent fixture at a table with Nine and the self-styled Fortune Teller.
They had begun to congregate there with an unspoken frequency, as if guided by some invisible hand – a gravitational pull of shared strangeness that none of them could, or perhaps truly wanted to, resist. And so, into the meticulously ordered calm of X’s life, two chaotic variables had been introduced, bringing with them a whirlwind of disruption and unexpected camaraderie.
Their newfound routine became a strange but constant thread in the fabric of his weeks. They would occupy their usual corner booth, a trio of misfits dissecting the city's latest villain attacks and the Hero Commission's often-flawed responses. Nine would animatedly recount his latest, well-intentioned blunders, Fortune Teller would read the patterns in the coffee grounds at the bottom of her cup, and X would offer dry, cynical commentary that somehow always landed as fondness. Sometimes, when the hour grew late, they would migrate to dimly lit bars, where the conversation would drift from superpowers to the mundane frustrations of their day jobs, the strange magic of their association making even ordinary complaints feel significant.
Despite the now-routine unusualness of his days, today promised to be doubly so. Nine had extended an invitation to his place, and since neither X nor Fortune Teller had any prior engagements on a Friday night after work, X now found himself standing before a weathered, grease-stained sign that read "Auto Repair & Customization." The garage was a cavernous space that smelled of engine oil, welding fumes, and stale coffee. The skeletal frames of cars in various states of repair stood under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights, and tools were scattered with a kind of organized chaos across every available surface.
X pushed open the heavy side door, its hinges groaning in protest. He stepped past a disassembled engine block and a stack of tires, moving deeper into the garage's belly. The sound of upbeat music and the erratic whir of a power tool grew louder. Then, from beneath a lifted sedan, a pair of familiar, grease-streaked boots slid out, followed by the rest of Nine, who beamed up at him from a creeper, a wrench in one hand and a smudge of oil on his cheek.
"Hey! You made it!" Nine exclaimed, his voice echoing slightly in the vast space. "Welcome to my humble abode! Well, my second one, anyway. The real one's upstairs, but this is where the magic happens!"
X followed Nine up a narrow, metal staircase bolted precariously to the wall, each step ringing out with a hollow clang. At the top, Nine shouldered open a heavy door, revealing a space that was a stark contrast to the industrial chaos below.
They stepped into a small, cluttered, but surprisingly warm apartment. The air smelled of instant noodles, old books, and the faint, ever-present undertone of motor oil. And there, already making herself at home on a well-worn corduroy sofa, was the Fortune Teller. She was idly shuffling her tarot deck, a cup of tea steaming on the crate he used as a coffee table.
"You're late," she said without looking up. "The water for the tea's gone cold."
X’s gaze swept over the room – the tool manuals stacked next to fantasy novels, the half-assembled model kit on the kitchen counter, the framed photo of a smiling man with his arm around a young Nine, both standing proudly in front of the garage sign. It was a lived-in space, full of a history X had never considered.
"I didn't know you ran an auto repair shop," X stated, his tone neutral, though it carried a note of genuine surprise.
Nine rubbed the back of his neck, leaving a fresh smudge of grease near his hairline. "Ah, well, it's not exactly my running it. It was my dad's. I just... keep it going. It's mostly just a hobby space for me and the guys now. Custom jobs, you know? Doesn't exactly pay the bills, hence the..." He gestured vaguely at his hero costume, which was tossed over the back of a chair, its bright colors a jarring note in the otherwise muted room. "The old man always said a man should know how to build things and fix things. Seemed as good a way to remember him as any."
He said it with a simple, uncomplicated fondness, a stark contrast to the complex, hidden layers X usually navigated. In that moment, surrounded by the artifacts of a normal life and a simple inheritance, Nine seemed more grounded, more real than he ever had on a battlefield. The garage wasn't just a business; it was an anchor, a tether to a world where things could be repaired with a wrench and some determination – a concept increasingly foreign to X.
"Right!" Nine announced, clapping his hands together and dispelling the brief, reflective silence. "Enough standing around. The real reason I invited you guys over!" He bounded over to a large, slightly outdated television surrounded by a nest of wires and game cases strewn across the floor. He dropped to his knees and began rifling through the collection.
"Okay, options, options!" he mumbled, holding up cases one by one. "We've got... FIFA. For when you wanna feel the thrill of victory without any actual property damage." He tossed it aside. "Batman: Arkham. For... well, it's not what we need, I guess. Or! Formula 1! You can feel the need for speed without, you know, actually wrecking a million-dollar car I'd have to fix." He put case away."Ooh, Rayman Legends. Perfect for parties."
He finally settled on a case, holding it up triumphantly. "But for a true test of friendship and a guaranteed way to start arguing, I present... the ultimate classic." He slotted the disc into the console with a satisfying click. The television hummed to life, displaying the vibrant, chaotic menu of a vintage fighting game, its pixelated characters posing dramatically.
"Prepare yourselves," Nine said, handing a controller to a bemused Fortune Teller and another to a deeply skeptical X. "This is a sacred ritual. We're going to beat each other up digitally until all our real-life problems feel very, very far away."
The Fortune Teller examined her controller as if it were a newly drawn tarot card, a curious smile playing on her lips. X looked at the device in his hands with profound distrust, as if expecting it to glitch out and unravel reality itself at any moment.
"The controls are simple," Nine explained, plopping down between them on the couch. "You basically just mash buttons and hope for the best. It's a lot like being a hero, actually, but with fewer concussions."
As the first match began, the apartment was filled with the sounds of exaggerated digital grunts, Nine's enthusiastic shouting, the Fortune Teller's giggles of surprise, and, eventually, the faint, almost imperceptible sound of X letting out a short, sharp laugh after executing an accidentally flawless combo. They played for over an hour, the pixelated battles a blur of flying kicks and special moves. The initial novelty, however, began to wear thin for the Fortune Teller. With a dramatic sigh, she let her controller drop into her lap during the character selection screen for what felt like the hundredth time.
"Ugh, this is boring," she declared, her nose wrinkling. "It's the same thing over and over. Punch, kick, flashy light, someone falls down. There's no mystery to it."
Nine paused the game, the screen freezing on his character's victory pose. "What? No way! This is a timeless classic! It's about skill! And reflexes! And... and button-mashing glory!"
"It's repetitive," she countered, crossing her arms. "Even my cards offer more strategic depth."
"Your cards are pieces of cardboard with pictures! This is interactive art!"
They went back and forth, a silly, heated debate about the merits of digital versus divinatory combat. Finally, the Fortune Teller's eyes lit up with a mischievous spark.
"Fine! You want to prove your little game requires skill? Let's make it interesting," she proposed, a sly smile spreading across her face. "A real competition. One final match. And whoever loses... has to give the winner something valuable."
Nine's competitive spirit instantly ignited. "Valuable? Like what?"
She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Not money. Something personal. A token of your defeat."
The air in the room shifted. The playful argument was suddenly charged with a new, unexpected gravity. It was no longer just a game. X, who had been observing the exchange in silence, raised a single eyebrow. This had just gotten far more interesting.
The air in the room grew thick with tension, the playful banter replaced by the intense, focused silence of the final match. The pixelated warriors on screen became avatars of their wills. Nine, leaning forward with his tongue slightly out in concentration, executed practiced combos with frantic energy. The Fortune Teller, her methods more unorthodox, mashed buttons with a chaotic rhythm that somehow, infuriatingly, worked half the time.
But it was X who became the dark horse. He wasn’t the flashiest player, but he was precise, patient, and ruthlessly efficient. He observed patterns, identified openings, and punished every mistake with cold, digital finality.
The battle was brutal. Nine’s character was pushed to the brink, his health bar a sliver of red against the flashing arena. With a desperate, final shout, Nine unleashed his character's most powerful super move – a blinding whirlwind of energy that filled the screen. It was a move that had won him countless matches.
But X didn’t flinch. In the split second before impact, he executed a perfectly timed block, followed by a devastating counter-attack – a simple, elegant move that required impossible precision. The screen froze. The word "K.O!" flashed in triumphant letters above X’s character.
Nine stared, dumbfounded, his controller slipping from his hands onto the couch cushions. "No way... How did you... that move is unblockable!"
From her corner of the sofa, the Fortune Teller erupted into a fit of mischievous, delighted laughter. "Oh, this is priceless! I told you it lacked depth!"
She clapped her hands together, her eyes sparkling with glee. "Now, for the spoils of war! Let's see... what valuable treasure does our vanquished champion possess?" She tapped her chin, scanning the cluttered apartment. "His limited-edition hero figurines? No, too childish. His complete collection of those terrible fantasy novels he loves? Perhaps. Or maybe... oh! That signed poster of that pop idol he thinks no one knows he likes!"
Nine’s face flushed a deep crimson with each suggestion. "Hey! Those are private collections!"
It was then that X spoke, his voice calm and cutting through the noise. He wasn't looking at the figurines or the posters. His gaze was fixed on Nine’s face, specifically on the pair of bright, canary-yellow sunglasses perched on his head.
"No," X said, a faint, almost imperceptible curve on his lips. "I want those."
He pointed a single, deliberate finger at the sunglasses.
Nine’s hands flew up to protect them instinctively. "My glasses? But i love them! They're iconic!"
The Fortune Teller’s laughter softened into a low, impressed chuckle. "Oh, very good, X. A truly exquisite choice."
With the dramatic sigh of a man parting with a limb, Nine slowly, reluctantly, lifted the sunglasses from his head. He held them for a moment, looking at their bold, cheerful color, a stark contrast to the gloom of his defeat. Then, with a final, resigned puff of air, he placed them in X’s waiting palm.
X held them up, the yellow lenses looking absurdly out of place in his pale, precise hand. He had won. Not just a game, but a piece of the very identity he found so baffling.
The next call to action came a few days later – a minor villain causing a disturbance downtown. It was the kind of chaotic, messy situation that had become their strange, unspoken meeting ground. Nine arrived with his usual energetic flair, already mentally preparing his moves.
And then he saw X.
He was already there, a figure of calm amidst the swirling panic of civilians. But something was different. Perched on the bridge of his nose, stark against his typically neutral expression and dark hair, was a pair of unmistakable, brilliantly yellow sunglasses.
Nine skidded to a halt, his own heroic pose faltering. He blinked, certain his eyes were deceiving him. The glasses, his glasses, looked utterly surreal on X. They were too bright, too bold, too... cheerful for a man whose default mood was composed detachment. It was like seeing a shark wear a party hat.
"Are you... are you actually wearing those?" Nine stammered, pointing a finger that wavered between accusation and awe.
X turned his head slowly, the lenses of the sunglasses obscuring his eyes, making his expression utterly unreadable. The villain, a man who could animate stone statues, was getting impatient.
"Focus," X commanded, his head tilting slightly as he assessed the battlefield through the yellow-tinted lenses. "The golem on the left has a structural weakness in its right knee. Your punches should be effective there."
Nine could only gape for a second longer. Then, a slow grin spread across his face. This was, without a doubt, the weirdest and most fantastic thing that had ever happened. His friend – his serious, reality-warping, perpetually annoyed friend – was fighting crime wearing his ridiculous sunglasses.
With a newfound burst of energy, Nine launched himself into the fray, his laughter mixing with the sound of shattering stone. He fought with extra vigor, partly to defeat the villain, but mostly to get a better look at the utterly bizarre and wonderful sight of X, the human personification of a sigh, calmly directing traffic while looking like a retired superhero from a 80s cartoon.
"Nine, eleven o'clock, three feet off the ground." X instructed, his voice a calm, collected monotone that cut through the chaos.
Nine, trusting the bizarrely specific command without question, pivoted and struck. His fist connected with a seemingly solid section of granite, which immediately crumbled into inert dust.
"Now, the lamppost. Apply lateral force at the base."
Nine obeyed, and another construct shuddered and collapsed.
It was less a fight and more a demolition guided by an all-seeing architect. X was no longer a passive victim of his abilities, spasming into other dimensions against his will. He was beginning to listen to them, to understand their language. The world presented itself to him not as a solid, immutable thing, but as a complex tapestry of interlocking forces, probabilities, and spatial relationships – a tapestry he was learning to gently pluck.
From the sidelines, perched safely on a fire escape, the Fortune Teller watched the entire spectacle. But her attention wasn't on the crumbling golems or Nine's powerful strikes. It was locked on X. When she saw him, standing there amid the settling dust, issuing commands with an oracle's precision while wearing the absurdly bright sunglasses, she lost all composure.
She didn't just laugh; she howled. She doubled over, clutching the railing, her shoulders shaking with uncontrollable mirth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Oh, my sides!" she managed to gasp between breaths, her voice ringing out across the suddenly quiet street. "You! You look like a librarian who won a contest to be a superhero for a day! The glasses! The complete deadpan! It's perfect!"
X, completely unperturbed by her outburst, reached up and calmly adjusted the sunglasses on his nose. He looked down at the defeated villain, then at his own hands, a faint, thoughtful expression on his face – what little of it could be seen.
The power wasn't a curse. It was a tool. A phenomenally complex, reality-altering tool that he had only just begun to open the manual for. And as for the glasses? They were a trophy. A reminder that even the most stable, predictable systems could be disrupted by the most unexpected variables. And perhaps, that wasn't always a bad thing.