[crow]

He responded with an entire chain of laughing cat emojis. Hazel felt a little frustrated, but it was kind of funny too, in its own way. It was also not at all what she would have expected from him when her uncle introduced him to her. He had those dorky glasses, and he looked like such an awkward goody-goody...

Not that she could talk, at least as far as glasses were concerned, but Hazel was pretty sure she didn't dress as blandly as he did, at the very least.

[crow]

And it didn't start right away when they first began talking to each other either. At first he was just straight-laced, maybe a little stingy on words in his responses. It was hard to get more than a short sentence out of him at a time.

Now... he was still like that. It was just who he was as a person. The only difference was the number of emojis he sent with his messages. The cats were a recent addition, and it looked as though he liked this set a lot.

[crow]

So? What do you think? Sound like anything you guys ran into lately? Cat emojis aside, that was what Hazel had really wanted to know. She would have had to tell him regardless, since they were working on this new hunch that maybe Hazel's dreams were predictive or something, so it might be that he would have to watch out for black fog instead.

But in the meantime, if he had any information on it, she sure would have liked to know. It might help her make sense of some of what she was seeing.

[crow]

Akira was quiet for a while. Hazel felt a little impatient, but it wasn't as if she didn't have other things to distract her while she waited. She'd had the tab open to another cat video compilation anyway. Speaking of cats. Maybe she ought to send him the link after this.

Eventually, Akira replied. We haven't, but I think I read about something like this on the internet, actually.

Hazel blinked. Whatever response she had been expecting from him, that hadn't been it. The internet? He actually saw this online?

[crow]

Deets. After a moment's thought, Hazel typed in another message. Links.

Hold on, hold on. It was a while ago, so I might not be able to find it. Akira's reply made her want to spam him with more angry emotes. She didn't, but she was sorely tempted. He was really just going to tell her that and leave her hanging? What did he see on the internet that looked like her dream? It couldn't have been related to the monsters they'd been talking about before, right?

[crow]

They had looked it up on the internet, separately, before they'd met one another. But they hadn't known any better back then, and she didn't know about him, but personally Hazel was just wondering what kind of crazy these dreams made her. The internet wasn't a great place for that, but maybe she'd read something dumb enough to take her mind off the bad stuff for a while.

Neither of them had been stupid enough to post their own experiences online though. Who would have believed them if they had?

[crow]

Especially in Hazel's case, where it was all dreams anyway. More likely someone would have just used it as an excuse to get her sent through the shrink gauntlet again, which she wasn't exactly eager to return to.

Neither of them had been able to find anything useful from that. Since then, the situation hadn't changed either. Apparently they were either the only ones dealing with this, or everyone else had similar thoughts and kept it to themselves. Not that she could blame them, if the latter was the case.

[crow]

Despite her best efforts, after a while, Hazel got impatient. Or maybe it was that she got more worried about what it could possibly be, the more she thought about it. This had better not be a bath bomb video you're sending me. She fired off the message, but there was no response.

If it really was something like that, she was going to release those audio logs for real. Or, okay, she wasn't, but... there would be retribution! That was false advertising and getting her hopes up for nothing.

[crow]

Honestly speaking, though, she doubted that was the case. It was a bit far to go for a joke, and he didn't sound like he'd been joking when he'd said it. Some people said you couldn't read tone over the internet, but those people were mostly old and didn't know what they were talking about. You absolutely could, if you knew what you were doing.

Akira didn't respond anyway. Hazel sighed. He was probably still looking. There was nothing she could do about it but to wait for him to find it.

[crow]

It took the better part of twenty minutes, but eventually she saw the notification go off for the chat app again. She immediately opened it back up. Akira had sent a link.

This was in the news about a year or two ago. Something about TV murders. It might not be the same as what you were talking about, but you mentioned TV static, so I suddenly remembered. The thumbnail picture that pulled up with the link had a stock image of an old TV too, displaying a grainy static.

[crow]

Hazel wasn't sure what she was really expecting, but... that wasn't it. All the little hypothetical jabs she'd been making at him in her head died as soon as she saw the mane of the article. It wasn't that she felt her blood run cold, exactly, but... it very clearly said 'murders'. Someone--- several someones--- had actually died.

Akira had mentioned before that the monsters they'd run into were dangerous. It wasn't like she had forgotten about that. But Akira and Yuu were still very much alive.

[crow]

And maybe because of that fact, she hadn't really thought of anything they were doing as being... well, deadly.

She hadn't experienced the danger firsthand either herself, which might have had something to do with it too. But some part of her had taken it for granted in a Saturday morning cartoons sort of way. Magical powers. Beat up the bad guys. Have weird dreams that you talk about with your friends to dissect whether you were one of them, or just plain crazy or something.

[crow]

Part of her had been excited about all of this, despite all the warning signs, and despite the state of her own life leading up to it... Or maybe even because of it, really. For the first time in what felt like ages, she felt like a part of something again.

And didn't every kid secretly dream about wanting to be a part of some awesome adventure, long past the age where they probably should have grown out of it? Up until now, that was all it had been to Hazel.

[crow]

Either it wasn't real, and therefore didn't have any substance anyway, or it was real and it was special and they were going to have some tough times, sure, but it was going to be awesome. She'd read Harry Potter. The last few books were pretty grim, but they got eased into the adventure.

She hadn't thought she had possibly gotten the genre wrong. What if it wasn't Harry Potter? What if it was some Silent Hill nonsense that they were getting themselves into? She wasn't a fan of horror games.

[crow]

Nevertheless, she clicked the link. Part of it was just curiosity, and part of it was because he had gone to the trouble of finding it for her, so she felt as if she maybe owed it to him to at least have a look.

The article didn't spare the details. Apparently there had been a murder spree in a small town where the corpses turned up in bizarre TV-related accidents. At the time of writing, the case had already been considered closed, so the tone was decidedly bland, but it was still pretty terrible.