We were sitting in the living room when someone made a sound.

We were browsing the hardware store and in my hand I was holding a freeze bomb and sleep bomb contained in packs in ramen. I was supposed to throw them out in that order for maximum effectiveness but I kept throwing the sleep hypnosis pack onto the floor, leaving me no choice but to jump to pick it back up before it activated.

I walked into the grocery store and saw him standing in front of the vegetables again. I asked if he had really been standing here for the past four hours and he denied it while holding a carrot. We started talking about what he was going to take next semester. He was thinking about taking a few history classes.

We were sitting on the grass talking about what we were thinking of writing our theses about. An acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in a year walked up to us and asked me in particular if I wanted to play League of Legends. I told him that I’ll pass and he continued walking along with his friend until he stopped and circled back around.

It had been a long time since I had been at this mall. We were waiting for everyone to get out of the car in the underground parking lot before going upstairs. Not only were the elevators gone but the building now only went to the 8th floor instead of the 16th. We were headed towards the internet cafe on the top floor to play a low-stakes, for-fun, League of Legends tournament.

I had started taking acting classes recently and I decided to take a slight detour before heading over this morning. I didn’t expect to see two other people there when I walked down the steps to the labyrinth*.

I walked through the rain to get to math class and saw that everyone was already seated through the glass walls. Even people who usually did not come to class were inside and I had a moment of panic as I thought that I might have been late.

We were play-testing a game that one of us had made on the table. The fork-shaped space consisted of square tiles, some of which were occupied by dice. The two players took turns rolling die to see how far to move and at the end of their turns, all units in the four directions from the player pieces were destroyed. One player’s goal was to simply destroy the other player while the second person had the goal of killing all of the ’neutral’ pieces.

Whenever I looked away, the stove would turn back on and the kitchen faucet would open again. I shouted out into the street for help but no one seemed to care. After running back and forth to keep everything under control, the house finally caught on fire. I ran onto the street to meet some surprised faces. Apparently it was the first time that the neighbors had seen me. I also noticed that a string of Christmas lights would continuously curl up the column behind me no matter how many times I pulled them down. I asked why someone would play such a cruel joke on me. Apparently this was supposed to be a rite of passage and everyone knew about it.

I had just moved into a new house and the residents were introducing themselves to each other. Someone to the left of me turned to face me and tried to sell me insurance. I looked ahead to see that the kitchen cupboards were stocked with paper plates. I felt a wave of shame for not knowing what to do.