May 18, 2025

I woke up on the morning after Renn Fayre and was told that my housemates “may have” been up to trouble the night before. They were being deliberately vague about it and asked if I had attended yesterday’s homeroom meeting. I was somehow late but did remember being lectured about respecting the environment. I was unsure if that was supposed to be a hint to what happened.

My friends were watching me delete some videos from my computer to clear up some space. I refreshed the page for 4han and along with loading excruciatingly slow, I saw the default theme change from Yotsuba B to Yotsuba in real time.

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It was approaching the end of the school day and my teacher wanted us to begin a “special project”. But first we needed to watch a 1998 adaptation of The Mist. “Isn’t that one infamously long?” I asked. “Too late,” he said. We’d been putting it off for too long apparently.

The film started with a monologue of high school proms but I had to pause it because I wanted to catch up in the book so I could read along. It felt like my mouth was filling up with chewing gum.

When I unpaused the movie it had turned into a documentary detailing the changing nature of security and the new world order in the 21st century. It provided tutorials on how to construct elaborate lockboxes made out of wood and springs. This was apparently the part that was supposed to be relevant to our project.

A classmate told me that someone had made a discord server for sharing designs. Meanwhile there were only a hand full of very basic designs included in the book we were given. There was a clause in our assignment saying that we were not to use AI for our work. The classmates around me were already showing off their intricate boxes while the raw materials were still scattered across my desk.