Rising Shards

There were rows of private booths laid out in a corner of the set. There were a curious set of rails beneath them that had a looping path around the floor. I wasn’t sure why we weren’t brought to these when the curtains fell but the mechanics of void scenarios like this only invited mental anguish when thought about too long. Anastasia had to be dragged over by the other devils, but even then she refused to go into the booth. I watched as she grumbled by herself as the rest of us entered the booths and sat down.

”I suppose the Confessional Of Love: Thadley’s Love: Matchmaker Edition is one of the optional rounds,” The announcer said. ”But this may affect who you get overall if you don’t narrow it down here!”

”I don’t give...” Anastasia looked around, grabbing a handful of ballast from the rails and throwing it. ”A rat’s ass!”

”Alright then! The rest of you will enjoy a ride around this tunnel of love. Enjoy catching up with your potential mates!”

”And stop saying mates!” Anastasia said.

There were two sets of rails the booths rested on, putting us face to face with another. We moved a notch at a time like we were on a factory belt, bringing me to Michi. The booths clicked together, giving us some privacy, though I’m not sure we really needed it.

”Hey.” Michi said.

”Hi,” I said.

Michi cleaned their glasses. ”This is so awkward,” They said. ”Not, you, I mean. I’m just not interested in you that way? No offense.”

”None taken,” I said. The two of us enjoyed some silence until the next turn, which brought me to Tay.

”Greetings, Lillia Cadence,” Tay said. ”I’m a dedicated, hard-working potential partner, though I may get distracted by my own work too much to always be present in a relationship, I wouldn’t mind looking, and you are a looker.” She winked. ”How was that?”

”I’m impressed you’re actually trying something out for this,” I said, not sure if she was just joking or not.

”Well, as I said I don’t mind just observing, but it’s fun to play along a little bit, isn’t it?” Tay asked.

”I suppose.”

The next shift brought me to KJ.

”I can get over the tea thing,” KJ said immediately, not putting things on the best first note. The love trio and I had some squabbles over the rentable tea sets at school, but I didn’t think we had any major feud between us. That didn’t really translate to much more than a slightly tense conversation about those tea sets.

Ash Althea followed.

”Hey there,” Ash said. ”These things are like a minute long, how do they expect us to talk at all?”

”I’m not sure,” I said. ”I haven’t really gotten a word in, though that’s mostly choosing to be quiet.”

”That’s smart, I should try that,” Ash said. ”I just think out loud enough. I’m pretty sure these train tracks don’t make any sense logistically. One of those void things, yeah?”

The two of us shared some spirited chatter about the engineering of train tracks before we shifted again, bringing me to Amara.

”Hi Lillia,” Amara said. ”I’ve been having trouble finding what to say, so I’ve just been giving compliments. So for you I’ll say I greatly enjoyed your speech about East Valataran’s desert regions.”

”Why, thank you,” I said. ”I enjoyed your science project detailing the amount of times your lasers can bounce between different rock formations.”

”I’m flattered! That took hours upon hours to prepare,” Amara said.

Myles Althea looked a bit crabby when we met up. ”Sorry, not you, I’m sure you’re cool, I just wanted to climb to the top of this and ride on it, but there isn’t enough time between the shifts to hop out.”

”I see,” I said. ”Maybe...when this is finished you could try climbing then?”

”I might be bored of it by then is the thing,” Myles said.

Myles spent the rest of the session looking for weak points in the booth to break out of, and we had a decent talk about craftsmanship of void related constructions.

Sai barely looked up from their notepad when I reached them. I thought I was being snubbed, but they explained after leaving a few scribbles on the page. ”Sorry about Anastasia, I didn’t want to bug you while you were shopping.”

”It’s fine,” I said, chalking that up more to Anastasia teasing than anything to blame Sai on. ”Say, have you met up with Michi? They like drawing a lot too.” I didn’t want to immediately suggest romance, but the two did seem like they’d have compatible personalities for friendship at least.

After we talked about the arts for our minute, I had Charmaine next, who kept grabbing the bridge of her nose.

”Sorry, headache coming on,” Charmaine said. ”These glasses are such a pain...”

”Don’t you normally wear them? Is it a new pair?” I asked.

”Hm?” Charmaine blinked, then laughed awkwardly. ”Ah. Yeah...”

That strangeness thankfully didn’t last too long, as we managed some small talk after that.

Rain was busy playing with the fur on her forearm when I reached her. ”Lillia Cadence. I assume KJ and Amara asked you about our tea set duels already?”

”KJ did, Amara did not,” I said.

”Interesting,” Rain said. ”Well, I don’t hold it against you, and I do hold grudges so that is high praise coming from me.”

”I don’t have any grudge against you either, Rain,” I said. We said that, but our tone made it feel like there was some kind of grudge lingering still.

Once we’d gone around, we were finally able to leave the booths.

”Can’t believe you all wasted your time with that,” Anastasia said, arms crossed. ”Thadley’s just been talking about surfing while you were in there.”

”Nosh, tubular, those are both great ways to describe the waves,” Thadley said. ”Some other surfing words I like a lot are—”

”Can we get on with this now that they’re all back?” Anastasia asked.

”Sure, yeah,” Thadley said. ”Now that we figured everyone out, we’re gonna do two teams, so let’s do that. It is so totally time for the Colablu Presents: Matchmaking Skate Break.”

We were directed to a part of the set that was just a skating park, in particular a halfpipe. Myself and Michi, KJ, Ash, and Myles had to go to the left side, while Charmaine, Amara, Tay, Anastasia, Sai, and Rain went to the right. Five skateboards were on our side, and six on the other. We had to write our names on the bottom of them in marker.

The obnoxiously loud narrator voice blared around us. ”Get ready for the ultimate matchmaking starter event possible. One side has skateboards, the other also has skateboards. Our state of the art romance trackers will detect which skateboard hits the other, and that’s who you’ll be going on a date with for this episode. Will it be true love? Find out Now!”

”So like, for the Colablu challenge, you can just kick your skateboard down,” Thadley said.

”If not I’m totally fine just observing and documenting the results,” Tay said.

”Alright, it’s a total bummer to keep teleporting you guys, but as soon as your board taps into another, you’ll be riding a wave down to the Date Zone, where you’ll have a romantic lunch with the one you were matched up with. Or two if you get the, the like, the extra...the extra one.”

While the booth segment felt like just brief conversations with friends and school acquaintances, this felt different. The ’date’ part of this began to sink in as reality, or as real as another bizarre set of circumstances could feel. I was still hurting from the breakup with Ko, was I ready to take that kind of plunge again? While the ’matchmaking’ was just a random kick of a skateboard, I pictured myself riding the board down, diving into something unknown and frightening. A brief mental image flashed, not of anyone specific standing on the other side of the halfpipe, just a nebulous person. Someone who’d catch me as I sped down, stopping me from falling, holding me and not letting go.

There was little chance that would happen here, but I was surprised at how I felt even picturing a nebulous person. Thinking about Ko romantically still hurt, but thinking about a mysterious person who’d pull me out of the abyss I found myself in did give me an odd sense of hope.

With that in mind, I found it easy when we were told to kick our skateboards forward. I sent mine over the edge. A moment later, I felt myself moving, and in a flash I was seated again, but at least I wasn’t bound this time. We were in another TV set, clearly shown by the place only having three walls, this time designed to look like a restaurant floor. And across from me, the person I was paired with, was Anastasia, who did not look at all pleased to be paired with me.