I handed him the game controller and switched to two-player mode. 

“Alright,” I said, propping the screen onto some books in front of us. “Have you ever play…”

I trailed off as I got a look at his hands holding the controller. He was mimicking my one handed grip, but I wasn’t ready to play yet, so the stance was all wrong.

So he’s never played games before either…

”Watch me,” I said and gripped the controller with both hands, putting my left thumb on the stick and my right thumb on the A button. “This is how you hold it.” I tried not to sound too condescending, and barely refrained from using my ‘talking to a child’ voice.

His eyes lit up in amusement as he copied my movements. He still gripped the controller awkwardly, but it looked correct now.

”Seems easy enough,” he said.

I booted up our first brawl. His character died within seconds of the game yelling ‘start!’ As he yeeted himself off the stadium edge. 

“Hmm,” he said quietly to himself, his attention focused intently on the screen. “I see now.”

I coughed, trying to hide my short burst of laughter. 

Watching him try so seriously was… kind of cute. 

I spent the next hour teaching him about the game and showing him how to use the controls to land combo attacks. He played badly at the start. He was uncoordinated and consistently dying to… pretty much nothing. But as time went on, he was able to land a few punches without accidentally falling to his death. 

To my surprise, Lucius never quit, complained, or angered. He seemed seriously invested in improving and focused on the match, despite constantly losing to me. I couldn’t help but compare it to when I tried playing with Stacy, who just got huffy the entire time and gave up within minutes. She wasn’t much of a gamer.

The class bell rang, jolting me out of my stupor. 

“Ah, I guess I better go to my next class,” I said grumpily, grabbing the game console. Lucius handed me his controller, looking somewhat disappointed.

”I appreciate you teaching me how to play,” he said with a smile. I didn’t understand how he could be so polite all the time. 

“Yeah. Whatever…” I paused, trying to rein in my sarcastic attitude, “we can play again sometime. Maybe in ten years or so, you’ll be able to beat me.”

He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair.

”Sure,” he said while giving me a breathtaking, sideways grin, “as long as you promise to teach me until then.”

I snorted. If I were anyone else, I might assume he was flirting. But by now I knew how naive and strange Lucius was. That was his version of a joke.

Without warning, the lights in the library started to flicker. A sudden barrage of deafening static-like… noises started up, sounding almost like electrical interference, but too low pitched to be normal. It filled the room, getting louder as I covered my ears and quickly stood up next to Lucius. 

The library was located centrally in the building, so there were no windows to provide light as they blinked our figures in and out of existence. They flickered at strange intervals, changing from a quick pace, to slow and back. Blink…blink.. BLINKBLINKBLINK.

Lucius wasn’t covering his ears like I was, but his body was rigid. His eyes darted to the ceiling as if trying to find something. 

“We need to leave,” he said, his tone more serious than I’d ever heard before. He grabbed my arm before I had a chance to get my bag and started dragging me through the rows of books towards the exit.

“Wait, my bag! It has the rest of my games,” I yelled so he could hear me over the noise and shook off his strong grip. I wasn’t going to leave my bag just for someone to snatch my games.

I started going back.

“Please, Nyx! Just leave it,” he followed after me and moved to grab me again, but I darted from his reach to snatch my bag up.

“See? Only took a secon—“ 

Fzzzzz. The lights blinked on for a long second, giving a brief moment of clarity. I met Lucius’s eyes and only then registered his forlorn expression.

Everything went black and we were plunged into darkness.