At the same time that day, in the administrative room...
"Hey Myrcella, that hot-stuff your 'child' or what?" Yuri asked, not looking up from her phone.
She was sitting back in her chair, legs crossed, focused on a game.
T. Myrcella, who had been looking through a stack of envelopes, looked up at Yuri with a raised eyebrow.
"Hah? I don't have a child, idiot. I'm single. Am I not youthful enough to be seen as a teenager?"
"I mean, you're an educator," Yuri responded, tapping rapidly on her screen. "So it's only natural that people expect you to have a child."
"Huh, good point- WAIT," T. Myrcella exclaimed, her voice rising sharply. "YOU MEANT TO SAY IF THAT 'ZACKIER' IS ONE OF MY STUDENTS?"
"Yeah, now who's the idiot?" Yuri challenged, finally looking up. She turned to T. Myrcella with a smug, playful grin.
T. Myrcella glared back intensely. "That's not fair, you made a misconception in what you just said, making believe that you were asking if that... guy was my child! Which is a ridiculous logical leap!"
"Blah, blah, blah. Don't wanna hear it," Yuri dismissed, waving a hand.
T. Myrcella clenched her fists in frustration, then sighed deeply to regain her composure.
"Ugh... well, here's your answer-he isn't one of my students. In fact, I have never seen him before in all of my ten years educating total idiots."
"Huh, really?" Yuri seemed genuinely surprised. "I thought he would be recognizable. I mean, he's good-looking, so he's popular with the girls... or did he just recently transfer to your school?"
"...I can't tell if he is. I wasn't informed nor have I heard of a record regarding a boy named 'Zackier'." T. Myrcella admitted, tapping a pen against her envelopes.
"But hey, I haven't checked the certificates of every student in years, so there's a marginal chance that I just forgot his existence." She said dismissively, but still suspicious. A little.
"Anyways, enough about him. What are your colossal plans for tomorrow's event? Even though I'm the director for the event planning, I think it's YOUR turn to be the director, you damned founder."
Yuri stared at T. Myrcella with an unreadable expression for a few moments, then suddenly rushed to her office desk at the back like a whirlwind.
She then casually yanked open a cabinet at the lower part of the desk and triumphantly pulled out a thick, brown record book titled:
「Plans for Tomorrow!!"」
She raised it into the air with a proud atmosphere.
"Why waste fifteen hours of executive time thinking for someone brats' enjoyment when you have this record!" Yuri declared, beaming.
"Oh wow, didn't know that you're a 'ready-to-go' person," T. Myrcella remarked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Kind of natural for founders, I suppose."
"What do you mean? I didn't make this book. I'm way too lazy for that." Yuri confessed, lowering the book.
"Ah, so you left the responsibility to your overworked assistant," T. Myrcella said, rolling her eyes and gazing away. "Now I'm thoroughly disappointed. Good job."
Yuri scoffed, turning sarcastic. "That's the most possible answer, but, not that either-in actuality, I just found this book sitting here on my desk, unopened, about five hours ago."
"And you haven't checked what's in it? Why?" T. Myrcella asked, genuinely baffled. "Let me guess-too 'busy' playing videogames?"
"Well, one time I opened a book at a random library, it exploded right into my face, and now I'm filled with hideous scars," Yuri stated dramatically.
T. Myrcella, hearing those words, was surprised and immediately observed the Mafia Queen's face.
There were no scars.
And even if it was covered by make-up, T. Myrcella would've noticed it as she is known to have punished naughty girls wearing large amounts of make-up during class hours.
"Uh, no you didn't." T. Myrcella snorted. "Your face is as clean as Cate Blanchett's, dumbass. And don't even go making excuses like, 'I covered the scars in makeup,' like scars can't be covered that easily-"
Yuri suddenly slammed the record book onto the desk with a loud thwack, effectively silencing T. Myrcella.
And It wasn't for a fact that she was mad at the Head Teacher's bickering. She's just that casual when it comes to loudness.
She then flipped the book open, determined to read its contents just to shut her teacher friend up.
T. Myrcella muttered, "This little..." before sighing deeply and leaning in to read the book along with Yuri, trying to get a better view.
Several minutes passed in silence as the two women devoured the pages, nearly done reading the record book's detailed plans.
Yuri broke the silence with a random, deadpan comment.
"Your breath stinks."
"Oh for the love of Jesus Christ, shut the fu-" T. Myrcella started, enraged.
Before T. Myrcella could finish her sentence, Yuri reached the final page of the book. The closing sentence was written in bold, clean script:
"This book is made for the purpose of a better future for Dawn Romantica. ‐ TOMP."
Both Yuri and T. Myrcella stared at the last sentence, utterly speechless.
It took over five seconds before T. Myrcella broke the silence, her voice hushed.
"TOMP... as in that red-haired writer we mentioned moments ago, the one who inspired your video game?"
"..." Yuri immediately leaned away from the book and shouted toward her guards outside the office door. "Hey bozos! Check the cameras! Now!"
It was a moment of panic.
Seemed like someone had recently infiltrated the Calypso residence without getting noticed by peers of the Mafia Queen.
A few minutes later, Yuri, T. Myrcella, and a random, anxious-looking guard were huddled in the dim CCTV room.
Sunlight barely filtered through the high windows, and the rhythmic squeak of an old electric fan did little to remove the heat.
"Fast backward to... uh... seven hours ago?" Yuri ordered. "Yeah, seven hours."
The guard nervously nodded and moved the video back, then clicked play.
The three stared at the screen for a few moments, but nothing happened.
Crucially, the record book was nowhere to be seen on the office desk.
T. Myrcella groaned. "Seven hours is a bit too far. Fast-forward the video to two hours later."
The guard nodded and moved the video forward.
Again, nothing happened for several minutes.
"Weird," T. Myrcella said, leaning in. "It's as if the record book-"
"Just spawned out of nowhere."
Yuri finished, her eyes gleaming with wild speculation.
"No, it did not!" T. Myrcella retorted, rubbing her forehead.
"What else are we supposed to guess?" Yuri challenged, throwing her hands up. "That some random drunkard threw the book through the window and it landed perfectly on my office desk?"
"If that were the case, that wouldn't even make any sense!" T. Myrcella argued, frustrated by the lack of logic.
"Well, we don't have a shred of evidence either do we? Now shut up and watch."
Suddenly, on the CCTV screen, a terrifying, rippling 'red black hole' appeared silently in mid-air inside the office room, materializing out of nowhere.
Objects immediately began to fly around the room, pulled by an unnatural force.
Then, in an instant, the CCTV feed went into an error screen, cutting out the moment of impact.
Yuri shoved T. Myrcella aside in her excitement and shouted at the guard.
A fantasy-like event just happened in their eyes.
"Fast-forward the damn thing! What happened next?!"
The guard nervously nodded and skipped the CCTV feed ahead.
This time, the error was gone.
The office room was back to its previous state: all the objects were resting back in their respective places, and the mysterious red black hole was gone.
Everything was normal.
But one detail instantly caught Yuri's eye: the record book was now sitting neatly on the desk, as if it had simply materialized into existence in the wake of the spatial anomaly.
"What... the heck was that," T. Myrcella whispered, slow with shock and disbelief. She turned to the guard with a severe frown.
"Is this edited?! Like some stupid prank?! There's no way that something out of a fantasy just appeared before our eyes!"
The guard wrung his hands. "B-but ma'am... we can't edit CCTV records unless it is converted into an actual video...! I, too, don't know anything about this phenomenon..."
Yuri raised a silencing hand into the air, causing T. Myrcella and the guard turn to her.
"How about we keep this a secret, for now," Yuri said, her tone suddenly serious, bordering on paranoid.
"Like, remember those movies when people investigate something scary and only one person manages to escape? Yeah, I'd rather not risk my life just for a scary discovery; I've watched enough horror movies to avoid this trope."
"But...!" T. Myrcella began to protest, then paused. "Oh, fine... you do have a point. But, this is still something immensely out of the ordinary."
"Eh, no biggie," Yuri replied, shrugging off the existential threat. "Whatever alien stuff gave that record book to us, they were generous. So let's give them a favor by revealing absolutely nothing about it and just using the plans. I mean, their plans for tomorrow were clever and traditional to MY home country."
"Alright, fine then," T. Myrcella conceded. "Just... don't get me involved in whatever this thing turns into."
She stood up and walked out of the CCTV room, shaking her head.
And suddenly, the usual intimidating teacher ran away from a fantasy.
Yuri watched her leave, then let out a sharp huff and looked at the guard, pointing at the retreating figure. "Heh, see that? All Tough, no show."
The guard nervously and softly laughed along with Yuri.
No questions were asked.
But if there were, those lingering questions that would hang heavy in the air would be:
What was that book?
Why was TOMP-the writer-mentioned in it?
Why was there a black hole five hours ago?
What... was the true purpose of that meticulously detailed record book?
Surely, it wasn't just for the simple purpose of helping Yuri make plans for the next day.