Chap 14 : The Glowing Demon Rectangle of Questionable Intent
This handphone was, without question, a demon spawn from the Eternal Realm of Hignavuwa—a place where light and darkness bled into one another and strange, disembodied sounds emerged from corners that did not technically exist.
It was not a good realm.
Nothing there was good.
Even the air felt malicious.
And this thing—this smooth, black rectangle of unnatural intelligence currently sitting in the center of my palm—felt exactly like something that had crawled out of it.
I was very certain of this.
It sat there innocently, dark and silent, its glass surface reflecting my face back at me with the smug patience of something that knew it had already won.
A trap.
Clearly.
Possibly sentient.
Almost certainly evil.
I was still contemplating which incantation would be most effective in destroying it without also setting the curtains on fire when Mina—Tangled Menace, as I continued to call her in the privacy of my own mind—dropped onto the bed beside me.
Too close.
Far too close.
Humans had no understanding of tactical spacing.
She leaned in with the unsettling enthusiasm of a novice priestess unveiling a cursed relic and held the device up between us like she was about to ruin my life through sorcery and poor judgment.
“This,” she declared, “is your phone.”
I looked at it. Then at her. Then back at it.
“It is watching me.”
“It is not watching you.”
“It has one eye.”
“That’s the front camera.”
“That is exactly what something with intentions would say.”
Mina ignored me, which was deeply concerning but also, unfortunately, very effective.
“See? You just swipe like this—”
The demon awakened.
The surface glowed.
Images moved.
Voices emerged.
I stiffened immediately.
“There,” she said brightly. “That’s your home screen.”
I stared at it.
“It responds to touch,” I said slowly.
“Yeah.”
“So it requires physical contact to activate.”
“…Yes?”
I leaned back.
“That is how it spreads.”
Mina paused.
Then she turned her head very slowly.
“…What?”
“This is how it infects,” I clarified. “It lures you into touching it. Establishes a bond. Learns your patterns. And then—” I gestured at the glowing surface. “—it consumes you.”
There was a long pause.
Then Mina made a choking noise.
“Oh my god,” she said. “It’s just a phone, you psycho. Relax.”
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Then I looked back down at the device.
The screen flickered.
A notification appeared.
A sound chimed.
I froze.
“…It speaks,” I said.
Mina burst out laughing.
“It doesn’t speak. It rings. Cheez—” She grabbed my hand and tapped the side of the device again. “You press this to wake it up. Then you swipe to unlock it. These are your messages. These are your apps. This is the internet, which is where you go to find information—and also to argue with strangers about things that don’t matter. This is the camera, which is how you take pictures of your food before you eat it so everyone knows what you had. This is—”
“Why,” I interrupted, “would anyone take a picture of food before eating it?”
Mina stared at me like I had just questioned the laws of gravity.
“For the aesthetic, Sera.”
“The what?”
“The aesthetic.”
“What does that word even mean?”
“It means it looks nice.”
“So humans document their meals… for visual satisfaction?”
“Yes.”
“And for others to see?”
“Yes.”
“And feel what? Hunger? Regret?”
“Jealousy.”
I stared at her.
“Why would anyone be jealous of food they cannot eat?”
“It’s not about the food,” she said. “It’s about the experience.”
“That makes no sense.”
“That’s because you have brain damage.”
We had been at this for three hours.
Three.
Hours.
Three hours of Tangled Menace explaining the functions of a device that, as far as I could tell, was designed to do approximately seven thousand things—none of which were necessary for survival.
It could tell you the weather, but one could simply look out a window.
It could tell you the time, but clocks existed.
It could connect you to people across the world, which was apparently desirable, despite the fact that most humans seemed to use it to argue with strangers about things that did not matter.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Mina said finally, snatching the device from my hand. “It’s not complicated. You press the thing, you look at the thing, you send the thing. That’s it.”
“And if I press the wrong thing?”
“Then the world ends.”
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
She did not blink.
I did not blink.
She was not joking.
“The world does not end like this,” I said flatly.
“If the world were truly ending, giants would claw their way up from the earth—towering things of bone and ruin, their hands large enough to crush houses like eggshells. Fire would move through the wind. Storm giants would tear through the sky in spirals of screaming air, ripping roofs from buildings and flinging peasants and livestock across the horizon with appropriate apocalyptic intent.”
I paused.
Satisfied.
“Anything less is just weather.”
Mina stared at me.
Her mouth was open.
Her eyes had, somehow, grown larger.
I had not known that was possible.
Behind her, Dad stood in the doorway holding a glass of water.
Slowly—
Very slowly—
He lowered it.
I heard him gulp.
Then, with the urgent panic of a small woodland creature sensing imminent death, he turned and fled down the hallway.
Probably to find Mum.
I watched him go.
This was concerning.
Because when Dad ran—
It usually meant one thing.
Footwear violence was approaching.
I did vaguely recall Mum saying something about if anything funny came out of my mouth again after the lunch incident four days ago—which I continued to refuse to acknowledge as part of my lived experience.
Unfortunately, that was a deeply unreasonable condition, as nearly everything I said appeared to offend this household for reasons I had yet to fully understand.
Still—
I had one advantage.
The kind doctor had stated, in a tone humans seemed to respect simply because it came from someone in a white coat, that there was to be:
“No more footwear thrown at Sera.”
Which meant, legally and medically speaking—
I was protected.
Probably.
I looked back at the glowing rectangle.
“Proper destruction,” I added, “requires commitment.”
There was a pause.
Then Mina rolled her eyes.
“Okay, drama queen. Not the end of the world. What I meant is your social life might end. You goon.”
I frowned.
I did not know what a social life was.
But the way she said it made it sound like something deeply important that could be lost—like keys, wallets, or the will to live.
I nodded slowly.
That was concerning.
I had therefore decided to treat the handphone with the same caution one might reserve for a live explosive.
This conclusion was not without precedent.
I once knew a Royal Arcanist named Lysander, in the realm where The Linchpin King ruled, who, during his brief and deeply regrettable period of experimental brilliance, invented a bomb so catastrophically unstable it nearly erased half the battlefield of Verform.
Not because it had been used in combat.
No.
Because one of his students had dropped it while attempting to pass it down a supply line mid-flight while riding an aggressively uncooperative war-honking Vellstrix.
This was, to be clear, an extremely poor tactical decision.
The Vellstrix was not trained for cooperation.
It was trained for noise.
A war-honking Vellstrix was a large, long-necked marsh beast with wings that were technically functional but emotionally unreliable. It possessed a beak capable of denting armour, a temperament that rejected authority on principle, and a voice that could be heard across three valleys and one regrettable diplomatic incident.
Its primary purpose is battle and was not transport.
It was disruption.
When released onto a battlefield, a Vellstrix would, honk at volumes that interfered with strategic communication bite anything that moved, including its assigned rider and panic with such enthusiasm that entire formations would collapse simply trying to avoid it
They were, in essence, airborne chaos.
Which made them an excellent choice for intimidation.
And a catastrophically poor choice for delicate tasks involving the transfer of unstable magical explosives.
According to the official report—which I later learned had been rewritten seven times to remove the phrase “catastrophic honking interference”—the student had attempted to stabilize the bomb while the Vellstrix was mid-honk.
This was a mistake.
The honk caused the rider to flinch.
The flinch caused the transfer to falter.
The falter caused the bomb to slip.
The bomb—
Did not appreciate being dropped.
The Vellstrix, however, survived.
It continued honking throughout the explosion.
Several people’s dignity did not.
So yes.
Based on Mina’s demonstration, this device was, functionally speaking—
The same thing.
A polished, glowing bomb of distraction and ruin.
And then—
Ping.
I froze.
Ping. Ping ping ping ping ping.
I nearly threw it across the room.
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