My stomach growled loud enough to startle a pigeon. Or three. They fluttered off like I’d personally offended them, which, honestly, I might have. Hunger radiated off me in waves strong enough to disrupt avian navigation.

  I winced and pulled my jacket tighter around myself as I trudged down the sidewalk. One more block to the bar. Just one more block to potato skins, a frosty beer, and the only person in my life who didn’t expect me to fix their router or update their drivers.

  Technically, this was dinner. Emotionally? This was survival.

  Lunch had been from the microwaves—a frozen burrito that had half-exploded in the breakroom like a bean-filled war crime. My stomach had been staging protests ever since. Now, it was escalating to civil unrest.

  My jeans were starting to fight back, too. The waistband pinched in all the wrong places, and I caught my reflection in a shop window: a guy in his early thirties, hair doing its own thing, dark circles under his eyes, and—wait. Were those jowls?

  Unacceptable. I was too young for jowls. Too nerdy to be this soft around the edges. Was it the late-night ramen? The stress? The sodium? Or maybe just the jawline genetics of a man who looked like a kindly bridge troll?

  I sighed, bitterly, and did what any grown man would do when facing his own declining aesthetic. I pulled out my phone and opened Pokémon Go.

  Instant dopamine.

  The map glowed to life in its cheerful, candy-colored way, with PokéStops dotting the screen like digital breadcrumbs. My fingers automatically started spinning the nearest one, earning a few Pokéballs and a revive. I needed the distraction. I needed a win.

  That’s when the glow caught my eye.

  Golden. Rare. Beautiful. A shiny Garchomp.

  I froze mid-step. No way.

  This was it. The hunt was over. My shiny white whale—except dragon-shaped and vaguely aggressive. I tapped the screen like a surgeon prepping for heart surgery.

  The encounter started. My thumb hovered. The world blurred around the edges. Traffic became a dull hum. Time stopped. The rest of the universe could wait.

  I lined up the shot. A perfect curveball. Click. One shake. Two. Three—

  “Gotcha!”

  I nearly collapsed from the rush of endorphins. This was it. The best moment of my week. Possibly the month. Definitely better than that time I found extra fries at the bottom of the bag.

  Grinning like an idiot, I raised my head…

  …and realized the world wasn’t quite right.

  People were staring.

  A guy halfway out of his car, just standing there like his loading screen had frozen. A group of coffee shop regulars with their drinks suspended mid-sip. A woman on the sidewalk, one foot raised like she'd forgotten how walking worked.

  “…What?” Hadn’t they ever seen a grown man excited about Pokémon before?

  I blinked. The moment stretched taut, like the universe was buffering. Reality on pause. Then—

  Play.

  The world lurched back into motion.

  The businessman finished getting out of his car. The woman took a step, shaking her head like she’d zoned out. Someone’s phone rang. The coffee shop crowd resumed sipping and scrolling.

  I stood there, stomach growling, phone still in hand, trying to process what the hell had just happened.

  Weird. But not capital-W Weird. Not yet. Weird enough to make me blink. Not enough to stop me from seeking deep-fried carbs.

  With a half-hearted shrug, I slipped my phone back into my pocket and kept walking.

  Whatever that was, I’d figure it out later.

  Right now? Potato skins. Beer. Elly.

  Not necessarily in that order. But definitely all three.

  Elly already had the best seat in the bar, because of course she did. She always got here first, always snagged the booth by the window, always claimed the side with the best cushion support (never mind her tiny body didn’t need it as much as I did) before I even walked in the door.

  She also already had a beer, a half-empty plate of potato skins, and the smug expression of someone who probably ran here just to beat me.

  “Took you long enough,” she said, kicking my shin affectionately under the table.

  I grunted, sliding into the seat and reaching for a potato skin. “I had an eventful day.”

  Elly hummed, resting her chin in her hand. “Oh? Your boss finally realized you’re the only competent person on the support team?”

  “Nope.” I took a sip of beer. “Met a woman.” I emphasized woman to differentiate her from the other females in the area.

  Elly froze mid-chew. I took the opportunity to wipe the ranch dressing off of her cheek with an oversized restaurant napkin starting to go damp from beer mug perspiration. Her cute-as-a-button nose wrinkled in distaste at the public display of helpfulness from a male.

  I didn’t notice, because I was too busy waving a potato skin for emphasis. “Not just any woman, Elly. The woman. Like, I’m talking Greek myth levels of hot.”

  She slowly put her food down on the appetizer plate. “Explain.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  So, I did—with way too much detail…

  How she crossed the street and made an entire city block lag like an online game with bad Wi-Fi. How businessmen locked up mid-step, baristas paused mid-sip, cyclists crashing. How she walked straight up to me, already knew my name and let it cross her full, Grecian lips, and then handed me her broken phone like I was the world’s sexiest Geek Squad employee.

  Elly listened intently, her eyebrows creeping higher with every word I spoke. I had barely gotten through the part where she handed me the phone when she started to shake her head, as if trying to shake the very absurdity of what I was telling her.

  "Wait, wait, wait," she interrupted, raising a hand like she was the moderator in some kind of debate. "So this woman literally stopped time for you, just to ask you to fix her phone?"

  "That's what it seemed like," I said, lowering my voice like I was sharing a secret with the one person in the world who might actually believe me.

  Elly’s eyes narrowed, her lips curling into a sly grin. "And you think she’s… what? Interested in you?"

  I opened my mouth to protest, but my self-doubt kicked in before the words could form. "I mean, no, of course not. She probably just needed help, right? I mean, why would someone like that...?” I trailed off. The words felt too heavy to say out loud, but they were already hanging in the air between us.

  "Uh-huh." Elly leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table as she inspected me with that all-too-familiar look of amusement. "So, you’re telling me a woman who literally commands the laws of physics—and knows your name—just needed help with her phone. Right."

  "Yeah, and she said I had a five-star rating." I was clutching at straws now. "Apparently, I’m good at this whole tech support thing."

  Elly snorted, picking up her beer. "Yeah, because you’re totally irresistible when you’re troubleshooting phone and tech issues. Nothing sexier than a man who can reboot a router."

  I paused, my eyes flicking to her, waiting for the sarcasm to hit its peak. But instead, she was watching me with an intensity that made my stomach churn in an entirely new way. It was the way she always looked at me when she was convinced that I was doing something wrong—even though she never actually told me what that something was.

  "Do you hear yourself?" she asked, voice unusually soft. "You’re really telling me that a woman who has the ability to freeze an entire city block and walks around with all that mystical energy was just… asking you to reboot her phone because she couldn’t figure it out?"

  “What else would it be?”

  Elly sighed, long and tired, like I was a computer she had to explain email to. Again.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, wishing the sticky, peanut-shell-covered floor would open and swallow me whole (or that I just hadn’t started this conversation). "Look, Elly, I’m just telling you what happened. I can’t explain any of it, okay? All I know is that after she walked away, I felt like I was in some kind of alternate reality, like—like I was the only one who didn’t get the joke."

  "Did it ever occur to you," Elly began, leaning in closer, her voice low but still tinged with that teasing lilt, "that maybe you are the joke?"

  I blinked. "What?"

  Her smirk deepened, and I felt like I’d just taken a direct hit from her. "What if all of this is happening because… you’re the one who’s out of sync? Maybe you’re the weird one, Daniel, not her." She shrugged, taking a long sip of her beer. "And maybe that’s why this woman showed up around you. It’s not a cosmic joke. You’re just too blind to see it."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but the words didn’t come. Instead, my mind just flickered back to the image of her—Euryale—those impossibly golden eyes, that cold yet amused smile. She hadn’t acted like I was the joke at all. But maybe Elly was right. Maybe I was the one who was blind to whatever was really going on.

  The warm, greasy comfort of potato skins was all I needed to push aside the lingering weirdness. For a moment, I could almost forget about the strange woman and her golden eyes.

  Almost.

  Elly’s gaze never wavered as I devoured another bite, her curiosity piqued.

  “So, let me get this straight,” she said, still playing with the remnants of her own skins, her fingers moving delicately, not unlike someone who had taken the time to perfect their snack-eating technique. “She just... stopped time?” Her eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes narrowed as she leaned forward.

  I nodded, trying to keep my voice steady. “I wouldn’t say ‘stopped time,’ but yeah, people literally froze in place when she crossed the street. It was like... glitching. And when I looked at her, it felt like my brain just completely crashed. Charm? Glamour? It’s very D&D.”

  Elly’s fork clinked against her plate as she put it down. She tilted her head, studying me with that unnerving intensity that made me shift uncomfortably. “So, like... what’s her deal? Do you think she’s a sorceress or—?”

  “Uh.” I scratched my head, trying to remember the exact details. “I don’t know. She said her name was Euryale, which is, like, a Gorgon name, right? Like, one of Medusa’s sisters? But no, she didn’t have snakes in her hair... just... very thick glasses.”

  “Interesting.” Elly’s lips curled into a tiny, knowing smile, like she already knew where this was going.

  I didn’t catch on at first. I was still too busy recounting the whole bizarre encounter.

  She picked up another potato skin, chewing slowly, her eyes focused on something just beyond me, out the window. There was something odd in her posture, a kind of tension that hadn’t been there before.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, finally pausing mid-sentence. My mind clicked back to the present as I watched her glance outside, her gaze fixed like she could see something I couldn’t.

  Elly blinked, as if snapping out of a trance. She waved it off, a forced smile flashing across her face. “Nothing. Just thought I saw someone I knew. Continue. What did you do after the whole... freezing thing?”

  I shrugged. “Well, after she introduced herself and handed me the phone, she just walked off, leaving me standing there like a confused idiot.” I took another swig of beer, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling creeping up my spine. “And that’s when I started thinking: Maybe she’s not from around here. She sure as hell doesn’t seem normal.”

  I could feel Elly’s eyes on me again, her gaze sharper now, calculating, like she was putting together pieces of a puzzle I didn’t even realize existed.

  “Did she say anything else?” she asked, her tone more serious now, her voice laced with an undercurrent of something I couldn’t quite place.

  I thought back, trying to remember. “Yeah. Before she left, she just said one word: ‘Interesting.’”

  Elly’s lips pressed into a thin line, and I watched as her fingers fidgeted with the corner of the napkin on her lap. There was something off about the way she was reacting. I should’ve noticed it sooner, but I was too wrapped up in the details to pay attention.

  I leaned forward, trying to catch her eye. “What’s going on? You seem... weird.”

  For a split second, her eyes flickered to the door, scanning the room. “Nothing,” she said, her voice much too light, like it was the furthest thing from the truth. “But Daniel... if you know what’s good for you, stay away from women like that. Seriously.”

  I blinked. “What do you mean ‘women like that’?”

  Elly sighed, glancing around at the bar, as if looking for an escape. Then, like she couldn’t hold it back anymore, she muttered, “You have no idea what you’re getting into. Just—don’t fall for her. Trust me. People like her? They don’t play by normal rules.”

  I furrowed my brow. “And what, you think I can’t handle it? I mean, come on, I survived high school.”

  She made a sound that was half-laugh, half-scoff. “This isn’t high school, Daniel. This isn’t some harmless crush. You’re way out of your depth here.”

  The bartender dropped a glass, and it shattered with a loud crash. The moment was broken, and Elly’s shoulders relaxed slightly, her expression returning to that almost teasing, nonchalant look she wore so well.

  “I’m serious, though,” she added quietly, eyes now darting toward the bar’s door. “Don’t get tangled up with someone like her. Not if you want to keep life... simple.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, Elly stood up abruptly, grabbing her coat from the back of the booth.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, still trying to process what she just said.

  She looked back at me, eyes softer than before, but there was still that edge. “Nowhere. Just... don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  And with that, she left me with the tab, the door swinging shut behind her. It sure seemed like she was going somewhere.

  I sat there, chewing on a potato skin and my own confusion. A hundred questions rattled around in my brain, none of them helpful. Outside the window, the streetlight flickered once, then held steady.

  As I reached for my drink, Elly’s bottle cap—which I was sure had been left on the table—rolled to the edge, spun once, and dropped into the trash can three feet away without making a sound. The lid closed gently by itself.

  I blinked. Shrugged. And took another bite, because I was clearly imagining things.