LEVEL ONE
“… no, unless— She’s back.” Liberty’s voice, rising to her normal clipped tone from a hush.
The second cough hurts more than the first. I’m propped up against Vera’s shoulder. She smacks my back and murmurs, “You’re okay.”
My throat clenches around a white-hot splinter. I cough hoarsely a few more times before I retch something sharp yet slimy into my palm.
A pine needle. A glob of spit splatters onto the ground from my fingers. Embarrassment flushes my face. I quickly wipe my hand on my pants and stand with Vera’s support.
“Did the cat say anything about this?” Annoyance, but also concern, in both the slant of Liberty’s tone and the tense arm pointing to our surroundings.
The pine needle curtain, the fountain—gone. The sky is now a dazzling white. The rest of the terrain has also been completely transformed.
“Did the—” Another cough. “What happened to the island? And … everything?” I cough again, but this time to observe the cloud that appears when I breathe. That’s when the cold hits, and I shiver violently.
Vera’s chest heaves. “Birdy and I were talking … The fountain feels like a checkpoint, so we’ll probably go back there once … You said four bosses, four stars. Four doors, four levels. One for each of us, going in order, and then … Elle.”
She pauses. “That’s not what you—um, well. The needles fell on us again and when they finally went away, we were here. I don’t know.” Then, softer: “I have no idea what’s going on.”
We stand in a clearing within a grove of black-barked, bare trees. White dust covers most of the stark polygon branches and the ground. More dust drifts down from the ghostly sky.
I’ve never seen snow before. I hold my hands out and collect a few flakes. When I squint, I make out miniscule crystal patterns. Elle really didn’t skimp on the details.
“Don’t call me Birdy. And how is this my level?” Liberty huffs, “Southern California, famous for its snow.”
“Sorry.” Vera furrows her brow. “I was saying—O, before you woke up—I feel like (a) if this is Elle’s game, then she’s probably filled it with references from her life. Which means (b) if each level is assigned to one of us, then your level should reflect how Elle felt about you.”
“So, what, she hated me? We had our issues, but this is literally a cold fucking shoulder—”
“It’s not hate, she wasn’t—”
“I’m not saying she was a crypto-TERF. But she was always competing against me and then denying that she saw, like, femininity as a competition.”
“That’s not fair. Especially since”—anger, surprisingly, crests in Vera’s voice—“you know what she went through. And how—” She strains as though she wants to continue speaking, but doesn’t.
I pull away from Vera. “How long was I asleep?” I don’t like hearing them talk about Elle like this when she’s not here to defend herself. And I definitely don’t like my suspicion that Vera stopped talking because she was about to run into the game’s censor.
Liberty scoffs, “Asleep?”
Vera’s eyes widen. “Um. I think—I hope you can be calm about this—”
“You weren’t breathing.” Liberty turns away from me as she continues, “After the needles swarmed you, Vee and I were, like, pumping your chest and reaching into your throat to pull them out. We thought you were…”
She trails off.
There’s no reason they’d lie to me. Plus, the center of my chest does ache, a dull throb dampened by the cold. And yet I wish what Liberty said couldn’t possibly be true. “What do you mean, ‘swarmed’?”
“They aimed for you.” Vera repeats, apologetically, “They aimed for you. We all got dumped on, but only you were being … I don’t know how else to say it. Targeted. Choked. They finally scattered when I drew my sword.”
A trickle of red drips off the side of Vera’s hand and stains the snowy ground.
Everything I’d previously thought about Morning Glory: wrong. This is a game that will draw our blood. With malicious intent. I’d been thinking about video games as theory. This is a video game in reality. There are no kind bosses, and there are no bosses without boss fights.
The hair on my arms rises as I sense not just the danger immediately around us but the implication of following through with the game.
Morning Glory has only laid out one hard rule: I can’t allude to or hear anything about the disappearance of its creator. But if there’s the possibility (that only I know about) to talk to Elle, who’s present in the game (also something that only I know about), then that means at some point, I will remember everything.
Increasingly, it appears to me that the game is meant to force open the doors of my memory.
So why are Vera and Liberty here? My eyes lock onto the crimson splotch of Vera’s blood, marring the snow. Did I doom them, in some way, by clicking PLAY AGAIN?
Is there any answer but yes? We should never have entered the game. But I’m positive none of us can make it out alone, and for that reason, we need to stick together. A unified front. I can’t, and won’t, threaten that unity by telling them everything I know about Morning Glory.
“We should move. In case they come back.” Liberty glances at me. “Can you walk?”
I nod and drop one foot into the snow, then another. Though I sense the cold up to my ankles, neither my socks nor shoes get wet. Liberty and Vera must be similarly unbothered because they trek briskly ahead.
My breaths arrive in sharper and sharper huffs as I try to match their pace. A brief but intense stab of envy jolts through me as I watch them from behind. They move gracefully in their cool outfits with their legitimate weapons, looking like real heroines with real purpose in our fantastic setting.
“—and high school? What was that like?”
“She’s not listening to you.”
I blink rapidly. Vera and Liberty both stare at me. Before turning away, Liberty says, “Still a daydream believer.” Her tone crosses the line from teasing to testy.
Vera slows down, splitting the distance between me and Liberty. “I was just wondering— How’s it been? In Calendula. Since … we left?”
A pause. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch. Things were … weird, after I moved, and I got caught up in some … You, um, go back to the clubhouse? Often?”
I should be touched by her interest. Instead, I feel more self-conscious than ever. I pick up my pace as I say, “I go there to sleep. Sometimes.”
Vera frowns. I clarify, “Not because home’s bad. Ma is … Ma’s great, that’s the same. It’s just more … comfortable. That’s why I was there tonight.
“Calendula was—is—fine. Or … not. You remember Darrah Lin? Um, apparently she went to Mr. Yang, the calculus teacher, after class to challenge a test score, and apparently he touched her leg, he says to pull her sock up, which, that’s still weird. But he’s tight with the Ye family so nothing happened. And then—”
Why am I chattering like a windup toy? The anecdote tumbles neatly out of me like a gacha from a token-operated machine. As hard as she’s trying to act otherwise, Vera doesn’t give a shit about Darrah Lin or Mr. Yang, though her eyes flash when I mention the Ye family, who basically run Calendula’s sheriff’s office; Elle’s dad’s side.
I dig into my memory to at least update Vera on Elle’s parents but come up blank. Right, I’ve already had this revelation: It’s not just Elle’s disappearance that I don’t remember. The three years after are missing, too, leaving me unable to answer a query as basic as How’s it been?
Except I did remember something, just now. I should feel elated. But, why that?
I have the disturbing sensation of watching my body from outside myself as a surgeon tweezes specific memories out of the gray murk of my brain and places them gingerly on slides. Allowing me selective glimpses of the life I’ve supposedly lived as if to say, See? You were really here.
As we stomp through the snow, I focus on similarly superficial people in our lives: Did Alex Li get into all the Ivies through his family connections, like he’d been bragging about since fourth grade? Did the other Alex Li ever get concertmaster? Did the other, other Alex Li—he always said it wasn’t him, but Elle shadowed him one day—finally stop stealing girls’ underwear from their gym lockers? Did June Sha ever report the boys’ soccer coach for assaulting her at training camp?
Nothing. Okay, what about: What was my highest final grade last year? What was my lowest? Did my mile time ever improve? Who did I talk to during classes? Which table did I sit at during lunch? Which teachers made me feel like a real person and not just another black-haired, brown-eyed, below-average-looking girl in a school of hundreds?
Nothing. And despite knowing it’s a futile endeavor, I try: What was a regular day of high school like? What did I do during the summers? Did anyone in or out of school talk to me about Vera, about Liberty, about Elle?
The only person who stands out in my memory is Ms. Song, one of the teaching aides. I always spent the first day of school with her for reasons that escape me now.
What if …
I’d always felt as though I was no one without Elle, but maybe that fear became truth. Maybe her disappearance triggered short-term memory loss that became long-term. Maybe what’s going on in my head has nothing to do with the game.
If so, how did Ma live with such a nothing daughter? A sentient tomb, a replica of the girl she’d raised? Or, even worse, did she not realize that her O had been replaced with a failed changeling, who can’t even properly apologize for the unforgivable crime of receiving the love and devotion meant for some other, more deserving girl?
I lean against one of the surrounding trees, double over, and dry heave, burping spittle which sizzles in the snow. Vera says something while patting my back, but I don’t hear her because I’ve just scratched a primal itch, one that only materialized when the scratch did. No—it’s simpler to say that throwing up on an empty stomach felt like second nature. And I’m …
Weak. So weak. No spine, no weapon, no memory. Without Vera and Liberty, I’d already be …
Liberty had stopped herself from saying it: Dead. My jaw clenches. Can we … Can we die in Morning Glory? Like not a “game” death but, for real? Is Elle trying to …
I can’t finish that sentence.
“She gets an apology, but I don’t?”
“What?” I can’t see her through my watering eyes, but Vera’s voice is brittle. “Don’t do— Birdy, she’s sick.”
Liberty turns on her heel. “Quit it with ‘Birdy.’ And, what a surprise.” Sarcasm, but also pity.
I’m missing something, but that applies to everything. I wipe my eyes with my hoodie sleeve as Vera steps toward Liberty.
Liberty asks, this time emphatically, “Where’s my apology, Vee?”
“You can call me Vee, but I can’t call you Birdy?”
“Birdy isn’t a real nickname. O was O, you were Vee, but Elle was only ever Elle, and because of that, I could never be ‘L.’ Birdy was just the best you could come up with.” Liberty whispers something under her breath.
“We didn’t think of you as a runner-up, c’mon, that’s—that’s fucked.”
“You’re so hard now. Cursing like a real teen rebel.”
Vera snaps a twig by her hand. “You got mean.”
“You got worse. What’s up with your hair and, everything?” Liberty laughs. High, mocking.
“What happened to you? In Los Angeles.” Vera reaches for Liberty. “I don’t remember being best friends with such a stranger.”
SMACK. Liberty’s hand bats Vera’s away. And Liberty hisses, “Best friend? You mean the girl you ghosted? I got the hint when you disconnected your number, congrats on making yourself dead to the world. Guess your mom taught you all about that.”
Vera glowers, an expression I’ve never seen on her. Her hands curl into fists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You could’ve told me.” Then Liberty turns to me. “And you. ‘O’s sleeping,’ every time I called. Your mom constantly covering for you, which, trust me, I got—”
Liberty’s mouth becomes a pixelated blob. After a few seconds of garbled speech, her voice cuts back in. “Seriously? We have to work with nothing?”
She turns her head toward the sky. Snow drapes over her as a crystalline veil.
And Liberty yells, “Fuck you, Elle! For this, and everything, and—”
More censorship, followed by, “But it was you.” A tear spills down her cheek before landing somewhere in the endless snow.
Not endless. Both Vera and I catch something in the periphery of our vision winking into focus: one moment a sea of white, the next a cityscape silhouette, buildings rising in right angles above the horizon. But we leave it alone as Liberty cries, a quiet, sad sound that fills my heart with guilt.
Copyright © 2025 by Lio Min.
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