In a million years, I would have never guessed how soon I would have become used to it all. The routine of rising at six thirty every morning to prepare myself for work became a thoughtless act in as little as a week. Cloudless summertime morning skies and flushed air accompanied me on my walk to the HHDA every morning. The hour to myself in my office before the doors opened proved more pleasant than I'd remembered. With the soft lights blanketing the polished floors and the conspicuous lack in obligation's demand, it was almost instantly the most favored part of my day.

During the first few days, I turned a wary eye towards Open Advisory. I might have ceased to find resentful clients and customers around the general area of my home, but now I was right at the source of where it could have been found. It was enough to hurl me off my guard to discover that not only this wasn't the case, but it was enough to seem like it had never been the case at all. The vast majority of the animals I struck up conversation with during that three-hour period at the beginning of the day either put forth polite courtesy or genuine kindness. Rarely did they even recognize me by name. It was like flinging my eyes open to the world just to realize that every little moment spent here before now had been nothing but a dream.

Being forgotten was something of both nightmare and bliss, depending on where it was coming from. I might not have been able to recall every single aspect of the day where I'd first received the suspension, but I had resorted to begging Lyle to bring me back to the HHDA just to avoid it. I was willing to give up my own pride just to sustain the memory that I had put out into the world. But now, standing in the results of it, with everything trickling back to me that had faded out of existence, I could see how it might have been the best thing that could have happened. Between the big things like screwing up my first Happy Homeroom session by letting my unchecked ego take control or something smaller like the awkward moments where my social anxiety tumbled my words over each other, that was all gone. It was a second chance, an entirely new way to present myself. It was only the beginning.

On the twenty-third, I attended my first constructive meeting in a year. There were no pressing matters, just a coming-together in a pre-scheduled conference. We discussed the status of our clients and what the future could have looked like. In fact, it was so inessential that the memory of it had wiped from my mind from the moment we dispersed. We adjourned the meeting early, having nothing of critical importance to share this time around, returned to our offices for the time being, and life endured as usual once the very next day began.

During the isolated hour between eight and nine the very next day on the twenty-fourth, I began drafting my first progress report. Lottie had offered permission to keep from starting that work up again until July and wouldn't have been expecting anything immense from me in that regard this month, so I held myself to a start with a soft deadline. It was a way to build up that self-discipline again, anyway. I jotted down a recording of my new arrival, what I had noticed in terms of changes and advances since picking up my work, and how I planned to transform the company with said work. I estimated the final product to result in about ten pages at the most and so I resisted stressing over anything more with the limited time that I had, but the first writing session alone earned me four entire pages. I let Lottie know to expect a shortened version of an assignment for the month rather than leaving it to the rolling in of the next month.

As directed, I studied each typed lesson as they were plopped down onto my desk once a week. Between putting together my first progress report and reading through the lesson in the first hour to myself, if I didn't clear away as much information presented to me as I would have been satisfied with or had been jolted out of the reading flow to get to somewhere else in the building, I allowed myself a few extra minutes during what would have been Happy Homeroom to finish it. With every passing week, I questioned myself whether I would have been ready to finally reimmerse myself back into that old part of my life, and every week came and went without a change.

On the twenty-ninth, I submitted an eight-page introductory progress report and was set to begin the real thing once the new month of July rolled in. When it did, I struck up another draft of a progress report on the day of Friday the first, having nothing but scraps of information for the month but squeezing out a couple of sentences for a start as it was. The second constructive meeting that I attended took place on the seventh, two weeks from the first, and the influential discussions began. For the first time since I had arrived last month, the question of where I personally stood in easing back into my work was set upon the table. It was evidently a little bit of a difficulty to balance the work I had been completing at the start, both my participation with Open Advisory and my progress reports, and my absence everywhere else. Inquiries arose of whether I was yet prepared to pick up my old work—Never pushy, of course, but curious.

It took a few times of being asked for it to strike me that my answer was subconsciously molded in a type. Before I fully realized it, I was declining and declining, relying on the truth of allowing more time to ease myself into my work before I wondered if it really was the truth. Was it the truth, or was it what was easy? Not only had my extended stretch at home worn off my motives to drive myself forward to some degree, but I'd made so much obvious progress towards healing that I was hesitant to push myself and ruin it all.

Something about it reminded me of the months separating my high school graduation and being accepted to work at the HHDA, lazing about just to surrender to my comfort zone and pushing back from a change in my life. It was time to start taking this seriously again. I wasn't the same animal that stumbled out of this building last year after the mistakes that had gouged into my life. Naturally, this only occurred to me just after a meeting where I had the perfect opportunity to mention it on the day of August fourth, so I had no other option left but to wait for the next one in two weeks on the eighteenth to create a more professional and official space to discuss. And so, instead I rolled up my sleeves, set my mind straight, and promised myself of upcoming change.

It was a change that I leaped at the opportunity to express the first availability that opened, that very next meeting near the middle of the month. It was the same day that those changes were set in place. As soon as the general announcements had been swept out of the way, I led the discussion with my new choice. It quickly proved to be a good decision to lead with it at the beginning, as the remainder of the meeting immediately and fully focused on the topic in regards to how it would have been applied to our future.

I was reminded of my responsibilities that would be brought in with my position as an instructor during Studies, though my active presence in Happy Homeroom held a bit more idled discussion. I was asked to retrieve my current lesson from my office before the conference would have been carried out any further—I struggled to pick it out of the other eight that I had been given up until now, but I got there eventually. The three of us practiced how I would return to the endeavor, the routine that the event would be looking like, and refreshed my sense of the activity. By the end of the rerun, and what I assumed at first would have been the adjourning of the meeting, a new touch of sureness crept through me. I wouldn't have been jumping in completely blindly even without the extra practice, but now I would maintain a steady path towards that future.

Another announcement tumbled in before the meeting had come to an end, although the time was already ticking past six o'clock in the evening when my shift was cut off, one that was delivered by Lottie. With the recent development within the company branch of Happy Homeroom, the software that was required to run the activity awaited the chance to be updated. In order to manage multiple designing sessions in one block, the program needed to be looped to provide it the option to restart smoothly. There had been nothing particularly holding back this update, just the everyday bustling that occupied too much space to make enough time for it, but this was better a time than any to complete it to refamiliarize me with the program. Lottie requested me to stay late about twenty minutes longer to join her in her office to loop the software—She would teach me how to do so once we stopped by and leave me to it to enlighten myself once again.

"I would have let you do this on your own computer, but it doesn't have the right software for that," Lottie confessed, lowering herself into a seat at her desk and rolling her chair closer to her keyboard. After following her into the room, I found myself standing near the shut door instead of joining her at her desk in what I understood fully was just plain awkward. "I apologize for asking you to stay late for this, as well. I didn't want to wait any longer than we had to. Let me just get this set up for you real quick."

"No, yeah, sure. Yeah, go for it," I said.

Lottie was almost instantly immersed in her work, lightly clicking the computer mouse to activate the program. Her dark eyes carried a certain stillness, a gentle focus as she watched the screen. My heart shivered with a sort of fluster and I tore my gaze away, casually tucking my paws into my pockets as I snuck a glance behind me through the glass in the door to pass the time. My eyes scoured the pearly walls of the hall on the other side, flicking as if searching for someone passing through. Like Lyle. Where was Lyle, anyway? For a split second, I wondered if he had already packed up and left for home, but then it struck me that he had mentioned before we split from the conference that he would be keeping himself in his office to finish some extra work and wait for Lottie. Somehow, I'd already forgotten.

"All right, that should do it," Lottie said at last. I faced front again to see her raise herself from her chair again, stealing a few more taps of keys along the keyboard before her eyes met mine. "I've launched the program and entered the coding section. If you'll take a seat, I'll show you what to do from here. It's a tedious process, but you'll get the hang of it."

I managed a nod, forcing myself forward to join her. Even as I neared, I was immediately plunged into the warmth of her presence. I kept my face still, ignoring the throb of jitters somewhere deep in my stomach in approaching such close quarters, and fumblingly stepped past her to reach the chair. Plastered across the computer screen in the launch of the program was an illuminated white page that glowed through the golden hour, spitting out rows and rows of assorted code. As I sank down into a seat, Lottie situated herself to stand at my side, perching a paw on the back of the chair.

"As of right now, the system can only be looped manually," Lottie explained beside me. Her serene, polite voice resonated in the depths of my chest, far down further than where my heart skipped in a dance of hypnotic unease. "Now that we're permitting three sessions per afternoon, leaving out the hassle is my top priority. When you're right in the coding like this, there's a button you can use to restart it all, which is what we've been doing, but it just takes up too much time to continue that way."

I dropped my focus from the computer screen and looked up at her. To peer over my shoulder to address the screen, she stood so close by that she nearly brushed against me. I caught the vibrant reflection of the screen in the darkness of her eyes as she studied it, almost completely drowning out the admirable color. I noticed that a few tiny wisps of hair escaped from the bun at the top of her head after the lengthy day at work, though her finely-trimmed bangs sat in a perfect line. Lottie had seen me look at her and returned the gaze, our eyes meeting for only a few seconds before she returned her attention to the screen. I didn't look away from her face.

"Like I said before, your main objective while you're in the code is to loop the software and save us all of that extra trouble," Lottie went on. "We will most certainly thank you for it. There's an extra bit of code that you're going to need to install in many different places, and then comes the tiresome part of it. You'll need to exit out of the coding to return to the main program, but make sure that you save your work first or you'll lose it. Once you've finished all of the coding, I want you to run through the program. If we're lucky, it'll run smoothly on the first go. If it doesn't or something goes wrong, you may need to enter the code again and check for mistakes. I'm going to make a note of which changes to submit and where."

Lottie withdrew a notepad and a pen from a drawer in the desk, shifting instead to the side of the desk to begin to jot down a note with her head bent down over her writing. The rapid scratch of the pen against the sheet was the only sound to strike the air for several seconds. After a few moments of writing, she paused, thoughtfully contemplating what she was meant to write, just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the writing that splattered across the note. It was a string of various punctuation, divided in the middle by the word end bordered by a couple of front slashes each. Once I had processed this, Lottie had already set off into writing again, scratching down one last note under the first before she reached the notepad across the desk to plop it beside the computer keyboard. The second mark that she had made instructed me to then begin a new line of code featuring the word restart, splitting the word between more punctuation.

"It's fairly straightforward," Lottie said, wheeling open the same drawer to toss her pen back inside. She shut the drawer again and rose to her full height, turning back to look at me while I hadn't once looked away from her. "Every time you see the first line of code, create another one directly afterward as I've written down here. It's important that you only install what I've written, otherwise I'm really not sure what it could do to the program. It's also important that you don't miss any codes that you need to add onto or it won't register that something significant has changed and might crash because of the conflicting information. If you need any help, I'll be nearby. It'll only take a little while, and then you can head home. What do you think?"

Well, the very first thought that had reached my mind was how beautiful she was, but that was clearly not the answer she was looking for. She likely would have appreciated a more professional response over the truth right now.

"I can manage it," I told her. "I'll finish up as quickly as I can."

"Great." Lottie lightly patted the note resting beside the computer keyboard for a moment as if drawing my attention back to it before she withdrew again. "I'll just be tidying up some files in here while you do that."

The sound of rustling pages, drawers rolling open or closed, and sheets of paper being peeled back from each other served as a consistent background in my efforts as I sat at the computer and Lottie kneeled at stacks of file cabinets on the right side of the room. I scrolled through the coding, my eyes scanning lines and lines of numbers and symbols, and made a mental note each time of where I had seen end points to add to. The first five minutes alone was simply scrolling, tracing segments I would need to adjust until I arrived at a point where I failed to scroll further. I swept back to the beginning, this time in acting on my instructions, and transcribed bits of code where I had been prompted to. The clock hanging from the wall ticked with every passing second, the room gradually dimming and losing its golden touch. It was only after almost half an hour did I reach the end of the code and the assignment, or what I had initially assumed was the end of the assignment, and ran the program through. At first, nothing seemed impaired, flicking through images with clicks of the space button, but then it froze itself into a gray screen where I couldn't figure out how to escape it. With Lottie's assistance in entering the code for a second time, we noticed together that I had just missed a few lines of code to be built from and it was nothing incorrect with the system itself.

It was a hint past six forty when I'd completed the task in front of me, having organized the coding and flipped through the program two times more to confirm that it restarted itself smoothly in loop. I let the screen sit on the first image of the program, the text stretching across in introduction to the activity, and rolled back the chair to glance past the screen at Lottie. She had risen to stand near a middle column of cabinets and had cracked open a pale folder to pick through the sheets of paper tucked away inside, immersed in her own work and unaware that I was ready to move on.

"I'm finished," I told her. Lottie raised her head from the folder, stealing a glance back to listen as I spoke. "Everything is running smoothly. There's no more problems with the loop."

"Oh, that's great," Lottie replied, reaching down to wheel open a low drawer and sliding the folder back into place. As she shut the drawer and straightened up again, she went on. "I truthfully had no idea that this would have taken up so much of your time. I apologize for that. I should let you know it's my best guess that your parents know where you are and what's happening. Uncle Lyle must have contacted them."

"That's okay. I don't mind staying late if you need me to," I assured her, climbing up from my seat to leave once again. As I rolled the chair back into place at the desk, I considered my parents—They might have had dinner already prepared for me before they had heard I would have been staying late. They might have eaten without me already. "Is there anything else I can do before I go?"

"Yes, just one more thing, if you don't mind," Lottie pointed out. "Once you leave, I'll be locking up this room, so I would appreciate it if you'd close the program and shut down the computer while you're there. After you've done that, you're dismissed for the day."

It was the least I could have done. I didn't bother seating myself again, instead leaning over the keyboard to close down the software from where I stood. It was nothing more than a few clicks of prompted buttons, saving my work and exiting from the program, but it was as the mouse was darting to reach the prompt to shut down the computer that Lottie's voice shattered my concentration.

"You looked so intently focused while you were working," Lottie admitted. My paw instantly fumbled, accidentally loosing my grip of the mouse as I offered my attention once again. When had she been looking at me? And when was the last time she had actually initiated casual conversation with me? "It was like there was nothing else in the world that you would have rather been doing at six o'clock on a Thursday afternoon."

"Well, of course," I told her. I wasn't entirely certain if there was anything else to say. "I love doing this work. It means a lot to me to support you. And the company."

"You know, I can see that, actually," Lottie replied, shifting her weight to perch her paws behind her along the top rim of the file cabinets.

I tore my gaze from her to shut down the computer, clicking the mouse against the prompt and watching the screen darken abruptly before I straightened up and stepped to the side of the desk to better face her and engage in conversation as she continued to address me.

"Your determination and diligence have really been shining through recently," Lottie went on. Suddenly, from the breath of a moment when I'd laid my eyes on her again, the soft tranquility in the dark color of her eyes fixed me to the sight like some kind of trance. "I do notice it. You're being more careful not to make any rash decisions. I notice it and I appreciate it. I really do. I can see that you've changed, and I mean that in a good way."

Wait a second. No, this wasn't casual conversation at all. She was opening up to me, allowing herself to become vulnerable even within the shakiness of where our friendship stood. Or maybe it wasn't so shaky at all, if the trust in unveiling herself had begun to thrive once again. Maybe we were going to be okay after all.

"Thank you, Lottie," I said. Her eyes were fixed upon me, taking in every word, just as gentle even in the stillness of her gaze. I had never loved her more than I did right in this moment. "I think I've noticed a change, as well. I want to fix my mistakes and work hard for the future of Happy Home more than anything in my life. I really have been trying to make things better, both with everything that happened and between us, and it makes me feel really appreciated to hear that you've seen that."

"Digby, if you don't know that I see everything that happens around here, then you still don't know the first thing about me," Lottie said, a smile etching into her face. She might not have been quite joking with me, but she clearly wasn't completely serious either. A smile. "Don't worry about that. I can see it. I've kept you here long enough. You should get going now."

My presence in Happy Homeroom began the very next day. There was no preparation, no practice, just appearance. It was such an abrupt change that it had completely been wiped from my mind by the time I took the journey back to my office after lunch and Lottie resorted to retrieving me at five past three while the activity was waiting to begin. Three separate participants visited us that afternoon, two friendly and one particularly shy. The first used a wooded template, the second an antique set, and the third completely blank. I put a cheerful face forward, but after the first two sessions, the mask of enthusiasm had begun to wear off in the repetitive routine. It turned out a temporary reaction as I departed from the room at six with the troubles cleared from my mind.

Three days later, I began my shifts as an instructor in Studies from twelve thirty until three. I'd returned right to the basics, offering a lesson with the most introductory course. I was blessed with a specifically assiduous group, sneaking a glance over my shoulder from the whiteboard to find several heads bowed down in scribbling down notes at what I was saying. With the steady progression of the information I was presenting and the unbroken attention that was given in return, it was nearly a miracle how well my first lesson back into the branch played out. One of the students at the end, a gray-striped cat around the age of her early twenties, even complimented my teaching and told me that she'd learned far more than she would have guessed. It was at that moment that I knew the future was heading in the right direction.

August concluded, breaking out into September. The temperatures were slowly diminishing, resorting to the brisk shiver of autumn. I had fallen back into my old schedule, producing everything I had worked for on the first time around and more. Lottie's twenty-third birthday came around on a Monday, a day that I only realized towards the end that it was the one-year anniversary of the moment I had figured out that I had fallen in love with her. The otters brought in cupcakes for the special day that we delighted in in the break room within the hour of eight to nine; vanilla with generous white frosting and edible happy-birthday posters poking out from the mass. Lyle let me in on the secret that he was planning on giving Lottie her birthday cake when they would arrive home so that they could share a mini-party together. Maybe I should have expected it, but as I was waiting in somewhat-hopeful anticipation of an invitation that would deliver Lottie and me to a genuine friendship again, it had never arrived.

What proved the fact more clearly that we had not yet reached that genuine friendship point was that we appeared to have struck some kind of a standstill. Last month, Lottie had opened up to me and confessed that she understood that I was trying to make a change in my behavior. That night, I walked the path home while toying with the idea that the trust in becoming vulnerable meant that our connection was developing, changing into something stronger. It wasn't, as it hardly took many days to notice. We might have even lost progress somehow, even though I didn't have the faintest clue what I'd done wrong this time. Lottie ceased to smile at me or speak to me casually from that moment out, only initiating conversation if it related to our work in some way and only when necessary. That wasn't a friendship, much less the best friendship that we'd been immersed in two years ago. It remained a strictly professional connection. It appeared that there was still work to be done there.

October opened up, leaving September in the past. Spooky, orange-and-black Halloween decorations sprawled across the walls, partly by my efforts of taping some up, but they only lingered for the month and slowly dematerialized across November. Leaves on the trees were painted from green, orange, to yellow and all of the vibrant autumn colors. The first snowfall of the nearing wintertime visited on a gloomy November Friday, but kept light and melted before the sun rose the following Saturday. It was the final day of the month when the heavier snowfalls began to plummet down, plunging the beginning of December into an ocean of pure, glistening snow. Sparkling Toy Day trees were positioned in almost every corner of the largest rooms, delivering festive adornments across the walls in its wake. On the twentieth, I reached my newest year of twenty-one, earning a lavender blank notebook with a matching ballpoint from Lottie and nothing from Lyle. Toy Day came and went amidst the dense snowfalls of deep winter, presents were torn open at home as a family around the shedding pine tree in the living room, and in the blink of an eye, the year of 2016 was past to make room for 2017.

A sort of tingle of anticipation tickled my stomach the night before the new year would begin, a tugging feeling that I couldn't possibly ignore. This year was about to be immense. I wasn't exactly sure how it was that I knew that, but something about the statement was so certain that it was as if I was considering whether the sky was blue. This was about to be a very big year, but the question was of what. Success? Another downfall? It was still early yet—The year had yet to even begin—And so I was left with tons of space to decide that for myself. This would become my best year yet.

I only wish that I could have guessed, even slightly, even just a warning, what I was about to stumble into just around the corner. A new change, yes—But an ordeal like I'd never seen before, one that I couldn't have prepared for even if I'd known beforehand what was coming my way.

February 13, 2017

.   .   .

My daily shift at Happy Home was over already, the clock hanging from my office wall ticking and ticking with the reminder that a few minutes had already come around past six in the evening, but my departure would have had to wait a few minutes more. Yesterday evening around this time, Lyle had stopped by my office to deliver my weekly lessons, stared at my desk for a few moments and the cluttered stacks of old paperwork that it supported, and left with a passing comment of how untidy I'd allowed my space to become. After that remark, I'd made a promise to myself to organize my belongings on the next opportunity I could gain. It was in doing so that something caught my attention that I hadn't anticipated to find for years to come.

The strewn sheets of paper littering my desk wasn't much of a challenge to dispose of, as it was all of last year and could have been recycled. I made a brief stop out of my office to toss them out. After that, I'd assumed that I had finished the task, but then thoughtlessly wheeled open a drawer to find another immense stack of used papers that I knew at once would have been a strain to go through. I plopped the pile down onto the desk next to my computer keyboard and began to rake through the sheets.

I studied the pale-green sticky note in my paw, my eyes flitting through the written text. I had initially spotted the note sandwiched between a progress report from four years ago and a sheet of information that I had filled out around that time, halfway through sorting the stack I had removed from the drawer. I recognized the writing without a thought as my own, but the writing itself within the familiar foundation it clung to was jotted down more carelessly than I would write today. If the context clues held true, this note would have also been brought into creation when I was just seventeen or eighteen. It was the context that plagued bafflement in my mind. It was a phone number, unlabelled and unmarked with nothing but the digits.

With the way it had been cast aside, I must not have cared for it so deeply. My eyes fixed upon the writing so firmly that my gaze nearly burned through, combing through my memory to determine whom the number belonged to. Who was I even in contact with during the first year of my working history at the HHDA? The alignment of the digits sparked a flicker of recognition that I couldn't quite place, a natural acknowledgment like I had once seen them in that order countless times before. And then, quite abruptly, a name latched with the number.

Isabelle.

This was the number to dial for my sister's first prepaid house that she had stayed in when she had first left home, after she had spent months in a public campsite as she couldn't afford a place to stay. It was the number I had punched in to reach her while we'd been going back and forth exchanging conversation when we were both seventeen before the massive battle that had forever damaged our connection. It was anybody's guess if she even still used that number. Although the majority of our last conversation, being two years ago now, had faded from memory, I recalled screaming at her for having failed to find work after so long of searching. For all I knew, she'd moved out that same night and found work hours later.

I brought the question to Lottie's office next to mine. It was likely but uncertain whether she would have still been present—Sometimes she stayed late to finish an assignment or a job of cleaning like I was tonight. After arriving at her shut office door, I snuck a glimpse through the glass window fixed into the door to check for her occupancy and located her seated at her desk to examine her computer screen. I tucked away the sticky note in my pocket and gave the glass a gentle knock, snatching Lottie's attention as she rolled her chair away from the computer to look at me. I saw her mouth move in words that I struggled to catch from the other side of the door as she politely gestured to permit my entrance.

I twisted the doorknob, easing open the door to step into the room. As I emerged, Lottie folded her paws together on the desk in front of her—Spotless, unlike mine at the moment—And met my gaze from across the room.

"I'm sorry for bothering you so late," I apologized as the door latched shut behind me. "I just had a couple of questions."

"Please don't apologize for that. It doesn't bother me," Lottie assured me, stealing a short glance at her computer screen before refocusing on me. "What can I help you with, Digby?"

"I was just wondering if you've been in contact with Isabelle lately," I explained. Lottie stirred in her seat again to carefully rise as I spoke. "There's a few things I was wanting to know."

"I have been, actually," Lottie pointed out, moving to the side of her desk inside to engage in more proper conversation. "Not frequently, but here and there. We send each other letters sometimes. What were you thinking about?"

"I found a note with her number on it from 2013." I slipped a paw into my pocket, withdrawing the sticky note and outstretching it for Lottie to take. Lottie hustled forwards, easing the note from my paw as I spoke and observing it. "It was stuck with a bunch of other papers from that time period. I think this is the number from when she was living in her first house. Does she still live there?"

"My goodness, no. She's had quite a few changes since then," Lottie remarked, lifting her eyes to lock with my gaze again. Oh. Maybe my half-hearted guess of her current situation wasn't too far off, then. "Soon after you two lost communication, she left that house and relocated to an entirely different island to find work. She was living in another campsite for a while, since she'd lost her money fighting to stay in the first house. Actually, just a while ago, she'd piled up enough Bells to buy a new house in full under her name. That was earlier this month, if I remember correctly. She's been staying there since then."

"It sounds like she found a job, then, if she could afford that," I pointed out as Lottie folded the note back into my paw.

"Oh, that's putting it mildly," Lottie replied. "She's been working two jobs to support herself. She hasn't told me much about them, though. I think she's afraid that she'll spill something confidential. She's pretty new to working a professional job and isn't quite sure yet what she can and can't discuss as an employee to those companies. If you're thinking about reaching out to her, she works early in the morning until eleven at night between both of those jobs if you can work around that."

"More than eleven hours of work each day? " I echoed blankly. "How is that even physically possible?"

"Well, it's Isabelle, to be fair. She's always had a knack for working hard," Lottie reminded me. "Thank you for stopping by. I'll see you tomorrow."

I struggled to invent any other questions I would have had, so I accepted her advice. I exchanged my goodbyes, crammed the note back into my pocket, and started off towards the door again. Just as I was shuffling in approach of the door that would lead me back into the hall, Lottie jolted me back to reality with my own name.

"Oh, Digby, wait," Lottie spoke up from behind me.

The sharp clicking of her nearing steps followed after her voice, only ceasing as I turned around. She had hastened to join me again, to stop me, and stood in front of me to continue speaking.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I just have one more thing I'd like to say," Lottie admitted. "I think it's great that you're finding an interest in Isabelle's routine again after what you two went through a couple years ago. It really shows how much you've grown since then. I hope you can work things out. I want you to know that the fact that you're trying to shows your genuine and sincere character. In full truth, I think you're amazing for that."

Wow. The statement struck me like a slap in the face, my mind reeling to create a response, but in such a sudden stun, my mouth refused to open. The clock secured to the wall patiently ticked with every second that the silence endured. Under the unusual atmosphere, our eyes had locked together, breathlessly waiting for the other to do or say something.

"Oh, that was awkward. Um," Lottie finally spoke up. She seemed to have been forced into a certain embarrassment at the lengthy pause, her paws fumbling to fidget with each other and then smooth back her up-done hair. It was an anxious tendency from years ago. Maybe that shy feature of hers hadn't gone away completely after all. "Just ignore that, please. You should go. I've kept you here long enough."

Lottie sent me on my way out from the building with a second sticky note with Isabelle's new phone number and another request to forget the uncomfortable moment that we had shared. I braved the thick snow on my way home, wrapped snugly in my puffy coat with the past chat rolling through my mind. Before I had carried the questions to Lottie's office, I hadn't exactly attached myself to the task of reaching out to my sister again or had even stumbled across the thought of it at all. It was Lottie that had first put the idea into my head. As soon as she heard that I was curious about what Isabelle's life had turned into nowadays, the excitement of the thought that I was being the bigger animal and letting her back into my life had shimmered more vividly within her eyes than any tear.

It was an idea, that was for sure. But whether it was a good one was flung through my mind with every crunching step across the snow. I considered the last time I had been in active communication with Isabelle at seventeen and our big fight at nineteen. The core of our damaged friendship was solely based on my mental health and the miscommunication that brought that certain downward spiral upon me. Advocating for myself was an easier task now, not to mention my mental health was utterly peaking. I struggled to even pinpoint the last day that the familiar throb of misery wrenched my gut. Besides, even if I crashed again, I had my resources. Mom and Dad were immensely talented at bringing me back up to mental health. Hearing that I would be reconnecting with Isabelle would splatter their faces with beaming smiles. With all of the elements to consider, my decision seemed heavily weighed. Maybe it was time to reconnect.

I arrived at home, greeted my parents, excused myself from dinner, and settled down for a nap. They both expressed concern that I was napping so late, reminding me that if I rested too close to bedtime that I would have struggled to sleep, but I was about to have a late night if I was to call my sister when she got off work. For almost half an hour, I tossed and turned in bed, but I drifted off somewhere around seven. The sleep that reached me was deep and unbroken, and I only managed to free myself from it when my bedroom was drowned in shadows. Drowsiness clouded my mind as I fumbled to check my alarm clock, discovering it past eleven thirty at night and nearly midnight. Between how late Isabelle's shift ended and whatever time it would have taken for her to return home, she must have still been awake.

As the sleep receded from my system, I clumsily fetched the sticky note from my coat pocket and slipped through the dimness of the dead hours to reach the living room. The slim moonlight pooling over the couch was just barely enough to verify the digits sprawled across the note, squinting in the low light to read my reference. I plopped down into a seat on the couch, blanketed with the moonlight that descended into the desolate space, plucked the phone from the receiver, and punched in the numbers provided for me.

The phone was already ringing by the time I tucked it under my floppy ear, beckoning someone to answer from the other line. Particularly damp clumps of snow clobbered the window above my head, rattling the glass in its casing. Something deep in my stomach was thumping with an almost sickened anticipation. If I had changed so much in the last four years, then she likely had as well. There was no telling just who she could have turned into since we last spoke, so many words spinning through my mindspace as to what to call her. Was she friendly? Arrogant? Gentle? Spoiled? Had her ignorance transformed her into a total jerk? Would she have even accepted my attempted restoration of our friendship the way I was ready to?

Who are you now?

Once, twice, thrice, even a fourth time did the phone ring. The call was failing. I raised the sticky note under the pale moonlight, running my eyes across the scrawled digits to check that I had tapped them in correctly. Maybe she was sleeping after all. It would have been immoral to keep her at work this late, especially with how long she works before that point. I'd call again, and if she still didn't answer—

Oh. Never mind. A click on the other line told me that the phone had finally been picked up, and right at the last second, it seemed. My breath shallowed, my ears straining for any sort of sound. A slow, tight inhale was drawn from the other line, something that sounded like how I felt. And then a voice, built from the foundation that my ears identified better than any other after spending the years of my childhood listening to it, spoke to greet me.

"Well, I mean, this day has been pretty stressful, if you know what I mean," Isabelle mumbled. There was a certain strain in her voice, but whether it was physical or emotional strain I couldn't accurately define. "You know how it goes. I appreciate you for checking in, though. I'll probably be okay. I always am. I just might have had a tiny little drink of whiskey that I picked up from the store to ease the stress."

Wow, okay. Out of everything I would have guessed my sister had become, an alcoholic was not one of those things. Words failed me, quite like my last interaction with Lottie, my mind wiped clean of anything to say. My mouth hung open in the emptiness of response, giving in to the plea of silence in my shock.

"Mr. Nook?" Isabelle prompted hesitantly when I didn't speak. I wasn't sure who she had been expecting to be calling her, if someone had made arrangements to speak with her later today or if someone had grown to her close acquaintance. Clearly, it hadn't been me, given that my last name wasn't Nook.

"Is this a bad time to talk?" I forced myself to question.

A strangled gasp escaped immediately from the other line at the sound of my voice. A muffled thump like a glass being put down shortly followed it.

"Digby?" Isabelle blurted incredulously. "Wait, is that you?"

"Yeah, it is," I told her. A twinge of discomfort wrung out my stomach. "Are you drunk right now?"

"Oh, be quiet! I'm not even that drunk. I'm just a little fuzzy," Isabelle retorted sharply. A pause cut into her protest, leaving a quietness to fall between us for a few seconds before her sigh breathed from the other line. "Sorry about that. That was uncalled for. It's just been a day. It's so weird to talk to you again. Can I ask why you're calling me right now?"

I allowed myself a short inhale to calm my nerves, shifting on the couch to a more casual seat. It was a challenge to brush off the thought that I was trying to talk to my sister while she was on the road to getting drunk, seemingly answering my call with a glass of whiskey right in her paw, but at least she was trying. At least she accepted the effort to talk.

"Well, I know you work late, so I wanted to give you a call when you weren't working," I explained. "I don't mean to take up the time when you should be sleeping. I wasn't sure when to call to work around your hours. Lottie told me that you're working about fifteen hours or something like that. Jeez, that's probably why you're drinking. I just—"

"No, sorry, that's not what I meant," Isabelle interjected. "I meant, why are you calling me? Why now, of all times? What brought this on?"

"Oh," I said. Something shuffled near the hallway, but after nothing followed it up, I assumed that it must have been one of my parents in their room. "I had some time to reconsider what happened between us. I thought that it was time to reach out again. I've changed a lot since we were in contact, and obviously, so have you. I think I want to try again with our friendship."

"Wait, really?" Isabelle replied. "Wow, that's not something I expected to hear today. Oh, did I interrupt you? You can keep going."

"No, it was kind of a natural stopping point," I admitted. "Anyway, I want to talk about what happened last time. I didn't treat you very well and I need to own up to that. I shouted at you and I berated you. That's not who I am or who I was trying to be. I promise. I was going through so much at the time and I just really wasn't in the best state of mind. I'm not trying to use that as an excuse, of course. I just want you to know. If we become friends again, I'm not going to let that get ruined again because of my lashing out. And if I step out of line again, hold me to my promise."

"No, I get it. I really do," Isabelle informed me. "Oh, shoot. I just almost spilled my drink. What happened between us isn't your fault. I don't want you to be so hard on yourself about it. I'll say it like it is. I abandoned you. The fault is mine. I was the one that didn't treat you very well and I'm sorry for that. I know how you feel. I'm kind of... Actually, that's kind of where I'm at right now, hence the drinking."

The uncomfortable palpitation deep in my stomach had shriveled down into guilt, sorrow, gouging through my aching chest. Everything that I had been dragging myself through in my final teenage years. Every night spent shivering with silent tears, sinking into the temptation of an angry and somber life that my grief unknowingly brought on. That was where she was right now. And I wasn't there for her. I hadn't had any idea.

"Isabelle, I'm so sorry," I mumbled.

"Why?" Isabelle asked. Something in her voice was softer, more sincere. "You didn't cause this. Neither did I. I'm trying to remember that part. It's hard not to blame myself for getting to this point. A lot has changed, and that's beyond either of our control. We've changed. I finally started working. Two jobs, in fact. I don't know if Lottie told you that. Even you've had some big changes. You got fired, didn't you?"

"No." The word escaped from my tongue more abruptly than I could have bit it. The question had come so suddenly and unexpectedly that my first instinct was to jump in and correct the misinformation. I tried again. "Well, I mean, not really. I'm guessing you heard everything that happened and what I did. I think I was incredibly lucky not to be fired after that. I was just put on a work suspension for a year. I came back last June."

Faded memories had begun to trickle back in. Around the nightmarish day that I'd been told to leave, we'd just heard back on a day that we planned to shut down the HHDA if the crisis didn't get solved. It was sometime in October, but the specific day had completely gone from memory. Lyle hadn't been pleased to visit me the night after to let me know of the plan of my suspension, the curt tone proving so. He had visited me in Lottie's place. Lottie, who had screamed and cried to have me gone for good.

"It was quite a battle to stay at all, actually," I admitted. "I couldn't lose something like that. Lottie insisted that I be fired for good, but Lyle had worked out an agreement with her. I'll never forget the way she screamed at me when she found out what had happened. I don't think she's ever cried so hard."

"What about your friendship?" Isabelle asked hesitantly. "How is that doing now, after that?"

"I don't know," I confessed. Something in the particular clicking of the words swelled up behind my eyes in a threat to spring tears to them. "I don't know where it stands. I wonder every single day. I'm trying so hard to get her to see that I never meant to hurt her, but I don't think she fully believes me. She says she does, but she's still keeping her distance from me. I don't know what else to do. She's everything to me, Isabelle. Everything. I have no idea what I am to her. She's the best part of me and always has been, and I made life so much worse for her. I wouldn't be surprised if she still doesn't trust me. I don't..."

A tightness locking up my throat swallowed my words. I gasped in a sharp inhale, ready to begin again, but it was then that the tears surged to my eyes. Choking on both a sob and my next words, I pressed my strained voice again.

"I don't know if she ever will again," I whispered.

Silence dragged on from the other line in a lack of response as I smothered a sob, clamping a paw to my mouth as the tears began to soundlessly trickle down my cheeks. I couldn't restrain the gasps that my tears resorted me to, but I muffled them as softly as I could manage through my paw. Isabelle didn't need to hear that right now. The memory of Lottie screaming for me to leave her and the idea that she could never forgive me pounded through my head, wrenching my chest with misery as my eyes, squeezed shut, spilled over with tears. What had I done to us?

At some point, Isabelle allowed herself a slow sip of her drink as neither of us spoke. I caught my breath, though the clench of emotional torment refused to loosen its grip on my chest and my eyes were stiff in the beckoning of tears. I drew in a deep breath, wiped at my tearstained face with the padding of my free paw and smeared the moisture away, weakly cleared my throat, and changed the subject.

"You said that you were working two jobs now?" I said. A scratchiness stretched out my voice in the stifling of tears.

"Oh, yes, I am," Isabelle pointed out, a hastiness that was a hint away of relief to shift the topic. "Actually, I think you'd find this interesting. I recently just got a job working for the Mario brothers. Well, recently as in, like, a year ago."

The Mario brothers, a pair of brothers known as Mario and Luigi, was a duo that I wasn't a stranger to. Before I was born, even before Lottie was born, the two of them had been in direct rivalry with the HHDA—Likely just the HHA at the time—Scrambling against each other to see who would reach ultimate fame first. Nowadays, both Lyle and the Mario brothers were not short of fame and knowledge of their names in the slightest, but the latter had unfortunately exceeded further levels of fame very early on. They might have even been the most well-known names in the entire world, sporting several tremendously-favored and demanded companies that I couldn't even list off all by name. And now Isabelle was working with them?

"No, you didn't," I argued. "I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you right now."

"I did," Isabelle protested. "Cross my heart and hope to die. I got invited to work with them last February within a company called Smash Ultimate. It's basically this competitive fighting scheme. I train for combat and I'm paid a salary for it. It's actually a pretty generous salary, if I'm being honest, but you didn't hear that from me. Once I get trained enough, I put on performances with other fighters and we engage in competitive combat."

"You joined a fight club run by the Mario brothers," I echoed. "Do Mom and Dad know you did that?"

Isabelle's answer, at least verbally, didn't arrive right away. For several seconds, the only sound I could register on the other line was a sort of awkward breathing from her in what was either her distraction or her hesitance to answer.

"I haven't really spoken with them since I left home," Isabelle admitted. "That sounds really bad. I know it does. I've just been so busy. That's the truth. I could only manage to keep contact with a couple of animals while I was away, and that was you and Lottie. With what's been going on recently, I've had even less time."

"What do you mean, 'what's going on recently'?" I asked. "Do you mean the double jobs?"

"Well, kind of. There's a bit more than that," Isabelle explained. "You know when I mentioned those performances that come every once in a while? It's called a combat trial and I have one of those on the first. I've been trying to prepare for that. I have absolutely no idea who I'm going to be fighting. That's the real reason I'm drinking tonight, to be honest. There's a ton of really strong fighters at Smash and I told Mario I wanted a challenge. I'll bet I'm going to be paired up with one of them. We'll see how this goes. It's getting a bit late, though. I should turn in."

"Can you call me when you finish your trial?" I requested. "I want to know how it goes. We can fully catch up then. When do you finish?"

"Let me think about that for a moment. Um." A pause stretched through Isabelle's sentence, lasting for no longer than three seconds before she spoke again. "I'm not working my second job that day, so it should be about three thirty at the very latest. Around there is when you should expect a call from me. We can talk about everything then and see what we can do about a friendship. Does that sound good?"

Three thirty. Where would I have been? That would have been half an hour after the start of Happy Homeroom. I would have been with a phone while I was there.

"I can work with that," I said. "Goodnight, Isabelle."

"Goodbye, Digby," Isabelle replied. "I feel that change is in the air for us, don't you think?"