Mel grinned at Kelly. “See — isn’t he great?!” she gushed excitedly. “I know you don’t like the idea of dating anyone who’s not your destined, but didn’t I _tell_ you Benji is just adorable? You two would be just the perfect couple! Don’t you just want to give him a _chance, _now that you’ve met him, Kells?”

Kelly remained silent, her eyes blankly glued to the calandar behind Mel’s head.

Mel’s grin diminished slightly. “…Is something wrong?”

_About time you noticed,_ said Kelly’s internal voice, cuttingly sardonic as always despite her numb inner turmoil.

“Benji _is_ my true love,” Kelly whispered.

Mel squealed. “Oh, of _course _he is — shouldn’t I have guessed that!” She paused, and then leaned forward, voice conspiratorially hushed. “So what’s you power, Kells?”

Kelly didn’t answer.

Mel frowned. “…Is the power bad?”

—

Kelly looked around with wide eyes, taking in everyone’s frozen features. For a moment, nothing at all moved.

Then, she watched as the world swirled into motion. The people remained frozen, but their shadows lengthened and twisted and came up to stand on the ground themselves, with long strips of darkness still connecting them to their casters. They moved, humanlike but unnatural, constructing scenes out of the contrast of dark and light.

Kelly had eyes only for her true love. Curious but with an odd sinking feeling in her gut, she watched as Benji’s shadow stretched out across the ground towards her. She turned as it continued past her, then stood up from the ground, tall against the horizon. She watched as it portrayed a terrible scene: shadow Benji walked exaggeratedly across a shadow road, before a shadow car twisted into existence from the length of inky darkness and headed straight towards him. The moment of collision was defined by an animated mess of random seeming black lines — it was hard to make out anything specific within it, but it didn’t matter. It was obvious what happened.

The mess of black expanded until there seemed to be nothing else, before it parted again, just slightly, to form something written in the gaps of the shadow: 12 20 24.

She spun back around, and saw all of the other shadows, each finishing up gory journeys of their own, similar number sequences of their own being scratched into walls of darkness.

With horror, she realized what they were: they were dates.

—

When life resumed, Kelly could do nothing but stare.

Benji’s hands were covering his mouth, eyes wide and slightly teary.

“…You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment,” he said.

The words tumbled weightlessly through Kelly’s numb lips almost without her permission; she felt far away as she responded: “You’ve waited nearly your entire life.”