Chapter 1: I Applied to Scares Customers and Got Drafted

Dante was halfway through his first proper job interview when his mouse started moving on its own and opened the hentai folder on his desktop. He sat in the shirt his mother had ironed, watching several hundred bad decisions load beside the webcam preview.

The escape room offered 22 dollars an hour to play a fantasy villain, and its wooden audition box had arrived that morning. At eighteen and a half, Dante had finally found someone willing to pay for the speeches he practiced in the bathroom, so he had hidden his sorceress figure behind the monitor and called the room clean.

The woman interviewing him had kept her camera off while asking him to pretend the box belonged to an enemy, threaten that enemy, and open it without damage. He had prepared an excellent speech, but his computer apparently had a presentation of its own.

The cursor selected an adult anime woman in a tiny cow print costume, filling his screen with the filename still visible. Dante had named it so he could find it easily, a decision he regretted as soon as he saw MILF beside his job application.

Dante leaned across the desk, filling the camera preview with jet black hair and one crimson eye. He could have looked handsome, but the interviewer mostly had his forehead.

"That isn’t something I meant to share," Dante said, trying to drag the window closed while his face remained visible beside it. "Could you give me a second? My mouse is doing something weird."

Dante yanked the mouse cable out, but the cursor opened another picture while he held the loose cable. It was the same woman from behind, because apparently the interviewer needed references.

"What’s a MILF, honey, and why is she wearing such a tiny cow costume?" His mom stood in the doorway with a laundry basket against her hip, reading the filename before he managed to turn the monitor away. "I thought you were talking to someone about a job."

"I am talking to someone about a job, which is why I’d really appreciate you not saying that out loud." Dante stood, trying to block the screen with his broad shoulders, but six feet three inches of panic still wasn’t enough. He turned the monitor instead. The webcam on top swung past his sweatpants and the underwear scattered across his bed before landing on his mother.

Dante turned the camera back toward the desk, too late to hide the laundry he had dumped on the bed. He had cleaned only the part visible behind his shoulders; the interviewer had now toured the rest.

"Those are drawing references," he said, because explaining why the pictures existed had somehow become more urgent than explaining why they were opening. "People save them to study anatomy and stuff."

"You asked me to fill out your grandmother’s birthday card because you didn’t want to draw a heart." She put the basket down while he tried to close the image again, and he briefly considered how far 22 dollars an hour would get him if he moved out today.

Dante’s face burned while Mom waited for an explanation and the interviewer watched. "Mom, could you please just give me a minute?" he said, waving her toward the door harder than he meant to.

Pressure ran down his arm and gathered in his palm, like he had pushed against something heavy that nobody else could see. His fingers went hot, the pressure snapped loose, and the window behind his desk blasted open hard enough to hit the outside wall.

Cold air tore through the room, lifting the papers off his desk and knocking a row of manga from the shelf. His mom grabbed the laundry basket from beside her feet while two books he kept turned toward the wall landed open at her feet, because apparently the computer had not covered his interests in enough detail.

"Christ, there must be a storm coming," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder while she checked the window. "Are you all right? Did any of that glass break?"

"I’m fine, and the glass is fine," Dante said, staring at his tingling fingers while his mother pulled the window closed. Across the street, the tree barely moved.

Dante had felt that leave his hand, right down to the ache in the wrist afterward. He wanted to wave again and see what happened, except his mom was standing in front of the window now, and explaining the books would be much easier than explaining why he had thrown her into the neighbor’s yard.

"Ah, excellent. That gives us what we needed," the interviewer said, sounding pleased for the first time since the call began. "We’ll send your invitation shortly, Dante. Keep the assessment kit with you until you receive the instructions."

"My invitation to what?" Dante held his hand against his stomach. "You saw the window, right? Was that something you did?"

The voice went silent while his mother checked the window latch. As she crouched to collect the fallen books, Dante nearly stepped on her hand trying to cover one with his foot, leaving her looking up at him while he stood on a woman who had cost him 38 dollars in shipping.

"I’ll pick those up, Mom, just leave them where they are." He reached for the mouse out of habit, found its cable still dangling, and held it up as the cursor moved across the screen again. "Look, I’m not doing that, and I want them off my computer."

Mom watched the cursor move with Dante’s hands clear, then switched off the power strip and reached behind his chair to unplug the computer from the wall. The screen went black, but his hand still felt too warm.

"Did you give them your bank details, or download anything they sent you?" Her hand stayed on the plug while he explained the application, and she checked his phone when he brought up the confirmation text. "And you didn’t pay a deposit for this box?"

"They asked for an address to send the prop, but that was it." He pushed the box away from the keyboard, suddenly less pleased with its brass corners. "I thought it might actually be a job."

"I know you did, honey, and I’m glad you applied for something." She squeezed his shoulder before picking up her phone. "I’ll ask Chris to look at the computer after work, but leave it off until then, even if they promise you a better interview."

Mom checked the time and collected her keys to pick up their takeout. Dante promised to leave the computer off and text if the interviewers contacted him again, which was easier than explaining why he kept looking at his own fingers.

After she left, Dante collected the books, sat down, and propped his phone against the monitor to film the box. He kept the unplugged computer in the shot, hoping to record proof that something had happened besides him losing a job in front of a cartoon nipple.

School gym classes and runs to hatch monsters on his phone had left Dante strong enough to carry the box with one hand, but he could not shift its tiny catch.

"You’ve had your fun," he told the box, dropping into the voice he had practiced for the audition. "Now you’re going to open, and we can decide how much trouble you’re in."

Dante pictured the catch sliding sideways along its track and felt that warmth spread through his hand again. He almost pulled away before it scraped across the wood without him touching it. The lid lifted, two faint snaps came from beneath the felt, and a deep dent formed in the carpet beside the desk.

Dante pulled both feet onto his chair and grabbed his phone, but the dent flattened before he could point the camera at it. He kept filming the empty spot for several seconds, suddenly much less interested in whatever speech he had planned.

A notification interrupted Dante’s recording, and he stopped it to check the message. The interview site had sent him a link to his result, with a preview congratulating him on his admission to Blackwell University of Arcane Studies.

Dante checked beneath the box for a wire, then held his hand over the latch and tried to move it again without touching it. Nothing happened, which felt much more in line with what he knew about himself.

Dante tried blaming the ranked matches that had kept him awake until four, then checked for a burn. He had spent years wanting magic to be real, but none of his imagined awakenings had involved his mom picking up porn.

The offer covered tuition, housing, and equipment, with a test of his magic on Friday at ten. Classes included Spell Control and Practical Wards, which the page described as protective spells, although students needed approval before attempting flight.

Dante went back to the original job listing, but its page was blank. He saved the university offer before they could remove that too.

He forwarded the offer to his mom, who asked whether it was a school for stage magic and warned him against loans. Dante imagined a dorm full of witches, then remembered waiting outside a shared kitchen for twenty minutes because a woman was making toast. Even if the school was real, he would still have to bring himself along.

Dante opened the contact window and typed, "I applied to scare customers for 22 dollars an hour. You took over my computer, and now you’re offering me a degree from somewhere I never applied to, so could somebody explain where the job went?"

The reply referred him to an admissions officer. When he asked for a return label, the contact instead offered to complete his assessment at home and collect the kit afterward.

"Nobody is coming to my house," he typed, saving the conversation before closing the page. The box was going back, and he wanted someone standing behind a counter to explain the school before he agreed to anything.

Beneath the lid lining sat an invitation bearing Dante’s full name, Friday’s appointment, and a dry cleaner’s address. His magical classification read PENDING, although the interviewer had promised to send the invitation that was already here.

Dante photographed the invitation and left it beside the keyboard, then took his phone and the open box downstairs. Two clean frying pans waited beside the cold stove, and he set the box between them with his phone on the counter.

The felt had lifted at one corner, exposing a narrow compartment with two broken threads stretched across an empty space. Dante touched one torn end, remembering the snaps when the lid opened, just as a heavy footstep creaked through the ceiling above him.

He looked from the empty compartment to the stairs while another step made the kitchen light shake. Something was still in his bedroom, and he had carried the only box it seemed to fit inside downstairs with him.

"Mom, is that you?" he called, pulling his hand out of the box as the creaking stopped. He waited for her to answer, hoping she had forgotten her purse and could explain how she had passed him without using the stairs.

A message lit his phone before anything upstairs moved again. Mom was still waiting for their fries, and she would be another ten minutes; beneath her message, the interview site had sent a new notice: "Your home assessment has begun. Please return to your seat."

Dante had told them nobody was coming inside, but apparently the company took rejection about as well as he took losing a ranked match. He picked up his phone and moved toward the front door, wanting to warn his mom before she came home to whatever he had let out.

A floorboard creaked overhead each time he moved, then stopped when he did. Dante waited beside the counter with his phone ready, watching the empty landing while he tried to work out whether running would make this worse.

The moment he reached for the front door, the footsteps broke into a run across the landing. The top stair bent under something heavy, although there was nothing on it, and the next step down began to creak.