“Heart Surgeon Claims That Fatal Mistake ‘Was Just a Prank, Bro’,” a headline reads.
It’s six in the morning and you’re about to jet for school as the obvious nonsense of this heading that is rather reminiscent of The Onion reminds you that it is April 1.
No matter, you’re gonna have a few laughs at the outrageous self-defacement every website seems to be so proudly doing this time of the year and that’ll be the end of it.
You shove your toast (sans toaster) into your mouth and exit your dorm room.
Time passes – in boring classes. You listen as your math teacher drones on about the relationship between a curve and its derivative as if anybody could be arsed to care. You ain’t gonna need it once you graduate.
You suffer in silence as your history teacher with her hysterically high voice prattles on endlessly about more infighting in the Balkans than there’s ever been on 4chan.
You make no peep as you’re the odd one out in PE and get paired with this obnoxiously chad dudebro of a teacher for some asinine exercise or other whose name couldn’t remain in your memory if you were paid to recall it in ten minutes.
You head to the other side of the building with the old rooms that have been slated for renovation since you began studying at this school and eat your lunch.
The day goes on and on.
You’re just living the same routine every day.
Aren’t people in their youth supposed to, like, have relationships and fornicate so hard they become attached at the genitals like barnacles?
Where is any of this in your life?
Where’d everything go so wrong?
Your over-protective mother? Freud would probably have a field day with that last one.
As the day finishes with you absent mindedly pondering such foundational questions opening your locker, you are greeted by a note falling to the floor. It reads: “Call me! 555-0142” followed by a heart.
The added glitter adds to the charm. It was obviously written and decorated with non-trivial amounts of effort as the meticulous hand writing betrays. Strangely, the hand writing does not seem familiar to you.
No matter, you’re gonna call one way or another; it’s not like you of all people ever made an effort to remember people’s handwriting – you’re happy enough to be able to read your own notes a week later, after all.

It’s not like you’re not harboring some suspicions.
All your life, you’ve had trust issues. You’d like to tell yourself they’re justified, but sometimes your nagging conscience just breaks through the cracks of your subconscious, wondering if Kronii used to bully in grade school and middle school because you’re paranoid like this in the first place.
Little gave you more comfort than knowing that you’re able to get away from her because you went to different classes at least.
This might be your chance to redeem yourself.
You cast your doubts, suspicions – and whatever other evil may lurk in the depths of your boundless void you call a mind – aside.
You punch in 5-5-5-0-1-4-2.
The dialing tone blares into your ear uncomfortably. Telephones and you were never kind of okay with each other, but desperate times call for desperate measures. At least hearing the dialing noise means the number wasn’t obviously invalid.
Your heart is aflutter with excitement now.
Who might the author of this note be? There are but moments before you find out. Before you can sort yourself out, a familiar voice greets you: “Hi, who’s there?”

Your heart sinks.
It was Kronii.
She’s the big bad bully who haunted your school days. But. However! You just told yourself to cast aside this paranoia of yours.
You want to believe in the redemption arc – both yours and hers. “Sup, it’s me, Anon. I was supposed to call?” The surprise left you unable to think about your response. It was just pure gut feeling.
“Ahahahahaha!” Her laughter pierces your left ear. You hold the phone slightly at a distance because you weren’t about to go deaf because of HER, Kronii of all people. “You didn’t think somebody would actually write you a love letter? Holy shit, anon, this is too funny! April Fools!”

This was twenty years ago.
While newspapers may have long since been old and quaint, they still exist… barely.
In a fit of nostalgia, you subscribed for the physical edition of the New York Times.
The first issue delivered to your home, you find an obituary for a person named “Kronii Ouro”.
Apparently she’d become a streamer – didn’t even change her name – and she ended up meeting her maker due to a stalker.
Crazy that someone would publish that in an obituary, you ponder to yourself.

But all you really feel is upset about that one specific prank she pulled twenty years ago.

Edit Report
Pub: 07 Oct 2021 06:17 UTC
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