Nobody stood in front of a vertically short yet horizontally long building. He stood at the entrance with his arms behind his back, patiently waiting for somebody. Somebody important. Eventually, a person entered his field of view who was the person he had been waiting for.
The person walked towards the building, constantly looking at the note inside his hand with the picture of this place attached. After making sure that he arrived at the correct place, he approached Nobody. He saw a grin appear across his face as he got closer to him.
"You've finally taken notice of my note, hm?" Nobody said, extending his hand towards the person. The person looked unsure about Nobody; just his grin was giving him the creeps. "Why am I called here?" The person replied, Nobody could notice his anxiety from his face and voice, which made him continue to keep his smile.
"Would you leave a pal's hand hanging in the air like that?" Nobody ignored his question. "Everyone gets nervous in their first times." He removed his hand from the air and put it back behind his back.
"What first time?" Nobody's vague answers had only made him more upset. Nobody turned around and walked towards the entrance, opening the door. "Come in, I have a surprise for you."
The person let out an internal sigh; he looked back at the way he used to come here, only to see it blocked by a wall as if that way never existed in the first place. The person closed his eyes and lightly shook his head, thinking he was hallucinating stuff. Only after a few moments of blankly staring at the wall did he realize that he was not hallucinating and that this wall was physical.
He looked back at the building, now seeing that the entire environment had changed to that of an unknown, isolated, infinitely long flat surface. The wind blew on his face as he observed his surroundings with a stunned look, spinning in place and seeing endless extensions of this dimension in every direction. His heart was beating fast; he felt scared but it somewhat gave him a feeling of Deja Vu.
He looked at the building again; the door lightly cracked open, just like how Nobody left it. The person allowed himself to calm down for a few seconds before taking an audible inhale and approaching the staircase before the door; once at the front of it, he pushed it open and entered.
Once he stepped in, the entire atmosphere changed to a much less dreadful one, and he quickly scanned around. The walls and the roof were made of pure wood with candle lamps attached to them, giving a red-orange lighting that only complemented the color of the woods and gave the inside a lifeful view. He saw many other people who looked exactly like Nobody, playing poker, pool, backgammon, chess, bowling, and other different games. He saw them chat, smoke, drink, and make deals and bets. He let himself watch them for a few seconds as he felt a little excited to be here.
But shortly after, he heard someone clear his throat. He turned his head to see Nobody sitting on one of the stools in front of the bartender's table, gesturing for him to come over. The person approached without any hesitation; awe was still sparkling in his eyes.
"Liking this place so far?" Nobody chuckled, watching the person get closer with a grin.
"I'd be lying if I said no." The person replied as he sat on the stool next to Nobody.
"Everyone likes this place." Nobody turned his head to look at his peers. "It's the first sign of it."
"What do you mean?" The person asked casually, throwing his leg over the other. His quickly developed confidence only confirmed Nobody's words.
"You see, I have been watching over you for a while." Nobody picked up a pack of cigarettes and took one out before igniting the tip of it and putting it between his lips. "You seem like you're new to your job." He extended his pack to the person, offering him to take one too.
The person did not comment on it but did take the offer. He took a cigarette out of the pack and ignited one for himself, inhaling the smoke into his lungs. "That's why I called you here." Nobody continued. "I'm going to help you become a better Nobody."
"You sure?" The person chuckled. "I don't think I'm a Nobody yet."
The bartender came to greet them, who was also a Nobody, cleaning a cup of glass with baby wipes. Nobody made hand gestures to order a drink without looking or talking to the bartender, and the bartender nodded before going back to the backside to prepare the drinks.
"All of us took our sweet times to figure out what we even are when we first became Nobodys, but you really could use a helping hand." Nobody puffed his cigarette, and an audible sound of bowling pins being knocked down echoed throughout the building, followed by a person cheering loudly.
"What do you think I need help with?"
"Well, with all due respect, you're kind of shit at your job. Not being able to properly clean your tracks, always getting caught midway through, not utilizing your arsenal. I got secondhand embarrassment from watching you."
The person's smile immediately faded away as Nobody brought up his failures, getting embarrassed himself. "I guess… admittedly, I'm kind of an amateur…" He inhaled a smoke from his cigarette.
"Here, let me get you through a lesson." Nobody replied; as he did, the bartender came back from the backside and put two drinks in front of them. "One of these drinks is poisoned, and drinking it will be guaranteed to kill you. Could you tell me which one is the one that's poisoned?"
"W-What?" The person chuckled nervously. "Do you guys always serve poisoned drinks here?" Nobody didn't answer, only continuing to inhale his cigarette. Realizing that Nobody was serious about this, he looked carefully into the orange liquid inside the big cups, seeing no visual difference in them. Both of their smells had no difference, either. He looked at Nobody, who was giving a death stare while continuing to smoke, which made the person feel a small shockwave throughout his body as if a gun was pointed at the back of his head.
The person looked back at the drinks, his mind racing through each moment he spent inside this building to find any kind of clue for the answer. His heart beat fast again, and a sweat went down on the side of his head. He closed his eyes for a few seconds before feeling a snap inside his consciousness. He opened his eyes immediately in a heartbeat and looked back at the drinks.
"This one!" The person claimed loudly, grabbing the one on the right.
"Correct!" Nobody's face immediately got fixed to his natural face, clapping his hands together to congratulate the person. "Now, please tell me how you did it," he demanded.
"When I first entered this building, I noticed that everything started to happen just a second before I came in, meaning everyone here was waiting for me to act like they were doing their natural things." The other Nobodys in the room side-eyed him for half a second. "You offered me a cigarette to distract myself with it, knowing very well that I don't smoke."
"Mhm."
"And, as we both know, we're much more resistant to deadly diseases or injuries than ordinary human beings, trying to poison me would take much more than normal to kill me."
The person put two of the drinks next to each other, showing the very small height difference with his finger as a measurement.
"In addition to that, it took the bartender longer than usual to bring two cups of drink. What do you think he would wait for? For the poison to dissolve inside the drink and spread. It was probably in the form of ice cubes, and don't forget about the strike from the bowling section being timed just well enough to overshadow the sound of the ice cubes being dropped, just as a safety measure."
"You have planned everything in here down to the smallest of details, haven't you?" The person finished, pressing the head of his cigarette into the ashtray, extinguishing it.
"Yes, including you succeeding in this lesson; have I given away too many clues?" Nobody chuckled, inhaling a smoke from his cigarette one last time before finishing it and putting it inside the ashtray as well.
"Trying to poison a peer is not the funniest joke, you know?"
"I want my 'thank you's for that. See how well you've gotten accustomed to the situation under pressure." Nobody said as the bartender took the drinks and went back inside; audible pouring noises came from inside.
"Gee, thank you." The person said it in a sarcastic tone mixed with annoyance.
"Though, one last lesson remains."
"And that is…?"
Nobody snapped his fingers, and everyone inside the building froze in place, including their breathing and eye movements. Nobody reached out to his inner pocket and pulled out a pistol; he threw it into the air and made it turn its back to the person before landing back on his hand. He extended his hand to offer him the gun.
"I've put one person inside this room that isn't a Nobody, the gun only has one bullet inside it, and I want you to figure out who it is. If you kill the wrong person, we are going to be your worst nightmare. But if you kill the right person, we will be your biggest supporter and ally."
The person eyed all of them in surprise as Nobody spoke, all and each single one of them stood like a statue. He turned his head to face Nobody. "What clue am I supposed to look for?" He asked.
"Nobody knows." Nobody chuckled.
"You damn…" The person aggressively picks up the gun, annoyed by the pun. "You ain't a Nobody without a Nobody joke, that's for sure." The person stood up and roamed the building, every single room in it. They all had the same clothes, the same face, and the same interests. The person looked very closely into their faces, their hats, their pockets—literally anything that could potentially differentiate one of them from the rest. But it was a dead end.
Annoyed by the lack of success, he looked into the building's inner structure instead, thinking it could give a clue about it. He looked at the ground, the walls, the lamps, the windows, and the roof. And yet, nothing gave away any hints to him.
Minutes had passed, and he returned to the exact spot he had left from. Trying to make anything from the little bit of information he could take from such a time waste. "Think… what does Nobody have that Somebody doesn't?" The person started to recount his knowledge about Nobodys.
"Nobodys can get to any place they want. They're usually very smart and coordinated; they're antimemetic in nature and can't be known for too long; they always wear the same clothes and interests. Wait!"
The person's eyes widened and shortly reshaped into a grin, the same grin Nobody greeted him with. "I found it," he said, facing away from Nobody.
"Oh yeah? Take your shot; I'd be disappointed if this lesson resulted in a failu-" The person shot into Nobody's head before he could finish his sentence, killing him instantly and watching his corpse fall to the ground from the stool, slowly creating a blood pool.
Suddenly, everyone inside the building unfreezed and started to clap their hands. "Congratulations!" They all said it simultaneously. The person was surprised by it, thinking he'd get killed for killing someone important even if he did what he was told. But as they clapped more, his surprised face turned into a smile, and eventually a chuckle on its own.
"I am surprised." The person looked in the direction the voice came from, seeing the bartender come out of his room. "Many people don't get to finish this part."
"YOU were the actual Nobody I was supposed to meet from the beginning, weren't you?" He approached the bartender from the other side of the table, dropping his now empty gun into Nobody's blood pool.
"Indeed I am, now, tell me, how did you figure it out?" Nobody sat down on the stool that was on his side of the table. "I'm curious to know." He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his inner pocket, igniting the tip and putting it between his lips, just like the fake one did it.
"It was, admittedly, a difficult one. But the only issue is that it relied on a rotten pillar."
"I'm all ears."
"Well… 'Nobody knows' right? Well, If a Nobody can forget about Nobody, then he wasn't a Nobody in the first place. But nobody except Nobody would know such a detail, and he didn't."
Nobody extended his hand toward the person from the other side of the table. "Would you leave a pal's hand hanging in the air like that?" Nobody said, not with a grin, but with a welcoming, congratulating smile.
The person accepted the handshake and gave a smile of appreciation. "Nobody would ever do that." He replied, both chuckling at the joke. "Congratulations on being a Nobody." he continued.
"Thanks," Nobody replied back. "But what am I supposed to learn from… any of this?" Nobody gestured at Nobody's corpse, still bleeding out.
"This was to demonstrate that you can only improve if you're pushed to your limits; we aren't born smart; nobody is. And frankly, you've done it much faster than my other students." Nobody said, taking an inhale from his cigarette and puffing the smoke out.
"What about the corpse?"
"I'll clean it."
"What about the person?"
"It's a friend of mine, although he isn't a Nobody, I got him to act like one in precise detail."
"Wait, what? How?"
"Well, I am quite experienced in it; humans are emotional creatures; how you press their 'buttons' on their forehead depends on how they respond to their emotions." Nobody reached out to his inner pocket and dropped a few pictures on top of the table. Each picture showed the slow progress of this person 'becoming' a Nobody, as well as him meeting Nobody occasionally. "I used to spend time with him often, entertaining and spoiling him until he thought that we were 'best friends.' I decided to use his loyalty to my advantage. I told him that spending too much time with me could get him to become a Nobody himself. Which he declined the thought of."
Nobody turned around and reached for another used wine bottle, starting to clean it. "Which is a lie, of course. But I made him believe it; he had a family; I had to get rid of them in the progress."
"You what??"
"Every time we met, whether intentionally or unintentionally, I had to get rid of his memories. I first started by taking pictures of his family one by one in the first week; he was really mad at himself for losing them. Then their commonly shared belongings among the family, whether it be glasses, blankets, or phone chargers. Then I started to put amnestics into their food and water, slowly making them forget about everything and each other. Then, day by day, I took his family members and… killed them."
Nobody continued, ignoring Nobody's shocked response. He continued to listen as he visualized the scenarios inside his head.
"I told him that the things he had lost were never there in the first place; compiled by the effects of the amnestics, it created a perfect gaslighting target. I told him he was slowly becoming a Nobody and that it was too late to prevent it even if he stayed away from me. It threw him into a downward spiral of depression and self-destruction. I took his phone and erased its memory, getting rid of the pictures in there as well. I replaced his clothes with our suits, and before you knew it, he was on the edge of suicide."
Nobody replaced the now clean cup with a new one and started to clean it as well. Nobody looked at the pictures, which were put in an order that showcased the person slowly turning mad.
"Then he abandoned his house and lived on the streets for weeks, not eating or drinking anything until he was in the blink of death. Then I stepped in; he was lying down on the grass as the sun shined through his skeleton-like, fatless body. I cast a shadow over him and offered him a helping hand; he had forgotten about me long ago. I told him that I could fix his miserable life, and he accepted without a second thought."
Nobody pointed at the last picture, which showed him offering a hand to the helpless man lying on the ground.
"From that point onward, I reconstructed his personality, his physicality, and his memories and convinced him that he was one of us. What you see lying down on the ground is the result of it."
"Holy shit…" Nobody looked at the corpse again, his pupils lightly shaking in shock. "How long did this take you?"
"Well, I started it the moment I found out about you, which was three years ago. Putting him in a miserable state like that took a year, and turning him into a 'Nobody' took two years. His name was Alan, by the way."
Nobody was left speechless, lightly knocking on the table as he processed what he was told. "Did you… use him for anything else, or just this event alone?" He managed to ask.
"Only for this event, I constructed his personality to be the perfect replica of mine, so I knew what he was doing even when I didn't watch over him. And in case something went wrong, I did the same thing to 4 different people in different ways to use them as a backup. So that makes 5 persons in 3 years."
Nobody replied, but Nobody could only chuckle nervously at the words laid before him. "Holy shit, you're a monster."
"I guess so." He replied calmly with eyes closed. He didn't really care about being called names, since it was one of the necessities to throw away your humanity to accomplish what you wanted in a world like this.
"And… what's up with this place? What happened when I first got here, the environment changed and stuff." He leaned further into the table.
"Oh, that. This place is, as you can see, an amalgamation of multiple places: a casino, a bowling place, a bar, and anything else that is close to those three. This place is called 'The Hub' where we, Nobodys, take our time to chill out and have a drink or two, or develop a gambling addiction." He chuckled at the last part. "This place exists in an extra-dimensional realm created by me with the help of Apsel, and only other Nobodys can see it."
Nobody placed the now-clean cup on the table and stood up. "You can take your leave now, by the way. I expect to see you tomorrow for another lesson."
"But how do I get here? Do I somehow summon this building or something?" Nobody chuckled again.
"You kind of do, yeah. Just imagine really, really hard that you want to enter this building, and it will manifest in front of you." Nobody replied in an unironically serious tone. "And then come back here. Visa versa for leaving."
"Well then." Nobody took a deep breath. "I shall take my leave." He stood up from his stool as well, turned around, and started to walk towards the exit.
"We will be expecting you tomorrow, don't skip your classes." The bartender said behind him.
"I will make sure of that." Nobody replied without pausing his walk.
He opened the door, seeing outside just as how it was when he entered it, no more wall or infinitely flat empty place. He walked forward before the door closed from behind.
The bartender grinned as soon as he left before another Nobody approached him from the side. "Good job, you really had him convinced."
"No problem, boss." The bartender replied.
"I will prepare another task for him, I might need your help again."