Step 2: Eat a hearty breakfast

By the time my phone's alarm woke me up this morning, Hakuno was already gone. She disappeared just as suddenly as she came to my life. I could still sniff a whiff of that faint milky scent she left on the bedsheet when I lied down my bed to collect my thoughts on the matter. Her disappearance saved me the trouble of having to go to the police station, but at the same time... How should I describe it? I felt empty. Lonely even.

No. That shouldn't be... Right? I'm used to living alone. I am at peace. The lone white hermit who lived in a self-imposed exile on top of a hill because he was too proud to become neighbors with the rest of the people of Sunset Bay, a coastal town that has about three thousand permanent residents. I'll be the one laughing when a tsunami hits and wipes away their happy little homes to become one with the sea! Not that I'm hoping for it to ever happen, mind you. No person in their right mind would ever wish for a calamity to strike upon their fellow man.

A part of me hoped that Hakuno hadn't really left, so I searched around the house. There wasn't really much place to look into. My humble home is composed of (in no particular order) a lone bedroom, a bathroom with a small bathtub for a small man, a spartan kitchen / dining room with a cupboard that contained more bottles of medicine than actual food ingredients, a living room populated by towering stacks of books and one dusty piano, a spacious front porch with a rocking chair that had evidently seen better days, and an open yard overgrown with sunflowers and dandelions because yours truly got tired of maintaining a manicured and orderly garden. In the end, my search for Hakuno was in vain. She was not in any of the places I have previously mentioned. Nothing seemed to be missing or out of place either- Not that there's anything worth stealing in my house in the first place. I'm not one for miscellaneous luxuries after all. Except for maybe the piano. I used to play it once upon a time. Then I just lost interest. Its keys have not produced any music in months, and I doubt that it ever will again any time soon.

The songbirds in the yard were chirping their usual morning cacophony, but even that failed to cheer me up. As if sensing my bad mood, a stillness in the air enveloped the garden and surrounding woods when I left the house and closed the door behind me. I took a brisk pace jogging downhill towards the harbour, having decided to have a look around in the town to see if Hakuno was there. If she wasn't, then I'll give up on her and move on with life.

My search eventually ended up with nothing to show for. I went around the town asking people if they've seen a bare-footed, brown-haired girl wearing a yellow nightdress, but it seems nobody else had spotted her since yesterday. Quite odd since Sunset Bay barely gets any outside visitors and any new face would be easily memorable to the locals.

Feeling exhausted and hungry, I dragged my feet towards The Mermaid to fill the void in my stomach with something. Like I've briefly mentioned, it's a family restaurant. I visit it maybe two or three times a week just to break the monotony of nutrition pills and sweets. About half of the tables in the establishment were occupied by busy patrons when I came inside. My favorite seat with a fine view of the ocean and good ventillation was taken, so instead, I flopped down at the bar counter. A small head of a little girl with dark-brown pixie cut hair poked out from the other side of the counter to stare at me with her sharp brown eyes. I stared back until she blinked and broke eye contact. The staring contest ended with my win this time.

"Hello, grandpa." The child greeted me with a smile. Her name is Coffee, one of my students and the daughter of the restaurant's proprietor. She's a level 2 Precog that can calculate both the unknown past and the likely future by utilizing laws of determinism. "The usual?"

"Yeah, little bean." I replied to The Mermaid's resident loli. Outside of school, the two of us use nicknames for each other as a form of endearment. Your namesake set aside, Coffee's probably the closest person I'm with in the whole town. "And don't forget the sugar cubes." I hurriedly added.

A plate of bacon, eggs, string beans and steaming fried rice landed in front of me shortly after. Beside it was a cup of coffee and a small bowl of sugar cubes. I steadily dropped the sugar cubes into the brown liquid while making small-talk with Coffee.

"How can you even drink that?" She asked me, her little mouth pouting like an upside-down letter v. "You might as well have eaten the sugar cubes alone without the joe."

"Well, my goal in life is to consume as much sugar until my blood transforms into sugary syrup!" I exclaimed, raising the cup and taking a gulp of my 'drink'.

"You'll die from diabetes first before that happens." She rolled her eyes. Her brand of sass was one of the reasons why I began to like her the day we first met. Perhaps I'll save it as a story for another time.

"By the way, have you seen someone- a girl not from around here. Looks like a Japanese, slightly taller than me, light brown hair, pale skin, wearing a yellow... Umm... nightdress?" I hesitated somewhat while attempting to describe Hakuno as decently as possible. I can't help but see the image of her sleeping figure in my head every time I ask about her.

"Not really." And like I expected, I got another negative answer. It was as if I was the only one in town who've seen Hakuno yesterday. "Have you checked the surveillance cams?"

"Oh! I haven't thought about that. Thanks a plenty, bean!" Having finished the rest of my meal, I paid the tab and bid my farewell to Coffee.

My next stop took me to the shadier part of the town (if you can even call nicely painted 2-storey apartment complexes as shady), to the residence of another one of my students: A level 3 technopath and self-proclaimed hacker king named Zach. He's a regular absentee and happen to frequently skip classes when he actually does come to school, so I had his address memorized from all the times I've come to his apartment for home visitations and disciplinary interventions.

To keep things short, I asked Zach to hack into CCTV feeds of the town from yesterday afternoon until this morning. I... I was left dumbstruck when I saw the video record of myself talking with thin air in front of The Mermaid yesterday. Hakuno, whoever she is, was never there. Zach looked at me with some concern but didn't ask any questions. I thanked him and quickly left, retracing my steps and running back to my house.

Unable to wrap my head with what had happened, I lied down in my bed and just stared at the ceiling for a very long time. The milky scent was gone. Was it also just part of my imagination? How could I have imagined something so life-like and unique? Everything about Hakuno felt so real. This isn't just my mind playing some cruel trick on me, is it? Should I increase the dose of antidopaminergic? Wait- I have to consult my doctor first before doing that.

...I'm not losing it, am I?