Late Night Lovers

Chapter 1

In the midst of your third year at the College for Fine Arts, you found yourself at a crossroad for the very first time. Your initial ambition had led you here, aiming to major in fashion design, but as the requirements for your final project loomed, you couldn’t help but entertain thoughts of dropping out. The challenge? Design and create three ready-to-wear outfits, to be submitted for evaluation by the shrewd directors of Fashion Weekly magazine. The chosen winner would have their designs showcased in the upcoming fashion show. As an amature designer, this opportunity was big for you, but you could already feel the weight of the pressure crushing you. 

It was a long, restless night. You were seated at your desk, your eyes locked on the computer screen, trying to conjure a spark of inspiration for your designs. The creative process had betrayed you, and despite hours of staring at the blank screen, not a single idea had come to mind. You were plagued by a terrible case of indecision that would not be going away any time soon.

“This is getting me nowhere.” A long, drawn out sigh escapes your lips as you lean back in your chair, the sudden weight change causing the old frame to creak.  

As you sat there, the weight of impending defeat bearing down upon you, your phone chimed with a notification. A surge of excitement coursed through your veins, replacing any negativity you were just feeling. It was the announcement of a new chapter in your beloved web novel, “Blooming Panic.” The temptation was irresistible. You moved the mouse cursor to the corner of the screen, closing all previous tabs, and brought up the page where the story awaited. After a few anxious clicks, it appeared right before your eyes– the latest chapter. Without a moment’s hesitation, your cursor found the link, and you began to read.
______________________________________

She sat down on her bed and took a deep breath. ‘Lola 2.0, here I come…’

Yet another chapter completed. Pondering over what you just read, an aching feeling spread throughout your chest upon realizing something– the next chapter to be released will be the last. The novel will be complete. There will be no more updates. It was understandably upsetting, especially considering for the past three years you’ve devoted all your free time to follow the story of Lola. This novel has helped you get through college, helped you realize things about yourself. You’ve made connections and grown attached to all the characters. The thought of saying goodbye to them so soon pained you.

You could feel the atmosphere around you become more dark, more depressing as these ideas filled your mind. Eager to divert your attention, you closed the web novel and turned to Twitter to immerse yourself in a personal mission you’d been pursuing. Despite the exceptional quality of the web novel, you couldn’t find any trace of a Blooming Panic fanbase– no fan art, no dedicated social media accounts– nothing. This struck you as peculiar. While diving deep into a thorough search on Twitter, a strange tweet caught your eye. It was an invitation to a Blooming Panic fan server.  At first glance, it looked like your average Discord link, but upon further inspection, you noticed some differences in the link address. Your thoughts wavered. On one hand, you had finally stumbled upon signs of life within the fanbase, offering the chance to connect with others who shared your passion for the novel. On the other hand, this wasn’t a standard invite link, and you couldn’t ignore the possibility of it being a scam or harboring some sort of virus. Going against your better judgment, your mouse slowly moved over the link. You closed your eyes and applied slight pressure to the left click button of your mouse. 

Click.

There was a few seconds of silence before a sound, closely resembling that of a Discord notification, filled the air. Then another followed soon after. Hesitantly, your eyes open and peer at the bright computer screen–which now displayed a program that looked similar to Discord. You have been automatically brought to a text channel labeled “blooming-rules” with a welcome message awaiting you.

BloomBot
Welcome to the ‘Blooming Panic! I’ve become a Monster?’ official server! We’re so happy to welcome another fan.
What will your username be?

You read through the messages then wait a second, trying to determine whether or not your computer was given an unwanted virus. However, as seconds turned to minutes and nothing happened, you figured it should be safe. After taking a small portion of time to think of a username, your fingers began furiously typing away at the keyboard. 

BloomBot
Awesome! Nice to meet you, @ LovelyLola
Please select your pronouns

BloomBot took you through a few more personal questions to ensure you’ll have a safe time while on the server. Once the questionnaire was finished, you were finally granted access to the rest of the server. New text and chat channels were added to the left side of the screen. Almost instantly, the silence of the room was interrupted by the constant sound of notifications coming from the other channels. 

bloop. bloop. bloop.

You slowly bring your mouse over to the side bar and click on the active channel. There were 8 out of the 10 members online. Two of them previously in a dispute before another interrupted, bringing attention to your arrival. Before you knew it, the chat flooded with friendly messages, welcoming you into the server. Eventually, everyone got around to introducing themselves. You learned quickly that quite a few of them had jobs, others attended school and college. Amongst all the introductions, there was one in particular that stood out to you the most. Nightowl. He had sent a selfie while everyone was talking and you instantly took notice of his features. Then his hair. It was almost a golden color, which complimented his eyes well. His cheeks were rosy, most likely due to the cold winter air. The most notable feature, yet, was his smile. It felt warm and inviting. 

LovelyLola
Aw. Is that you? Cute!

nightowl
awwww thank uuuuu

You became fairly acquainted with the members pretty fast, finding commonalities you shared with all of them. Despite being complete and total strangers, you had a good feeling about them. Due to you joining late, however, your conversation with most of them ended up getting cut short as they had other things to tend to. It wasn’t long before you and Nightowl were the only ones left online. Right as you were about to send him a goodnight message, you were interrupted by a request from him. 

nightowl
i know you probably have class early tomorrow but
how about i give you a nice
OFFICIAL
server welcome
in a call
i won’t keep you long!!

LovelyLola
sure :)

nightowl
i’ll be waiting!!