As a sorcerer, I call upon Zepar and Furfur in another realm.

This place isn't Rokkenjima. No... this is a land of magic, all my own.

In an elegant Western smoking room, I sat in a plush, red armchair. The fire crackled in the fireplace; a record played a soothing classical melody on a nearby player. The tables were decorated with a spread of luxurious foods most men could only dream of. The carpets were spotless; the tapestries, epic; the chandelier, dazzling. All of it was just so damn fancy.

I had sat my fancy ass down in my fancy ass chair and had been smoking a pipe that I'd managed to conjure a short while earlier. I held my head in my hands... It was useless. It was all useless! As a certain someone would say.

My hands brushed through my hair as I stared around the room at my many, many failed summoning attempts. My sixth attempt at a proper pentagram was scrawled uselessly on the floor. There was a pile of different trinkets I'd remembered encountering in my studies of Rokkenjima. Many of them were twisted, or burnt, or wrapped together, all byproducts of my **** attempts to summon the only two that could answer my prayers.

What was lacking? I was a man of love. I was a man of intelligence, at least when it came to this topic... at least, I thought so. I had the magic power of the Pink Trigger. No matter what I did, I couldn't call those two to my side. I set my pipe in a nearby ashtray and sighed.

At least I had all this fancy-ass food. That Ronove could bake. I didn't think he'd even baked all this for me: whoever it was for had just up and left, and here I was, cleaning off their table. I wasn't even trying to summon anything anymore. For now, I'd simply satisfy myself thinking of the two I was trying to summon. At least I could summon them to my wandering mind.

Bleh. I was getting sick of pastries. What I wouldn't give for some Chinese... As if I'd summoned it, I grabbed a wrapped fortune cookie off of the nearby desk and strolled over the window for a view to distract myself. That was pointless, by the way, as there appeared to be nothing outside the window but darkness, maybe some distant stars-

...

Wait. A fortune cookie? I knew that Ronove could probably whip up all kinds of cookies from a round the world, but did he have a packaging plant to wrap the damn things, too?

No... It was more reasonable to think that this was an answer to my prayers! When the depths of my despair became too much to bear, here was the product of my enduring will!

Now, I would create my own future! I held the fortune cookie toward the ceiling, cackling like a madman.