He shook his head in exasperation, then suddenly gave in to his anger and blocked the screen with his hand.
“Get a life!”
“Why won’t you answer my questions?”
“Shut up!”
His screen went black. A message appeared saying he’d left the chat. We took off our masks.
“He’s definitely hiding something,” Hiro muttered.
The conversation replayed in slow motion. An enlarged version of Jelinek’s nasty expression as he blocked the screen leered at us.
We continued our global search from the abandoned school the next day. I made a pot of the black tea I’d brought from home and put a tea cozy over it. Hiro sipped from a cup while she interviewed the ASes.
“Can you think of anyone else?”
Dunno
I know someone kind of like that.
Someone just as annoying
That lady who’s always saying she’s been hurt
Yeah, it could be her.
“Her?” I asked, looking up. So the Dragon wasn’t necessarily male.
Hiro did an image search. A heavyset, middle-aged Asian woman with a mean-looking expression appeared. She was wearing a fur coat and sunglasses. Her teeth were bared in a menacing smile.
“Her name is Swan. Has a bunch of different social media accounts and is known for her pushy, argumentative comments and crazy outbursts,” Hiro explained. “‘That hurt me’ is like her catchphrase. She relentlessly drives people into a corner—that certainly sounds like a monster.”
Lots of screenshots of Swan’s comments on social media came up in our search, written in English, Chinese, and Malay. I couldn’t read them, but somehow I could tell they were really awful.
“Yikes…”
“Ooh, found her meeting ID.”
“What?!”
“I’m calling her,” Hiro said, taking off her uniform necktie.
“Wait! Wait a minute!”
I set down my tea and frantically searched for something to disguise myself with. Ack, no hard hats in here today!
Hiro swiftly pulled her hair back, put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and swiped on some lipstick. I had nothing.
Crap!
I heard the ringtone.
Help!
Swan appeared in the video chat.
Her face looked totally different from the photos we’d seen online. She spoke politely and had an elegance to her. I might even call her modest. She had black hair and silver-rimmed glasses. Her sleeveless dress was showy but attractive. Behind her in the high-ceilinged kitchen, I could see a dining table big enough to seat twenty people, set with dishes, glasses, and flower arrangements.
“I was at a birthday party that day,” Swan said with a gentle smile.
“A birthday party?” asked Hiro, pretending to be a magazine editor.
“Yes, for my husband. I was so busy preparing, and then my daughters helped bake the cake.”
“Oh, I’m looking at the pictures right now.”
“Are you?”
A picture on her social media feed showed her two young daughters holding up the cake. Scrolling down, another showed them clinging to their fashionable father, who sported a tidy goatee.
“Your family looks very close.”
“Are you sure I’m the one you want for your article on ‘the ideal housewife’?” Swan asked hesitantly.
“Oh yes,” Hiro answered solicitously. “Our readers are going to adore you. I’ll be in touch once I have further details.”
She ended the call. I looked up in relief from the tea cozy I’d placed over my head as a disguise.
“She didn’t seem scary at all,” I mentioned.
“Everything she just said was a lie.” Hiro shook her hair loose and removed her earrings. “She doesn’t have a husband or daughters, and she didn’t make the cake; she had it delivered.”
“What?!”
“The live feed from outside her house hasn’t shown anything but Amazon and Uber Eats delivery people for months. Everything she posts on her social media are stock photos. Like this one, and this one, and this one.”
The freshly baked cake, the two young daughters, the fashionable husband… All of it was part of the fake family this fabulously wealthy woman pretended lived with her in that big house. A shiver ran down my spine.
“Freaky… Why would she do that?”
This was the woman who frequented social media sites around the world writing “You hurt me” in all different languages. Hiro offered her level-headed analysis.
“She doesn’t have an alibi, and she’s extremely aggressive. If the bruises represent her comments…she could be the Dragon.”
Wounds… Bruises on the Dragon’s back… Maybe.
We found an anonymous message board with a thread titled “Searching for the Dragon’s identity,” but it wasn’t clear if anything the people were saying was true.
How much do I have to pay the Justices to get an item that lets me unveil other people?
Idiot, they don’t sell those items. That’s what’s wrong with the system.
Why do they have more power than the rest of us?
Voices, can you fix that please?
After the Beast is unveiled
A ballpark in Anaheim, California.
In the right-side batter’s box, Fox, an outfielder for the Wildebeests, cracked his bat hard against a well-placed ball with a slight uppercut swing.
“Whoo-hoo!!”
The crowd roared with approval.
“As his performance in last year’s World Series showed, Fox is one of MLB’s strongest hitters. He’s extremely popular with the fans, but rumor has it he’s hiding a horrible secret,” the aging commentator said, like he was showing off a brand-new possession.
“A rumor?” The announcer of the long-running program egged him on.
A large monitor in the TV studio displayed Fox’s handsome, bearded face looking up as he hit a home run. The commentator lowered his voice intimately.
“He plays the gentleman, but underneath the mask is a violent man.”
The image on the monitor transitioned from a shot of Fox sliding for a catch to one showing the team practicing. Everyone was talking casually in T-shirts under the bright sun, except for Fox. He was going for a run all by himself in a long-sleeved hooded sweatshirt, clearly the odd man out.
“They say he never takes off his top during practice because he’s covered in huge scars.”
“Wowww…”
Astounded, nervous murmurs ran through the studio audience.
Huge scars? That was hard to believe. Why? Was he a dangerous man? What kind of wounds did he have?
The announcer voiced those feelings.
“Every superstar has skeletons in their closet. We’re disillusioned every time we discover them.”
“Ohhh…”
A murmur of satisfaction and reassurance passed through the crowd. Of course every celebrity had a side the public wasn’t aware of. That was a given. I doubt anyone would be surprised if he was eventually arrested for some sort of violent offense. They’d probably tell their friends and family they thought he was suspicious from the start.
Fox was flashing a brilliant smile on the monitor.
Hiro had taped the show and replayed it for me. I gazed at Fox’s blue eyes.
There were several big bruises under them.
The commentator’s words echoed in my mind.
Scars…
Could he be the one…?
“Hiya, it’s Hey-o Doggo here.”
“And Mr. Reseggnation.”
Hey-o Doggo was a weak-looking dog wearing a T-shirt. Mr. Reseggnation was the egg character with the crack in his head. The two of them had a YouTube channel.
“Did you hear?” Hey-o Doggo asked Mr. Reseggnation.
“About what?”
“There’s a new AS popular with kids.”
“Wait, more popular than me? Who is it? Tell me, tell me!”
“You’re popular? You’ve been around since 1990!”
A picture of the Dragon appeared onscreen. Both characters fell over.
“Whoa!!”
“I’m talking about the Dragon.”
“I thought everyone hated him.”
Mr. Reseggnation punched the picture of the Dragon.
Right away, comments from kids all around the world showed up. The program was being broadcast live, and two kids were chosen at a time to talk on the stream. Hey-o Doggo read out their names and ages.
“We’ve got Aileen, who’s thirteen, and Omari, who’s ten.”
The kids explained excitedly why they liked the Dragon.
“The Dragon’s lair is called the Castle.”
“We’re competing to see who can find it first.”
Hey-o Doggo read out the names of the next children.
“Here we’ve got Camille, age sixteen, and Jake, age thirteen.”
“What’ll you do if you find it?” Mr. Reseggnation asked them.
“Take a selfie with him!”
“Shake his hand!”
“Next, Charlie, age eighteen, and Leo, age nine.”
“He’s a bad guy, right?”
“That’s why he’s the coolest.”
“I like how he’s quiet but strong.”
“Now we have Tomo, who’s eleven, and Kei, who’s fourteen.”
“You don’t think he’s scary?”
“The Dragon…is…my hero.” The pale-faced boy named Tomo was tilting his head for some reason.
“Does your neck hurt?”
He glanced around nervously with vacant eyes. He didn’t seem quite like all the other kids. Mr. Reseggnation turned to Kei, who was dressed in black.
“Hey, you in the back, look over here.”
But Kei refused to look at him.
I was watching the broadcast in bed.
“A hero…”
So the Dragon everyone on social media hated was a hero to the kids. What was the truth?
I stopped the livestream, and a series of related videos appeared. I found one featuring the kid called Tomo and clicked it.
“Yes, we’re a happy little family of three. We’re doing just fine without Mom around.”
A reliable-looking, confident man with thick eyebrows had his arms around Tomo’s and Kei’s shoulders. He must be their father. Tomo had the same vacant look in his eyes and kept twining his fingers together. Kei, still wearing black, was looking down silently.
Guess there’s all sorts of families out there. Mine included. But we’re not a happy little family, and we’re not “doing just fine.”
“We support each other and we enjoy every day.”
In the video, the father looked back and forth between his sons, smiling. They didn’t say anything.
Dad and I didn’t support each other.
On another channel, a poor-looking young guy was streaming from his bedroom.
“We’ve been buddies for ages,” he said, holding up a picture of the Dragon on his phone.
On this one creepy channel, a young man wearing the head of a mascot costume was shaking his head like he was dizzy.
“Me and the Dragon are hella tight.”
One of the naughtier channels had several young women in sexy bathing suits lounging on a king-size bed under a pink light.
“He’s actually crazy rich. Keep up the clicks if you wanna see his super luxurious mansion,” one of them said, shaking her rear end provocatively.
Comments kept popping up in one corner of the screen:
They’re all full of crap
Don’t believe any of it.
Click here for the real story
Day by day, more people were claiming to be friends with the Dragon or to know his secrets. The web was becoming a tangle of questionable information about him.
Who’s the Dragon?
Yeah, who?
Who is he?
Who?
Rumors about him were spreading like crazy. The endless glittering streets of U buzzed with the ever-growing chatter of ASes.
Who’s behind the Dragon?
Who is he?
Who?
Who…?