Beep beep beep!

Ryan groaned and squirmed around in bed, finding himself completely entangled in his bed sheets. He reached an arm out from under the covers, blindly seeking out the source of the most evil sound of all existence at the point in time. Eventually, his hand brushed against the cool surface of his phone, which he promptly snatched and yanked under the blanket with him.

Ugh, alright let's see what time it i- ack! Momentarily blinded by his screen's brightness, he shook his head to clear daze before squinting his eyes at his phone. 10:51 AM?! Eesh, that's even later than yesterday!

Tumbling head over heels, Ryan scrambled out of bed and practically threw himself onto the floor. He winced a bit from the impact and groaned sleepily, gazing around his apartment. The sight of many still packed cardboard boxes graced his eyes, eliciting a tired sigh. How have I not gotten to unpacking yet? Come on, what is wrong with you, Ryan? I'll have to get to this after breakfast. Or brunch, I guess.

Climbing to his feet, Ryan's eyes flicked to his bedside table, where he had left a small note for himself last night with the words "Princess Luna" messily scribbled on it. Recognition flashed in his mind and he remembered why he had left it. Let's see, um... I think tonight there were a few childhood faces, some large school campus, an even larger, uh, water bottle or something? Really weird dream tonight, as usual, but I don't think I can remember there being any Princess Luna.

Ryan scratched his head awkwardly. "I... guess there really was nothing to worry about, like Twilight said." He glanced over to the hallway leading to the bathroom, where he had apparently left the door open from last night. Quietly, he crept towards the door and leaned an ear into the open space. After receiving a few seconds of nothing but his own breathing, he cautiously peeked his head into the bathroom.

"Hey, Twilight? You there?"

Once more, no response could be heard. He waited maybe ten seconds, straining to pick up any sort of faint noises from the other side of his mystical shower curtain, before backing up and closing the door.

Hmmm... she's probably out getting breakfast. He double checked his phone to reaffirm the time. Or... lunch? Or, maybe brunch. Is brunch even a thing over there in, uh, Equestria? He scratched his head in thought. Oh, whatever. From what she's told me so far, she has her own sort of life, so whatever she's up to right now shouldn't be anything I need to worry about.

He paused, the realization of what he had just thought hitting him in the face, and chuckled. I somehow managed to discretely make first contact with some unknown, alien world made up of sentient ponies and a whole ton of random creatures from our myths and legends... and two days later, I'm wondering whether she's busy eating lunch or brunch. Wow, okay.

He glanced backwards towards the notebook sitting on his work desk, still opened to his latest page of notes taken from the previous day's talks with this 'Twilight Sparkle'. And apparently, minus the impossible existence of mythological creatures, the ability to control the weather, moon, and freaking sun, and just the existence of magic in general... they're barely any different from us as a society. They've got businesses and jobs and unemployment, there's restaurants and libraries and farms, a functioning government, hell, they even have to pay taxes!

He turned around to face his now-closed bathroom door. Not to mention, I can understand Twilight completely fine, like she's a native English speaker, though she says their language is something called 'ponish', with its own, completely different origin! What's going on, is there some sort of 'magic spell' on my shower curtain that's translating our words to each other or what?

Ryan's stomach rumbled, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance. Yeah yeah, I heard you. Ugh, I really need to grab food now. I'll have to remember to ask her more about this whenever I see, I mean, talk with her again. Based on everything else she's told me, magic and all that is much more her specialty. I'll probably be best if I... He paused, then chuckled to himself. Who am I kidding? I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Ryan walked over to his desk, picking up his wallet and key, before heading for his front door. He spared a glance backwards once more towards his bathroom door, then turned back around and quietly opened his front door and slipped out.

"One breakfast burrito, please."

The cashier nodded and pressed a set of keys on the register, its front-facing display lighting up to list his one and only item. Ryan fidgeted around with his credit card already out and ready in his hand. She turned tiredly back to him.

"Do you want any extra sauce with that?"

Ryan shuffled around on his feet, trying not to think about the many potential sets of eyes that could be gazing upon him from the short line of customers behind him. "Uh, no, no sauce, thanks." He eyed the packets of ketchup sauce sitting at the edge of the counter. I don't want to risk another incident of spilling the sauce while walking. Gah, never again.

"Any plates or utensils?"

Ryan looked back towards the cashier. "Oh, uhm, no thanks either."

"What about-"

"Just the burrito, please. Oh, and make it to-go."

The cashier rolled her eyes. "Alright, that'll be $5.99."

Agh, why are you the one rolling your eyes, I just wanna get out of your hair quicker. Ryan swiped his card and waited a few seconds for her to hand him his receipt.

"Your food will be ready in about five minutes."

"Cool, thanks." Ryan grabbed his receipt and walked over to an unoccupied corner of the joint and leaned on the wall. He pulled out his phone and began mindlessly scrolling through his downloaded music.

Alright, so if I remember right, Twilight mentioned there were some orchestra concerts she's likes listening to, and she definitely really liked that cello prelude I have saved. Hmm... He scrolled down his phone more, making note of a few relevant orchestral pieces he had saved. I should probably make a playlist or something for Twilight with all the different orchestra pieces I have. If she liked that cello music, she'd totally love some of these other ones.

He paused. Actually, I gotta make playlists for all my music so I'm not just sifting through them in alphabetical order... He swiped over the menu to create a new playlist, subsequently naming it 'Twilight Music'. He then started going through his music and checking off anything remotely recognized as being orchestra.

"Hey."

"WHA-?!" Panicked, Ryan stumbled a little to the side, away from the voice that was just in his ear, very nearly dropping his phone. After regaining his bearings, he turned around and faced the annoyingly familiar Vietnamese man with his obnoxiously familiar black and white business suit. "Ugh, Peter, really?"

Peter, Ryan's former work colleague, leaned against a nearby wall and flashed a cocky smirk. "What, surprised to see me?"

"Uhm, yeah? I only ever see you eating out during the week." Ryan slipped his phone into his pocket and mirrored Peter's posture, though a little unsteadily as the wall near him had some unfortunately-placed shelves, but he did his best. He looked Peter up and down. "And what's with the whole get-up? You look like you just came from your office, isn't it the weekend?"

Peter's smile faltered and he rolled his eyes, groaning in exasperation. "If by 'weekend', you mean either Saturday or Sunday, then yes. But if you mean 'day of relaxation away from all your work and stress', then I'm afraid my company's got another thing to say." He leaned his head back and bumped it hard against the wall. "Our product manager called the entire team in for some last minute stress testing of the application and database or whatever. We don't have an internal demo of it for it yet, so I dunno what the fuss is about."

"Aw, damn." Ryan looked to the ground awkwardly and scratched the back of his head. "Uhm, sorry to hear, man."

"Nah, it's all good." Peter waved a hand dismissively. "I can handle it as long as we're getting paid for the extra time. We'd handle it better if you were still with us."

"Uhuh. Ha. Ha." Ryan rolled his eyes though failing to hide a small grin. "You know, you don't need to mention that so much, I like my new work place a lot better."

"Well, duh. It's your literally place. Not like you have anyone telling you what you can't have hanging on your walls." Peter playfully punched Ryan on his shoulder. "But come on, you need to get out more than just our little lunch talks during the weeks. You've been lot more, uh..." He scratched his chin. "A lot more reserved lately, since you left us. I swear, you gotta talk to more people other than just me, now that you're not like, forced to when you were on the dev team."

Ryan scoffed and looked away slightly, sighing a little. "I'm... fine with how I am now, with how things are now. I just... I dunno, I think I'm pretty content with just keeping things how they are." He glanced over to the counter, eyeing the small slips of paper hanging on the wall behind. Come on, where's my burrito already?

"Really? You sure don't sound like it." Peter pulled out his phone and scrolled through some lists, text too small for Ryan to read out from where he stood.

"Huh?" Ryan let out a yawn. "Well, maybe I'm just sleepy still, I just woke up not too long ago after all. And besides, we still have our lunch chats and our occasional weekend hangouts, right? That seems like enough for me for now."

Peter put his phone back away and glanced over to Ryan. "Speaking of that, what was up with you yesterday? You weren't answering any of my calls or messages all day."

Uh oh.

Ryan's eyes widened. "You were texting me yesterday?"

"Yeah? Of course I was, I was just seeing if you were free to hang at your place again." Peter raised an eyebrow. "I know you can be a bit slow on replying, but you've full on ghosted me for a full day, that's not really like you. At least, I hope it isn't now. Were you busy or something yesterday?"

Shoot, I had my phone on silent for most of yesterday! Some notification popped up during my talk with Twilight, so I disabled the push notifications so I could focus more on all those topics she was asking me about. Ryan pulled out his phone and peeked at his settings, confirming his memory. I got so sucked into chatting with her that I totally forgot Peter usually messages me on Saturdays.

Ryan rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, offering a sheepish smile. "Yeah, uhm, sorry about that. I was just really busy with researching some new, uhm..." His eyes flickered across the cafe for some inspiration, between people, tables, wall decor, before finally landing on one of the workers in the back pouring a smoothie. "...fluid dynamics simulations. You know about those, right?"

Peter blinked. "Huh? You've never been interested in those before."

Have I not? "Well, I just found saw some YouTube video about it yesterday morning and really wanted to play around with it." Ryan mentally wiped off an imaginary bead of sweat from his forehead.

Peter stared at him for a while before looking down and shaking his head with a smile. "Heh. That sounds about right. By the way, you seem pretty relaxed now, with all things considered. I haven't really seen your new place yet, so you think we could drop by your place and-"

Twilight.

"No!"

"Huh?" Peter blinked, then chuckled. "Come on, you just moved in, you can't possibly have made that bad of a mess already."

Twilight might be around by the time I get back. I mean, I could run ahead and warn her to stay quiet, but that might look weird to Peter. I don't know if she might get too curious and try greeting another one of 'humans' anyways. The last thing I need is word of this weird, interdimensional... thingie getting loose. I literally just moved in and everything is actually... okay for once. He paused. And if he so much as hears a girl's voice in my apartment, he's totally gonna get the wrong idea and start telling that crap to everyone. His mind raced, searching for a valid excuse.

Wait a minute, what am I doing? I don't even need to lie.

"Yeahhhh sorry about that. I, uh, haven't really unpacked pretty much anything since moving in last week. Everything' still all over the floor, and I'd rather you see the place once I have it all nice and organized."

Peter rolls his eyes with a laugh. "Uhuh, suuuure, don't know why I expected anything different. You even found some whole new thing to obsess over before even getting to that."

A quiet sigh of relief. Whew, he bought it. Perfect. Now I can just-

"Just don't get too distracted with that for that demo thing of yours tomorrow."

What. "What?"

Peter cocked his head in confusion. "Yeah? Y'know, that client demo you've been telling me about all week."

Ryan sharply inhaled as the recollection of the previous week's stresses flooded back to him. This time, a genuine bead of sweat slid down the side of his face. "Oh. Right, that."

"Yeh, you were all stressed about it, always talking about how you weren't sure whether a certain feature would be done in time."

I spent the entire week focusing on getting the functionality up and running. I had told myself I could just use the upcoming weekend to plan out the presentation and my speaking points.

"And even with the parts that you were done with, you didn't even know how you were going to properly demo them!"

And then the weekend happened, and Twilight happened, and I got completely caught up with chatting with her all day yesterday and completely wasted half of the weekend.

"Especially with your anxiety with running presentations in the first place, like wow. I mean, do you remember what happened the last time you tried managing the demonstration when you still working with us? Like, wowie, I-"

"Oh my god, thank you for the reminder, but you are not helping at all." Ryan snapped loudly. Silence fell over the cafe, and he shrank slightly. "Sorry, uh, I-"

"Ryan! Breakfast burrito!" A voice called out from the pick-up section of the counter.

Oh, universe, you could not have timed that better. Ryan quickly stumbled over to the pick-up counter and grabbed his wrapped-up food, then made his way for the door. "Sorry, I really gotta go now, Peter!"

"Wait! What is going on with yo-" Whatever Peter's parting words were, they were lost to Ryan's ears as the door slammed shut behind him.

Author's Note

Yep! Another update! Bit short, but not splitting it here would've made this chapter unnecessarily long. Hoping to stop these hiatuses from getting too long.