Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,93

looked happy. I was happy for them both.

Gray had doffed his regalia, declaring loudly that it was too friggin’ hot, adding god.

After a solid hour, the crowd finally began moving on to explore the rest of the Faire. I had broken character long ago. I was a babbling little boy in a costume jumping up and down. We all were.

“That was awesome!” I cried. “That was awesome!”

Jamal stopped jumping abruptly and pointed. “Dude.”

“That was awesome!” said Milo and Gray.

“Dude,” said Jamal.

I looked.

In the trees beyond stood a sylph. There were lots of sylphs at the Faire, but this one was like no other.

For she glowed.

She glowed the purest blue.

Light burst through from beneath her white bodice and white skirt. Behind her sprouted an impenetrable steel fan of radiating wing blades, each polished to intensify the luminescence. The wing blades were each tipped with crimson triangles of blood—this sylph had seen battle, yet not a stain marred her garment.

The astonished crowd around her throbbed as she took a step beneath the branches of the tree and changed her hue to bright yellow, then orange. In the shade she was even more brilliant.

I wanted to know how blinding she would be in the darkness of night. I had never wanted anything worse.

She drew me toward her with a simple curl of outstretched fingers. I let my sword fall. I ignored the amazed cries of my compatriots.

I went.

“You look incandescent,” I said.

“They’re actually LEDs,” said Cirrus. “In Yiwu you can get fifty thousand three-meter strands for a hundred bucks. I learned how to install and configure a controller on Nerdsweat.”

“I know Nerdsweat,” I said.

“These metal blades took forever to cut and form,” said Cirrus. “I almost chopped my fingers off. Then I almost burned them soldering on all the individual servo motors.”

“Servo motors?” I said. “For what?”

Cirrus gave me a look: You’ll see.

“Let’s just say I watched a ton of NeoForge videos,” said Cirrus.

“I know NeoForge,” I said.

“You better,” said Cirrus. “Those guys follow you. Everyone follows you. Because they know no one else comes close to DIY Fantasy FX, led by one Sunny Dae.”

I nodded with sheepish pride, because it was true. We had the most, best followers of anyone in the entire Do-It-Yourself Fantasy and Science Fiction Cosplay Special Effects Maker category. And on every video since the talent show, I was the host. The front man, you could say.

“I’ve been exploring your strange little world,” said Cirrus. “It’s quite nerdy.”

“I know,” I said.

“Obsessively nerdy,” said Cirrus. “The arguments people get into—Dumbledore versus Gandalf?”

“Yap,” I said, like What can you do?

“I wish you’d just shown me the real you when we first met,” said Cirrus.

I paused. “Do you miss Rock Star Sunny?”

Cirrus sucked her teeth and thought. “I mourned him. I did. One day I met him, and then one day he just went away.”

“I’m so sorry about everything,” I said. “I am an idiot.”

“But not all of him went away,” said Cirrus, catching my eyes with hers. “I saw him in your videos. Not Rock Star Sunny or Nerd Sunny, but a kind of pure Sunny-ness.”

“A Sunny-ness,” I said, with a chuckle.

“Anyway, I’m an idiot, too,” she said. “Because I’m here.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you more,” said Cirrus.

“Not as much as I missed you, though,” I said.

“Shut up,” she said. “Listen. The Yiwu thing ended sooner than expected. Yay. I made my parents move us back here instead of some other new city.”

I blinked with surprise. “Did they freak?”

“Not as much as I hoped,” she said. “But I’m trying to get over that. They are who they are.”

“You’re really back,” I said.

“There’s that famous Californian endless summer I keep hearing about,” said Cirrus.

“I can show it to you,” I said.

She took a step closer. “I liked your video. I liked it a lot.”

I took a step, too. “Thanks.”

“I’m not talking about Esmeralda’s Veil,” she said. “I’m talking about the other one.”

What?

“From my doorbell,” she said.

Cirrus’s doorbell, with its little impassive video eye.

She smiled, took a breath, and quietly sang.

“You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

And I sang with her.

“You’re beautiful, it’s true.”

We kissed, and the beautiful nerds around us laughed and cheered.

It was much too much attention for Cirrus, I guessed, because she activated individual servo motors to draw her wing blades down around us and shut out the crowd, creating a gleaming dark hood where she glowed and glowed, her light pinging back and forth from metal to metal.

She closed those deadly sharp blades tight and offered no possibility of escape.

I was doomed.

Acknowledgments

Greetings, adventurer! You have reached the Realm of the Acknowledgments. I hope you had a fun journey. I know I had a ton of fun creating it. For this is my fun book: my happy, goof-off, slap-silly story very intentionally designed to bring desperately needed joy and light to what was a very difficult and mind-bending year.

Anyway, you know those people I thanked for Frankly in Love? They’re still here, and still wonderful. Our adventuring party includes:

Jen Loja, our fearless, lawful-good level 27 warrior leader, along with her compatriot Jocelyn Schmidt.

Jen Klonsky, a chaotic-good rogue with at least 19 charisma. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to work with a publisher like you.

The wise clerics Elyse Marshall and Lizzie Goodell of the publicity clan.

All those within House Marketing: Her Benevolence Kara Brammer, the neutral-good ranger Alex Garber, the lawful-evil drow druid Felicity Vallence, and the loyal warlock apprentice James Akinaka. And we cannot forget Shannon Spann, a sorceress of unspecified level who can teleport between the worlds of TikTok and Rec-A-Reads at will.

Felicia Frazier, lawful-good level 25 sorceress, and all her anointed wizards in sales.

Caitlin Tutterow, Theresa Evangelista, and Eileen Savage, lawful-good monks blessed with 20 points of constitution each, as well as shadow rogues Laurel Robinson, Elizabeth Lunn, and Cindy Howle.

Those mystic seers perched high atop Alloy Mountain: Les Morgenstein, Josh Bank, Sara Shandler, Joelle Hobeika, and Elysa Dutton.

I must include the traveling bard Timba Smits for his beautifully precise and evocative cover art, as well as the greatsword barbarian Judy Bass.

Ensconced within the central tower of Yoon Castle, there is always Lady Nicola, my eternal love. Together we are ruled over by the kind but very confusing Queen Empress Penny. Sound the butt alarm!

I have to end by thanking my big brother, Danny, artist, tinkerer, and archnerd, who I have always looked up to, and still do. As kids we conquered the Tomb of Horrors atop the pool table plains at the house of the O’Bitz brothers, and Danny was the best Dungeon Master ever.

About the Author

David Yoon grew up in Orange County, California, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Nicola Yoon, and their daughter. He drew the illustrations for Nicola's #1 New York Times bestseller Everything, Everything. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Frankly in Love, which was a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Honor book. You can visit him at davidyoon.com.

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* Same mechanism as Esmeralda’s Veil, but in a melee weapon with the switch hidden below the sword hilt and a white noise generator.

* Electroluminescent sheets sewn into windows cut out of the fabric, powered by a Li-ion waist pack. Two Raiden’s Spark mechanisms concealed in each arm sleeve.

* Concealed cap-gun mechanism with additional white LED flash effect.

* Don’t make fun; Gray had been out of the game for years. He thought a ranger was a type of vehicle.

* Just abs.

* No change.