Back on their home turf, the other three power-walk out of the station with Roxas lagging behind. Hayner says they should go work on the paper. That is the level of “I don’t want to talk about this” he’s at: he’d rather do homework. Also, y’all only investigated six wonders, and Chumlee absolutely said there were seven. You had one job, comprised of seven smaller jobs, and you couldn’t even do that! What if the seventh thing was TOTALLY REAL? And it was aliens?! To that end, Chumlee says the gist of their report will be how the rumors were “bogus.” Olette adds, “We can still make it sound good if we write about all the work we did.” I can’t even begin with these children. None of you did shit! Roxas, even with the maelstrom that must be his thought stream at the moment, feels the need to call out what quitters they all are. “But what about the last one–the seventh wonder?” he asks, feeling his redemption riding on this. Hayner angrily spits, “Who cares?” and when Roxas insists he does, Hayner flounces. Honestly I’m amazed he didn’t do this earlier. Chumlee and Olette look like they wish they could turn invisible right now, but after some badgering, Chumlee admits he knows where the seventh wonder supposedly is: “It’s at that haunted mansion.” Then he and Olette run after Hayner, aka their friend who has not gone insane. INSANE FOR LEARNING.

With that, I’m back in control of the increasingly out-of-control Roxas. Chum tells him not to “get [his] hopes up” about this seventh wonder, because it’s probably a silly misunderstanding like all the others were…n’t. Reading between the lines, this is extracurricular and none of Roxas’s friends will be helping with this investigation–like they helped at all before this–but dollars to donuts they’ll totally include it in their paper if he actually finds anything. Get new friends, Roxas. Seifer sounded interested!

Roxas is already being *Doc Brown voice* ERASED FROM EXISTENCE

So, alone, Roxas proceeds to the, ahem, Haunted Mansion. (The place doesn’t bear that much of a resemblance to the attraction, nor is it actually haunted. Also, if we’re doing at least one more of these games, Disney should be a little more sparing with its properties–as we’ll see later, one ride can be the basis for an entire world!) Roxas is staring at the gates when Chumlee scares him half out of his skin by saying behind him, “You know something… We were gonna check the mansion out tomorrow. It is the most suspicious place.” I am going to assume he means checking out the mansion re: Roxas’s current trajectory toward the loony bin, because they already said they were going to look into that tomorrow. If he means they were going to check out the seventh wonder, I call bullshit–they were all ready to write their dumb paper today!

I am worried about Chumlee spinning lies for nothing, it turns out. He clarifies, “Even Seifer’s gang was gonna help,” and that both means it definitely wasn’t for school (that little nerd Vivi excepted, there’s no way those kids are going to do summer homework) and explains what Seifer and Olette were winking to each other about earlier. Roxas, though this is at least the second time he’s been told this, yelps, “Seifer?!” in shock. “Yeah, Hayner asked him to,” Chumlee replies. Okay, maybe don’t get new friends. They were being really weird earlier, but in fairness so were you, kid.

Just as Roxas’s world is maybe, at last, being set right-side-up, the camera zooms in on the mansion to show fucking Naminé in one of the big windows on the top floor. Well, that’s going to just flip his little table again, but he so far doesn’t seem to have noticed. When he asks Chumlee what they’re looking for, well, you’re going to be SO surprised: “Well, they say there’s a girl who appears at the second floor window…even though no one’s lived here for years.” I am already girding myself for Chumlee recounting the Snopes article he read about totally cool and weird optical illusions that make girls in white nighties show up in glass. Roxas is going to look so fucking sad and alone.

Roxas stares through the gates and the camera zooms–with a zoom sound, like the cameraman is physically flying over the gates and doesn’t know how his lens works–toward the window where Naminé is standing. And suddenly, we are in her all-white room, with her childish drawings pinned to the walls and scattered on the floor and the table. Among them are an aerial view of the Island of Wankers, a room that looks like the Hollow Bastion keyhole chamber, and Axel and Roxas (both in black hoodie robes!) talking to two other mystery figures. HMMMMMMM. But Roxas, who is now in the room somehow, is focused on a depiction of Kairi, holding a paopu fruit that is either larger than her giant head, or is being held out by her toward the viewer. That means we are all Junior, not just poor Roxas. I’m not okay with this.

She has an intriguing impressionistic style but I am distracted by nobody having hands.

After looking for Naminé, who is in here somewhere but possibly hiding, Roxas turns his attention to the drawing of himself and Axel. I guess it’s possible the blond is not Roxas–their backs are turned–but I doubt anybody else has that red mullet. Santa wouldn’t be that good to me. “This is…me?” Roxas asks. “And Axel’s here too.” Well, fine. Naminé casually tells him, “You ARE best friends…” which Roxas takes as a joke. Dude, does Naminé seem like she’s capable of jokes? Or any–sorry–off-color remarks? She goes on, “Don’t you want to know the truth about who you really are?” No, that’s okay, he’ll just carry on this weird half-life where all his friends think he has some kind of brain injury and he misplaces every object he’s ever cherished. The dream!

Roxas insists, “No one knows me better than me,” which is something that should be true and yet so obviously isn’t specifically for Roxas at this moment. “But…” he adds, “I don’t get what’s been happening lately.” Welcome to my world! Roxas, in first-person mode, walks to the other side of the window, where he spots a drawing of Goofy, @%$#!!!, and Junior. @%$#!!!’s beak and Junior’s right foot look like they are being subsumed by the yellow in Goofy’s pants, so this is not Naminé’s finest artistic effort. Nonetheless, she asks, “You know these three, don’t you?” Of course, Roxas does, though only from his dreams. I know I’ve been more focused on how trying these dreams have been for me, what with the merman nipples and moaning keyholes and everything, but this really makes it sink in how awful they must be for Roxas. Imagine dreaming of these three dinks, every night. What kind of god would allow that?

“About a year ago…” Naminé says, “some things happened, and I had to take apart the memories chained together in [Junior]’s heart.” That is a lot. Naminé is likely boiling down Junior’s entire bumbling adventure as “some things happened” to keep Roxas focused–especially when he’s seen a lot of it already–but it also feels like the hand-wave of it is there to distract me from the insane casualness with which she says she broke down the components of Junior’s heart like she was snapping segments off a KitKat. She just…did that! Don’t ask questions. “But now…I’m putting them all back exactly the way they were. It’s taken me a long time, but pretty soon [Junior] will be his old self again.” How much munny can I offer Naminé to make a few tiny adjustments before she’s done? Would 5000 do it? I can throw in some Float-G.

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Since Roxas had to be about to ask this, Naminé cuts to the chase and adds, “The process has been affecting you, too, Roxas.” He thinks this means the dreams, and neither kid even mentions Roxas’s new best pals, the Keyblade and the Sexy Dusks. “You and [Junior] are connected,” Naminé says, which is somehow worse than her follow-up bad news, “And…in order for [Junior] to become completely whole again… He needs you.” Roxas takes this in along with a drawing of himself, still in a black robe, holding hands with Junior. Well, holding stumps. Her meaning, that “He needs to inhabit your fresh body”–or whatever is going on here, and it is not good for Roxas any way you slice it–is lost on Roxas, who is all, “Me? What for?” He’s looking for a new best friend and you won the worst lottery ever devised! Yay!!!

“You hold half of what he is…” Naminé says. I was about to say, “The good half,” but is there 50 percent of Junior that’s salvageable? I’m asking. “He needs you, Roxas,” she repeats. Oh, well if JUNIOR NEEDS HIM. Time for Roxas to fling himself into the endless void, to help this dude he has never met and barely knows, and what he does know comes from a Greatest Hits album of him acting like a choad! The screen whites out, and I assume we’re going to be back at the front gate without Roxas and Naminé ever being more than disembodied voices in this room, but then we’re back in the room, with the two towheads facing each other across Naminé’s ridiculously long table. Unless she’s really into Warhammer, I can’t imagine this being a practical piece of furniture for her. Even less so than the ceramic sculptures of potted plants.

Roxas decides to take a break from his super-cool destiny of being Junior’s shadow and asks Naminé what her deal is. She answers, matter-of-factly, “I’m a witch with power over [Junior]’s memories and those around him.” …Neat? I have no further questions. The camera zooms in over Naminé’s shoulder toward her most recent drawing, still on the pad. It’s some sort of wack castle with towers sticking out every which way, but not Hollow Bastion. Roxas is stuck on this “witch” business, as anyone would be, and Naminé adds, “That’s what DiZ called me.” Reader, if I followed this up with anything but my immediate reaction to it, it would be dishonest with you, and also myself. So: “DiZ NUTS!”

Looking forward to lots of iterations of that very modern and fresh joke in the future, and I hope you are too! Anyway, thinking about how this DiZ creep called her a witch makes her look almost emotive for a moment, as she sighs that she doesn’t even understand this power or know if “there’s a right way for [her] to use it.” I mean…I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “Don’t use it” is your best bet there! But I guess if you’ve already decided that trapping a stupid boy in a magic artichoke is either a good or at least an unavoidable outcome, it would be easy to get bogged down in the ethical framework beyond that point. Roxas smiles in what feels like the first time in ages and says, “Hmm…I can’t help you there.” Naminé smiles too. She’s probably relieved that Roxas didn’t immediately take her to task for infecting him with some goof’s memories. Whew!

‘You have a curio cabinet, with no curios in it.’

But this brief moment of laughing at Naminé’s problems only reminds Roxas of his. He leaped with gusto into hearing more about Naminé because he couldn’t handle her truth bombs about himself, but it only took a moment of that for him to go, “No, let’s go back to me.” But after getting a glimpse into the truth of things, Roxas has realized he doesn’t know himself like he thought he did. “I guess I would like to know. What do you know about me…that I don’t?” he asks. “That you masturbate more than anyone in the gummiverse,” Naminé does not reply. I mean, he might know that.

Naminé, who up to this moment had been popping at the seams with juicy information, pauses and looks reluctant. But after considering, she finally says, downcast, “You…you were never supposed to exist, Roxas.” Wooooof. Way to hit the boy with both barrels, Naminé. Roxas is deeply offended. “How could you even say such a thing…even if it were true?” He does not add, “WHICH IT’S NOT, RIGHT,” but it’s implied. Naminé at least has the grace to apologize, and wonder aloud, “I guess some things…really are better left unsaid.” Yeah, “The universe meant to abort you” is not a thing anyone wants to hear. That said, I bet she’s totally going to be withholding to Roxas now, out of fear of upsetting him again, so good job keeping that info pipeline clear, buddy!

More or less confirming my suspicion, the second Naminé finishes speaking, the white curtains in her room flutter, the screen whites out, and Roxas finds himself back outside, wearing the thousand-mile stare of someone who’s just realized their universe is contained inside a marble on a cat’s collar. Chumlee is shaking him by the shoulder to snap him out of it. Looking concerned, he asks, “Did you see her?” Could it be? Is someone about to believe Roxas? “Yeah. Watch the window–closely,” he instructs Chumlee. This probably is not the best way to go about this. Sure enough, when Chumlee looks, he just sees Naminé’s curtains moving. What is making them move like that, anyway? That window is closed. Was there an all-white ceiling fan I missed? “Oh, lame,” Chum says. “That’s just the curtains moving. There must be a draft somewhere.” As he goes on that he’s surprised the Haunted Mansion “even has curtains”–like when people die in an Amityville Horror bloodbath, they make sure to take down all the drapes first–we see the window from Roxas’s point of view, and Naminé is still standing there staring at him. “Yeah,” Roxas replies. He is broken. I really didn’t think a day of Chumlee of all people treating him like an imbecile would be the last straw, but life surprises you like that.

Back at the Wankhouse, Olette asks them how it went. Because Roxas is probably catatonic now, Chumlee answers for them both, “The girl in the window turned out to be a curtain flapping in the wind.” I mean, we’re all curtains flapping in the wind, if you think about it. “I figured as much,” Olette replies. “The report’s already done.” YOU WROTE IT YOURSELF? GIRL. I hold out a tiny bit of hope that Hayner was at least a nominal co-author, and then Olette says, “So, wanna go find Hayner? He’s probably at the station.” God dammit, Olette. I know it’s not her I should be disappointed in, but I still am. Olette also notes they only have “two more days together,” which gets Roxas to focus again, his face clearly reading “BECAUSE I’M ABOUT TO BE ERAAAAAAASED.” Olette has no way of knowing this, but she still clarifies after seeing his expression, “Summer vacation, remember?” Do they not go to the same school? Can they not still hang out once they’re back in class again? I wish it weren’t so obvious that these words were only put in her mouth so Roxas could take them the wrong way.

The trio catches up with Hayner sitting in their usual spot on top of the tower, eating a goddamn popsicle like he hasn’t a care in the world. So to break down how this evening went: Hayner sat on his butt and ate ice cream, Chumlee and Roxas stared at a window, and Olette wrote a paper for all four of them. Fuck this. “Tomorrow we search the town,” Hayner says, trying to sound like an in-charge, gumption-filled leader, and not a lazy, work-shirking butthole. Chumlee adds, cheerfully, “Next day’s the fair.” Well, maybe that at least will be a fun outing that doesn’t end in soul-crushing dread for Roxas! Seifer will win him a giant stuffed Minion, and he can throw up all over Hayner in the Zipper! A fitting last day of summer if I’ve ever heard one.

Yeah, this dude who avoided homework to eat ice cream doesn’t need any more stress!

While Chumlee and Olette laugh at Hayner maybe getting fat from all his ice cream–of which he didn’t even buy any extra for his friends!–Roxas continues to look like someone ran over his dog. Hang in there, buddy! That fair, which you will surely attend, will definitely be worth all this suffering, and tomorrow, you will absolutely get answers and closure to all these weird problems you’re having, when Seifer and Hayner crack the case! Everything’s coming up Roxas!