Chapter One

It was 1:25pm, and Terrence was still lying unconscious on his bed.

He did not have a particularly long night, nor was he feeling any symptoms of sickness or bodily disorder. It had happened gradually over the months - one late night here for studying, one late night there for playing computer games - he had inadvertently reversed the biological clock in his body, and the glaring streak of sunlight that shone through his balcony window evidently did not prove to be sufficient encouragement for him to awake to the bustling world outside.

On most other days this reckless habit would have been fairly harmless, but today was an important day, insofar as he actually had events listed on his schedule besides that of feeding and other basic human life sustenance activities. He had set his alarm to 1:30pm the previous night (or perhaps it was better described as "earlier today"), and at precisely that moment a series of noises cracked through Terrence's ears and thus rendered further sleep as no longer a viable option. The hooting of his alarm, the bleeping of a truck outside, a roommate cooking lunch with an obnoxiously tinny frying pan, and above all that there was also Hazel's disgruntled barking. She could have been barking at the unpleasant noises that had seemed to occur all at once, or it was entirely possible that she was barking simply because she needed Terrence to wake up to take her for a walk.

Terrence was a tolerant man. Or at the very least he was tolerant to noise - he had fallen asleep to a pumped up recording of Slayer: Angel of Death before, or indeed, Nightwish: Romanticide. So it couldn't have been the growing pandemonium that accounted for his decision to wake up. No. His decision stemmed from a strained anticipation of the day's events to come. It was the anticipation of completing the things that had to be done, menial tasks, like waking up to attend to the house cleaners, or doing the weekly laundry, or taking out the garbage. Although today, it was none of those things.

Today was an important day, and he could not afford to lose any more time.