I started scribbling. Some bystanders watched curiously, but I was too deep in my own headspace to care. I wrote the basic facts. Spilling any liquid causes a 1 year wipeout. Interestingly, a drink and a drop of tear both wipe 1 year. So far the mark appears on the right arm. Is this a pattern? Or random perhaps. The note… it seemed oddly specific in its wording. I realized that the psycho actually was right, the drink was in Casanova’s hand. Is this proximity based? That barista, I thought, if an unconscious person spills, does that count?

  After writing all of it on the napkin which was nearly filled, I carefully drank my latte from the straw which had gone lukewarm. I stood up, took the napkin and went outside. The door to the cafe had interestingly said ‘closed’. Although I am pretty sure it said open when I entered. Anyways I decided to head home.

  The first sign of this being at least citywide was when I noticed people on the sidewalks with the same marks. The waiters' doing perhaps? All of this made me think if this was ever so slightly an organized operation, but the situation was getting serious pretty fast.

  Wrestling through these questions I reached home. It was an old building my parents had given me as a gift for securing a ‘reputable’ job. I entered reading my hypothesis about the liquid… speaking of which I needed to pee… But it is surely a liquid so now what?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  After avoiding all the fuss at the shop, I wouldn’t wanna lose years by simply peeing I thought. But bladder inflammation isn’t a good way to die either is it? It took a bit before I thought that the toilet has water in it, so technically it shouldn’t count as a surface. But I searched it up. My life, boring as it might be, is more important than the world. Turns out, as long as it stays within the container, you're fine.

  Done with that problem, I searched the actual question that mattered. It was worldwide. Social media was a circus. Videos of people testing it. Some doing it for likes. A guy poured a bottle on the ground and screamed as the mark on his arm rewrote itself. Reckless, but predictable, give humans a rule and they try to break it on purpose. Others were just posting the same warning over and over: “DON’T SPILL. YOU LOSE YEARS.”

  I could use the internet as an observatory because of these idiots. I started digging into the rule’s specifics. I reopened my wrinkled napkin. I had noted that the liquid might work based on proximity, I was wrong. It works by possession, interesting. Amidst all this, I found an interesting video.

  A dude with at least some brain was testing the difference between liquid dropped all at once and drop by drop, turns out, a whole bucket at once is -1 whereas drop by drop is -1 per drop. I had transferred the notes on the napkin to my phone because duh.

  It was getting interesting by the minute but then someone, probably a shithead, knocked on the door.