1)ficpress repeats the first line again. "2

2."

2) An entire chapter devoted to developing Kari. Unexpectedly good. I'm kinda surprised that a story like this didn't just jump right into the action.

3) Kari dates like she's trying to set some sort of time trial record. Nice.

4) Most. Awkward. Date. Ever.

5) This story's actually got me fairly interested. I'm curious to know what the deal with Alex's headaches are. Not much about his life has been explained, so it could be anything. This story's got a lot of potential. Please keep writing it.

-SC

Here's a review, numbered for convenience.

1) Occasionally, ficpress does this buggy thing where it takes the fist line of a story (or sometimes a line from a completely different story on your desktop, dunno why) and clones it at the beginning of a chapter. I usually make a point of double-checking every document I upload to ensure that it's not there, which is a lot of extra work, but it prevents things like this from showing up: "The Dark Mark

The Dark Mark

By D.Doberman

1."

2)"“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Alex said monotonous." I suspect that's going to be of some philosophical importance later, which I approve of. It's also not bad as an opening scene. Minor critique, though: 'monotonous' is an adjective, and has a hard time describing 'said'. 'monotonously' might be better.

3) You've got some great character interaction between Kari and Alex. I've never heard of someone coldly, bluntly accepting a date before. That was good writing.

4)"That’s when his head began to feel hot, and the walls dizzy." good description, and a little bit of snyasthesia with the walls feeling dizzy.

5) You've got sort of a simple, direct writing style, which is refreshing. It says exactly what it needs to, and doesn't really get lost in the details. I think I'll read a bit further.

-SC

I really like the use of dialogue in this story. The description is good but could use some work... can't wait until the next chapter because you have a great start.