[I'm hungry]
It was a dull, gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach, familiar in its persistence. The empty bottles were scattered across the bed like fallen soldiers, their labels peeling, their contents long since absorbed into his bloodstream and metabolized by his accelerated healing.
His head throbbed. His mouth tasted like something had died in it. His body was stiff and sore from sleeping in an awkward position, his neck cricked, his back aching.
For a long moment, he just lay there. The ceiling stared back at him, white, unremarkable, the same ceiling she'd looked at every night before she fell asleep.
He didn't want to move. Didn't want to exist. But his stomach growled again, insistent, demanding, and his body kept surviving no matter how many times he tried to destroy it.
He pushed himself upright. The room spun, tilted, steadied.
His legs were unsteady beneath him, but they held. He walked to the bathroom.
The bathroom mirror showed him a face he barely recognized. Pale. Hollow-cheeked. The scar on his cheek seemed to have disappeared, but new bruises seemed to linger, more scars from Reina.
His violet eyes were bloodshot, ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises. His hair was a tangled mess, unwashed, uncombed. He splashed cold water on his face. Drank from the faucet until his stomach stopped cramping.
It didn't help.
He looked like a ghost.
[Maybe I am a ghost, maybe I'm just a wandering spirit]
The apartment was still dark. The curtains were still drawn. The clock on the nightstand told him it was evening, according to the blinking digital display, but he had no idea what day it was.
Time had stopped meaning anything. The empty bottles clinked together as his foot brushed against one, sending it rolling across the floor. He didn't bother to pick it up. Didn't bother to clean anything. Just walked.
He walked back through the house, past the kitchen with its moldering coffee, past the living room with its silent television, past the front door that he didn't bother to lock. He stepped out into the night.
The city was different at this hour.
The streets were empty except for the occasional car and the distant sound of sirens somewhere across the harbor.
The neon signs were brighter now, their garish colors painting the sidewalks in shades of pink and blue and electric green. The air was cool and clean, washed by the same wind that carried the salt smell of the sea.
He walked without direction. His feet carried him through streets he didn't recognize, past buildings he'd never seen, through neighborhoods that existed in some other city, some other life. The hunger was a constant companion now, a dull ache that had settled into his bones and refused to leave.
[I need to distract myself]
The PC cafe was in the lower district, a sprawling, three-story building wedged between a karaoke bar and a ramen shop whose signboard had been flickering for the better part of a decade.
The sign above the entrance read "Cyber Gaming Apex" in glowing blue letters, each character ringed with pulsing neon that reflected in the puddles of last night's rain.
The windows were tinted black, revealing nothing of the interior except the faint glow of monitors and the silhouette of figures hunched over keyboards, the muffled bass of electronic music vibrated through the walls like a second heartbeat.
[Should I?]
The door was open. The air that spilled out was warm and stale, thick with the smell of instant noodles and energy drinks and the particular musk of people who had been sitting in the same chair for too long.
Hoshimi walked inside.
The interior was exactly what he expected. Dark. Smoky, despite the "NO SMOKING" signs plastered on every available surface. Rows of computers stretched into the dim interior, their monitors casting everything in shades of blue and white and the occasional flash of color from someone's game.
The air smelled of instant noodles, cheap deodorant, and the particular musk of people who hadn't seen sunlight in days.
A bored-looking attendant glanced up from behind the front counter. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of tired eyes that came from working night shifts in a place that never closed. "Membership card?"
"I don't have one, how much for a private booth?"
"Three thousand for twelve hours. Five thousand for twenty-four. Private booth is extra." The attendant's voice was flat, reciting prices he'd said a thousand times before.
"I'll pay later, I don't know how long I'll stay here."
"Sir, you have to pay first and if you want to extend your time then you can pay later."
"Fine." Hoshimi pulled a handful of bills from the envelope, he didn't count them, didn't care and slid them across the counter. "Twenty-four hours. Private booth and food."
The attendant glanced at the cash, then at Hoshimi's face, then back at the cash. Something flickered in his expression but it was gone before Hoshimi could identify it.
"Booth 47. Second floor. Menu's on the desk. Order through the system, someone will bring it up. Don't harass anyone, don't break anything, bathrooms are down the hall." He slid a keycard across the counter. "Enjoy your stay."
The booth was small. A single high-end gaming rig, its tower glowing with RGB lighting that cycled through a rainbow of colors.
A comfortable chair, the kind designed for marathon sessions. A menu laminated in plastic, listing an array of instant noodles, rice bowls, and energy drinks.
A small window that looked out on the neon-lit street below.
Hoshimi sat down. The chair enveloped him, its contours molding to his body. The computer hummed to life as he pressed the power button, its fans whispering, its RGB lighting pulsing.
The monitor flickered on, displaying the cafe's logo, a stylized infinity symbol rendered in blue neon before transitioning to a login screen. He typed in the credentials printed on his receipt.
The desktop loaded. He stared at it for a long moment. Then he opened the game library.
There were hundreds of titles. Shooters. Role-playing games. Strategy simulations.
He scrolled through them without really seeing them, his eyes glazing over, his mind still trapped somewhere between the empty bottles and the fading scent of jasmine.
He clicked on something at random. A first-person shooter. Loud and bright and mindless. The kind of game Sophia used to play when she was stressed.
The loading screen flickered. The game world materialized around him, a battlefield, gray and ruined, filled with other players who were already moving, already shooting, already dying and respawning and dying again. He chose a character at random. Spawned into the chaos.
His first death came within seconds. His second came even faster. His third, fourth, fifth, he lost count. He didn't care. Didn't get frustrated. Just respawned and ran forward and died again, the cycle repeating endlessly.
[When is it going to get addicting?]
Hours passed. The sun rose somewhere outside the tinted windows. The cafe's fluorescent lights remained constant, their hum merging with the drone of computers and the distant rattle of the air conditioning.
Other players came and went, their voices filtering through his headset.
The hunger returned.
He ordered food using the phone at the front desk.
Fast food. Burgers. Fries. A milkshake that was too sweet and too thick and reminded him of something he couldn't quite remember. He ate at his computer, one hand on the mouse, the other holding a greasy burger that left stains on the keyboard. The taste was bland.
[Damn it, I'm so tired of everything]
The days blurred together.
He slept in the chair, his head resting on his folded arms, his headphones still playing the distant sounds of gunfire and explosions. He woke when his neck cramped or his bladder demanded attention or the clerk came by to collect another payment. He paid without counting the bills. He ordered more food. He played more games.
The battlefields changed. The graphics shifted. He moved from shooters to RPGs to strategy games to simulations that had no violence at all, just quiet, meditative tasks like farming and fishing and building things that would never exist in the real world. He played them all.
Completed quests. Leveled up. Collected achievements that meant nothing and proved nothing and filled the void with small, meaningless bursts of accomplishment.
The other players stopped being strangers. Their voices became familiar. Their names became constants.
The same quests, the same mechanics, the same predictable dopamine hits of level-ups and loot drops and the cheerful chime of completed objectives.
He ordered food at regular intervals. Ramen. Rice bowls. Fried chicken. Energy drinks by the case.
The cafe's staff delivered it to his booth without comment, clearing away the empty containers when he was done, replacing them with fresh ones. He didn't talk to them.
[I wish I could stay like this forever]
He installed more games. A first-person shooter. A strategy game. A bizarre indie game about a stray cat exploring a cyberpunk city.
He played them all, switching between them whenever the grinding became too monotonous.
He stopped looking at the date. Stopped keeping track of time. The hours passed in a haze of monitors and keyboards and the endless, soothing rhythm of digital worlds. The money lasted longer than he'd expected.
His body deteriorated. He could feel it. The chair was destroying his back. The lack of sleep was eating at his mind. The endless fast food was making him sluggish and weak and sick in ways he couldn't quite articulate.
He'd lost weight. His clothes hung loose on his frame. His hair had grown longer, greasier, falling across his face in lank strands that he didn't bother to push back.
He didn't care.
[What's the point of taking care of myself? Who's left to care?]
[No one, absolutely no one cares]
Neila.
[They'd be better off without me]
He didn't notice at first. The cafe was always dim, always filled with shadows. But this one was different.
It blocked the light from the overhead fluorescents and cast his keyboard into sudden darkness.
He looked up.
A woman stood beside his booth.
The woman was tall. That was the first thing he noticed, even in his peripheral vision. Tall and slender, with the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier just by existing.
"Oops my bad, I came into the wrong room, sorry."
A chill went down his spine.
Her hair was the color of autumn leaves. Ginger.
Her eyes were gold. Something warmer. Her face was wrong.
Not the face he'd grown up with, the face he'd watched go still on that blood-soaked street, the face he still saw every time he closed his eyes. This face was younger. Softer. More delicate features. A different jawline. A different nose. But the hair. The eyes.
Her eyes widened. "Hey? You okay? Why're you staring at me like that?"
His voice came out as a croak. "You're in the wrong room."
She let out a nervous laugh. "Yeaa, I know. But you look like you need help."
The ginger hair. The height.
The way she stood, her weight shifted slightly to one side, her posture relaxed but alert, ready for anything. The way the light caught the edges of her silhouette and made her seem larger than she was, more real, more present than anything else in the dingy little cafe.
Hoshimi grabbed his chin and felt his cheeks with his fingers.
"Really? I look that way? My bad, I'm sorry."
She quickly shook her head.
"Hey, hey, there's no need to apologize. Say what? Let's get out of his dingy and dirty place, we need to get you fixed up, you look really unhealthy."
She smiled at him.
"My name's Tara, what's yours?"
"Hoshimi."
"Mind giving me your number?"