With the final tap of the keyboard, a tired sigh slipped past his lips as he leaned back.
"Finally... done." he muttered, stretching until the shoulders cracked. The sound echoed faintly in the near-empty office.
He rolled his wrists, feeling the muscle pain, and pushed back from the desk. His palms were clammy, his eyes burning after staring at the screen for the whole day.
He squared the reports—tap, tap, tap—sorting the documents, stacking the remaining documents, slid his laptop into the bag, and zipped it shut with a tired exhale.
Mark had vanished at 5:30 PM, calling out a quick "See ya Monday!" before heading off, leaving him to babysit the tail end of the workload. That was three hours ago. Three hours of Mark's work, absorbed, like always, into his own unending evening.
He quietly grinded his teeth. The irritation was hard to ignore.
He glanced out. The office was a grid of silent, dark cubicle corners. More than half the desk lights were dead; a few diehards were still around, the true workaholics or the genuinely desperate, remained. He knew a couple of them slept here, a real monument to the city's grind.
Tanaka in Accounting was in bad shape, head already pillowed on his arms. Sarah from Logistics was still there, her face a pale, bluish mask in the glare of her monitor, her furious typing the only other sign of life. The 10 PM club. The walking dead.
He zipped up the bag after checking every item and stepped out of the cold, air-conditioned office without saying anything, they don't talk much anyways.
The hallway air felt different right away.
By the time he reached the street, he'd already loosened the collar and taken a deep breath. The air was warm, heavy with exhaust and food smells, but at least it felt alive.
The city sky was dark and hazy, the moon faint behind the clouds.
Phone in hand, He merged into the slow-moving stream on the sidewalk. Everyone looked the same kind of tired—suits, uniforms, scrubs—all heading home after a long day.
Everyone looked worn out but glad to be done for the day. Some were on calls, others joking or deciding what to eat. A couple argued quietly as they walked by, their voices low and tense.
Three guys in matching company polos laughed too loudly, the smell of beer clinging to them. Everyone looked tired, the old man dragging his feet, the woman typing on her phone but it was the kind of tiredness that came after finishing something. He just kept walking, part of the crowd like everyone else.
Just another person in the current.
On his screen, the loading animation for [Neo Genesis 9: We Who Remain] began.
'Time to do dailies and forget the budget meeting,' he thought, A micro-dose of dopamine to offset the macro-dose of dread. His thumb is already poised over the app icon.
The loading screen gave way to the familiar, welcoming splash art: The Empress, a hyper-real anime woman, all iridescent hair and an impossible bust, offered a smile that promised paradise for 500 gems.
He fell into the familiar zombie-shuffle of the phone-walker.
Eyes down, thumb swiping. Tap-tap-collect reward. Look up, sidestep a rushing bike messenger. Look down. Tap-upgrade. Don't bump into anyone. The cardinal sin of the city. The embarrassment was worse than the impact.
He was harvesting soul-crystals when the notification banner slid across the top of his screen, obtrusive and annoying. A high-pitched ping cut straight through the game's swelling orchestral score.
A message. From him.
He frowned, his thumb hovering.
'Strange,' he thought, a little spark of genuine curiosity cutting through his fatigue. 'It's been a while since I heard from Armpit_enjoyer.' He hadn't seen that name, that lewd profile icon, in... months? A year?
But he ignored it. He had to finish the quest. Claim Reward. The small animation of a bursting treasure chest felt insulting.
He reached the corner, waiting for the light. Around him, the city pulsed. A sea of isolated faces, each illuminated by their own private rectangle of light. Nobody looked up. Nobody met anyone's eyes.
The light changed. He stepped off the curb, into the darker mid-block, and tapped the message.
No text. No "Hey, how are you." Just a video file.
The thumbnail immediately caught his attention. It was very high-resolution. It showed a man who looked less like a person and more like a pre-Raphaelite painting.
The man was almost unnaturally good-looking, aristocratically handsome, his chiseled features and obsidian hair suggesting a man perpetually in his late twenties, though he had to be older.
He was seated at a dark table with intricate marbling of old wood, composed like a portrait come to life.
But the man wasn't looking at the camera. His gaze was fixed on a silver-framed photograph he held. He zoomed in, focusing on the picture within the picture. It showed a small boy, maybe eight or nine, standing before a vast, gothic mansion bristling with spires.
The boy wasn't smiling. His eyes were wide and sunken, somewhat hollow, ringed with dark circles that looked like bruises. He looked frightened… haunted, even.
Not just tired or sad… truly lifeless. Like something vital had already left him.
He fumbled an earbud from his pocket and jammed it into his ear.
He pressed play.
Silence. No, not silence.
The faint, amplified sound of a ticking clock.
On screen, his hand moved.
Long, pale fingers stroked the glass of the photo. The skff of finger on glass was the only sound. His expression was cold, unreadable, but his eyes... his intense, unnatural violet eyes... stared at the image of the boy with a terrifying, possessive fondness.
A single, melancholic piano key struck. Then another.
The camera, which he'd assumed was fixed, began to push in. It drifted past his shoulder, past his sharp profile, until the photograph of the boy filled the entire screen.
And the still image dissolved into motion.
It was a montage of the boy's life, shown in disjointed, dream-like fragments. The boy, learning to read, his small finger tracing words in a massive, leather-bound book. The boy, eating alone at a dining table that stretched into darkness.
The boy, watching shadowy figures… family? Servants? glide past, their faces always blurred, never looking at him.
The boy, painting, his small hands covered in dark, chaotic swirls of black and red.
A cold, sharp knot tightened in his stomach.
This wasn't just strange.
This was wrong.
It was a sinking feeling that made the hairs on his arms rise.
His steps, without conscious direction, quickened, turning into a hurried pace that felt almost like a muffled run. His heavy messenger bag swung clumsily against his hip, a solid weight with every stride.
And then, just as the boy in the video started to look up with that haunted, lifeless expression.
He was so transfixed by the screen, by the haunted child's eyes staring back at him, that he never saw the figure step from the shadows of the alleyway.
"Huh?" The sound was snatched from his lips, someone slammed into him.
It wasn't a jostle; it was a violent shove, a concentrated force against his chest.
His body was already moving too fast, thrown utterly off balance.
For a sickening moment, the street spun, and the bright lights of the distant intersection tilted wildly. The phone flew from his hand, its light skittering across the asphalt.
The world tilted sideways. He saw the worn strap of his own bag swing past his face as he pitched forward, off the curb and into the street.
The world, which had been muted by one earbud and a piano dirge, exploded.
The sound hit him before the realization did, a deafening, earth-shattering BLAAAAARE from an air horn, a sound so loud it felt like a physical blow to his chest.
Falling. He saw the gutter rushing toward him, and then, filling his entire vision, a wall of light and chrome. Two massive, blinding headlights, high as his chest.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhh!!!"
He heard a scream. It might have been his.
Then, not a sound, but a sensation. A colossal, sickening crunch as the world compressed. A flash of white-hot, agonizing pain that incinerated every thought.
And then, just as the phone screen on the pavement finally flickered out, so did he.
As the phone's screen dimmed to black, the boy's smile was the last thing he saw.