Hey, I'm Zander, Hydro's friend. I have an Agelessness ability, but somehow I can get hurt, get pain — physically and mentally. Not that anyone notices at first glance. I blend in, mostly, though sometimes the aura of being *slightly off-kilter* makes coworkers glance at me like I'm some sort of weird statue they accidentally walked past. Honestly, it's exhausting. But hey, normal life. Or… as normal as life gets when your "friend" is an immortal redhead who literally shouldn't exist in a sane world.
I work at Google as an intern. Yeah, I know, sounds impressive, right? Except the reality is about as glamorous as a soggy noodle. Everyone's glued to laptops, typing faster than their caffeine-deprived hands can keep up. Meetings about meetings. Endless slides, spreadsheets, and more acronyms than I care to remember. I swear half the time, I start reading a memo and it's like decoding an ancient language. You know that moment when you realize you're just a small cog in this infinitely spinning machine, and nobody cares if you break? Yeah, that's every day here.
I rub my temples. My back aches, probably from sitting too long, probably from my body remembering things nobody else has gone through. I'd like to say the internship helps me forget, but it doesn't. The office smells faintly like burnt coffee and desperation, and the hum of fluorescent lights is like a meditation on monotony.
And Hydro? Yeah, he's supposed to be here. Not like he needs a job — he does photography or camerawork as a side hustle or something, keeps his hands busy while the world spins into chaos. The last I saw him, he was hauling gear at some cosplay expo, probably muttering about how humans are fragile but stubborn. Now he's nowhere to be seen. And you know me — I can sense when he's near. If he were in the building, I'd feel it in my chest. But nope. Nada. He's gone.
The weird thing is, even though I know where he's likely hiding, the fact that he's not here hits differently today. Maybe it's me feeling like a normal person, slaving away at spreadsheets while the legend I grew up next to is out there doing… whatever he does. Maybe it's the job talking, reminding me how pointless this all feels.
So, I sigh and sip my lukewarm coffee, trying to convince myself that watching charts move in real time is somehow meaningful. It's not. The only thing moving meaningfully is the cursor on my screen, blinking like it knows my soul is slowly rotting.
"Zander, can you review the Q3 metrics again?" A voice. I look up. Janet, mid-30s, already looks like she's had seven lives of stress packed into one. She doesn't smile. Never smiles. If she did, I think the building might collapse under the sheer surprise.
"Uh… sure," I mumble, already opening the spreadsheet. Numbers. Charts. Colors screaming irrelevance.
Hours pass like water through a sieve. My body aches. My mind aches. Somewhere in the middle of column F, row 38, I swear I felt a flicker of pain — not the usual existential kind, but something more like why am I still here, staring at this kind of pain. I check my watch. Another thirty minutes passed without anything changing.
And then… the commotion starts. Across the office, people are shuffling, whispering. Something's off. And I know. I feel it.
Hydro.
Not that he's doing anything dramatic. In fact, he's just… there, setting up his camera tripod by the atrium window. Like he belongs. Which he does, somehow, because Hydro always belongs. People barely notice him at first, too wrapped up in their own worlds to look up. But me? I can feel the ripple, the hum of energy he carries. My gut tightens.
Where the hell has he been?
I watch as he adjusts the camera angle, mutters something under his breath about "stupid reflections" and "never trusting humans with light." Classic Hydro. I want to yell across the room, wave, say hey, you're late, but I don't. Not yet. There's a subtle tension between us — a push and pull I never quite get used to. Maybe it's the way he can enter a room and feel like he's simultaneously miles away and too close.
I glance around. Everyone else seems oblivious. They see a guy fiddling with a camera, probably a freelancer, whatever. They don't know. They can't know.
The truth? Hydro's presence makes the world tilt slightly, like someone tuned the universe to a frequency only a few can perceive. Scanners, empaths, sensitive interns like me — we pick up the invisible strings he drags behind him. But for everyone else, it's just a guy. A guy with red hair, awkward hoodie, carrying way too much camera gear.
I force myself to focus on the spreadsheet again. Work. Work. Work. Because that's what humans do when the impossible is walking around right in front of them. We stare at numbers and pretend it's all that matters.
And that's when the pain hits.
Not physical. Not really. But a memory flashes — Hydro standing in a battlefield, barely breathing, spears everywhere, and he doesn't even flinch. Doesn't even stumble. He just stands there. Impaled, bleeding, immortal. Watching. Waiting. I blink and shake it off. Wrong place, wrong time. But the image lingers. I hate it. Because it's too familiar. I know it too well.
A coworker bumps into my desk. "You okay, Zander?" They don't see the tremor in my hands, the twinge in my gut, the way I suddenly feel ancient and small all at once. "Yeah," I say, voice tight. "Just… tired."
Tired. That's the word for it. Intern life sucks, the world sucks, and immortality… well, it's not all it's cracked up to be. You get to watch your friends get hurt, laugh, suffer, and grow while you… don't. Or do. In ways nobody can measure. Ways nobody should.
Finally, lunch break comes. I sit outside, city noise buzzing around me, people too distracted to notice the universe quietly bending behind the building. I scroll through emails, mindlessly, until a familiar ping pulls my head up. Hydro's camera is rolling. A quick clip, just capturing mundane office life, some random shots. He's not even looking at me.
I want to say something. Wave. Joke. Make him notice. But I don't. I sip my coffee, stare at the reflection in the glass, and think about how weird it is — him just… existing. Doing normal stuff, even as everything else isn't normal.
And that's the thing. Hydro could save the world, end the apocalypse, annihilate an army of monsters before breakfast. But here he is, just a cameraman, just moving through life like he belongs. Like he's human. And somehow, that's the most terrifying part.
I check my watch again. Fifteen minutes left before the next round of pointless meetings. I take a deep breath, rub my neck, and remind myself: focus on the spreadsheet, Zander. Hydro will do Hydro. And you… you survive. Somehow.
Because immortality isn't always about being untouchable. Sometimes, it's about living through the mundane, the boring, the painfully normal… and not letting it crush you.
And honestly? I'm exhausted already.