Linus lay pinned to the mattress, a thick shaft of morning sun slanting through the gap in his curtains and anchoring him in place. He didn't turn away. Instead, he stared up at the blank ceiling, letting the warmth settle across his face like a hand. The restless static that usually crowded his mind had gone quiet—not silent, exactly, but hushed into something softer. Something he couldn't quite name.
For a moment, he wasn't twenty. He wasn't anything. Just a body filled with light.
The warmth pressed against his chest, insistent and strange, like the ghost of a feeling he'd buried so deep he'd forgotten it existed. It tasted like summer afternoons spent sprawled on his grandmother's porch, like the particular quality of air right before a thunderstorm when he was eight years old. Nostalgia, maybe. Or something lonelier than that.
He pushed himself upright, the bedsheets tangling around his legs. His room greeted him with its usual indifference: a battlefield of unwashed plates stacked precariously on the desk, T-shirts draped over the chair like shed skins, the faint sour smell of yesterday's takeout containers mingling with the stale trapped air. Dark circles shadowed his eyes—he'd caught a glimpse of them in the black screen of his monitor last night, twin bruises that had become as familiar as his own reflection.
Linus shuffled to his desk and dropped into the chair. The computer hummed to life beneath his fingers, pulling him into the blue glow of his feed. He scrolled without thinking, thumb working on autopilot, until a photograph stopped him mid-swipe.
Kenji. His high school friend—though "friend" felt generous for someone he'd barely spoken to in two years. In the photo, Kenji had his arm slung around a girl's shoulders, both of them grinning at the camera with the kind of unguarded joy that looked almost performative. Almost, but not quite.
Linus stared.
Huh.
Even Kenji had a girlfriend. Kenji, who'd slept through half their classes and could barely string together a coherent sentence during group projects. Kenji, who'd been terrible at academics, worse at sports, utterly forgettable in every measurable way. And yet there he was—smiling like he'd figured out some fundamental truth about existence that Linus had somehow missed.
He seems happy, though.
The thought settled in his chest, small and barbed. Kenji was out there living, doing whatever people did when they weren't locked in dim rooms watching their lives shrink to the size of a screen.
Linus clicked away. Opened a game. Let the familiar loading screen wash over him.
Hours bled into each other, marked only by the shift of light across his desk. Outside, the sky had turned gray and swollen, clouds gathering like bruises. Somewhere beyond his window, thunder rumbled—low and distant, a warning he didn't bother to heed.
His phone buzzed.
Mom.
He let it ring twice before answering, already arranging his face into the tone of voice he'd need.
"Hi, sweetheart." Her voice crackled through the speaker, warm and textured with static. She was calling from the countryside, probably standing in the kitchen with flour on her hands or soil under her fingernails—some evidence of a life still connected to tangible things. "How are you? How's college?"
The lie came easily. It always did.
"Good. Yeah, classes are fine. Busy, you know." He kept his voice light, casual, like he'd actually set foot on a campus in the last six months. Like he hadn't dropped out before he'd ever really begun.
She asked about his eating habits, whether he was getting enough sleep, all the small worried questions mothers ask when they're too far away to see the truth for themselves. He gave her the answers she wanted—yes, no, of course, don't worry—until the conversation reached its natural end and she told him she loved him and he said it back and meant it and hated himself for lying.
He set the phone down.
And that's when the rain started.
Not the polite drizzle of April showers, but a sudden downpour that hit the window like fists. The sound filled his room—urgent, percussive, alive in a way that made his breath catch. Linus stood and moved to the glass, pressing his palm against the cool pane.
The warmth bloomed in his chest again, stronger this time. Bigger.
He watched the rain hammer the empty street below, watched it turn the concrete dark and slick, and something inside him cracked open. A memory surfaced, unbidden: he was six years old, barefoot in his grandparents' yard, spinning in circles with his mouth open to catch the drops. His mother had called from the doorway, laughing, telling him he'd catch a cold. He hadn't cared. He'd felt invincible. He'd felt alive.
When was the last time he'd felt anything like that?
The ache in his chest swelled until it pressed against his ribs, demanding acknowledgment. He stood there for a long moment, caught between the urge to throw open the window and the safer impulse to turn away.
He turned away.
Back to the desk. Back to the game. Back to the hollow comfort of doing nothing.
Midnight found him still there, hunched over the keyboard with burning eyes and a headache building behind his temples. The screen's glow had etched itself into his vision, leaving phantom shapes when he blinked. His back ached. His mouth tasted stale.
And somewhere beneath the physical discomfort, a layer of realization began to settle over him like sediment.
How did I turn into this?
The question arrived without fanfare, but once it took root, he couldn't dislodge it. He leaned back in his chair, letting his hands fall into his lap, and began to retrace the path that had led him here.
It hadn't always been like this. Once, he'd been different. Once, he'd lived in a house that smelled like his mother's cooking, where dinner meant gathering around a table and talking about nothing important. He'd had friends who knew him—actually knew him, not just his username or his profile picture. He'd felt connected to the world in some fundamental way he couldn't even articulate now, because the language for it had atrophied from disuse.
Then high school. The move to the city for better opportunities, better schools, a better future. Alone in a rented room, surrounded by strangers who already knew each other, already had their groups and inside jokes and easy laughter. He'd tried, at first. But trying was exhausting, and failing was worse, and eventually it became easier to just... stop.
He'd gone quiet. Turned inward. Found that silence was safer than risking the wrong words, that solitude hurt less than rejection.
High school had felt like something to endure rather than experience. Every day a weight he carried until he could set it down and retreat back here, to this room, where no one expected anything from him.
And then college. Or the idea of college, anyway. The prospect of doing it all over again—new people, new expectations, new ways to fail—had felt insurmountable. So he'd simply... not gone. Told himself he'd start next semester. Then the one after that. Then stopped pretending he was going at all.
Now his days looked like this: games until his eyes burned, scrolling until his thumb cramped, lying to his mother, watching other people live their lives through squares of light while his own narrowed to the size of this room.
I can't get along with people easily, he thought, trying the excuse on like an old coat. I have more fun here. This is just who I am now.
But the warmth in his chest—that strange, insistent nostalgia that had surfaced twice today—called him a liar.
Linus shut down the computer. The sudden absence of light left the room feeling emptier than before, shadows pooling in the corners. He could still hear the rain outside, softer now, a gentle percussion against the glass.
He climbed into bed without brushing his teeth, pulled the sheets up to his chin, and closed his eyes.
Sleep came quickly, pulling him under like a tide.
And in the darkness, something in him began—just barely—to shift.