Work Text:
[Red.]
Ren pressed his back into the seat behind him, and the wall behind that. Maybe if he tried hard enough he could sink through it and into the cool air outside. His head was pounding, despite his best attempts to chase away the oncoming headache with painkillers and water.
His friends were too loud. The lights were too bright.
But it was okay, it had to be, this is what college kids did. They were loud, party animals, something like that.
Ren was starting to feel lightheaded.
He shook his head, leaning back forward and excusing himself from the table. He made his way over to a restroom, eyeing the exit longingly. He couldn’t leave without telling anyone, but he needed to get out of the noise.
The fluorescent lighting in the restroom still hurt his head, but it was slightly dimmer. He closed his eyes and leaned over a sink.
Music and voices still filtered through the door, but it was quiet enough that he could actually hear himself think.
And all he could think of was red.
That was a new development. Why was he angry all of a sudden? His grip tightened on the sink.
Someone walked in behind him, he didn’t open his eyes to see who it was.
“Woah man, are you okay?”
Not one of his friends.
He heard steps get closer to him. A hand about to touch his shoulder.
Ren felt something inside him snap, and he turned sharply. An unnatural sound rose in his throat, and he let his teeth clamp together as a warning. The person behind him jumped back, pulling their hand close to their chest.
A flash of red.
“Hey, chill out!”
Ren ignored it, making a break for the door.
The music swelled, the lights seemed even brighter. Distantly, he could hear someone calling out his name.
He pushed his way through the room, trying to ignore the taste of iron in his mouth, the way the crowd seemed to refuse to part, the way his mind was howling.
Finally, he pushed his way out the door and into the night.
-
It was rough, rough knowing he was entirely capable of doing something yet being so completely unable to do it.
Ren’s past few weeks had been full of missed due dates and unfinished projects. It seemed the only thing he had any time to do was worry about the things he wasn't doing. He hadn't even gone out with friends since that night he'd bit someone for getting too close to him.
He had chalked it up to a mix of his headache and some lingering anxiety over a paper he hadn't finished yet, though that same paper still sat unfinished in a tab on his laptop.
His mind was still plagued with that sickening red.
He couldn't even remember if he had eaten today, but he'd been too busy hiding from the assignment that was judging him from across the room to get up and take care of himself.
Needless to say, he was not having a good time.
It had been fine for the first semester, a few late submissions, a few half-finished assignments. Nothing too serious. Nothing that had affected his grades too badly. The first months of the second semester had gone fine as well, albeit with a few missing papers.
But now. Now he was struggling.
The first week or two of the semester had been fine. He’d skated by as per usual. He had even managed to get a good grade on an assignment for once. But the pressure crept in. It built until it pressed into his head, into his brain. He couldn't think straight, couldn't even remember what he had been trying to write when he had taken notes in class that morning.
Maybe he should take a walk.
Ren got up from the spiraling thoughts, tossing his blankets to the side with no intention to pick them up.
His laptop had apparently died while he was busy fighting for the motivation to start his paper. He shook his head, shutting the screen and neatly sidestepping small piles of loose papers strewn across the floor.
He clicked the bedroom door shut quietly behind him, glad he had been able to get into a single bedroom dorm. He couldn't imagine the pressure of someone else possibly seeing him like this.
Like this. What happened to that cheery student who had gotten good grades and had plenty of friends?
Here he was, in stark contrast to that ghost of his past. He hadn't seen his friends in months. Hadn't gotten good grades in weeks. Hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in days.
He ignored those thoughts, grabbing his keys off the counter and a jacket from the back of a chair. He glanced out into the hall, checking to make sure it was empty before he stepped out of his dorm. He didn't feel like talking to anyone while his mind was clouded with thoughts of blood.
He walked outside quickly, only slowing his pace when he was out of sight of the dorm building. It was a bit chilly, but the trees had turned orange sometime in the last week or so, and he wanted to enjoy it while he still could.
His stomach growled. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, couldn’t stomach the thought of eating anything that he hadn't hunted- He shook his head quickly. He could just grab something quick to eat on his way home, that should dispel the thoughts for the next while.
He heard voices rounding the corner ahead.
He thought he would be alone on this trail, especially at this time of day. People should've been in classes, he should've been fine to walk around unseen before hiding away for the next few days.
But there were people ahead.
And maybe he panicked. He didn't really want to be seen like how he thought he looked, didn't want to snap like he almost had that night with his friends.
So what he definitely didn't do was dive off the path and into a bush.
The voices grew louder, then quieter once more. Ren sighed, partially in relief and partially in disappointment at himself. There wasn't always going to be a perfectly placed bush to hide in.
That didn't mean there wasn't one now though. He leaned back against the branches. He would think about that later, but for now, it really was just nice to be sitting down.
He didn't even realize he had started crying.
Apparently his brain hadn't gotten the memo about thinking about things later, since he was currently remembering the things he had told himself not to think about.
He had a paper due in 8 hours and he hadn't even named the document.
He had a class this evening that he was dreading going to.
He was a mess.
He was going to fail.
And gods was he hungry.
From where he was, hidden in the bushes near a path just off the main field of the campus, he could see a squirrel.
He watched it dig around in the dirt, searching for something. After a few moments, it pulled out its prize: a pristine acorn. He watched it lift the acorn to its mouth, time seemed to slow.
Something in him snapped.
He leapt out of the bush, weaving past a few trees before the squirrel spotted him. The squirrel, understandably, dropped the acorn and darted away from him, further towards the field.
He could feel his stomach growling, or maybe he was the one growling.
The squirrel skittered up over a short retaining wall that separated the trail from the campus. He vaulted over the wall, gaining on it slowly.
The squirrel skidded to a stop in front of a group of people, turning around and making a break for the treeline behind him.
He took that as an opportunity to pounce.
He bit down.
He tasted bone.
He saw red.
Someone was shouting, or maybe it was the squirrel screaming. He couldn't quite tell.
He chewed, swallowed, felt something solid in his stomach for the first time in what felt like months.
He glanced up, making eye contact with someone. He whipped his head around, realizing people were staring at him.
He dropped the squirrel.
He looked down at it, into its lifeless eyes.
Then he got up and he ran. He ran like his life depended on it, like he would die if he stopped to face what he had just done. To face the people who just watched him do that.
He nearly ran into someone who was leaving the dorm building. He couldn't remember what they said but he growled at them anyway. They pressed back against the door and he ran past them, not stopping until he was fumbling with his keys at his door.
He turned the key, the door opened, he stepped inside, he locked it behind him. A routine he had done countless times before.
He walked into the bathroom, trying to breathe. To recompose himself.
Ren looked into the mirror. He did not recognize who looked back. They had bloodshot eyes and blood on their face and blood in their teeth.
Ren stepped back. And he slid down against the wall. And he cried.
-
Dog.
They were calling him a dog.
He was trying to ignore it all, ignore the comments, ignore the names.
But dog. Dog stuck with him.
Ren hadn't left his dorm since the incident. He stopped doing much of anything. His paper still sat in a tab on his now dead laptop that he hadn't even bothered to plug in.
He picked up his comm from where he'd let it fall a few minutes ago, turning it on and looking at the college chats once more.
And then he saw it.
The picture.
It was a picture of himself, holding the squirrel and covered in the blood that he swore he could still feel under his fingernails and against his face.
Ren threw the comm, leaving it to power off on its own. He plugged in his laptop and waited for it to gain enough charge to turn on.
He couldn't stand it anymore. He was done.
He had pretended his way through a whole year and a half of this and now he was facing the consequences.
He dropped his classes, dropped out completely. He knew he would have two weeks to pack up his things and leave once it went through.
He wouldn't need two weeks.
He grabbed a backpack, threw some important stuff and a change of clothes into it, picked up his comm, and left the room.
He turned the comm back on, looking for information on how to switch servers. How to leave completely. He wanted out, he wanted to escape.
One link took him to a website about outworlds.
Bingo.
Ren left the dorm, slipping the keys under the doormat he'd gotten as a gift from a friend last year. The cartoony looking dog on it taunted him.
He walked out of the building, taking care to avoid making eye contact with people as he left the campus.
One person who recognized him jeered. Another simply looked sorry for him.
He tried not to pay it any mind.
Tried.
Ren kept walking until he found himself stopped at a small patch of upturned dirt. Some students had buried the squirrel, and he almost felt guilty about not attending the funeral before he remembered that he probably wouldn't have been invited anyways.
He laughed bitterly, kicking an acorn over towards the tiny grave. He typed the command to find an unoccupied outworld into his comm, hovering his thumb over enter for a moment too long.
“Sorry,” Ren muttered, to himself, to the squirrel, to his friends and family. He pressed the button and felt himself get whisked away.
[Red.]
Ren dropped to his feet, rolling away from a zombie and bringing a shield up to deflect an arrow from hitting him. He knew his respawns were unlimited now, but that didn’t make him any less terrified of dying.
He shuddered at the memory of his first death, of getting backed into a corner and blowing up, the last thing he saw that bright green. The last sound that telltale hiss.
Not fun.
Ren shook his head, pulling his focus back to the task at hand. He was mining for iron, and trying not to die in the process.
He swung down at the zombie, cutting it into dust and flesh, before rounding on the skeleton. With a few practised swipes it too fell into a pile of bones, allowing him to access the vein of iron ore they had been defending.
He was headed back up before long, the spoils of his mining trip weighing down his inventory, even if his steps were light. It felt good to focus on nothing but breaking down rocks and cutting away hordes of mobs.
He made his way back to his simple homestead, dropping coal, iron, and various other rocks and minerals from his inventory into some chests to be sorted later. Some food he’d gathered from his farms earlier sat on the top of a furnace in the back of the main room, ready to be prepared. Some wheat, carrots, and a raw steak.
The steak was red.
Ren shook his head, trying not to think about the red haze calling to him. It should’ve gone away by now, he had already left that accursed place that drove him to such a dizzying madness.
Right?
He sat on the bed in the corner, red sheets torn off to the side and replaced with a hastily made green set. Green was supposed to be a calming colour.
He needed to eat.
The meat on the furnace-top taunted him, daring him to step closer, to try and cook it.
He stood slowly, stepping closer. He still had coal in his inventory. It would be a simple operation. Toss the meat in, followed by the coal. Cook the carrots and make some bread for the side. A simple but filling dinner.
His shoes felt like they were full of lead.
He grabbed the cut of steak from the furnace carefully. Slowly. The red called.
He raised it to his mouth, despite vehement protesting from his brain.
It settled, solid in his stomach. A sickeningly familiar feeling.
But he continued.
-
Ren had once again stayed out late by accident, too busy trying to gather resources for a storage building to realize the sun had been setting. He was used to it by now though, the monsters in the night no longer an issue when his armor was stronger, his technique improved.
A lone spider hissed at him, leaping towards a gap in his armor. He pushed it over with his shield, cutting down its stomach as it flew past him. Some string and dust were all that remained of his assailant.
It continued like that as he made his way back, dodging stray arrows and avoiding eye contact. Until he heard it.
A hiss, a silent footstep.
Ren whipped around, shield raised instinctively to block the attack. The swing of a sword followed by falling back.
A pile of dust and a fine gray powder. He had finally killed one.
The sun was on the horizon once more, sending rays of light across the land. A sight he didn’t see very often before, now free for his viewing pleasure.
It was nice.
Ren picked his way down a slope, spotting his homestead in the distance. A welcome sight after a night of fighting for his life. His arms and legs were heavy as he finally rounded a stand of trees.
He very quickly noticed two things in quick succession. An notification on his comm, left unheard by a poorly timed creeper explosion. And a familiar face at his door.
Ren froze.
It was his brother.
Questions of how he found this world and why he was here circled his mind.
Why now? He had just found the beauty in this world, and here was his family to drag him away from it all over again.
Ren saw red. He blinked.
“Ren?”
“Jono.”
They stood there, staring at each other as the sun slowly rose higher over the trees.
Ren fought the red away, this was his brother after all. Even if he was here to take him back to his parents, Ren wouldn’t dare bite back.
“Why are you here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Ren shuffled further out from behind the trees, walking down the path until he was standing in front of his door next to Jono.
“I needed to get away. From everything,” Ren muttered, eyes trained on the transition from the cobblestones of the path to the wood of his doorstep.
He heard Jono shift, but didn’t look up to face him.
Ren shook his head slightly, looking up to the door and gesturing towards it.
“Would you like to step inside? There might be some lingering creepers around.”
Jono nodded, stepping towards the door. Ren opened it, following his brother into the small building. He left Jono to poke around the room while he pulled out some spare stairs to use as chairs.
“What happened?” Jono finally asked as Ren finished setting up a makeshift table.
Ren looked over to where he was picking up the discarded red fabric beside his bed, running his hands along a tear.
Ren settled on a simple, “Bad colour,” before moving to prepare some snacks. He had stale cookies from an attempt at baking the other night, they would do.
There was still blood on his furnace. Ren turned the other way.
When he returned to the makeshift table with the spoils of his search, Jono had already sat down. Ren set the cookies down, sitting across from Jono, though he kept his eyes trained on anything but his brother’s expression.
“It’s been two months, Ren. You’re lucky that college let me look at the departure logs.”
Ren cringed inwardly at Jono’s tone of voice. That pity and worry only reminded him of the days following his break.
Jono sighed, clearly not impressed with Ren’s silence. “They told me what happened.”
Ren shook his head, moving to stand. Jono grabbed his arm.
“Just talk to me Ren. Stop running from whatever this is and let me help you.”
Ren stopped. He slowly sat back down.
“Just you?”
“I made sure our parents didn’t catch wind of this. They think you’re going to a different college now.”
“...Okay.”
Ren leaned back, tipping his head back and taking his turn to sigh. Jono leaned forward, ready to listen.
“So you heard about the squirrel, I assume,” Ren started, following the patterns on the ceiling with his eyes while he spoke.
“Yeah,” Jono agreed quietly.
“I wasn’t doing good in my classes, Jono. I was struggling. I thought I could handle it, but well. You know how that turned out.”
Ren sat forward again, studying the grains in the wood of the table instead. “It got worse in my third semester. I started seeing red. I was easier to provoke, my friends probably didn’t want to be around someone so angry and I stopped showing up anyways.”
Ren looked down at his hands.
“And then I got hungry. I guess normal food wasn’t enough…” he trailed off, and Jono just nodded understandingly.
“Come back with me.”
“What?” Ren said suddenly, reeling back from where he had leaned forward.
“Come back to the city-server I’ve been staying in, I have an apartment with a spare room,” Jono continued, grabbing one of the stale cookies and snapping it in half to get to the still soft center.
Ren stared at him, bewildered. “Why would you- Why now? Why me? You could find a much better roommate if you need some to split the rent. I don’t even have any-”
“Because I’m worried about you,” Jono cut him off.
Ren shut his mouth quickly, looking away.
“Come see a therapist, come make friends, come do anything. Anything but sit out here on your own, fighting for your life.”
Ren shook his head.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Ren looked back up at Jono, searching his eyes for something, anything. Some ulterior motive, some scheme or plot.
“I’m a monster, Jono. I took a chunk out of a squirrel and I enjoyed it. I haven’t felt full since.”
That was a lie. Ren ignored the blood on his furnace.
“Ren,” Jono started, setting down his cookie to reach across the table. “You aren’t a monster, you’ve just had a tough go of it. You don’t have to stay if it doesn’t end up working out. You can come back here whenever you want. No harm, no foul.”
Ren nodded slowly. The room went silent for a few moments.
“...Fine,” He admitted quietly. “I’ll think about it.”
Jono gave a gentle grin.
Ren smiled back.
-
Jono had decided to stick around while Ren packed his things. He really didn’t have much to put together, but he didn’t want to leave so quickly, so he made a show of it.
Ren went about finishing his daily errands, gathering crops and tending to his livestock. Then he cleaned out his junk chests, which were starting to overflow anyways.
By the time he had actually started packing, Jono had already made himself at home. He was poking at different things around the homestead, such as his fences and sheds. Ren watched him out the window for a moment before continuing his packing.
Ren picked up a small trinket he had made when he was first trying to figure out how to work wood for his tools and buildings. A small wooden dog, which he had meticulously chiseled away at for days before deeming it complete.
He wrapped it in some wool, gently setting it into a corner of his bag.
After some time, Jono had made his way back inside. Ren had still been occupied with deciding which clothes he had brought with him would still be deemed city-server appropriate, and hadn’t paid his brother much mind.
Until he heard a quiet gasp from the back wall of the room.
Ren mentally slapped himself for forgetting to clean up the blood, but it scared him too much to even go near it.
Ren looked over at Jono, trying to figure out what lie he could come up with.
“Ren, are you okay? There’s blood over here.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, that’s just from my dinner the other night.”
Jono was walking across the room to him.
Fumbled.
Jono looked him over, leaving Ren to sit awkwardly under his gaze. After perhaps a bit too long, Jono sighed, looking back at the furnace.
“You have been cooking your meals, haven’t you?”
Ren felt like he had failed some sort of deception check.
“Of course,” Ren forced out, attempting to avoid the conversation under the guise of focusing on finishing his packing.
“I don’t believe you,” Jono muttered, but he dropped the conversation, moving back towards Ren’s kitchen.
Ren watched him walk away, a strange shame welling up inside of him.
Ren yawned, realizing maybe a bit too late that he hadn’t slept since yesterday. He secured his packed bag in a corner of his inventory, turning to where Jono had been making a racket trying to prepare food from Ren’s limited food supplies.
Ren collapsed into one of the makeshift chairs, sprawling himself across the table.
He watched Jono finish cooking whatever it was he had ended up making, trying not to fall asleep at the table.
Eventually Jono brought over two bowls of some sort of soup Ren couldn’t remember the name of, but it didn’t matter. Ren ate instinctively, despite knowing he wouldn’t feel full afterwards. He was too tired to care.
After they finished the meal, Ren set to work finding enough wool for a second bed while Jono cleaned up. The sun was setting, and Ren knew Jono wouldn’t force him to go to a city-server at night after two months in the wilderness.
Ren set the bed down, the basic red sheets taunting him as he curled up under the green wool of his own bed.
[Red.]
Jono dragged Ren through the city spawn, weaving through the crowd like he had lived here his whole life. Ren, on the other hand, felt miserable as he squinted through the glare of the sun reflecting from nearby buildings and tried to ignore the noise.
…He felt like he had been in this kind of situation before.
He ignored the rising red feeling in his mind, holding tightly onto Jono’s hand and following him to wherever it was they were headed.
After what felt like an eternity, the crowd thinned, people heading off in different directions as they got further from spawn.
“My apartment building is just a few streets away, we’ll be there soon,” Jono said, turning back to Ren for a moment before continuing to lead them.
Ren let go of his hand, nodding. “Why are you even out here anyways? I thought you were going to school too.”
“Didn’t quite work out for me either. I’m trying to get into making music now,” Jono explained with a wave of his hand. “I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
“That’s cool, you’ll have to show me some time,” Ren said, looking down at the sidewalk to avoid the glare.
They walked in silence for a while after that, only stopping briefly so Jono could buy Ren a pair of sunglasses from a pop-up shop on a street corner.
Ren was thankful for the sunglasses, especially as the sun began to rise higher, intensifying the reflections off the glass of the buildings around them.
The next time they stopped, Jono pulled a key-card out of his inventory, dropping it into a hopper and pulling Ren through the now-opened door. Jono retrieved his card, returning it to his inventory and leading Ren through the apartment building.
“So this is where you’ve been staying?” Ren joked as Jono fumbled with the key for door number 629 on the sixth floor. Ren couldn’t see from where he was standing, but he had a feeling Jono had simply rolled his eyes in return.
Once Jono had the door opened, then locked behind them, Ren was led to a sparsely decorated room. The guest bedroom.
“Sorry there isn’t much in here, I haven’t really had any guests yet,” Jono explained, but Ren didn’t mind it. He had brought his own keepsakes anyways, and he was already eyeing out potential places to store them.
“It’s okay,” Ren said after a moment too long, forgetting that he was supposed to respond to people when they said things.
“I’ll let you get settled in. If you need anything, I’ll be in the living room.”
Ren nodded, pulling his bag out of his inventory as Jono left the room.
His bag was swiftly unpacked, clothes set in drawers and spare items arranged on shelves. Eventually, he was left with the small bundle of wool that contained the wooden dog figure. Gently unwrapping it, Ren ran his fingers along the grain to pull any loose fibres away. Once satisfied with the state of the figure, he set it on the short table beside the bed.
Stepping back, he examined the room. It felt a bit more homely with his new additions. Like a piece of his singleplayer world had picked itself up and come to the city-server with him.
Ren sat on the edge of the bed, a small sigh escaping his lips.
He could get used to this.
He had to.
-
Ren opened his eyes to red once more.
He shook his head, fighting the colour away. He had been doing so well at ignoring it. He couldn’t let it come back now.
After a few minutes of unsuccessfully fighting his brain, he got up, throwing on a coat and stepping outside of his room. Jono wasn’t in the living room, meaning he was probably busy working or practicing. Ren didn’t really know what his brother did all day, but he wasn’t about to start questioning it now.
He grabbed the spare key Jono had given him and stepped into the hall, locking the door behind himself. As he was about to start walking, however, he heard a noise from down the hall.
Ren watched in what felt like slow motion as someone else stepped out into the hall, making eye contact with him while they locked their door.
He froze, staring blankly at the other person. She wore a pink coat, and seemed to have flowers in her hair, though it may have just been a headband.
Thankfully, she broke eye contact with him after a few awkward moments, turning back to finish locking her door and leaving Ren with a chance to escape into the snow dusted streets below.
He walked for half an hour, maybe longer. The repetitiveness and the cool air both helped to clear his mind, and by the time he made it back to the apartment building he felt much better than he had.
He headed back inside, finding his apartment quickly to avoid any further random encounters.
He was gonna need to work on that.
-
Ren may have made a slight miscalculation.
The plan had been simple really: go to a ren faire he had seen an advertisement for, enjoy himself for a bit, then return home before his brother went to bed. A simple endeavour, one designed to get him out of the apartment and back in the company of people he didn’t know.
What he hadn’t accounted for was that the definition of ‘enjoy himself’ might have included a few drinks, especially since the theatre kid in him wouldn’t let him break character.
So here he was, drunk and walking home way later than he had planned for. He was surprised he had even made it back to his building alone, with the way the buildings around him spun into the night sky above.
He dropped his key-card into the hopper by the door, leaning against the cool brick wall while he waited for the redstone to work its magic. He adjusted the plastic crown on his head before stepping inside, pulling the card back out of the hopper on the other side of the door.
He struggled his way up the stairs, using the sheathed sword at his side to steady himself on each step.
Ren silently cursed Jono for living on the sixth floor.
Upon making it to the sixth floor, after accidentally climbing a floor past it, he staggered his way to his door. The numbers wobbled in front of his eyes, their visibility not helped by the shades he had forgotten were on his face.
He could make out two vaguely loopy numbers, and one with a hook. He hoped it was the right one as he knocked on the door, not bothering to try fumbling with the lock in his current state.
He waited for a bit, hoping Jono wasn’t asleep yet.
After a few moments, he knocked again, slightly louder this time. He heard what might’ve been a door opening, or the crash of someone tripping. He felt a bit bad for waking his brother up this late.
The door swung open.
The person who opened the door was not Jono.
Ren felt the red returning. He pulled the sword from his side, a growl rising in his throat.
“Woah there,” the person began, stepping back as Ren stepped forward.
“What are you doing in my apartment?” Ren asked sharply, the kingly accent he’d put on all night creeping back into his voice. He brandished the sword to drive the intruder further back.
“I assure you, this is not your apartment,” the other person answered quickly, in what sounded like a spur-of-the-moment mock medieval accent to match his own.
“Of course this is my apartment, 629!” Ren snapped back.
“My guy, this is 626,” the person responded, dropping the accent as quickly as he had picked it up.
Ren shook his head, feeling the room start to spin.
“I challenge you to a duel of honour,” Ren blurted out before he could stop himself. He could feel himself slipping back into the kingly character he had made for himself.
The intruder sighed, pulling a sword out of his own inventory.
“I accept.”
-
Ren woke up on an unfamiliar couch, with a splitting headache to match.
He sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes and looking around. A blanket was half draped across him, and there were a few painkillers and a glass of water on the coffee table beside him.
He looked further, spotting someone sitting at a counter in the kitchen nearby.
“Hello? Where am I?” He croaked out, staring at the stranger.
“Oh hey, you’re finally awake.”
The stranger looked older, hair balding and beard graying. He was wearing some sort of lab coat, and drinking what seemed to be coffee.
Ren just blinked at him.
“You were trying to cross the city, right? Fell right into that drunken address mixup,” the stranger explained to him, standing up and moving to a chair by the coffee table.
Ren nodded, sitting up fully and swallowing the painkillers in an attempt to fight his hangover.
“So this isn’t my apartment is it,” Ren said, more of a statement than a question.
The stranger nodded, a sympathetic look on his face. “The name’s Cub,” the stranger offered up, as if it was any condolences.
“Ren,” he responded, trying to stop the room from spinning in his mind.
“Well, it's nice to meet you Ren,” Cub said, and Ren hummed an agreement.
They sat in a slightly awkward silence, Ren sipping on the water he had been given while Cub finished his coffee.
A few minutes passed before Cub broke the silence once more. “Did you want your sword back? I left it by the door,” he said casually, gesturing at a sheathed sword across the room.
“Oh, I should probably take that with me, yes,” Ren stated, setting the now half empty glass of water back on the coffee table.
The room still felt fuzzy, but Ren was able to make it to his sword relatively easily. He clipped the sheath back to his belt, acutely aware that he was still dressed like a king.
“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Ren said, turning to face Cub and leaning back against the front door. “Sorry about challenging you to a duel last night.”
“No worries man, take care. I’ll see you around,” Cub waved, and Ren took that as his cue to step out into the hallway.
626. Ren facepalmed mentally.
He took a few steps down the hall, knocking on door 629 this time.
It opened seconds later to a worried looking Jono. Ren gave a sheepish grin. Jono just shook his head.
“I thought you disappeared on me,” Jono admitted as Ren walked past him and into their own living room. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah, I got drunk and challenged one of our neighbors to a duel,” Ren said plainly, unhooking the cheap robe from around his shoulders.
“I don't even want to know actually,” Jono joked, and Ren just smiled in return.
Jono walked to their kitchen, preparing two cups of coffee. Ren, meanwhile, slumped onto the couch, staring at the faint patterns of the ceiling above.
Maybe someday he'd return to the outworlds to fight for his survival once more, but until then, he didn't mind fighting the red feeling in order to stay right where he was.