Work Text:
"Happy birthday, Cashier."
When Cashier walks into the store for his first shift of the day (or night?), Dummy and Player are already standing there by the counter, party poppers sprinkling confetti in the store along with a nicely decorated birthday cake.
"I–" He scratches his head, "I told you guys my birthday before? Or, how–"
"You mentioned it once." Dummy nods to Player, "They were there when you did." The kid grins cheekily.
"Oh, uh…" He twiddles with his thumbs for a bit. "…thanks, guys? Sorry, I'm not good with this kind of stuff…" He looks left, then right, then left. "…I guess you guys can put the cake down at the counter."
Dummy nods and sets it down. Cashier's face furrows a bit. "When'd you and Player even get the time to make something like this anyway? I never saw…" Dummy shrugs.
"We just had some free time."
"I didn't take you as the baking type."
They give a small smile. "I'd like to think I can do anything, as long as I put my mind to it."
Cashier scoffs. "Really."
"Well, there's a perfectly fine cake in front of you, isn't there?"
He takes the disposable knife the two brought with them. "We'll see about 'perfectly fine'." Beside him, he hears the quiet giggle of Player, and quickly remembers the cake he's been half-insulting was their own work too. He lets out a rather loud sigh. "Whatever."
He slices the cake into eight pieces. He's not exactly sure why, considering there's only Player, Dummy, and him in the room. But it wasn't like they could all eat three large slices either. "Uh…do you guys know anyone? That we can take this to."
Dummy crosses their arms. "I suppose the diner is still open…" They glance over at Player for other ideas. Player nods in return, he supposed even for a tiny kid like them they had connections all over town.
"Okay…guess I'll just take the rest of it?"
"It's your birthday, Cashier. Being greedy for once won't kill you. Well, that's not to say–"
"Shut up." He grumbles in response but there's nothing he can really say to argue back. He takes a bite into the slice. It's strawberry shortcake, mellow and fluffy. "Not bad." he says, mouth full of it already.
"Don't talk while you're chewing, Cashier."
"You're not my mom." he retorts, before gulping down almost the entirety of it. Dummy quietly watches as they take smaller, perhaps what they'd consider more "calculated" bites of their own. Next to them, though, Player just wolfs down the entirety of their slice. Great minds eat alike, or however that old saying went. Only when he finishes his portion does Dummy ask another question.
"So, what will you do for your birthday, Cashier?"
"Uh…" He'd sort of forgotten his birthday had been coming up. He had plans and all but…
Yeah, just tell them you wanted them to come over and hang out with you like a loser.
"Please don't tell me you just planned to work the whole day."
"I– no! Who do you think I am!?" He desperately tries to switch the subject. "I-I mean, what's even the point of celebrating my birthday, anyway?"
"Cashier, what are you–"
"With how it is, I'm still seventeen, aren't I?"
They fall silent for a moment, contemplating. "…I suppose that is true." An awkward silence falls upon the three of them, and Cashier realizes he probably should have just chosen the more loser-ish option instead. "That's still not a good reason to celebrate, though."
"I just forgot, who cares?" He absent-mindedly fiddles with his fork until he sets it down for good alongside his plate. The awkward tension from a bit ago still lingers in the air.
Player tugs at his sleeve, before looking in the general direction of their own house. "I guess I could come to your house if you don't mind, Player…?" They nod enthusiastically. "S-Sure then."
"Can I come too, Player?" Dummy asks ever-so-politely, before Cashier even has the slightest opportunities to kindly tell Player that they should definitely, absolutely not invite Dummy no matter how much pleading they do.
Player nods, grinning excitedly. Cashier rolls his eyes. "It's settled, then." Dummy remarks. "We'll meet around afternoon."
"Alright." The kid gives a thumbs-up before rushing out the door. The chime briefly sounds as the door sways back and forth, still settling from the impact that their absolute dash was. He glances at the timer. "Guess I'll take a break even though I didn't… really do anything."
Dummy hums. "Okay. I'll watch the store then."
"Thanks."
The bell rings once more.
Outside, it's just as quiet as it always is. Crickets chirp, hopping to and fro somewhere behind him. The vending machine gives off its usual artificial hum. A streetlight flickers for a moment.
"Sweet seventeen…" he mutters, just to hear what it'd even sound like. It sounds totally, completely wrong. Wasn't it sweet sixteen or something like that…?
Cashier has been seventeen for a while. He has some memory of going to school, taking dumb math classes and even dumber language arts courses, vaguely getting to know people, the usual high school experience. In the back of his mind, something tells him that those memories are blurs for a reason, that if he just considered it more, he would find something more abruptly wrong with the reality he lives in, but he doesn't have time to think about that. He's seventeen, he's a cashier working at a small convenience store, and that's all there is to his life.
Cashier likes to think he's not scared by eternity. He's just scared of being seventeen. He has okay-ish grades, working this late an hour isn't that bad, and he might've tried to end the world on multiple occasions, but that's fine and all now. Every seventeen year-old does that anyway. He's just supposed to be graduate soon. Become an adult, do something important, maybe finally leave this tiny place he calls his hometown.
What a shame, right?
He laughs at the idea.
Like he could ever imagine growing up. Because he was fine with working this job for the rest of his life. Because he was fine with staying close to this town. Because he was fine with messing around with Dummy, Player, and whoever else would occasionally stop by. If he could stop time in this very instant, he'd replay the same days, months, all over again, because he's seventeen, he'll always be seventeen, and he shouldn't have to worry about grown-up stuff.
He's not stupid, though.
Eternity is longer than life. He could have already spent a lifetime in this town and he wouldn't have known, or more so, he wouldn't have wanted to know, anyway. Rather, he was already part of the town and he never had the chance to leave. Perhaps, he'd already ended the world, and this was the afterlife, or maybe this place was hell itself, and—well—how could he know? Why bother when there wouldn't be an answer waiting for him anyway?
Not like he cares.
It's his birthday. What the hell is he doing, contemplating like some kind of philosopher out here? He's seventeen. He'll live.
The bell rings once more.
"You look worried."
He turns to see Dummy, standing beside him. "Do I?"
They lean against the wall, staring up at the sky. "Or, you don't look that happy, at least."
"Uh…" Cashier glances away. "It's not that. I'm just…not a smiler?"
They frown. "You're bad at lying, Cashier."
He curses. "It's not that deep though."
"Tell me anyway."
"I…" He clicks his tongue once or twice. "Do I have to?"
Dummy simply stares back, with eyes asking why he even bothered to ask. "Yes."
He resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Fine." He slumps against the wall. "…did you think what I said earlier was weird?"
"How you'd finish the rest of the cake on your own even though you don't really know anyone?
"What– I– dude. Okay, I get that was weird but that's not it. I meant the—"
"The part where you said that it's pointless to celebrate your birthday."
"…Yeah."
They pause for a moment, seemingly in thought. "It was weird. But I thought you said it just to say it."
"I was but…I dunno. Do you even remember the first time we were…here? And not just something fake. Don't you…"
He trails off. They don't respond. Shame quickly comes chasing after Cashier. "…Like I said, it's not that deep anyway—"
"Are you scared of 'forever', Cashier?"
He stops. He doesn't say anything for a while.
Damn.
He kicks at nothing on the ground, hoping there'd at least be something to fill the silence. But, well, there's nothing on the ground. So he has to admit it.
"A little."
They tilt their head a little. "Why?"
He shifts uneasily. "It's a long time, right? And…" And he trails off, not because he's hit a wall, but because he can't quite bear to finish his sentence.
"You're scared of Player growing up."
He pinches the bridge between his nose. "Are you inside my brain now or something?"
That same smile back from them. "I might be."
He hits the wall again, letting out another sigh. "God, maybe I'm just worrying about nothing. They're still just a kid now, 'nd…" He stares at the distant horizon, still dotted with the stars of the night sky. So familiar, he wonders when the day will come when he finally tires of it. "Can I tell you something weird?"
"Sure."
"I have this dream, sometimes. The world is ending, like it was back then with Kyu and Orby and all, but I wasn't pissy about it that time. I asked them if they could give all that data to me. I think I died right after, because the only thing I remember after is my vision going white and…seeing Player staring at the empty counter in the store." He looks at the ground. "When I think about it, it's not really like a dream, maybe like some kinda lucid dream. But it felt more like a memory. But it never happened though, is the thing.
When I saw them, though, I just knew they were, older, somehow. So, so if they do grow up eventually, then…"
He slumps all the way to the ground, feeling both a sense of relief and disgust overcome him. He shouldn't have said it, it was too sickening, too revolting of a thought to share out loud. Of course, Dummy has nothing to offer in return. They only stare off into the distance, contemplating the same, haunting questions he has been.
"I don't think they'll ever tire of us, though?"
Cashier thinks about it, but he doesn't want to get into the semantics. He curls up a little, now that he sits, pathetically on the ground. "…What do you think we are, Dummy?"
They turn to him, now with a curious look in their eyes. "What do you mean by that?"
"I'm seventeen, you're nineteen, it feels kinda wrong to just say that we're kids, at this point. And well, maybe I'm a teen, still, but I don't think a lot of people would say you're one. But, we're not adults, either. There's some kind of weird in-between and I don't really know what it is."
"Adolescents?" Dummy tries.
"Yeah, but…eh, not really?" He leans towards the wall, away from their ever-piercing gaze. "And then there's the weird thing of, are we human? But we're just lines of code, sets of dialogue, pixels on someone's screen…maybe I should've accepted that fact after everything." He buries himself in his own chest. "I wonder if Player will really…"
"If they do, it won't be today." says Dummy.
He stares up at them. They look down.
"One day this world'll end, maybe you're right, and they will grow up. But it won't be right now. And," though their voice sounds as neutral as ever, he swears he can hear a tiny edge of sass to it, "at least, next time, it won't be your fault."
"Aren't you funny." he remarks dryly.
"Sorry."
"No, it's–…whatever."
He looks at the stars. Artificial lights brightening the sky, only there by lines of code, a background, or maybe just a simple JPG file. Maybe, if he could touch the sky, it would fall over and collapse.
"What do you think we really are, Dummy?"
A long silence inserts itself between them two. Then, they sigh.
"I think we're just people, Cashier."
But how, how could they call themselves people: a human who's really a piece of code, and a piece of code who wants to be human, but both are just that—pieces of code, written haphazardly on a whim, by someone they hardly know.
But maybe, Dummy's right: it's a question he won't be asked today, or one he really needs an answer to now.
"If you say so." he replies.
He gets up from the gray-ish cement, littered with soda cans and other junk. Something skitters by and snags a can. Crickets still chirp and he can even hear a faint birdsong.
Dummy turns the other way.
"…see you tomorrow, Cashier."