Work Text:
Player wakes up to the comical brightness of the sun, shot their way through the window angled by their bed. They make a quick turn, eyes harshly split open, yeesh, the positions of the windows in here seriously started bothered them. Haphazardly, they haul themself up, beginning to approach the window by their door in search of the postman’s van. It had arrived at their wake-up the other day, after all.
The stargazing they’d gone on the other night resurfaces in their mind, they can’t help the way their mood sinks as they think back. As they briefly recount the anguish in his voice as he spoke of being ought to reside within this experience for eternity, the way he spoke about having eyes, the truck begins to come into view. They approach their door on instinct, trying the knob go no avail, right, this thing didn’t work.
They glance between the sheet pasted by the door and the knob, recollecting assuming the lack of ability to open the door on their part was likely to prevent them from leaving alone at night, that rule still occured to them as an odd one. They hear their knob turned on the other side of the door, it being swiftly pulled open by the postman. While tugged open quick, Player catches his momentum begin to slow, huh.
“Hey, hey, day two!” He greets, although, with an uncharacteristically hoarse tone of voice. “I —“ He pauses, throat catching on the oddly deep breath he takes and bringing about an awful minute of hacking and coughing. Player awkwardly stares him down as he settles, was he sick? Well, it was rather evident he was, but could NPCs even get sick? None that Player’d known of, that’s for certain. “… Sorry, my bad there.” He states, dusting off the box he had on-hand. “What I meant to say, was that I just about to drop off your mail.” He explains, strain in his voice once again getting apparent.
Player can’t help their concern, and chooses to whisk out the text chat interface. The one for this game was rather troublesome, the gesture for it being rather difficult to pull off, but they could manage. ‘Are you sick?’, they type out. The postman’s eyes instantaneously dart down once he gives their message a read. “Oh, well…” He pauses, Player noting the force in the ‘well’ he gets out. Amidst his silence, they observe the weak swing of his arms and the way he struggles to pin his peppy expression, yeesh, he really was coming down with something. “In a sense?” He answers with hesitance.
Player tilts their head, out of both confusion and a reluctance to try and pull the chat out again. “As in, uh,” the postman briefly breaks into a significantly less intense coughing fit, before managing to clear his throat. “Sorry, I mean to say that this is a… Combative thing,” He tilts his head back up to look directly at them, “it’s part of my programming, you — you don’t have to worry about it, bud.”
Player can’t help the way their curiosity triples itself, his programming? The postman was intentionally built for catching bad colds? They try to push down the urge to ask more of him in favour of expressing their remaining worry, beginning to tug at their side for the chat interface. ‘You sure? It looks pretty bad’, they try.
“Yeah, of course!” He emphasises, grating in delivery, forced in emphasis. “Besides, I —“ An interrupting cough, “I’ve got other deliveries to make, don’t I?”, and at that, Player takes the liberty of stepping towards their doorway and glancing side to side, clear. ‘There aren’t any other homes here, though,’ they begin to type, pausing to ponder what exactly they were to ask. The postman didn’t seem like the kind to lie, and they’d prefer not to be suspecting him, and they thus opt for the other query pressing them. ‘Are you sure you’ll hold up alright with a far one?’.
“Of course! I’ll be… Fine, nothing bad happens here anyways, right?” The postman’s tone grows evasive, combative for the purpose of gutting their concern, somewhat desperate as he probably is. It really only furthers their worry. “Besides, it’d be against my code to, well, step down. We wouldn’t want to break the game here!”
Player furrows their eyebrows, ‘Are you sure you can’t rest for a minute or something?’ They question, on impulse once again. They hadn’t exactly come across to themself as ‘the worrying kind’, lack of company as of recent considered, but the initial intrigue and general concern of it all simply blended up and into worry. Not to mention, they haven’t seen an NPC ‘programmed’ to be sick, have they? Player was no programmer, but that is one odd choice.
“Of course! Uh,” He appears to briefly consider something, scanning them with an odd squint that only briefly unsettles them. They hear him push back another cough. “Are you that worried? I… Could take a little break, I guess.” On instinct, and out of relief, they send him a nod, “I mean, I — am built for you and I wouldn’t…” He swallows, cutting himself off and clearing his throat, Player can’t help the raise of their eyebrow. “Well, I may as well.”
The postman vanishes from in front of them, and alarm instantaneously takes hold of them, did he have a programmed vanishing for mornings as well? “Over here!” A hoarse call from behind them peaks, to which they turn, there he was. They first and foremost opt to gesture for him to hand them the package he was holding, “Are you sure I need to let go of this?”. Player nods, grasping for the keyboard they’d decked behind them earlier, ‘It is supposed to be my delivery anyways’. The postman’s expression grows a tad nervous, “Well, er, about that… My deliveries are sort-of, well, empty.”.
Player lowers their hands, they were what? “See,” He begins to shake the box, no sound resounding within, “It’s really just an —“ A smothered cough that produces a wheeze, “Opaque box, it’s for the sake of it.” Player shrugs, once again gesturing for the box to be handed to them, ‘I still think you could put it down! I’ll leave it on the table or something, that works?’. Postman glances over at their message, briefly lingering on it before handing them the box with some reluctance.
They dust off their empty dining table for the sake of it, placing the box down with deliberate slowness as if a misplacement’d shatter the thing. They promptly turn back to the postman, who appears more awkward than anything, looking to them for a statement. ‘Do you want to take the bed or the couch?’, they settle on. The postman looks between the two options, “I wouldn’t mind either?”
They presume they’re to make the choice for him, and beelines for what’s evidently more comfortable, ‘I’d suggest the bed!’, they send. The postman takes a shaky, broken inhale, and seizes the bed as if it’s a floating object in a water body. Player pulls a chair from the dining table to sit by him, ‘So,’ they begin to consider what to try asking him, ‘feeling any better?’.
The postman wordlessly nods, “Mhm… Thanks for this, bud —“ He begins to break into violent coughing and struggling to inhale once again, worry resurfaces in Player. They once again raise their keyboard, ‘Do you have anything that can help you?’, they question. The postman sloppily turns himself over to face them,
“Not exactly…” He briefly goes silent. “St-still, it’s nothing to worry about, really. Again, it’s just part of my programming, way to fix up a few little, uh, bugs.” He raises a knee to cling to, “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, really.” Player nods, for, evidently, they trust him.
They’ve never thought themself the trusting kind either. They tended to be skeptical about games that angled for more than the competitive side or things, especially social ones, and this one was just one of those. Thinking about why they joined was the last thing they wanted to do here, but they couldn’t help thinking back when it surfaced. They didn’t quite know why they trusted this game, and they didn’t quite know why they trusted the postman, they just did.
Last night’s stargazing comes to mind again. The way the postman spoke about the yearning he had for what they could always get to, and the way they’d taken everything he’d said to heart. That the postman was someone with no choice but to stay trapped here, that he wasn’t programmed to say that or something akin to it, that he was sincere when he told them he appreciated them playing. They glance at him again, his expression strained, the fact that he was trying to bring another topic out evident, they probably were the trusting kind.
It then hits them how loud the silence had gotten, ‘So,’ they begin, fingers pausing to hover over the keyboards as they began to sift through all the questions that’d come up in their head over the postman or the game for something worth asking, beginning to type out and delete all that came to them. ‘do you have an actual name or..?’, they hesitantly hit send on that one.