Chapter 20:

The apartment is the apartment.

I do the scan.

White wall — present, committed, doing the minimum. Kitchen — clean from this morning, the nikujaga smell fully gone now, just the neutral smell of a space that has been aired out by the passage of a day. Chloe's door — closed, which means she's not back yet. Mother's door — open, which means she's at work, which I already knew, which the scan confirms anyway because the scan doesn't take prior knowledge into account, the scan just reports what's there —

I sit on the couch.

The bag goes beside me.

I look at the ceiling.

Not counting. Just — looking. Just the specific quality of a mind that has been through a Thursday that contained more than a Thursday typically warrants and is now in the apartment with nobody home and nothing scheduled and the particular quiet of a space that is waiting for the people who fill it to return —

The pencil is in my bag.

I'm not thinking about the pencil.

---

The pencil is in my bag.

It's just a pencil. It's a standard pencil. She bought it and waited by the east exit and held it out with the stutter and the steady eyes and I took it and said okay and put it in the bag and that's — that's the complete account of the pencil, that's all there is to say about it, a pencil was transferred from one person to another person and is now in a bag and —

My first friend.

The sentence arrives without being invited.

I said we'll figure it out.

I said it without running the social calculus, without mapping the implications, without the decision tree, without — just said it, just the words coming out of my mouth the way the deflection came out, the way the enough came out, the way continue came out — before the brain weighed in, before the background process could intercept —

When we meet again.

Not if.

Sky said when.

I think about that.

I think about the pencil and the first friend and the when and all three of them pointing at the same thing which is — which is that something is happening in the parameters, something is being revised without formal authorization, something is filling the long way around and the east stairwell and the specific geometry of the spaces I built for emptiness —

People.

Human connection.

The concept of human connection.

I analyze this.

---

Human connection.

The desire for it is universal. Every study, every philosophical tradition, every piece of literature that has survived long enough to be assigned in high school classrooms confirms this — the human being is a social organism, connection is not a luxury, it's a requirement, the absence of it produces measurable damage at the cellular level, loneliness is not a feeling it's a biological state —

I know this.

I've known this.

I've been sitting in the east stairwell knowing this for two years.

But here is the thing I keep returning to, here is the thing that the pencil and the first friend and the when are pressing on without knowing they're pressing on it —

I don't know how to connect without using.

I look at the white wall.

The wall looks back.

When I stood between Kana and the bullies this morning — I told myself it was different from what I used to do. I stood between them. I said enough. My body made the unilateral decision and I went with it. But then she thanked me and I spiraled for three paragraphs about how I don't deserve it because I am the same, because I used to be the geometry —

And then.

And then I looked at her eyes.

Her neck.

I noted it and filed her as ordinary and moved on.

I collected.

I'm always collecting.

The maid cafe. Sky's 0.7 seconds. The new maid's 0.8 seconds. Kana's steady eyes and the edge of something on her face that I catalogued without her knowing I was cataloguing —

Every person I encounter becomes a data point in my narrative.

Every genuine unmanaged reaction I find becomes something I've extracted from someone who didn't know they were being extracted from. I dress it up in philosophy — the proof that something genuine still moves between people, the unmanaged thing, the real thing — but the philosophy is just the framework I've built around the taking.

I take.

I have always taken.

I took Lia's trust and turned it into entertainment.

I took Ben's secret and turned it into a punchline.

I took Sarah's confidence and turned it into a recurring bit.

And now I take Kana's steady eyes and Sky's composure crack and the new maid's 0.8 seconds and I file them and keep them and call the keeping connection —

It isn't connection.

Connection requires giving something back.

What do I give.

I look at my hands.

They held a door open this morning.

Before that they took a pencil without ceremony and put it in a bag and said okay.

I don't know if that's giving or just — not taking, which is different from giving, which is a much lower bar than giving, which is just the absence of the worst version of myself rather than the presence of something better —

I am a monster with sophisticated language for being a monster.

I am the same arrogant kid who looked at people and saw material.

I just look at them more carefully now.

That's not growth.

That's just —

---

Anyway.

I don't want to confuse you.

I've been sitting here for — I don't know how long, I've stopped counting, which either means I'm growing as a person or means I've been too deep in the spiral to remember to count, and I've been using my sophisticated language again and I realize that you might be sitting there with a completely reasonable expression on your face going — what is this person saying —

So I'm going to translate.

For accessibility purposes. For clarity. Because I am a considerate narrator despite all available evidence to the contrary and I want you to follow along —

Rizz.

Rizz is — the capacity to attract, to draw people toward you, to have the specific quality of a person that other people want to be near without being entirely sure why they want to be near them. It comes from charisma I think. The middle of it. I've looked this up. It's been used in the context of — look, I understand the word, I've encountered it in the wild, I've observed its usage in a variety of social contexts and I've synthesized a definition from those observations which is that rizz is the quality of being someone people move toward rather than away from —

I am currently working on having any rizz whatsoever.

This is going as well as you'd expect.

Cooked.

Cooked means — finished. Done. Beyond the point of return. The situation has progressed past the stage where intervention would produce a different outcome and what you're left with is just — the result of the thing, just the completed state, just —

Moving on.

Sigma.

The sigma is — the internet has constructed an entire mythology around the sigma which is the person who exists outside the social hierarchy entirely, who doesn't participate in the game, who has removed themselves from the dynamics of approval and status and the seeking of external validation — the lone wolf, the self-contained unit, the one who doesn't need the group because the group is irrelevant to the internal operating system —

The mythology frames this as a choice.

That's the part I keep stopping at.

The choosing.

Because the sigma mythology assumes you looked at the social hierarchy and decided it wasn't worth your time. That you weighed it up and found it wanting and stepped away from it deliberately, from a position of having the option to participate —

But what about the version where you didn't choose.

What about the version where you were in it, were loud and present and taking up space in it, and then you did what you did and the hierarchy made the decision for you, and what you got wasn't the sigma's deliberate solitude but just — the what's left, just the shape of the space after the thing that was in it has been removed, just the east stairwell because the main corridor costs too much —

The sigma got there by choosing.

I got here by —

Anyway.

I don't think I have rizz.

---

Why am I like this.

I'm sitting in an empty apartment talking to myself about sigma mythology and Gen Z vocabulary and the philosophy of human connection and Chloe isn't home yet and I have — I should find something to do, I should give my hands something to do and my brain something to track that isn't the monster question or the choosing question or the pencil in the bag —

I reach for my phone.

---

Geometry Dash.

The level loads.

I've been on this level for — it doesn't matter how long. Long enough to have the layout memorized. Long enough to know exactly where every obstacle is, every gap, every moment where the timing has to be precise or the whole run ends and you restart from the beginning —

The game starts.

The cube moves.

It moves because that's what it does — it moves forward at a fixed speed and the only variable is the jumping, the only input is yours, the only question is whether your timing is correct or not, whether you jump at the right moment or you don't, whether you've learned enough from the previous deaths to die in a new place rather than the same old place —

I die.

I restart.

The level loads again.

Same level. Same obstacles. Same geometry. The level doesn't care about the monster question or the choosing question or the pencil in the bag or the when that isn't an if. The level just — is, just presents itself again exactly as before, just offers the same sequence of challenges in the same order with the same unforgiving precision requirements —

I die again.

I restart.

The thing about this game is that every death is data. Every run ends either at the same place as the last run or somewhere new. If it ends somewhere new you've learned something. If it ends at the same place you haven't learned enough yet. Either way you restart. Either way the level is still there. Either way the only thing to do is — try again, same level, same obstacles, from the beginning —

I make it further than the last run.

I die at a new place.

I restart.

The cube moves.

I jump.

I don't comment on this.

---

The door.

The door opens the way the door opens when Chloe opens it — with the energy, with the momentum, with the specific announcement of a person who has been containing themselves in a public space and has now reached the threshold —

"BIG BROTHER I HAVE ACHIEVED SOMETHING."

I pause the game.

"What," I say.

She appears in the living room doorway with her bag and her jacket and her hair doing the weather system thing and the expression of someone who has been waiting to deliver news since approximately second period —

"I got the highest mark in the class on the history essay," she says. "The one about the Meiji Restoration. Which I wrote entirely the night before. Which I wrote while also watching a documentary about deep sea fish. Which means I am operating at a level that the standard academic framework is genuinely not equipped to —"

"Congratulations," I say.

She looks at my phone.

"Are you playing Geometry Dash."

"No," I say.

"That's Geometry Dash."

"It's a geometry related activity," I say. "The specifics are —"

"You're playing Geometry Dash on the couch," she says. "In the dark. Alone."

I look at the window. It is, I notice, darker than I registered. The afternoon has moved past the golden thing and into the early evening without consulting me.

"I was thinking," I say. "This was incidental."

"You were thinking while playing Geometry Dash in the dark."

"The dark arrived gradually," I say. "I didn't authorize it."

She looks at me for a long moment.

"Eighteen expressions," she says. "Plus the Geometry Dash in the dark face. Nineteen."

"I wasn't making a face."

"You were making a face," she says, already moving to the kitchen. "The face of someone who has been thinking too hard about something and used Geometry Dash as a pressure valve. It's a very specific face. I'm filing it under subcategory: coping mechanisms, Michael Potter, volume one."

I look at the paused game.

The cube frozen mid-jump.

The level still there.

Still waiting.

"I'll make dinner," I say.

"What are we having."

"Something," I say.

"Extremely helpful," she says. "Very descriptive. I feel very informed about the upcoming meal."

I put my phone down.

I go to the kitchen.

The pencil is in my bag by the couch.

The white wall is doing the minimum.

The cube is frozen mid-jump over an obstacle it may or may not clear when the game resumes.

I don't think about which.

I just go to the kitchen.