Chapter 55: Poor apartment
The hallway light sputtered once as Lucen keyed in the door.
Second floor. Cracked linoleum. One stair loose enough to throw off your step if you didn’t remember where it was. Gen followed just behind, quiet. Not asking questions yet. Not making jokes either.
The kind of silence that only felt normal when you’d been hit by too many things in one day.
Lucen pushed the door open.
It stuck halfway, then gave with a low wooden groan. He stepped inside without pause. Gen paused in the doorway.
It was small.
Not just small in the cheap apartment sense, small in the ’this-is-a-storage-room-someone-pretended-was-a-studio’ kind of way.
One desk, warped from water damage. One thin mattress laid out next to the wall, half-covered by a rolled blanket. No kitchen. Just a cold-box tucked under a shelf and a half-functional burner someone had etched a heat glyph on out of frustration.
Lucen didn’t look around. He knew what it looked like.
He walked in, kicked his bag down next to the desk, and sat on the edge of the mattress like he always did. Shoulders loose. Not relaxed. Just settled. Like there was no use pretending the place was worse than it already was.
Gen stepped inside. Slowly. Closed the door behind him without being told.