Chapter 64: End Of A long Day
I walked down the familiar streets, the granola bar from Ms. Lail a half-eaten lump in my pocket. My brain was still trying to process the absolute train wreck of the last few hours.
When was the last time I had this much to think about? Usually, my brain was just background noise, a low hum of video game lore and meaningless observations. Now it was a full-blown civil war.
My life used to be a slice-of-life manga. The really boring kind, where the main character just stares out the window a lot and has fake-deep thoughts about the clouds. The plot was simple: nothing happens. Ever.
Now? Now I was the main character of five different, badly written stories at once.
There was the awkward rom-com subplot with Jake saluting me on the roof. The gritty delinquent manga where I was blackmailing the school’s top pretty-boy. The slow-burn friendship-or-is-it-something-more drama with Nina. And now this... this dark, depressing story about Thea, the girl who looked like she was already a ghost.
My life had officially gone multi-genre, and the writing was all over the place.
I used to worry about my save files getting corrupted. Now I had to worry about... people. Real ones. With real, messy, complicated problems that couldn’t be fixed by reloading a checkpoint.
It was exhausting.
I wasn’t even paying attention to where I was going. My feet just sort of... knew the way. I looked up and realized where I was. I was standing at the corner of the street that led to Thea’s house.
I stopped.
The street looked just as quiet and forgotten as it had a few hours ago. No cars. No people. Just peeling paint and overgrown yards.