Arden’s bedroom was dark, messy, and cluttered. Nerdy posters covered the walls, his clothes were strewn about, and his bed was messy and unmade.

The only light in the room came from his computer; hazy blue light reflected off his glasses and shadowed his face as he scrolled mindlessly through YouTube, as he had been doing for the past three hours. He could almost hear his mother’s voice in his head, If you keep looking at a bright screen in such a dark room, you’re going to go blind!

Yeah, well, he was already pretty damn blind anyway, so who cares?

Arden had been waiting for a DM back from his friend. His best friend. Online friend, but a friend nonetheless — two years of friendship had led to a very specific dynamic that he held very dear. Every weekend, they’d play games together. He’d been practically counting down the minutes until they finally replied again.

Truthfully, he felt a little pathetic waiting on them like this. They’d said they were doing something or other for college, and here he was, rotting away in his room like a sad hermit and being a general disappointment to his parents. Well, that, and he had his college online courses, but it wasn’t the same, was it? His social anxiety has crippled him greatly.

Just as Arden was starting to sink in his self-pity, a notification finally popped up on the corner of his monitor. A Discord DM!

Embarrassingly, Arden’s world brightened almost instantly. He felt way better now that they had replied, and nearly knocked over a can of Monster in his haste to type a reply to them.

Heyyy welcome back. How was your thing? Are u down for some Minecraft btw?

He sat back on his chair, chewing on his nails nervously. “Please still be down to hang out," he muttered to himself, focused on the three little dots that popped up as they typed back. He had been bored and lonely all day, and he missed his best friend a lot. He hoped they would have time to play.