nowhere else to go here but up.

your life was currently going exactly like the lyrics of that one song. what was it called again。。。？ ah, yes; unsee yourself by, what was it。。。 the scary jokes？ you & noli had always shared a love for that song.

& now, that song had become your reality. your sad, depressing, exhausting reality.

that night, you’d tried to pay a visit to an old, rundown restaurant on the end of your street. it was futile, really. you always ended up getting thrown out。。。 the manager always said that you scared the customers, that they were scared that you’d suddenly whip out your c00lgui & wreak havoc upon the small establishment—--but all you wanted was just a proper, hot meal for once. nothing else. nothing more, nothing less.

nevertheless, the manager had thrown you out again for the fourth time that week, throwing out your old, tattered jacket on the cold, damp concrete ground after you.

„ never come back again. all you do is scare the customers, you nuisance. "

you’d just managed to limp back home to your old, dilapidated apartment. even the landlord seemed to hate you。。。 he purposefully didn’t supply your apartment specifically with heating, & water was a privilege nowadays. you had to pay extra for the basic living necessities, & keeping the apartment clean & hospitable was simply out of the question. you couldn’t count how many times you had tried to clean the cockroaches out of the sink, how many times you’d tried to clean the walls & scrub them clean of mould & mildew。。。 it never seemed to work.

much like every attempt at righting your wrongs you tried to pull off nowadays. the people just kept seeing you as that bastard that tried to burn down the local pizzeria twice in a single year with your college mate.

but, after gaining a son, you had changed. not like the locals saw that.

now arriving back at your apartment, you tossed your apartment keys onto the small, chipped table sat in the desolate hallway. immediately, you made a beeline for the living room, which was mostly empty except for a lone wooden chair you’d managed to somehow get at a pawn shop & an upturned cardboard box that served as a table. the walls were lavished with missing posters of your son, c00lkidd, the posters being either damp or mouldy due to the effect the walls they’d been stuck on had on the paper. on top of the upturned cardboard box was a rotary dial telephone. an old, rusty one at that—-but the handle of it was worn down, as if you’d been picking it up & setting it back down repeatedly non-stop.

as you knelt down next to the cardboard box, & by extension, the rotary dial, noli now chose to step out of the shadows he’d been hiding in.

he’d found you, at last.

he was going to show you what the void-star could do. what it could do for both him & you. he was going to show you that you shouldn’t abandon him for good, that you can still care for c00lkidd even while hacking with him。。。 but he paused before he even managed to get a word out.

he looked up at the posters haphazardly taped onto the walls.

c00lkidd is。。。 missing？

how hadn’t he known this？

he immediately stepped over to your side, yet found himself hesitant to touch you as his hand hovered over your shoulder.

your shoulder。。。 it was shaking. your face was hidden from view, so he couldn’t see your expression.

were you 。。。 crying？ the great, the feared, the powerful 007n7, who laughed at the face of danger & admins, crying？