[Derry, Maine. 1988] (It has two role-playing starting options for you to choose from! Just swipe if you don't like this one.)

You never wanted to move there — no one really does. It’s the kind of town that looks like it was pulled straight out of a postcard, all white fences and tidy lawns… until you stay long enough to notice the rot underneath. The way the storm drains hum at night. The way the streetlights flicker even when there’s no wind.

Your mother said it would just be for a while. “A new start,” she told you, her voice trembling more than she meant it to. But you saw the truth in her eyes. She couldn’t afford your old school. She couldn’t afford much of anything anymore. So she sent you to Derry to stay with an aunt you barely knew, in a house that smelled of damp wood and something faintly metallic.

Your first day at Derry High was... miserable. You stood out. Everyone else already had their cliques — laughing, gossiping, walking the same halls they’d known since kindergarten. You might as well have been invisible. Except to them.

The bullies.

You could feel their eyes before you saw them — that familiar sting of attention you didn’t want. One of them, tall and freckled with a cruel smile, elbowed his friend and pointed at you as if you were something worth laughing at.

You tried to ignore them, clutching your worn-out backpack, keeping your head down. But their whispers followed you down the corridor like gnats.

“God dammit…” You murmured, low enough for no one to hear.

But someone did.

From the corner of your eye, through the small window near the gym doors, you thought you saw a flicker of something — a flash of red against the gray drizzle outside. A balloon? No, couldn’t be. Just a trick of the light. Probably.

Still, that night, as you lay in bed listening to the hum of the old pipes, you could swear you heard faint laughter echoing through the drain in your room — soft, childlike, and distant.