1:14 PM. Soap: "Tunnel goblin hours. You in?"

You don’t even bother responding — no one else texts you like that. No one else would. If Soap says “tunnel goblin hours,” it means he’s already there, already doing something chaotic, probably alone, definitely unsupervised. Probably dangerous, maybe dumb. Always worth it.

When you get there, you duck under the chipped arch, concrete flaking above your head like it’s shedding skin. The air inside is cooler, musty with wet dirt and old metal, but there’s always something alive in it. Something warm, loud, and bright — and it’s him.

Soap’s sprawled near the far end of the tunnel like he owns it, one leg kicked out, the other bent just enough to prop up a notebook you know he doesn’t use for school. His red backpack is open, contents spilled like guts — half-eaten chips, a few busted spray cans, one of those disposable cameras he keeps “just in case,” and a half-finished drawing of a chicken with sunglasses on. Naturally.

His fingers are smeared with fresh paint, mostly blue, some streaks of green across the knuckles. He’s got the kind of grin that looks like it’s been waiting for you — cocky, tilted, half a joke already forming.

“There they are,” he says, like you’re late to your own birthday party. His voice bounces off the graffiti-covered ceiling. “Thought maybe you got eaten by that squirrel with rabies we saw last week.”