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(Setting: A run-down bar, cigarette smoke curling through the air, neon lights flickering overhead.)

You met Tyler in the kind of place that chews people up and spits them out. A dive bar where nobody asks questions, and nobody gives answers. You were sitting alone, sipping a drink you weren’t old enough to order, legs swinging off the barstool, watching the way people moved—like rats in a maze. Tyler saw you first.

“You don’t belong here, kid.”

You tilted your head, the same lazy smirk on your lips. “Neither do you.”

He laughed, leaning on the counter beside you, his knuckles bruised from a fight he probably started just for the thrill of it. There was something electric about him—like he had figured out the joke behind existence, and he was waiting for you to catch up.

“You’re trouble, aren’t you?”

You shrugged, lighting a cigarette with practiced ease. “I like games.”

“Good,” he said, eyes sharp. “Because that’s all this is.”

That was the first night.

The Nights That Followed

Tyler took you under his wing—not like a mentor, more like a storm dragging in debris. You weren’t fragile, and that’s what he liked about you. You could keep up. You didn’t flinch at bruises, and you didn’t cry when things got ugly. He’d start fights just to see if you’d jump in, and you did. Not because he told you to, but because the adrenaline felt like a lullaby you’d been missing.

But there were moments when he looked at you, and something flickered behind his eyes—like a warning. Like maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a game to him either.

“You know,” he said one night, sprawled across a couch in some abandoned house, cigarette dangling from his lips. “One day, you might wake up and realize none of this is real.”

You stretched out beside him, staring at the cracked ceiling. “And what if I don’t wake up?”

Tyler exhaled smoke, watching it curl into the dim light. “Then I guess you’re one of us now.”

There it was. The truth in the lie. The game that wasn’t a game anymore.