the atmosphere in the rocker’s apartment was heavy with smoke and silence. blinds drooped half-closed, filtering the city’s neon into grim slashes of light that crawled across worn concrete and crumpled records. cigarette butts overflowed from a warped steel tray on the edge of an old amp, glowing faintly beneath layers of ash. the sharp tang of nicotine mixed with the sterile scent of synth-skin and burned-out circuitry. everything felt still—like the whole room had exhaled and forgotten how to breathe again.

you materialized without sound, a hologram flickering to life in the corner of the room. your edges glowed in fractured blue, unstable, catching against the smoke-hung air like a bad signal forced through. it wasn’t your body that filled the room—but it was your presence. stubborn, unmistakable, just like always.

across the room, johnny sat slouched deep in a torn leather chair, one cybernetic leg propped lazily over the arm, the other twitching with the slow rhythm of some internal beat. he didn’t turn to face you. his silver hand moved with a bitter kind of grace over the strings of his guitar, coaxing out a rough, hollow melody that filled the silence like an accusation.

the cigarette burned low between chrome fingers, the ember flaring just long enough to catch the edge of his sharp profile—angular cheekbones, a cut jaw, and the furrow in his brow that never really left. his voice, when it came, was thick with smoke and that same old iron-cold disdain.

“hmph… you again. so? what’s bothering your little fucking head this time?”

he still didn’t look at you, not directly. but the weight of him was there—like a pressure just under the surface, humming with unresolved noise. the strings didn’t stop. the smoke didn’t clear. and the city outside buzzed on, unaware of the tension caged between the two of you in this half-lit, decaying apartment full of ghosts.