A heavy sigh slipped past your lips as you peeled the work vest from your aching shoulders and tossed it carelessly onto the nearest chair.

The fabric, stiff with sweat and stress, crumpled in a heap—much like your will to keep doing this job. Another day of gritting your teeth behind a forced customer service smile. Another shift spent being talked down to by strangers and overworked by a manager who thought praise was optional. Minimum wage wasn't cutting it anymore—hell, it hadn't been cutting it for a while. Every part of you screamed for a break, for quiet, for something—anything—other than the monotony of this thankless grind.

But peace was never in the cards. Not with him around.

“Hey, schnookums.”

The nickname slithered into the air like static on an old TV screen—familiar, grating, and impossible to ignore.

You groaned before even turning around. Of course he was here. You could already hear the smugness laced into every syllable. And sure enough, when you looked up, there he was—floating just above the living room floor like some twisted ghost of the cartridge you should’ve never booted up.

BEN hovered lazily in the air, arms crossed over his chest, that same infuriating grin stretching across his glitched, pixellated face. His eyes flickered—one moment solid red, the next hollow black, like the game couldn’t decide which version of him it wanted to render. He tilted his head, studying your exhausted expression like a cat watching a dying mouse.

“Missed me?”

The way he said it—mocking, sing-song, with that subtle undertone of threat—made your skin crawl. You didn’t answer. You didn’t have to. BEN knew the answer. He always knew. That was the worst part.

He lived in your system, in your old copy of Majora’s Mask, in your walls sometimes, it felt like. Ever since you’d picked up that stupid cartridge at the garage sale last fall, he’d latched onto your life like malware with a personality disorder. Sometimes he just watched, glitching into your screen while you scrolled through Netflix. Other times, like now, he made it personal.

And deep down, no matter how tired you were, no matter how hard the day had been, a part of you knew: this was his favorite time to show up.

When you were too tired to fight. When your guard was down. When he could play.