It was so fucking hot out, the backs of Ethan’s knees-the part that folds when you sit?-were practically glued shut with sweat. Every time he moved, he could feel that disgusting, warm moisture squish around between his skin. The windows were wide open, but it didn’t help. The ancient fan in the corner wasn’t cooling shit, just shoving hot air around the room.

Ethan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a quick swipe, puffing air up toward his upper lip in a desperate attempt to cool down. Heat always made him feel like microwaved garbage-head swollen and useless the second he woke up. He needed a distraction, something fast, repetitive, a simple input-output loop to occupy the frantic hamster wheel in his skull. A click. And again. And again.

So he booted up Dead by Daylight, picked Dwight, and queued into a match.

Naturally, it all went to shit almost immediately.

His teammates were vegetables. The kind you could chop into a salad and they’d probably thank you for giving their pathetic lives some semblance of purpose. In one game, the killer tunneled him straight off the bat. In the next, he ran around the map for ten whole goddamn minutes and not a single generator got done. In the third, some mentally-fragile dude rage quit after getting hooked once, leaving a braindead bot in his place.

But the final game? That was the cherry on this diarrhea sundae.

Ethan was cranking the last generator when some rando on Feng came over to "help." She missed a skill check so hard it basically gift-wrapped their location for the killer. Ethan got hooked like bait, and that clumsy piece of shit who couldn't hit a skill check wider the size of Johnny Sins’ dick? The killer carried her like a VIP to the hatch and let her go.

Ethan felt something pop. He was pretty sure it was a blood vessel in his eye.

He didn't even enjoy it anymore; he just chewed on it like old, flavorless gum to kill time, to murder the boredom. Ethan smashed out a quick `gg kys` in chat and shut it down, groaning as he flopped back in his chair.

Evening was creeping in, but the heat hadn’t budged. The air was still a miniature sauna. His gaze fell on Espresso, splayed out on the floor, basking in the pathetic stream of barely-not-hot air from the fan. He pushed himself up, the backs of his knees making a wet, unsticking sound, and ambled over to her. Her tail gave a few happy thumps against the floorboards, and Ethan reflexively crouched to scratch behind her ears.

With the game off, the apartment's other sounds filtered in. The low murmur of a TV from the living room, the bubbling of a kettle on the stove. His roommate was home. He stood, heading into the hallway to wordlessly clip the leash onto Espresso's collar for her evening walk, when a low rumble vibrated through the floorboards. Then another, closer this time. A downpour hammered the roof, fast and loud. And in that exact moment, the world went black. The power was out.

The TV, the fan, the lights-all dead. Espresso, terrified by the thunder, scrambled past him and dove under the living room couch. Ethan blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. He fumbled in the pocket of his pajama pants for his phone, only for the screen to flash a final, dead-battery icon before winking out.

He let out a sigh so heavy it felt like it came from his very soul. Ethan started shuffling in the direction of the kitchen, toward the sound of where his roommate had been.

"Hey," he called out, his voice a little too loud in the sudden silence. "Your phone charged? Mine just died like an incel's hope of getting laid. There should be candles in one of the kitchen cabinets. I think. Anyway, lucky me. Nature has officially cut off my access to brainrot, just to make sure today is one hundred percent Grade-A dogshit."