One Day | Dreamnap / Dreamnotfound

Prologue - Stormy

The floors creak gently in protest as a black haired man paces quickly around the narrow corridors of his home.

Small strings of curses leave the man's mouth as he takes a sip of water, his hand shaking as if it were cold.

The man's eyes flickers uncertainty and he looks down, finding a sudden interest at his feet as he ignores the messages spamming him to return to a call.

The dim amber lights in his room shine down on him, creating an eerie aura of tension and fear, almost resembling the scene of an interrogation.

A bed stands steady in the corner of his room, a small table standing alongside it, holding various items on its flat surface.

A lamp hovers over the table, flickering as if it has run out of motivation to keep shining.

Underneath the lamp, a picture of his smiling friends stares back at him, a large crack running along its side, unmoving and taunting.

Beside the photo, his phone rests on its portable charger, vibrating with Discord notifications, the fury of its senders reflecting through the phone's rapid shakes.

A thunderstorm rages outside of his window, much like the one that was tempering in a certain voice channel.

His lights continue to flicker as the thunder and rain sneer at the overhead power lines, taking turns at jabbing it.

He looks up, tilting his head ever so slightly to look up at the high ceiling that towers over him as if it was damning him for his sins.

The man loosens his grip on the glass, his heart skipping a beat when the cup attempts to escape through his insecure grasp.

Blinking, he looks at the cup for an excruciatingly long moment, feeling blank as he tries to decipher the incoherent sounds of anger spilling out of his headsets like water flooding out of a trapped room.

The man closes his eyes lightly as his thoughts drift to any memory that holds the smallest possibility of a straight answer.

He shakes his head, sighing as he tries to organize his thoughts.

Definition is a key point in any relationship, for example, one's definition of anxiety may be like a disease, spreading from one person to another until it finally demolishes them whole.

For another, it may be swimming in a flooding ocean with no sight of land from any visible direction.

Perhaps their definition of friendship had been too far gone to recover.

The man bites on his bottom lip as worry for his friends and frustration wraps itself around him like a cocoon.

He lets out a soft sigh, letting concern engulf him as he looks across the room to his monitor with tired, half-closed eyes.

His dark brown eyes sting as he scans his monitor from top to bottom.

The Discord call lies in the top left corner of his screen, spilling out toxicity and hatred. As he notes his colleague's icon flashing in sync to his voice, the man feels an unexpected pang of worry for his friend.

Shaking his head slightly, he shifts his gaze to an unfinished Word document that was peeking out meekly from the side of Discord's window.

As he notices more notifications flood into his inbox, he panics.

He stalls, trying to come up with any minor reason to why he should refrain from rejoining the voice channel.

As soon as the idea of going to check the damage the storm was doing outside pops into his mind, he places his cup of water on his table, dangerously close to the edge.