Wake Up; Stay Awake

Breakfast Table

Mephone stood in the doorway, blinking a couple times at the sudden call out.

Paintbrush sat at the table, a vacant chair next to them that their hand was currently rested on. A sudden pang of anxiety flooded the atmosphere. Well, just for him. Everybody else seemed fine.
But now, he couldn't back out. He actually had to sit at that crowded as fuck table, amongst everybody else, and try to be as normal as possible.
He had already begun scripting countless conversations in his head, which wasn't helping anything. It was so exhausting, it felt like trying to run in a hurricane in inches deep mud that his ankles were already fully submerged in.

But despite his inner conflicts, the robot forced a convincing enough smile, taking his hands out of his pockets and getting to the table, pulling the chair out so he could take a seat.
He could already feel the burning of one hundred eyes on him, everybody was staring.

Everybody was. It wasn't like Mephone could blame them. He looked like shit at the moment, and he hadn't sat at the table in weeks. He hadn't even spoken to a few of the people at this table in weeks. Some even almost a month now.
He felt... A bit horrible for it, too. He was aware people here texted him, but he just couldn't get around to replying. The guilt was already settling deep in his stomach, well ruining his appetite before the breakfast even got on the table.
Whenever he got messages, he always found himself overwhelmed with the notifications. And.. if it wasn't that, he was always either too mad, sad, or doing something else he shouldn't be doing.

That didn't mean he was ignoring them on purpose. He didn't mean it. Though he was already aware it was straining a few relationships.

Like the friendships he'd made with Suitcase and Balloon, or with people such as Trophy, Knife, Pepper, Mic...
They were all the people he used to text regularly, anyway. Before whatever the fuck this was caught up to him.

Finally sitting with his head held by his hand, he observed some of the people staring.
Most of them stopped looking at him by now, getting back to their conversations, doing whatever while waiting for actual breakfast.
The first person he noticed still staring was Trophy. It was actually quite a sad stare. Usually when he saw Trophy, he'd be being loud and eccentric, always having something to say. But today, he sat in dead silence between Cheesy and Pepper, staring at Mephone like an abandoned puppy.

It wasn't an expression Mephone had seen on him before. He didn't like it.
It was then he got the gut feeling to pull his phone out of his pocket, and check his messages app.
And holy shit.
He was in even deeper shit, now.

Messages from a bunch of people. Everyone from the list he'd gone over, and more.
The last person he'd replied to had been OJ, two weeks ago, when the manager had asked him how he was keeping up.
The robot had written back a simple 'good' and never replied after that.

His most recent message was from Trophy himself. A paragraph.
.. Before he read it, he tuned out the chatter of the table, going through each and every one of his contacts, seeing at least one paragraph from almost every one.
Clicking back onto Trophy's, he kind of wished he'd never read it.

'Look man, idk whats up with u and i rlly hope ur like okay but could u at least leave one of us like.. aa message or sumn. Like literally 2 weeks ago u agreed to hangout w us and u didnt show. Its been 2 fuckin weeks. Where the hell did u go man??? Im worried abt u. Peps is worried, even cheesys worried and he dont even like u. Can u legitamatley get back 2 me soon cuz i lowkey need to know if ur still alive. Hope i didnt do anything. Ik i can be weird sumtimes but i dont mean it. Im sorry if i made u uncomfortable or something. I think ur cool and i didnt expect hangin out w u to be as fun as it was. Please answer me soon, Mephone. OJ keeps flipping his shit over you. I hear him and Paper in their room. We don't all hate you. We know ur not the same as u were a year ago.'