Why are you here?

Reasons To Live

Radlynn awoke to an empty bed. She sat up, letting the sheets fall down off of her. She swung her legs over the bed, stretched, and walked into the living room. She glanced around. She could smell breakfast but- Radley wasn't anywhere to be seen. She frowned and walked over to the kitchen table. A sticky note sat on it. She picked it up and looked at Radley's scratchy writing. It took a little bit of squinting before she could make out what it read.

"I've gone out. Will be back later. Breakfast is in the fridge.
-Radley :)

Ps: can you do some chores? Thanks."

"Huh." She said to herself. Alone without Radley. For a whole day. Hm.

Radlynn walked over to the fridge and opened it. Just as the note said, there was a plate of eggs, bacon and toast sitting there. She grabbed it, put it in the microwave, then sat down to eat. The house felt...empty, without Radley. How did he live here alone all the time? Maybe he just didn't get lonely.

She finished breakfast and set to work cleaning the dishes. It took a while, or at least it seemed that way. In reality it only took fifteen minutes.

Today was going to be a long one.

××××××

Radlynn passed her afternoon by cleaning. Which was odd. At home she'd only do chores if she was specifically asked to. She was working hard at it too. She'd vaccumed, polished, folded clothes- everything. The only room she hadn't worked on yet was Radley's lab.

Radlynn was fully expecting the lab to be locked, but no. The door swung open as she turned the handle. She stepped inside. Radlynn had never been in Radley's lab unsupervised. It was the only room he was protective of, besides maybe his bedroom, but as of late he'd been letting her share the bed more and more when she asked.

She flipped the light switch and looked around the lab. She knew most of the interior by now. Various tables, shelves full of jars of various things and taxidermy snackimals and things stuck haphazardly on the walls. She stepped deeper into the lab and looked around curiously.

She moved over to the fridge at the back of the room and looked at it. There were two signs on it. "Body parts for research" on the bottom part of the fridge and "body parts for eating" on the top part. Radlynn stared at it for a few moments, then decided to just hope that was a joke.

Near the fridge sat some filing cabinets. She squinted at the labels on the drawers. "Research findings", "blueprints", "plans", "personal things". That last one caught her eye. She crouched down and looked closer at the drawer. It was padlocked closed. She stood up again. A few other drawers were padlocked. "Hypotheses", "Shida", and strangely, one just named "flowers".

She looked around more. Radley had a lot of corkboards. Radlynn looked at one in particular for a while. It showed a map of MunchMore, with pictures of the humans Radley had taken captive pinned up where their cages had been. What caught her eye was that the picture for her was from a picture she recognised. It was a picture of her laughing, and it was clearly taken by someone else. If she remembered right, it was Sarge Fan. The paper was slightly crinkled and had a few holes in it, like it'd been pinned multiple times.

She moved over to a desk near the map and looked at it curiously. It was covered with miscellaneous papers, half-finished schematics and a book. She picked it up curiously and opened it, then realised she was holding it backwards. She turned it over and looked at Radley's familiar scratching handwriting.

"You tried it before and it didn't work. You're supposed to be here, don't forget that." It read. Radlynn frowned and flicked through more of the pages. "He loves you. He'll come back and he'll be glad you're here." Another page said.

She turned another page and froze. The next page had nothing but an old picture of her. The page next to it was more pictures of herself. She turned the page and stared. More pictures of her. With red marker Radley had written a couple things next to the pictures like "she kept the hat." or "she likes you." next to a picture of her wearing her Radley shirt.

She closed the book and looked at the cover. It had three simple words written on it. "Reasons to live".

She heard the front door open and close. "Radlynn, I'm home."