Just another ordinary story. Here, a struggling bachelor is confronted with the randomness of life. Among other things.

Vara belongs to  varalen

Plaisir was created by  palibakufun

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Nicolaus didn’t have much use for a shopping cart. And it wasn’t just because he was two feet tall.

As it happened, the main grocery store in Pryor had made some accommodations over the years to Pokémon customers. It was only sensible, what with most of the town’s revenue coming from a Pokémon-operated business. So in addition to the shopping carts stacked together by the sliding front doors, the anteroom contained a stack of rolling shopping baskets with extendable handles. Anyone of practically any height could conceivably use those.

But Nicolaus didn’t need those either. He was going to have to walk his groceries home with him. There was no sense in bothering with an extra container on the way. So the Meowstic walked straight inside with nothing but a cloth bag rolled up under his arm.

The store was a drab, standard place, with pretty much the same off-white tone for the floors, walls and ceiling. There were tall shelves all along the walls and through the open floorspace, forming ten long aisles—every possible square inch of which, of course, was covered in colorful merchandise. From the high ceiling shone a grid of fluorescent tube lights, which filled the room with a neutral, shadowless illumination. This was a place to buy food. It didn’t pretend to be anything more.

It was a weekday mid-morning, which meant that practically nobody was in here. At a glance: Only two of the six checkout lanes were open, and only one other customer was within sight. This was the best time to go shopping. No one was in the way.

Nicolaus made a slow circuit around the room’s outer walls, where most of the refrigerated shelves were. He had a routine list of things to get. Fruit from the produce aisle, lunch meat from the adjoining deli area, eggs and milk and yogurt from the dairy aisle. That was all. His diet was simple and inexpensive.

As his bag filled up, he slung it over his shoulder and held the straps with one paw. Despite being a psychic-type, the Meowstic refused to use telekinesis to carry things whenever he could help it. The threat of accidents simply wasn’t worth the added convenience—and besides, he didn’t mind the exercise.

Halfway through his list, on the way to the dairy aisle, a voice called out to him.

“Excuse me! Sir!”

It was a Cubone, standing there in one of the aisles, all by himself. A small, rather round, bipedal Pokémon, covered in light brown scales, with a thick pointed tail and pronounced spines on his back. Like all of his species, he was wearing a full-face skull-like helmet over his head—in this case, made of what appeared to be white plastic. He had one of the rolling shopping baskets next to him, filled partially with assorted goods. And he was waving at Nicolaus with both hands.

Nicolaus obligingly turned course and began walking towards the fellow shopper. “What is it?”

“Sir?” The Cubone addressed him in a meek, high little voice. “Could I trouble you to get me the, uh… the... active dry yeast, please?”

He pointed up with one claw at the top shelf to Nicolaus’ right. They were in the baking goods aisle. The yeast was right up there, in its characteristic dark brown glass jars.

This wasn’t really proper form. The ideal thing for the Cubone to do would be to find a sales associate and ask them to do it. But, as Nicolaus had observed, there were very few of them in the store right now. He wondered how long the Cubone had been standing here, struggling to figure out how to reach his desired item.

Nicolaus casually waved his free paw and lowered one of the jars from the top shelf, right down to eye level with the little Pokémon. “Is this the one you wanted?”

The Cubone lit up and nodded happily. “Thank you! This is very fine! Thank you so much.”

He waited for the Cubone to take hold of the jar, then released his telekinetic focus and began walking back away. “You’re welcome,” he called back without looking.

Sometimes Nicolaus wished the aisles in the store had ladders attached, like bookshelves in a library. He understood why they didn’t—it was an incredible liability, especially with less dexterous Pokémon and with heavier merchandise. But the alternative was for smaller Pokémon to be forever unable to reach higher-up items themselves. And while it might not have seemed like much, it was one more example of the times when Pokémon couldn’t act independently.

He was forever grateful to be a psychic-type who could bypass any such problems. Independence was a precious, fragile thing. Decades ago, Pokémon had earned their freedom en masse from human ownership—in many cases, by force. But they still lived in a human-dominated world, and that forced many of them to surrender bits and pieces of their independence simply to get by in daily life.

Nicolaus sympathized with those before him. He’d had to fight for his own independence too.

The rest of his shopping continued unimpeded. The bag over his shoulder grew steadily heavier with each item. The distance between his apartment and this store—in other words, the same span as from the town outskirts to the revitalized downtown stretch—was a twenty-minute walk. He’d be carrying it the entire way there.

In the meantime, it was important to make sure that he selected the nonfat plain yogurt and the skim milk. He didn’t want to end up as round as that Cubone.

He passed by the bakery aisle with a brief frown. Once, he’d been curious to try all of the store’s different baked products. Lately, he wasn’t feeling it. Arceus forbid he try their cake. It could only disappoint him.

The checkout lanes featured a built-in stepping stool at each end of the conveyor belt, so as to allow smaller Pokémon to unload their purchases and make their payments. Since there was nobody in line anywhere, Nicolaus walked up to one of the open lanes and skipped right to the second stool. It was still preferable to levitating himself right then.

The cashier was a tan-skinned human who grinned at the sight of the Meowstic coming up. “Good morning,” she said.

“And to you,” Nicolaus replied automatically, while carefully unloading his items onto the belt right by the scanner. He would’ve simply overturned the bag, but for the eggs. His favorite part of his diet, and easily the most irksome to move around.

He paid in cash for the grocery total. The expenditure represented a notable portion of his monthly budget. Even if Nicolaus had a large amount of money saved up, he’d still live frugally from day to day, because his income was tiny. Copywriters were generally well-paid, but not mediocre ones who were still going through college.

Also, he had no money saved up. He’d depleted his bank account down to the single digits on rent last week. What he had in his wallet was pretty much all of it.

Outside, the sun was approaching its highest point. As Nicolaus exited the doors, he squinted hard against the glare from the sidewalk. This was going to be a long walk, especially with all the weight on his back. There was little to do but get to it.

His route took him across the parking lot, then down the sidewalk along a busy commercial road, crossing one intersection after another. There was a seemingly constant stream of traffic going both ways along the road, which made it hard to think. Fortunately, his route soon took him down a much quieter street, winding past houses with front lawns and driveways, and then eventually past more run-down-looking buildings from the town’s older development.

Soon enough, Nicolaus’ apartment came into sight. It was a small two-story house very far from everything worth looking at, with dirty white siding and a tiny front porch. The landlord—a human male from an older generation—didn’t live there, but the ground floor was owned by one tenant, and the second floor was owned by another. They were reasonably quiet.

Nicolaus was actually a little suspicious that maybe the second floor was owned by a Kakuna or something. He literally never heard anything from up there.

Upon reaching the concrete porch, he used a brief, limited burst of self-directed telekinesis to skip his way up the human-sized staircase. Then he fished his keys from his pocket, opened the glass storm door, and let himself inside.

There was a three-way foyer of sorts inside the apartment. One door, to the left, opened up to the ground floor. Another, to the front, led to a staircase to the second floor. The last, to the right, led down to the basement—or at least the part of the basement that Nicolaus could access. He had a second key for this door, as well.

As he changed his grip on his keyring, the Meowstic noticed something. There was an acrid smell on the air, like burnt plastic. That was strange.

Still, he had nothing to do but open his door and continue like normal.

The smell immediately became much stronger. There was a visible haze of smoke in the air.

Nicolaus instantly dropped his grocery bag and jumped all the way to the bottom of the stairs with a single telekinetic bound. He threw open the door to his room.

The smoke was so thick, he could barely see. He couldn’t breathe. But he could see its source, right there on his dining table.

His laptop was on fire.

It was like the passage of time suddenly lagged on him. Everything happened in an instant. The first priority, he knew, was to prevent the fire from spreading. But then he was going to have some much bigger problems. In this instant, Nicolaus’ future was suddenly thrown into question.

The room was obviously too dangerous to enter. Nicolaus did the entire thing with telekinesis, standing at his doorway with one paw raised. First, he yanked the laptop’s charger cord out. There was a red fire extinguisher on the wall by the sink—he removed it, pulled its pin, aimed the nozzle at his laptop, and squeezed the handle. A jet of opaque white mist washed over the flame. He held it down for a few seconds, moving the extinguisher from side to side, until he was sure it was out.

There was too much smoke. Nicolaus set the extinguisher down and leapt back up to the top of the stairs, stumbling out into the foyer, gasping for breath between nonstop coughing. It was incredibly noxious. He felt like his lungs were going to seize on him.

Now that he had even a moment to think, he was feeling a frenzied panic set in. His heart was pounding so badly it hurt. He still couldn’t breathe. There was nothing to do. His laptop had caught fire. How had that happened? Had it really been that defective? He never even took it anywhere, he’d never dropped it or done anything bad to it.

But even with the fire out, there was still an utterly massive problem. If this had damaged his laptop too much to use—he was hoping against hope that it was salvageable, but if his laptop was a lost cause, then that was his entire livelihood gone. Nicolaus’ only source of income was his copywriting, and he needed a computer to do that properly. No computer meant no work; no work meant no money; no money meant no rent. He could lose the apartment. And then where would he be?

All of that went through his head in the first few seconds.

Nicolaus unlocked the front door and pulled it open. The smoke needed to air out somehow.

Then he took a deep, shuddering breath in, turned back inside, and made the plunge back down the stairs. His laptop was still sitting there in the cloud of noxious smoke. Part of the plastic casing had bent and sagged downward. The glass table surface beneath it had some big dark splotches on it where the fire had been burning.

He was lucky the table hadn’t been made of wood. The whole apartment might have burned down then.

There were two more things that the Meowstic had to do with his telekinesis: he opened the little window by the ceiling, to help air out the smoke, and then he lifted his laptop up and pulled it into his grasp.

It had been badly damaged, all right. He could barely even stand to look at it. He held it in both paws as he brought himself back up to the foyer.

The moment he was up by the front door again, Nicolaus began to put the laptop down—then something hit him. Something very physical.

He raced out the doorway, stumbled down the porch, retched once, and vomited all over the grass. The bitter, caustic wet heat got all through his throat and nostrils and everything. He couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the smoke, maybe… maybe something else… he couldn’t tell anymore. His eyes were watering badly.

It took a minute for Nicolaus to pull himself together. He wondered why there had been no alarm from the smoke. It hardly mattered now. But as he began hauling himself back up the porch stairs, he still pulled out his phone and—after a few tries, his paws were shaking badly—put in a call to his landlord.

The smoke was drifting out the front door. There was quite a bit of it. On second thought, Nicolaus hopped back down for now. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the toxic stuff.

After a few seconds, his landlord picked up. “Hello?”

“Mr. Daniels, it’s Nicolaus,” he said. His voice was a bit hoarse. “Just letting you know there was a fire. It’s out now.”

“A fire?” Instantly, the human’s voice snapped to serious concern. “What happened?”

“My laptop caught fire. I put it out. The building is fine.” Nicolaus coughed.

“Are you alright?”

“I think so. Mr. Daniels, I think my smoke detector’s broken. It didn’t go off.”

Silence for a couple seconds. “... I’ll look into it. Nicolaus, go check into the Poké Center if you’re not feeling alright. I’m out of town right now, I can’t come over.”

“Understood. I’ll call back if anything changes.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, bye.” Nicolaus hung up and put his phone in his pocket. His work wasn’t done here in securing the situation. What else did he have to do now?

On the foyer floor, his laptop was still sitting there. It was closed, but he wasn’t sure if he could get it open. The near-right corner of the screen was completely gone, replaced by a blackened hole. The casing below was in a similar condition.

Nicolaus picked up his burnt computer and carried it out to the porch. Then he sat down on the top step and did what came naturally: He thought.

It wasn’t easy to think. His breath was still shaky, his heart still racing. He willed himself to breathe—counting to seven with each breath in, counting to seven with each breath out, until he was a little more under control. But the next thoughts coming to mind weren’t calming him at all.

Now that he could see the extent of damage to his laptop up close, it went without saying that the machine was beyond repair. It looked like the battery had caught fire, which had burned a hole straight through the screen and probably some other hardware too. So he was going to have to obtain a replacement. Possibly a used netbook or something cheap like that—if he didn’t worry about doing anything besides word processing and internet access, it might cost less than a month’s rent.

Maybe he could pay for that. Maybe. If he found someone or someplace to borrow money from.

The real question was the hard drive. All of his works-in-progress were stored in there. For security reasons, Nicolaus never used cloud storage, and his latest flash drive backup was over a month old. If the hard drive was lost, all his various writing work would be lost with it. Most of those pieces had deadlines. Some of them were within a day or two. There was no way he could rewrite them from scratch in time.

And then he wouldn’t be able to pay his rent, and then he’d be out on the streets with nowhere to go. This was the reality of Nicolaus’ life. It was honestly this precarious. Losing his current computer meant losing his home.

He had no idea what he would do if that happened. But his breath was becoming hard to control again. The frenzied panic he’d felt from seeing the fire in his room was being steadily replaced by an icy, heart-gripping sensation of dread.

Three years ago, when Nicolaus had turned eighteen, he’d left his parents’ house with only the barest plan of what he was doing. They were the sort of parents who tried to control what their child did at every minute of the day. When he was very young, he’d thought it was actually normal for kids to not have doors on their bedrooms, and to then have the room inspected every evening for anything that was out of line. Later on, when he began school, they’d disallowed him from going to see any of his peers outside school hours. That trend had continued through his whole upbringing.

Now, in hindsight, he realized they’d treated him like a possession rather than a person. They’d prevented him from making any friends, denied him any kind of financial support, and expected him to stay with them even as an adult. Even after leaving, it’d taken him a year to get them to stop trying to pressure him to come back home. In his mind, being homeless would have been preferable to staying with them any longer.

Thankfully, he’d never had to put that resolution to the test. But it’d always been a matter of luck. For three years, he’d been living alone, and he’d never had a safety net, never had a backup plan—never had anyone to rely on.

Now, he was one hairsbreadth away from running out of luck. He didn’t have to lose hope yet, but it already unsettled him deeply, knowing that the fate of his home here was effectively out of his control. There was a physical sensation to it, a sort of sharp, painful sinking within his chest. He couldn’t let his emotions take over, no matter how dire this became. Not now.

Even if this was, in fact, very dire. Nicolaus had to admit, this wasn’t how he’d expected his day would go.

The Meowstic closed his eyes and focused his psychic power inward. The energy might not have been able to change his mood, but it could calm him, at least for a moment. It rolled over his mind like a wave of water, muffling the noise of his thoughts, giving him an opportunity to collect himself. He allowed it to spread evenly and completely, held it for a few seconds, and then released. The exact same feelings as before began to bleed in, but now he had an advantage in clarity.

This didn’t have to be the end of his independent life. Even if the hard drive was partially damaged, data recovery technology had become very sophisticated. If he could get to a computer repair store nearby, and ask for their help in retrieving what was on the drive—that would be enough. Of course, there was a lot to do on the way, and he had no idea how much the service would cost. But he had to take this one step at a time.

This wasn’t over yet. He was still in control of what he was doing. There was a procedure to this, and he had to follow it.

First things first. He wasn’t done here.

Nicolaus picked up his grocery bag and went back downstairs. The smoke, by now, had mostly cleared. Good enough. First, he put the groceries all away in the mini-fridge. Next, he went to his toiletries by the shower, retrieved them, and brushed his teeth over the sink. It involved a lot of scrubbing and rinsing. He didn’t stop until his mouth was tasting completely normal again.

With all that taken care of he came back up—normally he’d close the window before leaving, but his room really needed to finish airing out—and began locking the doors behind him. He scooped up his laptop on his way down the porch, carrying it in both paws across his front as he began walking.

He was fairly sure he knew where a repair store was in town, but to make sure, the Meowstic took out his phone again and tapped in a web search for ‘computer repair pryor OK.’ Sure enough, there was one on the same road as the grocery store, and it was currently open.

So far, this was working. Nicolaus considered calling ahead to the store’s phone number displayed on his screen, but he decided against it. They wouldn’t be able to tell him anything without looking at the laptop anyway.

It was time to walk. Time to walk, and let himself organize his thoughts, the way he always did.

Normally, he knew, he would’ve been taking in the details of his environment and reflecting on them mindfully. It wasn’t working now. He felt numb. Like he was going to shut down, like he couldn’t keep doing this. He had to hold it together.

He focused on his breathing. No need to overthink it, just wait for the next step to come along.

No need to overthink it.

This was an exact repeat of Nicolaus’ route to the grocery store. He walked along the same sidewalks, stopped at the same intersections. But now, instead of carrying a cloth grocery bag, he had a damaged plastic laptop. It actually smelled a little burnt, just walking along like this.

If it turned out that the fire hadn’t ruined the hard drive but the CO2 from the fire extinguisher somehow had, he was going to laugh. Well, no he wasn’t, but it would be interesting to tell people about later.

He still felt a little sick. There really was nothing to do but continue walking. His future was in his own paws, as always. He could do this.

The computer repair place was actually on the back of a commercial building, with a sign out front saying to circle around. That would explain why Nicolaus couldn’t remember where it was. He split off from the busy sidewalk and headed down the open driveway to behind.

Since both of his paws were full, Nicolaus pushed the glass door open with his shoulder. That worked.

Inside was a large, open, well-lit room with white walls and a beige-carpeted floor. All four walls were filled with counters and shelves stacked up with various computers and components, many in partial states of disassembly. They all had adhesive tags stuck on them with numbers written on in permanent marker.

Only one person was in here. A Grumpig, male, rotund and porcine-nosed, wearing a blue denim vest. He was seated on a chair in front of a disassembled computer on a table, and squinting intently at a yellow-handled screwdriver, which was fastening things inside the computer seemingly of its own accord. Another psychic-type, hard at work.

“Excuse me,” Nicolaus called out.

“One moment,” the Grumpig called back without looking away from his work. He finished fastening the screws for whatever he was doing, then lowered the screwdriver to the table and glanced sidelong at Nicolaus. “What can I do for you, sir?”

This was going to be a little awkward to explain.

“My, uh…” Nicolaus held up his laptop demonstratively. “My laptop, uh… caught on fire today. I’m hoping the hard drive is salvageable.”

The Grumpig frowned for a moment, then hopped off his chair and waddled up to take the laptop in his own paws. He flipped it over and examined its underside briefly, before using his telekinesis to pop off the plastic casing. “We don’t need this,” he muttered, tossing the plastic piece over his shoulder. It landed in a wastebin on the far side of the room.

Nicolaus could see inside the laptop now. It looked very blackened in parts, and some of it was outright missing, but he couldn’t tell what was what. Something in there was his hard drive. Whatever it was, it had to come out of this in one piece.

This was the moment that would decide everything. He forced himself to keep breathing.

Seconds went by. The Grumpig peered down closely at the exposed machinery and circuitry. Then he sighed, shook his head, and handed the laptop back to Nicolaus.

“This hard drive is burnt to a crisp,” he said. “I hope you’ve backed up your data. Is the machine still under warranty?”

It felt like someone had just punched him hard in the face. Nicolaus could hardly even see straight. He accepted the burnt laptop back into his paws without a word.

The Grumpig was saying something more, but he couldn’t tell what. It didn’t matter.

His hard drive was beyond salvaging. His data was gone. That meant he couldn’t finish his work in time. And that meant he wouldn’t be able to make enough money this month. And that meant, and that meant…

Nicolaus had to go. He mumbled something polite to part with, then turned for the door. Had to get away from this.

He stumbled back outside. The sun hit him harshly. He was trembling. Everything was coming apart. He was supposed to be in control and he couldn’t do it anymore.

This was it. He’d run out of choices. Every option from here, everything he could think of, led to the same outcome. He wasn’t going to keep the apartment. When the month ended, he’d be done. If he borrowed money, it’d become even worse. He’d run out of choices.

The Meowstic began to step back to the road, down the open driveway. It was impossible. He was breaking.

What were his parents going to say to him, when they found out he’d failed at living alone?

He threw his dead laptop as hard as he could into the air. It burst apart into a hundred pieces before it could even hit the ground. He screamed out, at the top of his lungs.

“FUUUUCK!!”

His knees hit the ground—it came up to meet him—he put his paws over his head but he couldn’t make the thoughts stop. This was it. He was done. His experiment was over. No more independence. No more freedom.

Whimpering sobs wracked through his lungs. He couldn’t stop them. His control was gone.

He had been so stupid. How could he have done this to himself? It had been so, so stupid of him. He’d known this could’ve happened at any time, and he’d kept trying anyway. Some stupid, stubborn urge to be on his own, to live on his own. It had been doomed from the start.

Time went by. He kept sobbing. Tears and drool were dripping on the ground under his face. It felt dirty. He couldn’t get out of this. Out of any of it.

He didn’t know what to do.

Eventually, the Meowstic just ran out of tears. His eyes couldn’t make any more. He picked himself up onto all fours, hauled himself over to the side of the driveway, and propped himself upright against the brick wall of the commercial building. He couldn’t think.

A little more time went by. He was going to have to get himself together if he ever wanted to continue his day. So for lack of a better option, he sat in place and focused on his breathing until he could think at all again.

All of the broken pieces of his laptop were scattered on the ground in front of him. He remembered reading someplace that it was bad to dispose of some electronic parts with other trash, but it was probably even worse to leave them out on the road.

He summoned enough psychic energy to start collecting the pieces by his feet. He’d figure out someplace to put them. At least he could do that much.

To be honest, Nicolaus hadn’t even liked this laptop computer very much. He’d bought it used from an internet seller, shortly after striking out on his own. It had taken forever to start up, it could never run more than a couple applications at a time, and the display had been uncomfortably bright. The only reason he’d used it was because he needed a computer and couldn’t afford anything better.

Also, it hadn’t been able to run any good games on it. That had always annoyed him.

Halfway through what he was doing, a car rolled into the driveway and went straight past him. Its tires crunched over some of the pieces of his laptop. He didn’t even care.

The real problem was that without this computer, he didn’t have an income source. Finding work in town had always been practically impossible, with his meager qualifications. If it weren’t for all the scholarships and affirmative action programs for Pokémon, he wouldn’t have made it into college either. He’d happened to become acquainted with someone in the writing business while in high school, and that had led to the whole copywriting thing. It worked. Or it had worked, until now.

Now, the experiment was over, and he was done being independent. Nicolaus thought of the word ‘independent’ here generously. He wouldn’t have been above accepting some kind of aid from somebody. But he still had no friends in town. In general, there was nowhere to turn to for help, besides his parents’ house.

Did he have anywhere to go? Anywhere at all?

Nicolaus looked down at the pile of plastic bits in front of him. He pushed himself unsteadily up to his feet, leaning one paw against the brick wall, then began to lift the entire pile with one telekinetic pull. It wasn’t that different from when he practiced his psychic powers on a deck of cards. He could move them as one mass, but not really change each piece’s position in the group.

Because it had been so, so useful of him to practice his psychic powers on playing cards. Now he was using those powers to put the shattered, scorched remains of his crummy laptop computer in the trash.

He carried the pieces in front of him out to the street, trudged up to the nearest sidewalk garbage bin, and dropped them all in. There. That was that problem solved. He was feeling breathless and shaky and drained-out, his eyes were aching and dry, everything was still falling apart around his precious folded ears, but at least he’d done his civic duty and avoided littering.

There was probably one place that Nicolaus could go. He didn’t exactly think of it as a source of actual friends, so far, but… basically, the big Pokémon-run business providing the stream of revenue for Pryor was an upscale sex resort just outside town. Cafe Plaisir. He’d been there a few times now. Besides the usual grocery runs, it was the only place he went to with anything close to reliability.

Of course, the Cafe was far outside his income range to be able to really do anything at. And if they thought they could hire him to be one of their ‘waiters,’ he’d still probably prefer the streets. … And if they wanted to hire him for anything else, they presumably hadn’t read his resume very closely.

But it was someplace to go, all the same. For once, Nicolaus had no plan at all. He had no idea what would happen if he went there. This was what it looked like when he’d run out of sensible options. He just had to start doing things that weren’t sensible.

So, once the Meowstic had gotten his bearings again, he resumed walking. This was going to take a while.

In fact, the walk took him about two hours.

It all blurred together after a while. He passed by the shuttle station, where people could pay for motorized rides to the Cafe from the middle of town. Of course, he didn’t try to use it, because he couldn’t afford that, so he just kept walking and walking, on and on. By the time he got outside the commercial roads, his head was aching and his throat was parched.

But still, he kept walking.

There was plenty of time to think out here, but Nicolaus didn’t welcome it. He was still having trouble believing that this was even happening to him. He’d been going through all the responsible motions he could, but in the back of his mind, it all felt unreal, like his day had suddenly transitioned into a bad dream without his realizing it. This morning, everything had felt perfectly stable and secure as always, and now he was here.

Of course, if his life had really been stable and secure, he wouldn’t have been faced with losing everything he owned thanks to one broken computer. The stability had been an illusion. Anyone’s life could be derailed by a sufficiently large turn of bad luck, but this was a fairly small one. He shouldn’t have felt so secure to begin with.

And it wasn’t like Nicolaus himself was off the hook. It wasn’t pure bad luck that had befallen him today. This was partially his own fault too. An entire month between flash drive updates? He should’ve been doing that every day. If he had, the lost hard drive wouldn’t have meant losing all his progress, and none of this would have been happening. He’d simply felt too secure, too complacent. Three years of independence, and no turn of luck had ever challenged him enough. He’d gotten lazy.

Maybe his parents had a point after all. They were still horrible people, but maybe they had a point. He couldn’t take life on by himself. He wasn’t equipped for it. Even if he wanted to be.

That was the sort of thing he contemplated for the intervening two hours. It was a long, long time to be alone with his thoughts.

By the time the Cafe Plaisir building came into sight, Nicolaus didn’t know why he had gone to the effort of walking over. Nothing he was doing made sense. If he expected these people to help him in the long run, there was no telling how badly things would end up.

But here he was, plodding on down the grassy roadside path to the Cafe’s front porch. It was mid-afternoon. The sun was blazing away. He needed to get indoors no matter what.

It occurred to him that he had become painfully thirsty. His tongue was sticking to the inside of his mouth. He’d been vaguely aware of it before, but soon he’d probably have to talk to someone, and this would make it difficult.

When it came time to climb the stairs to the porch, Nicolaus tried to give himself a psychic boost. It faltered halfway. He fell and landed face-down on the top step. Its edge slammed right into his belly, beneath the ribcage. It hurt badly.

It barely mattered. He pushed himself back up, coughing a couple times from the aching impact, and let himself in through the front doors.

Nicolaus ignored the Pokémon at the lobby’s front desk and went straight in for the main bar. Everything felt hazy. He knew this environment well, but it felt strange right now. Like it wasn’t his proper setting, like he didn’t belong here at the moment. It felt like being in his old high school building past sundown. This was the wrong time.

The main bar, like usual at this time, was mostly empty. Classy and rustic-looking, but empty. A few customers were sitting around at tables with drinks. There were also a few waiters in here, and Nicolaus was pretty sure his thirst was making him hallucinate, because one of them appeared to be a big fluffy Bibarel. He needed to stop.

Behind the bar counter along the room’s far wall, there was a lone purple-furred Espeon standing there with his paws propped up on the countertop.

Nicolaus might’ve smiled a little, under other circumstances. He knew that Espeon. Professional bartender, name of Vara. One of the friendliest people in the whole Cafe, though maybe not the best at being authoritative. There were worse individuals he could’ve bumped into today.

So he walked up to the bar, and clambered up onto one of the barstools. “May I have a glass of water, please,” he rasped, before even getting himself all the way to the top.

By the time he was seated and facing the countertop, there was already a full glass of ice water sitting on it. The Espeon was watching him carefully, brow raised.

He picked up the glass in both paws and took a long, deep swig from it. “... Thank you, Vara.”

“Hey, Nico,” Vara said, turning to face the Meowstic more directly. “What’s going on? You doing all right?”

How was Nicolaus going to explain this? Two hours of walking, and he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“... I’m not having the best day,” he replied eventually.

The Espeon shuffled a little closer. “Oh? Tell me about it.”

“Basically, today my laptop caught on fire, and now I can’t do my professional copywriting and I have no more revenue. And I also have no savings, so I’m not going to have enough money for my rent this month. So a month from now I’m probably going to be homeless.”

Nicolaus took a deep, shuddering breath in, then let it out slowly and took another sip of water. Yes, that was his situation today.

Vara stared at him for a couple seconds. Then, perhaps realizing that Nicolaus wasn’t joking, he took a deep breath in himself and nodded once. "Right, then... well, first of all, I am extremely sorry to hear that." He glanced around the room briefly. "Second... have you talked to anyone aside from me about this?"

“No. I let my landlord know about the fire. That’s it.”

The Espeon paused again. “... What if you could use another computer for now? Until you could afford a replacement.”

“Well, I’d originally been planning to do that, but I needed the works-in-progress on my hard drive, and that’s, uh… The hard drive is gone. So my work is gone too. I’m going to miss some deadlines on projects I’ve been doing. No way around it, I think.”

“Which means you won’t have enough money for rent, yeah…?”

Nicolaus nodded numbly. “Yes. … And I’m not going to just borrow money for that, because I have no way to pay it off. I’ve been barely scraping by as it is. That’d put me in the hole forever.”

“Do you have anyplace else you can stay for now? Any relatives in the area you could work something out with?”

“Technically, my parents live one bus ride away. But I’d rather live on the streets. I’m serious.”

Vara winced. “... Anyone else?”

“Well, after I learned my hard drive was done for, I came here. I don’t have any other friends in town. No family, either.” Nicolaus paused. He was missing something. “... And I’m not looking for work,” he added very firmly.

It was probably a good thing that no one else was sitting here at the actual bar. This conversation would have been very awkward for someone to overhear.

“Of course not.” The Espeon shook his head emphatically. “No. I wasn’t going to propose that to you. But, uh… I mean, if you need it, you could always stay at my place. I don’t have any roommates in my apartment. It’s not a huge floor area, but I think it’d work out… you don’t exactly look like you’d take up a lot of space. And I can cover rent myself.”

Now, this was a new turn.

Part of Nicolaus wanted to feel hopeful about this. He could feel that little spark of feeling light up in him. And he knew exactly what it was about: Someone was volunteering to help him in a time of need, because they cared. But the rest of him wasn’t that easily swayed. He didn’t know whether Vara intended to follow through on the offer, what Vara’s living situation was really like, or—and this would be the most important in the long run—what Vara might expect from him in payment.

After a beat, Vara added, "I can understand if you don't want to accept charity, or something, but the offer's there. You could chip in toward water or electric if you wanted, but I wouldn't expect anything out of you other than not trashing the place."

Nicolaus rubbed his eyes briefly. First he’d had a surreal day, and now he was having a surreal conversation. His landlord wasn’t going to be pleased regardless. “I’m not opposed to receiving charity,” he replied. “Not on principle, at least. I’m not that proud. But you know that actually kind of… sounds more suspicious than if you just stated what you want in return, right? We’re living in a world of hidden costs and fine print. I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

Vara arched his brow briefly, then began drumming the pads of one paw along the wooden countertop. “I suppose I don’t have much of a reason. You’re typically kind, and presently in need. I have the space. Seems to work to me. It’d be nice to have a friendly face about when I come home from work, but that’s something I can get by going and visiting Fable, too.” He paused, and then added, “Well. ‘Friendly.’ Most of the time.”

The way Nicolaus saw it, there were basically three possibilities right now. First, that Vara was making a delusionally empty offer and had no idea what he was talking about. Second, that this entire thing was some sort of sociopathically deceptive lure to get him off-guard. Third, that somehow his extraordinarily bad luck earlier today was being canceled out by a stroke of extraordinarily good luck. Vara seemed too intelligent for the first one, and they’d known each other for long enough that the second seemed unlikely. But the third one was just stupid. He couldn’t take any more of being yanked around like this today.

“Thank you,” he said, without really thinking about it. Then, also without thinking about it, “I’m imagining just printing out a smiley face and taping it to the wall by your door for you. It’s friendly. Also probably more expressive than I am.”

That prompted a laugh from the Espeon. “You’re expressive, just fine. Just more subtle about it than most. You said you’ve got till the end of the month, yeah? That’s… what, two weeks? How much stuff do you need to move?”

Nicolaus held up one paw and used the other to count on his claws. “I have a mattress, a table, a chair, and a mini-fridge.” He glanced up at Vara, who was staring at him wide-eyed. “Also, there’s technically a bed frame, but it doesn’t belong to me.”

Ostensibly, Vara had been expecting something more. He took a moment to compose himself and answer.

“W-well, uhm… that shouldn’t be hard to get over to my place, then… they gave me like three keys when I moved in, so that shouldn’t be an issue, either… when I get off shift I can walk over with you and make sure you’re actually okay with this setup, if you’d like.”

Maybe this was the third option after all. It sounded genuine enough. But as Nicolaus observed, this was also a moment when his emotions were struggling to catch up with his new information. He began to lean against the back of his seat, before realizing that he was on a barstool and he was about to fall off of it. He quickly laid his paws on the countertop for stability. “Uh. … All right, then.” The Meowstic took another sip from his water glass, then gave Vara another glance.

He continued: “I don’t know how this works. I’ve never done this before. If there are any papers I need to sign, anything like that—oh, and you know, the smiley face thing wouldn’t work, I don’t have a printer—I’ve just never had anyone to room with before. I’ve been in five different apartments over the past three years, and I’ve been alone in all of them. Not that I’m complaining, I’m just new to this.”

The Espeon laughed. “You don’t need to be on any paperwork, no. Unless you want your stuff insured, or you feel like showing up to the office to pay rent for me, there’s no reason to make any note of you living there in an official capacity. Would likely need to file a change of address, though, which you can just do through the post office, and… well, I don’t have a printer, either, so I suppose your idea might be dead in the water.”

Well, at least one of them knew how this worked. Nicolaus couldn’t shake this feeling that something was creeping up on him. He’d literally just had his lesson in feeling too secure about things. On the other hand, he couldn’t produce any rational reason to decline Vara’s offer. There was little to do besides wait for the other shoe to drop.

As someone with neither hands nor shoes, he took his own mental dialogue as another indicator of human dominance in the world.

“No printer for you either?” The Meowstic drained the last of his water glass. “Mmm. I guess that explains why you don’t already have a friendly face in there.”

“See, at one point I’d planned to print myself a smiley cat face to fit the purpose, but all I had access to is the Plaisir photocopier, and…” Vara trailed off meaningfully. “... have you ever been to the Plaisir photocopier?”

Nicolaus gestured to his glass on the countertop. “Refill my water before you tell me the rest of the joke, please. I want to spit it out when you do the punchline.”

It was almost like normal. Another day’s interaction at Plaisir, customer and barkeep, one psychic cat to another. And also Nicolaus had just been saved from an incredibly bleak future and possibly the end to any happiness in his young adult life. So, almost like normal, except not at all. He was waiting for the feelings of trepidation to turn to feelings of bottomless gratitude.

Vara did, in fact, refill his glass with water before continuing. “To be entirely honest with you, I don’t think there is a punchline. Just a sad, sad photocopier that’s seen entirely too many oversized genitalia, and not enough happy cat faces.”

“That is sad,” Nicolaus murmured. “Of all the ways people could try to make their genitals look bigger—a photocopier?”

Vara picked up Nicolaus’ water glass with telekinesis, took a sip from it, and spat it out laughing.

That worked too.

The Espeon waved a paw at him. “No, no! I meant they were oversized before they had their likenesses printed.”

The Meowstic began to say something more, but stopped before any words could come out. He’d been devoting some part of his mind to coming up with socially apt things to say, but it was running out of focus. Ever since he’d smelled that smoke in his apartment, it’d been one unthinking strategic move after another. And it was exhausting.

He let out a long, weary sigh and leaned his head down on his paws. “Today’s been a day,” he grunted. “You know, I was actually starting to like that apartment? It’s a crummy little basement room with pipes running across the ceiling. Doesn’t even have a separate bathroom. No stove, no counter space, no laundry. But it was still mine. I paid for it with my own money, from my own accomplishments. It felt good.”

Vara sounded unfazed. “Well, if you want to, you can get back out there as soon as you have the money for it. I really don’t mind taking on a roommate, but I’m also not gonna to tell you to stay longer than you desire.”

Truth be told, Nicolaus didn’t care that much about his current apartment. But he could tell he was trying to express something. It’d been lingering in his thoughts this entire time, ever since Vara had made that generous offer to shelter him.

He looked up at Vara’s face again. “I was going to have a very, very bad time in the coming months. I’ve been sitting here talking to you about whatever, but mentally I’ve just been thinking: What am I getting myself into? What am I going to owe you? Because it’s a lot more than you letting me be your roommate. We’re talking about you saving my adult life. I had no options left before you made your… your proposition, just now. I can’t even believe I’m saying this.

“But think of how my future months would go if you hadn’t posed the offer. I’d be homeless, or worse. I walked all the way over here figuring there was no way for me to avoid that. And then you just casually told me otherwise? … If there’s nothing else you want me to do for you, I guess all I can do is thank you.”

Nicolaus felt a chill go through him as he was saying the words. His thoughts were finally beginning to catch up with everything that had happened. It wasn’t that he felt like things were back to normal—he knew exactly how close he’d come today to having his life totally ruined.

Vara reached over the bartop and laid a paw on top of Nicolaus’ head. It was surprisingly small, given how much bigger he was. “Well, you could cheer up a bit, for one,” he said, with a smile, then continued. “It’s just some space, Nico. I’m honestly just glad to be able to help you out. There are an awful lot of ‘what ifs’ to your situation, and if you think about them too deeply, you’re gonna tear yourself apart. When you find yourself with a vaguely steady flow of income, and some decent savings behind you as a windfall, then, maybe I might ask you to chip in a bit to rent or electric if you still want to stick around. But even that’s a ‘maybe’… I’m not concerned with it, and that would be months away, from the sounds of things.”

The Meowstic looked up at the limb resting on his head. Ostensibly, this was as close as they could get to a hug with the countertop in the way. He would have helped by climbing up on top of it, but that seemed unsanitary. So instead, he simply reached up and rubbed his paw on Vara’s foreleg. “I dunno,” he murmured. “It’s… it’ll be a commitment on your part, I’m sure. But I get it. I’m sure I’ll cheer up eventually.”

“No doubt.” Vara withdrew his paw and leaned back a little, surveying the room. After a moment, his face lit up, glancing at Nicolaus again. “Hey. How about a drink of your choice? A real one. On my tab.”

So they were going back to normal right now. Nicolaus was aware that he had a great deal of unresolved feelings to process about all of this, but he could sit down with his emotions another time. Under quieter, calmer, more secure circumstances. Possibly in Vara’s apartment.

“Well, since this is Cafe Plaisir, I figured you were already going to bill me for the glass of water.”

Vara snorted with laughter.

“But no,” Nicolaus went on, “I think you’ve given me enough today. Don’t you agree?”

The Espeon gave him an insistent look. “C’mon. I’m offering it to you. You’re in Plaisir’s bar, relax a little.”

That he was. After everything that had happened today, Nicolaus didn’t know if he could bring himself to celebrate the way that his fellow psychic wanted. Even if his fellow psychic was now quite likely his future roommate. But here they were. Despite everything, life was going on. One turn of random chance had simply led to another.

“All right.” He held his arms out wide, then laid his paws on the counter. “Sure, thank you. Free drink it is.”

Vara’s look instantly turned to a big grin. “Excellent! What can I get you?”

Nicolaus shrugged pleasantly. “Oh, I don’t know. Surprise me. You already did that today too.”