And just like that, Arin died.
The day it happened had been terribly ordinary. His alarm woke him up half-an-hour before he had to really get going. Just the way he liked it. Arin didn't feel truly awake until he'd had his habitual back-and-forth with the snooze button.
As always, he rushed through his morning routine, deciding that the slightly-wrinkled shirt he'd worn the day before was good enough for another day at work.
Breakfast was the usual combination of leftovers from dinner and a banana, chores like hanging up his laundry and taking out the trash were painfully routine, and his commute to work was the same as it had always been.
Even the entirety of his workday was ordinary.
Their client, unsurprisingly and at the last minute, wanted their team to make changes to the prototype. Before lunch, their boss reprimanded the team for not meeting the client's expectations. After lunch, their boss yelled at the team for wasting too much time following the client's every whim and fancy.
After a few hours of tapping away at his laptop, Arin stretched to relieve the now-familiar pain in the back of his neck. Looking around, he saw Jay, who sat at the desk next to his, stealing glances at Ria. Ria, who sat by the door, was stealing glances at the coffee machine. Erica, who stood by the coffee machine, was stealing sugar packets. The same as always.
Predictably, his boss told him off for being a slacker when he finally decided to clock out after an hour of overtime, and habitually, he kept his head down and mumbled excuses before leaving anyway.
Shaking off the perplexing combination of stress and dullness only his job as a designer could evoke, he stopped by the convenience store to pick up ingredients for dinner, and then… safely returned home to the rundown apartment he rented.
Thereafter, Arin spoke to his parents while preparing the rice and vegetables, texted his older sister while cooking meat, and ate his dinner while consoling his younger brother, who had called to drunkenly rant about his girlfriend breaking up with him for the third time. They would get back together soon enough. They always did.
On most days, he would spend the hour following his nightly bath on PvP games with his friends. That day, however, he decided he wanted to turn in early. This was the only thing he did differently from usual.
Having made up his mind, Arin turned off the lights, fluffed up his pillow, and lay down in bed.
And then the ceiling fell on top of him.
…
Arin's eyes snapped open, and he pushed his hands forward. His reaction was too slow. He'd already felt the pain of being crushed.
His hands slammed against something warm and soft. Even as his brain registered that there was no way his ceiling felt like a human torso, his eyes took in the scene before him.
He had indeed pushed a human torso, and the human it belonged to was sitting sprawled on the ground, glaring up at him. Just for a moment, Arin saw the person's expression flicker, before it settled back into a look of unconcealed hatred.
'Just you wait, Rin,' the pale-haired boy forced through clenched teeth. His sweaty, scattered hair and freshly bruised cheekbone showed that Arin's unintended push was only the latest in the series of whatever he'd suffered.
'If garbage -,' he spat out the word, '- like you doesn't learn its place soon, even the damned House of Waste will not keep you for long.' Narrowing his eyes, he hissed again, 'Just. You. Wait.'
'Wait for what?' Arin asked numbly. His voice came out hoarse. He had no idea what was going on.
'You little -!' The boy pushed himself off the ground, staggering a little as he stood. And even though he hadn't quite figured out anything about whatever was going on, Arin reached out a hand to steady him.
'Don't you dare!' the boy shrieked, stumbling out of his reach.
'Oh. Sorry.' Arin blinked.
'You will be,' the boy huffed. Patting dust off the seat of his pants, he looked at something behind Arin. 'You could've just kept your head down and given me what I wanted. Oh, I'll get it anyway,' he paused, an evil glint in his eyes, 'and have it skinned and stewed alive.'
He turned to face Arin again, and smirked, 'so just you wait.'
With one last, hateful glare, the boy turned away, swishing his cloak around himself and vanishing in a puff of smoke.
Arin blinked again.
'What the f-'
A sudden grunt sounded behind him, and Arin felt a puff of hot, moist air hit the back of his head. Dazedly, he turned around to see –
'A horse!?'
It was a fine horse. Tall and sturdy, with a deep gray coat. Its mane and tail shone with a healthy lustre. It slowly blinked its large, soft brown eyes, gently nudging the side of his face with its nose.
A friendly horse.
But what was a horse doing in his bedroom?
For that matter, what had that strange boy been doing in his bedroom?
And why did his bedroom look like a clearing in the middle of a forest!?
Arin felt the strength leave his legs. He sank down to the ground and held his buzzing head in his hands. Suddenly, he just felt incredibly exhausted.
Ignoring the concerned horse that had lowered its head to sniff the hair on top of his own, he decided to stay where he was for a moment, so he could organize his thoughts.
The strange, angry boy had disappeared in a wisp of smoke after dramatically swishing his cloak. The sight had been comically similar to a trick Arin had seen a magician perform at a birthday party when he was a child.
Still, he couldn't explain the disappearing act for now, so he chose to focus on the cloak instead. Why had he been wearing a cloak? Something was seriously wrong with the guy.
Personality-wise too. The pale-haired youth had threatened him (and the horse) before flouncing off, hadn't he? And while Arin wasn't too sure what exactly the threats entailed, recalling his bruised face gave him a sense of satisfaction.
Additionally, even though he wasn't the one who'd hit him, at least he'd pushed him.
…And why, exactly, had he pushed him?
Arin paled, recalling the motion of belatedly pushing up his hands to hold off… the ceiling. The ceiling of his bedroom in the rundown apartment he rented. The ceiling that had… crushed him.
Staring into space as the gray horse slowly chewed the hair at the top of his head, Arin winced as he recalled that brief, final sensation of pain.
Just like that, he'd died.