Here's the corrected version with Moon's age fixed to 18 and all references updated to reflect he's a current high school student:
---
The night shift at Greystone Diner ended at eleven.
Moon knew this because he had memorized every detail of his schedule the way poor people memorize things that matter, desperately, carefully, and without the luxury of forgetting. He had a third shift, Tuesday through Saturday which earned him minimum wage plus tips, except the tips were rare because Moon had a face that people looked through rather than at.
He looked quiet and forgettable. The kind of server customers couldn't remember five minutes after leaving.
He untied his apron, folded it neatly on the break room shelf, and stepped out into the cold.
The alley behind Greystone Diner smelled like old grease and cigarette smoke. A single streetlamp buzzed overhead, flickering the way cheap lights always did — like even electricity couldn't commit to illuminating this part of the city fully. Moon pulled his jacket tighter and winced.
The bruise along his ribs screamed.
He pressed a hand against his side instinctively, then stopped himself. Touching it only made it worse. He had learned that three hours ago when a customer had accidentally bumped into him mid-shift and he'd nearly dropped an entire tray of drinks trying not to react to the pain.
*Nearly.*
He'd caught the tray. He always caught things. It was one of the small, stupid miracles of Moon's life — he could keep everything from falling except himself.
He started walking.
---
It had happened that afternoon, two hours before his shift.
Moon had been cutting through Caldwell Park — the shortcut that shaved twelve minutes off his commute, twelve minutes that mattered when you were timing the bus down to the second. He'd had his headphones in, eyes down, thinking about nothing in particular. Maybe about whether he had enough left in his account to buy proper food this week or whether it was going to be another rotation of instant noodles and convenience store rice balls.
He hadn't noticed the group until he was already too close to turn around without being obvious.
There were four of them. Sitting on the park benches near the fountain like they owned the space, which in their minds they probably did. Moon recognized them before he recognized their faces, he recognized the *feeling* of them, that particular energy that made the hair on the back of his neck rise. It was a feeling he'd been trained by years of experience to respond to.
And at the center of them, leaning back with his arms spread wide across the bench like a king greeting subjects, was Benson.
Benson Hale.
The most popular guy in their class and the single most consistent source of misery in Moon's eighteen years of living. Benson looked like someone had designed him specifically to make Moon's life difficult. Broad shoulders and an easy smile. The kind of jaw that belonged on a recruitment poster. He was wearing a jacket that probably cost more than Moon's monthly rent, and he was laughing at something one of his friends had said, and for exactly three seconds Moon thought — *maybe he won't notice. Maybe he could just walk past. Maybe today is different.*
"Oi."
Moon kept walking.
"Moon. Hey — Moon."
He stopped. Not because he wanted to. Because his body had been conditioned over years of high school hallways and locker room corners and lunch periods spent eating alone to respond to that voice the way a kicked dog responds to a raised hand. Before his brain could override it, his feet had already slowed.
At this point there was nothing he could do so he turned.
Benson was grinning.
"Thought that was you." He stood, rolling his shoulders like he was working out a kink. His friends watched with the lazy attention of people who'd seen this show before and found it consistently entertaining. "Still doing the sad little worker-bee thing? What is it now — the diner on Fifth?"
Moon said nothing.
Benson's grin didn't waver. It never did. That was the thing about Benson — he didn't get angry the way other bullies did. He didn't need to. Cruelty was just entertainment to him, something to pass the time between the things he actually cared about. Moon had spent years sitting in the same classrooms as this person trying to understand what he'd done to earn his particular attention and had never found a satisfying answer.
Maybe there wasn't one.
Maybe some people just needed someone to stand below them to feel tall.
"You look tired," Benson observed, stepping closer. "Hard shift today?"
"I'm going home," Moon said. His voice came out quieter than he intended.
"Sure, sure." Benson fell into step beside him, which was worse than being blocked because it meant Moon had to keep moving and pretend this was normal. "I was just thinking about you actually. Funny, right? Weird how that works."
"What do you want, Benson."
"Just catching up." He clapped Moon on the back — hard and friendly, the way you'd greet someone you actually liked — and Moon's ribs erupted.
He didn't make a sound.
He was proud of that, afterward. He didn't make a sound.
But he stumbled, and his hand flew to his side, and Benson saw it, he saw the way Moon's face went white and something shifted in his eyes. Not guilt. Something more sadistic than that. Like he'd just learned something useful.
"Oh," Benson said softly. "There it is."
What followed lasted maybe four minutes.
It felt longer.
Moon ended up on the ground near the fountain, Benson's friends keeping loose watch on the park entrance while Benson himself crouched down and delivered three precise hits to Moon's midsection. Not the face — Benson had always been smart about that. Nothing visible. Nothing that looked like what it was when viewed from a distance. Moon curled around his ribs and breathed through his nose and waited for it to be over the way he had always waited for things to be over.
"You should really watch where you're walking," Benson said pleasantly, standing and brushing off his knees. "The city's dangerous."
They left.
Moon lay on his back beside the fountain for a while and looked up at a sky the color of old concrete and thought about nothing at all. Then he got up, straightened his jacket, adjusted the strap of his bag, and went to work.
He was seven minutes late.
His manager docked his pay.
---
Now the shift was over and Moon was walking home and his ribs hurt and his feet hurt and the cold had settled into his shoulders like it meant to stay there permanently. He had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the pavement and he was doing the thing he sometimes did on nights like this — running a quiet internal accounting of his life, checking the numbers, seeing if anything had changed.
It never had.
Eighteen years old. A part-time job he worked after school just to cover the basics. A small apartment with a window that didn't seal properly and a radiator that made sounds like an old man arguing with himself. No friends to speak of, not really — classmates at best, the kind of people who'd nod at him in the hallways but wouldn't notice if he disappeared.
And then there was Sera.
He allowed himself to think about her the way you allow yourself to touch a bruise — carefully, briefly, to check if it still hurts.
It still hurt.
Sera was his classmate and his girlfriend and for a long time the only thing that made sitting through the same school days as Benson feel survivable. Not because she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, though she was beautiful in a way that had made his chest ache the first time he'd really looked at her. But because she had looked back. Because she had smiled at him like he was someone worth smiling at.
Moon had done everything. He had picked up extra shifts to take her to restaurants she mentioned once in passing. He had remembered the small things — her coffee order, the name of her childhood dog, the particular shade of yellow that made her happy. He had bought her things he couldn't afford. He had rearranged his schedule around hers without her asking. He had been careful with her in a way he had never been careful with anything because he understood, somewhere deep and wordless, that she was the only good thing in a life that hadn't given him many.
He had given her everything.
His phone buzzed.
The notification was from Benson — which was strange, because outside of school Benson had never once texted him. There had never been a reason to. Moon stopped under a streetlamp and stared at the notification for a long moment.
Then he opened it.
It was a video.
It took him three seconds to understand what he was seeing. Three seconds where his brain genuinely could not process the information being delivered to it.
Sera.
His Sera was moaning in the video while fucking Benson like a whore.
The timestamp read last Friday. Moon had worked a double shift last Friday. He had called her before sleeping and she had answered in a drowsy voice and told him she'd been in bed since ten.
He watched eleven seconds before he couldn't anymore.
He lowered the phone.
The rage arrived slowly and then all at once. Moon thought about the restaurants he couldn't afford. The bracelet he was still paying off in installments. The way she'd looked at him across that birthday dinner table and said 'you always know exactly what I need.'
He thought about Benson's grin in the park. 'I was just thinking about you actually.'
He stepped off the curb without looking.
He didn't hear the truck until it was too late.
There was a sound like the world ending.
Then nothing.
---
Except —
The nothing didn't last.
There was no pain in his body, neither did he feel anycold pavement. Even the sound of traffic had stopped. Just golden light, arriving the way dawn arrives somewhere wide and open — gradually and then overwhelmingly, filling everything until there was nothing left that wasn't filled with it.
Moon became aware that he was standing.
He looked down at his hands to find them intact. The bruises were simply gone.
He looked up.
He was standing in a space that was not quite a room and not quite a landscape. White marble veined with gold pulsed beneath his feet like a slowed heartbeat. Enormous columns rose on either side of him, carved with figures that seemed to move at the edge of his vision. Ahead of him, draped in fabric the color of deep wine and morning roses, was a throne.
[Ding! Welcome, Moon. The Goddess of Lust has acknowledged your suffering.]
The voice arrived not as sound but as sensation — vibrating through his chest, resonating in his teeth.
[She has decided to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Will you become her champion?]
[Yes / No]