'She won't even hear me out?' He thought… That was a bit harsh.
No, it was very harsh in fact, but then again he couldn't really blame her. This was how she treated everyone at the end of the day.
'Honestly… what was I expecting?'
He had to follow it through though… Maybe that had been a joke or something or maybe she was just—
No… he was being delusional and he knew it. Charlotte on the other hand looked at him with her light blue eyes.
"So what are you going to lead with?" She slumped slightly against the door frame. "Expensive flowers? Michelin star dinner? What's the move?"
Wren blinked. Since when did a love confession require all of that?
"Sorry, I'm just very used to it." She waved a hand loosely.
"Guys always try to impress me first. Leah didn't tell you? Hic." She tried to stand up straight and mostly managed it. "But then again… what did I expect honestly?"
She laughed once after that. In a hallway where the only sound was the two of them it landed louder than it had any right to.
"Wren." She said his name the way a teacher corrected a wrong answer. "I don't know what made you think tonight was the right night for this but okay… Sure, I'll be honest with you."
She took a breath and let it out.
"I've known since second year, maybe earlier. I noticed and I ignored it because engaging with it would have made everything awkward for everyone and honestly…" she looked at him evenly "...it wasn't something I thought about much beyond that. That should already tell you something."
"You're not ugly. I'll give you that much." Her eyes moved over him once quickly. "But there's nothing there that makes a woman look twice. You have the kind of face people forget the same day… it's decent enough but forgettable and I think you know that about yourself, which is probably why you've been wearing those glasses all night trying to add something that isn't there."
Wren didn't say anything… He genuinely didn't know what to say.
"I graduated top of my class. Not the top of our friend group, not the top of our department… the top of the entire university." She held up three fingers. "Three companies reached out to me before I even finished my finals... Three serious ones, I have thought very carefully about where I am going and what that life looks like and I need you to understand that you are not even a rough draft of that picture."
She tilted her head.
"What did you graduate with? A 3.0 in Business Administration?" She said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. "You spent four years in the same building as me and came out with a degree that doesn't open a single door. I don't know what the plan is from here but it clearly isn't mapped out and that's exactly the problem."
She turned the handle.
"You're nice. You've always been nice but nice is what people say when there's nothing else to say and I think somewhere underneath all of this you already knew you were walking up here to hear no." A short pause. "I hope that helps somehow."
She didn't slam the door but rather she just closed it with a clean click… then nothing. Wren stood in the hallway and didn't move for a moment then he turned around and walked to the lift.
The ride down was quiet… The lobby was quiet... and soon he pushed through the front door and the cold hit him immediately, it was a lot more than it had been on the way in.
'It's cold.' He looked up at the sky. The moon was out, pale as usual and completely unbothered. 'Or is it just me?'
The wind came through and moved his hair and the front of his shirt.
'No. It's definitely cold.'
He started walking toward his apartment with his hands in his pockets… It had gone exactly the way he expected and his chest was heavier than it should have been for something he'd seen coming.
'She's right though.' He thought. 'I don't really have anything going for me. I came to this city to study and that's literally all I did. Maybe I should just head back to Harlow...'
He pushed the thought away immediately.
He had friends here. Who needed Charlotte when he had people who actually gave a damn about him? Leah had told him to call her.
He could even loop Brett in and let the man roast him until it stopped feeling like anything. He pulled out his phone and dialed Leah.
It rang once… twice… three times.
"Is she doing her hair again or something?" He muttered. The wind was picking up properly now and the sky had gone the specific shade of dark that came right before rain. "What is this weather? A single heartbreak can't be that serious."
The call connected and he exhaled.
"Hey Leah. You there? Took you long enough, don't tell me you were doing your hair aga—"
His voice died.
The sound coming through the phone wasn't Leah's voice… rather it was Leah's moans. They were loud and completely unmistakable and his face went very still.
'Why did she pick up…'
"Yo." Joel's voice came through… his voice was slightly breathless and drunk too. "Leah's busy… stop trying to steal my girlfriend."
Wren opened his mouth.
"You're always right next to her man… Always at her shoulder, always making her laugh, always finding a reason to be in her space. Hngh!" A pause that was filled with sounds Wren had no interest in hearing. "You think I don't notice? Trying to take what belongs to someone else because you don't have the looks or the status to get your own. Come on."
There was a rustling sound and the phone was set down somewhere very close to them.
"Listen to her with her actual boyfrie—"
SMASH.
Wren didn't decide to do it. His arm moved and the phone left his hand and hit the wall and the sound cracked through the quiet street loud enough that people nearby turned to look.
He didn't stop… He picked it up off the ground and hit it again and kept going until what was in his hand had stopped being a phone entirely and was just components. It was a broken screen, loose parts, and a piece of the casing somewhere near his shoe.
He stood there for a second just breathing while a woman on the other side of the street quietly crossed to a different pavement.
'What the hell is going on tonight.' His cheek stung where he'd been biting it without noticing. He looked down at what was left in his hand and then dropped it, let the pieces fall and just started walking.
'I need to go.'
…
The next morning Leah, Joel and Charlotte sat in a cafe around a table that had been meant for all six of them.
Leah had been dialing since she woke up… This was her twentieth attempt, she remembered Wren's call coming through last night but after that it was fog.
It was always fog after a certain point when she drank. She'd woken up next to Joel and tried to piece together the end of the night and couldn't.
Joel knew something… she was certain of it.
He'd been off since they woke up, sitting wrong, and looking at his coffee like it had personally done something to him.
Every time she asked he said it was nothing, since he said it the third time with slightly less patience than the second, she'd stopped asking.
"I still can't get through." She put the phone face down on the table.
Charlotte looked up.
She'd been quiet since they sat down with both hands around her cup turning it slowly.
'I said too much… I always say too much when I drink, that's the whole reason I keep rejections short.' She looked at the table. 'But I was just being honest.'
"Brett went to check on him." Leah said. "He should be—"
Her phone buzzed and she had it to her ear before the screen fully lit up.
"Yo." It was Brett.
"Is he okay? How is he?"
Silence on the other end for just long enough that Leah's stomach dropped.
"According to the landlady he moved out at six this morning." Brett said. "He didn't wait for the refund on the remaining months neither did he leave a note or tell anyone where he was going. He just handed in the key and left with one bag… She said he mentioned it was somewhere really far."
Nobody said anything.
"That's all she had." Brett added then he hung up.
The table stayed quiet while Leah picked up her phone and looked at the screen.
Twenty-one missed calls with zero responses. She put it back down and didn't understand why he was doing all this… Was he really cutting them off?
Across the table Joel was looking at his coffee again.
'The hell did I do…?'
…
"Hey, these girls are wild… all girls are the same… they're messing with my head, love… think I need a change… before I lose my mind, love…"
Something tapped him on the shoulder.
Wren pulled out one earbud and turned around. A teenage boy across the aisle was leaning toward him with a disappointed expression.
"Grown man singing Lil Thorn lyrics out loud on a public bus." The kid said.
Wren looked at him then he faced forward, moved his shoulder and put the earbud back in. He turned the volume down a notch though which was just enough to hear the bus around him.
Three rows back someone was humming along to the exact same song through their own headphones and nobody said a word to him...
Wren sighed then let it go.
He had a single luggage bag between his feet with everything he'd managed to grab, which wasn't much.
He'd woken up with no alarm because the alarm had been on the phone he'd turned into scrap the night before.
He had showered, put on cologne and was out the door. He'd handed in the key without waiting for the refund calculation, bought a ticket at the counter and got on the first bus heading north into Mayne, Harlow which was his hometown.
'I left several months of rent with that woman.' He thought, watching the highway flatten out through the window. There were trees and grey sky with less city with every kilometer. '..Gone.'
He stretched his legs out and the bag shifted.
Harlow was still hours away. He was too wired to sleep and too drained to think straight so he just sat there and let the music run and watched Bostara disappear behind him.
'Stepmother and stepsister.' He thought eventually. 'Old man gets married, installs a whole family in the resort and then calls me out of nowhere like this is completely normal… Like I don't need a heads up for something like that.'
He shook his head once.
'Nothing weird is going to happen. This isn't some kind of porn.' He stared at the seat in front of him. 'Though honestly… at this point a system would be very welcome… Universe, if you're listening, now would be a good time.'
He closed his eyes and the music played.
At some point the music stopped and when he opened his eyes to find out why… he noticed that the world had gone pale.
It was just pale, like everything had been put through a filter that took the color out and left a copy of the bus that was slightly wrong in every direction.
He couldn't feel the seat under him properly… the engine sound was gone. Everything was gone, all of it replaced by deep silence and then something appeared in front of his face.
[Ding…]
He leaned back instinctively.
[Congratulations, Candidate #339,433. You have been selected as the Host of the NTR Business System.]
'The NTR Business Sy—'
[Bodily functions will be shutting down temporarily as the System initializes... Please wait.]
'Hold on, shutting down what—'
The thought didn't get to finish. His body went heavy all at once and his head dropped and then there was nothing.
When he woke up… something was shaking his shoulder. Wren came back slowly and his eyes opened and a man was standing over him holding his hands slightly away from his body like he wasn't sure what the correct posture was for this situation.
The bus was empty… every single seat was completely empty and the light through the windows was softer and came from a different angle entirely.
"Who…" The driver cleared his throat. "Who are you?"
Wren blinked a few times and sat up. His mouth was dry… His eyes felt like they needed another hour and he looked down at his hands out of habit and went still.
His hands were different.
The veins ran more clearly along the backs of them… the hands themselves were broader and he turned them over slowly, then back again.
'What.'
"We are at the Harlow bus stop." The driver's voice had gone somewhere between careful and genuinely unsettled. "Please make your way out."
Wren grabbed his bag and stood. The ceiling of the bus was closer than it should have been. He didn't hit his head but it was a thing he was suddenly aware of.
He moved to the side door, stepped down onto the ground and before he'd even fully turned around the bus had already started pulling away in a U-turn then back toward the main road like it had somewhere to be.
He watched it go and then he turned around.
The Harlow bus stop sign was one of those old metal ones that had been there since his father was young with a slightly warped surface dull enough that it caught reflections more than it read them.
He glanced at it out of habit and then looked at it properly, after that he took one step back.
It was him in the reflection… with the same blond hair and the same blue eyes but with a completely different face.
The jaw was sharper… and his cheekbones sat differently. The face looking back at him had no business being that clean and handsome.
It was almost like he was staring at some popular model.
'What is happening today.'
[Ah. Welcome back to the land of the living, Host.]
The screen appeared directly in front of him and Wren stepped sideways hard, nearly catching his bag on the ground.
It floated at eye level while being semi-transparent with text in it.
'What are you.'
[Excuse me? You literally asked for a system not even three hours ago and now you don't know what I am?... I'm the NTR Business System. Call me Nyx. My job is very simple. I'm going to make you the richest, most attractive man alive.]
A short pause.
[All you have to do is complete my missions and steal other people's lovers… The stronger the relationship you break, the more you earn… Easy. Hehe~]
He blinked and then turned around, looking around.
'That's it… I must be hallucinating.'