Nolan sat silently, eyes locked on the glowing screen before him.
The room around him, once full of shouting and chaos, now felt far away.
His posture relaxed, arms folded loosely over his chest. Not because what he watched was calming—but because it felt familiar.
He wasn't terrified. Not anymore. He'd already seen it before.
A fuzzy memory bubbled up—his old neighbor's cramped living room, the air thick with the smell of fried rice and laundry soap.
He remembered watching the very same movie on their dusty, flickering DVD player, the screen scratched and skipping every now and then.
Back home, his family didn't have one. They had a battered TV with an antenna that barely worked, but no DVD player.
So Nolan used to sneak over to the neighbor's house on weekends, pretending to borrow sugar or leftover rice, just to get a seat on their torn couch and press play on something like this.
