One year.
Three hundred and sixty-five days. A neat, round number for a wound that refused to close.
The coffee was tasteless, a bitter, hot liquid Alex Ryder forced down his throat out of mechanical habit. He stood at the kitchen counter, staring at the digital clock on the microwave: 7:14 AM. The house was silent, but it wasn't a peaceful silence. It was a weighted, suffocating quiet that had settled over them a year ago and never left.
He could hear his mother moving around upstairs, the soft, deliberate footfalls of someone trying not to make a sound, as if a sudden noise might shatter the fragile truce they had with their grief. His father would already be gone, having left for his construction job before the sun was fully up, escaping into the unambiguous world of concrete and steel.
Alex didn't blame him. He wanted to escape, too.
His own routine was a fortress built of numbness. Wake up. Coffee. Work-from-home IT tickets—"My printer isn't connecting," "I forgot my password again"—simple problems with simple solutions. It was a world of logic and order, a stark contrast to the chaotic static that filled his head. Lunch. More tickets. Log off. Stare at the wall. Sleep, if he was lucky.
Today, the fortress was crumbling. The date on his monitor was a wrecking ball. One year to the day since Leo vanished.
He rinsed his mug in the sink, the water needlessly loud in the stillness. He had to get out. But where would he go? The park? A coffee shop? Every place felt haunted by a phantom limb, the space beside him that his lanky, perpetually grinning younger brother should have occupied.
He drifted from the kitchen into the hall, his feet leading him against his will. He stopped. There it was. The door. White, six-panelled, a brass knob tarnished with a year's worth of disuse.
Leo's room.
For 365 days, it had remained sealed, a time capsule of their family's last happy morning. His parents couldn't bring themselves to touch it. Alex hadn't been able to either, but for a different reason. For him, that door wasn't a memorial. It was an accusation.
He rested his forehead against the cool wood, closing his eyes. The memory, sharp and cruel as broken glass, played out in his mind for the thousandth time. Leo, buzzing with a manic energy, his laptop open on the kitchen table, pointing at blurry images and forums filled with rambling text.
"It's real, Alex, I'm telling you. People are just… slipping. They're noclipping through the walls of reality. They end up in the Backrooms."
Alex, exhausted from a long shift, had just scoffed. "Noclipping? Leo, that's a video game term. It's not real. It's a creepy-pasta, a story for kids on the internet."
"You're not listening! Look at the patterns, the disappearances…"
"I'm listening to you sound like a crazy person," Alex had snapped, his voice colder than he'd intended. "You're nineteen years old. Grow up. Stop chasing ghosts in your computer and get a job."
The light in Leo's eyes had gone out. He'd just quietly closed the laptop. "Yeah. Okay." Two days later, he was gone.
A fresh wave of guilt, hot and acidic, washed over Alex. He'd spent a year running from that conversation, from the memory of his brother's crestfallen face. He had buried himself in logic, helped the police analyze phone data and social media, trying to solve Leo's disappearance like one of his IT tickets. But there were no logs to check, no passwords to reset. Just… nothing.
He owed him. He owed Leo more than a dismissive, cynical final memory. He owed him more than this shrine of neglect.
His hand, trembling slightly, closed around the doorknob. It turned with a stiff groan. Pushing the door open, he braced himself.
The smell hit him first. Stale, still air, the faint, sweet scent of old paper and the ghost of a teenage boy's deodorant. The room was a diorama of a life abruptly paused. A wrinkled hoodie was draped over a gaming chair. A can of soda, long flat, sat on the desk next to a monitor coated in a fine layer of dust. Posters for obscure bands and cult classic films were thumbtacked to the walls.
It was messy, but it was Leo's mess. Every object was a tiny, piercing stab of memory.
Alex saw the dust motes dancing in the single beam of light cutting through the blinds and felt a surge of something other than despair. It was a grim, hollow resolve. He couldn't bring Leo back. He couldn't take back his words. But he could do this. He could give his parents back a room, not a tomb. He could pay this small, insignificant penance.
He walked over to the window and pulled up the blinds. Light flooded the room, illuminating the year of stillness. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the dust tickling his nose.
He would start with the clothes. He bent down and picked up the hoodie from the chair. The fabric was still soft. He folded it, the methodical motion a small comfort, and placed it on the bed. Then he moved to the desk, his IT technician's mind automatically cataloging the clutter. Old hard drives, a tangled mess of cables, a stack of textbooks.
He would scour this room until it was clean. Maybe then, he could start on himself.