9:13 P.M. was the time. Priya had been concerned about my little fall. She told me I should work from home until I was better, and that I should get myself checked out. She did, however, still need the bugfix by the end of today. If it wasn’t, we’d be cutting it too close to a significant milestone for our product.

  I nibbled on my thumbnail. I had made some fixes to my bugfix that wouldn’t break our software. I watched a stream of green success messages flit across my terminal. No failures so far. I spoke too soon. Red failure messages flowed across my screen like blood. I slammed my desk with a clenched fist and gritted my teeth. I imagined someone running across the room, and dropkicking me in the solar plexus, knocking me out for good. I stood up and winced. I had been sitting for a good 6 hours by now. Ikumi, my neighbor, had been kind enough to patch me up with the bandages and first aid she had. But this would take some time to heal.

  I decided to take a walk. My Introduction to Advanced Algorithms professor in college always told us, “If you can’t figure it out, take a little walk. Come back 15 minutes later, and you’ll have figured it out.” What he forgot to add at the end was - “Mileage may vary.” He had built his own compiler before he finished middle school, and contributed thousands of lines to the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds knew his Github username. I decided to take a walk nonetheless. I could pretend I was smart sometimes.

  I slipped on an oversized hoodie, and left my room. I stopped by the bathroom to pee, and I cringed when I looked into the mirror. Oily, unkempt hair, a couple blotches of acne on my cheek, dark circles that made me look like a panda, I could go on forever. I met my own gaze, and looked away. I left my apartment, taking extra care to not trip on the steps again. I started heading in the direction of the small suburbs that the apartment complex was right next to.

  The Bay was a “boring ass fuckin’ place, unless you’re in San Francisco”, in the words of my brother. I hate San Francisco and loved the rest of it. The anonymity was freeing. I could go anywhere I wanted without meeting anyone I knew. You could disappear on a hike and nobody could find you. I plugged my earphones into my phone, and started to blast Relativity Theory’s Hi-Fi Anatomia album. I felt a sudden urge to let loose a guttural scream into the indigo-black night sky. A hand tapped my shoulder. I let out a little squeal instead and pivoted on my bad leg, nearly tripping again.

  “Going for a walk?”

  Ikumi smiled at me. She was in a black tracksuit damp with sweat. She jogged in place, waiting for me to respond. I made some sounds in my mouth, but no words came out.

  “I knew it was you, from the bandages on your leg. Sorry, did I surprise you?”

  “Uhhh…”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Erm…”

  “Where are you going?”

  It wasn’t like I had a destination in mind, so I just pointed in the direction I was going in.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “No.”

  I barely choked out a word. Ikumi walked in step besides me. Her breathing slowed as she cooled off from her run.

  “So, how’s it going? Are you feeling better?”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Yeah, thank you for your help in the morning.”

  “You gotta be more careful. Living like that’s going to get ya in a big hurt someday.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for helping me again.”

  “Of course! My pleasure.”

  I didn’t know what to say here. Did I ask her about her run? How it was? Was that too boring? I didn’t want her to think I was boring. I could ask about what she did for work, but maybe she had a bad day at work, and I was bringing up something she would hate talking about, which would make her hate me. I thought back to the little succulents she had on her windowsill. I could compliment them and say they were cute —

  “When you get better, we should climb together. Ever done rock climbing?”

  I had tried it a couple years ago. Once I got a couple feet off the ground, my head started spinning with vertigo. The floor seemed so far, and my palms started to sweat, making my fingers slip on the handholds.

  “If not, we can just go out for a run sometime. How does that sound?”

  “Yeah, uhm. That sounds good.”

  “Do you have Instagram? Let’s become friends!”

  We exchanged Instagram profiles. Her profile was blinding. Pretty photos on hikes, candid shots at the climbing gym. She could be a microinfluencer. Actually, she kind of was. I think I spotted a paid ad she did somewhere. My Instagram had been stuck at 22 followers for a long time, and my last post was from five years ago.

  “Hm…”

  Ikumi took a good long look at me, then glanced down again at her phone.

  “Joy, you need to take care of yourself.”

  She stuck my Instagram in my face. It was a post from me in college. I was sitting on a bench with a laptop, and laughing at something.

  “Look at this. This is you from five years ago. Did you spend the last five years in prison?”

  My face turned hot, and I could feel sweat trickling down my shirt. I remembered what I’d seen in the mirror before I left my apartment.

  “Um, I don’t know.”

  Ikumi grinned. Her eyes opened wide, and her irises shone like black pearls in the moonlight.

  “But you do know. What happened?”

  I looked down at the ground. A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. What had happened?

  “Well, if you need help, I can help you. Not for free, though.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll leave you alone now. Have a nice walk!”

  Ikumi started to jog away. She looked different than she had in the morning, more imposing, taller, more muscular.

  I finished my walk and came back home. I sat down at my desk and glanced at the time. 9:41 P.M. I started to read through the test case failures. My professor had been right. Things started to click and I began to type.

  I ran the tests again. No failures. I could finally push to our master branch. I pushed, and closed my laptop. I checked the time on my phone. 1:21 A.M. I eased myself up, and hobbled over to the fridge. I opened a can of cheap beer and gulped half of it down. I took another can out of the fridge and sat back down at my desk. I remembered what Ikumi said. “What happened?” I blinked. I decided not to think. I drank both beers in quick succession and felt a good warmth entering my body.

  I laid on my bed, and everything went cold. I breathed in sharply. In my head, I could see a black silhouette opening my window, creeping through my living room, slipping through my opened door, then slitting my throat. My heart started to pound. I got up, and checked every window in my apartment to make sure they were locked. I glanced at my front door. It was locked. I imagined the black silhouette waiting outside the door, waiting for me to go back to my room and fall asleep. I tiptoed to the door and gave it a couple hard jiggles to make sure it was locked. The alcohol started to take over my bloodstream. My vision fogged, and I stumbled back to my bed. I laid there.

  The black silhouette was in my room. I couldn’t see them, but I was sure they were in the closet. My heart began to pump in an erratic staccato, and I stopped breathing. If I made a noise, they would know I was here, and I would die. I would die before having done anything with my life. I would die a senseless, meaningless death, swallowed in an instant by the sands of time. I fixed my eyes on the closet and waited for them to come out. I wondered if I would scream, or if I would be so paralyzed by fear that nothing would come out. Blurry shadows danced in my room, and they advanced towards my bed. Blood roared in my ears.

  Piercing rays of sunlight forced their way through my closed eyelids. I woke up. I clasped at my neck and probed with my fingers. There wasn’t a gaping hole in my throat, and my jugular seemed to be pumping fine. It was possible that I was still alive. I checked my phone. 8:53 A.M. It was time to attend the morning sync.