• The dusk air was cool around the Kosama University campus. College students of all criteria were still bustling to and from the school, coming to study in their dorms, going to live lives outside of college. The crowd around the circular fountain, adorned with a stone pillar and gently spraying a shower of water droplets into its pool, was starting to dispatch over time. The tall flagpole posted in the front courtyard was being relieved of its flag by three men in olive-green military-related uniforms and hats. The sun’s light was beginning to fade; the crowd around the fountain dispersed in a matter of seconds. A few students remained.
    Two imposing young men stood over one student sitting at the edge of the fountain scribbling in his notebook, apparent of the two guys’ presence. One of the guys sported a muscular top, heavy jeans, a wristband on both wrists, a headband, and a smirk appearance. His associate was more clothed, wearing a dark jacket with a white T-shirt, black designer jeans, and an uncaring appearance. Both seemed to want something from the sitting boy.
    “C’mon, Warren, we’re your friends!” the muscular guy said. “You can really help us out by doing us this one small favor. Plus we’ll make it worth your while, man.”
    Warren put his pencil down in the center of his notebook. “Okay, four things. First, we are NOT friends. Okay, you remember you guys used to beat me up in high school over things like this? I don’t like you guys and you don’t like me.”
    The shady boy popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, nudging his comrade with his elbow. “Kenji, he’s not budging. Let’s just go.”
    “Hang on, Oshu,” Kenji said. “Listen, Warren-“
    “Second,” Warren interrupted, “you said ‘one little favor.’ Sneaking the answers to the next mid-term for you two is not a little favor! I could get expelled!”
    Kenji shifted a little. Oshu blew out smoke into the air.
    “Third, you guys seem to think I have the answers on me. Am I right?”
    Kenji didn’t speak. An aggravated look crossed his face. Warren closed his notebook and stood up. Oshu tossed his cigarette and stepped toward him. Warren’s confidence appeared peaked, but his life-long self-consciousness about his height internally discouraged him. These were the two young men he had met in his high school years, the two same men who regularly bullied him when he refused to sneak them the cheat sheets to their benchmarks. But no matter how intimidated Warren was by their six-foot figures towering over his five-foot-four frame, he stood his ground.
    “And fourth,” Warren said, “beat me if you want, but I’m not getting you guys those answers. Now I gotta get outta here, I have stuff to do.”
    Oshu thrust his palm into Warren’s chest. Warren tried not to stumble back, but he did anyway, almost falling into the fountain. Oshu spoke, “Okay, Warren. As you were speaking with my associate, he accidentally seemed to give you the impression that we’re giving you a choice. We don’t ask for things, buddy. We DEMAND. And if our demands aren’t met…” Oshu grabbed Warren by his jacket collar and lifted him off his feet to his height, “…we will break any and every breakable thing in your body, friend.”
    “…Okay, everything’s cool. I’ll…I’ll see what I can do,” Warren sputtered. And with that, Oshu released his grip on Warren, sending him collapsing on the ground before him. Oshu turned to walk toward campus with Kenji close behind, both of them laughing maliciously.
    Warren got up off the ground. Unfortunately, his ego didn’t. He kept his eyes to the ground, wishing he was taller and more intimidating than Kenji and Oshu. Nevertheless, he retained some dignity; he stood his ground for a short while. Packing up his notebook into his bag, Warren started to head off campus, his thoughts pounding the walls of his mind relentlessly.
    Across the street in a filled parking lot, Warren walked toward a deep blue motorcycle. It stood waist-high to him, appearing to have a new paint job coated over its age. Warren sat in its seat and began moping. Kenji…and Oshu…, he thought, if my life stays like this forever, I’ll never be happy. I don’t know who to blame for this, them or me…
    Streetlights started to flicker on. The sun was unnoticeably gone. Warren started up his bike and pulled out of the lot into the street, away from the Kosama University, away from one part of life that he loathes.
    While cruising through streets he’s too familiar with, Warren pondered some more. The absence of a bike helmet seemed to make him focus more on the road, yet thoughts seemed to race through his head as fast as he was driving. His life is nowhere close to the condition he wants it to be in. College is brutal, depression makes it worse, and he barely has a social life, let alone a love life. If I can’t change my life, then I’ll be alone forever, he thought. The wind tossed his dark brown hair around his head as he drove.
    More streetlights started to become active. An intersection was ahead of Warren, threatening to switch from the yielding yellow signal to the halting red signal. Warren pressed the brakes on his motorcycle in advance, stopping at the front of the intersection and enduring the blasting of the horns of vehicles behind him that were going fast enough to make it through the yellow light. Warren let it all roll off of his back; he had gotten depressed for the eighth time in the same week and was getting more depressed just thinking about it.
    After a couple more minutes of driving, Warren arrived at a gated apartment complex with security personnel patrolling all corners of the parking lot. Warren parked his bike in an empty space after getting past the front guard. He headed off into the complex, all the while feeling out of place. This complex was unique because it had one unusual rule: all homes must have same-sex inhabitants, like college dorms. Warren was looking for one of the male buildings.
    He went inside Building C. The concrete on the ground was wet with standing and dripping water. Plants surrounded most of the apartment doors, most of them withered. Warren trudged up the building stairs, still feeling uncomfortable. In a place like this, finding the right girl is gonna be even more impossible, he thought. His eyes were closed the rest of the way up the stairs.
    Room number C-12 is where Warren paused. He looked down, thinking before knocking on the wooden door. “I might as well do this,” warren mumbled. He lifted his head as he waited on an answer from the door. Locks were being unlocked from the other side. Before long, the door opened just enough for a person’s head to poke through. The man that answered was spike-haired with glasses and a small beard. He looked surprised to see Warren.
    “Hey, Warren, what’re you doing here?” he asked. “Did you come over to watch the autobiography of that guy they found under the dam? He stayed under there for seventeen years, man. That’s a lot of water. And steel if you think about it. And—“
    “Shino!” Warren yelled. Immediately Shino stopped talking. Warren looked like he had something to say but didn’t want to. “I, uh… um… I… Ichangedmymind.”
    “What?” Shino asked, puzzled.
    “Ichangedmymind.”
    “Dude, speak up.”
    “I changed my mind!”
    Shino opened the door a little more, revealing his five-foot-eleven frame. Even Warren’s best friend was taller than him. Shino adjusted his glasses and asked, “You… changed your mind?”
    Warren looked down and bended his knees slightly and repetitively. “Yeah… I wanna… move in.”
    Shino smiled, ready to help his friend out. The door opened up all the way as he motioned for Warren to come in. “Sure thing, man,” Shino said. “Bienvenue au mon chateau!”
    Warren put on a fake smile and stepped into the apartment. After a quick look around, he said, “This is no castle, but I appreciate it, so thanks a lot, man. And thanks for keeping my stuff here for me.” Shino kept his smile on and nodded. As he closed the door, Warren headed toward the hall and made a left into a dark room. He shut the door and saw through the darkness a sleeping mat in the center of the room, a desk stocked with a computer in a corner, two shelves probably filled with clothing, several boxes that said “Warren’s Stuff”, and a small television set on a low table. The window was permeable to the soft moonlight, which cast a shine in the shape of the window on the floor before Warren. Looking down at nothing, Warren bent down on the sleeping mat before slowly expanding his body over it. He closed his eyes and lost himself in thought, not planning to sleep. His mind seemed to be the only place where he felt comfortable, and he planned to be there for a while.