Clink. Clink. Clink.

Rei rubbed his eyes, which were puffy with exhaustion, and furrowed his brows in discomfort. The sound continued on. Rei tried to ignore it, pressing his ear further into the mattress as he covered his other ear with his hand.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

“Why can’t the dumb noise just stop?” Rei thought angrily, the continuous sound really starting to get on his nerves. He had really been hoping to finally get some uninterrupted rest after a tiring couple of days. Where even was the obnoxious noise coming from?

Having given up on trying to get some more rest after the sound had rudely woken him up, Rei sat up, scratching the tussled mess of hair on his head before resting his hands on the bed on either side of himself. He slowly rose and stumbled over to the door. He could barely walk thanks to a combination of his exhaustion and his injury from earlier.

As he was about to open the door and Rei’s mind slowly started to function properly again, a sudden pang of fear struck him. What if the noise was coming from a person? A dangerous person?

No, that wasn’t likely. Rei was pretty sure he was alone in the apartment. But the thought had given him a newfound apprehension for going to see whatever that sound was.

Rei quickly found the light switch to shut the lights off before leaving, just in case someone passed by his apartment room and saw that someone might be there. He slowly grasped the handle and opened the door, swallowing nervously.

“Is this safe? Should I just hide inside the room?” Rei thought as his agitation grew worse. He stood there and thought hard for a moment, his curiosity eventually triumphing over his fear of the unknown. He didn’t feel like being rational right now; he just wanted to know what that noise was. Rei stepped out the door into the apartment building’s hallway as he went to investigate the noise that had awoken him.

He blindly strolled through the dark halls towards the sound, realizing it was coming from the floor above him. He clambered up the stairs, trying not to create much noise as he went up the rickety, dilapidated flight of steps.

CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.

The sound grew exponentially louder as Rei traveled upwards and closer to its source. He finished climbing the staircase and went through the hallway until he had reached a closed door, the sound now clearly reaching his ears, much louder than it had been before. The clinking was definitely coming from something in this room.

His tired state having cast a negative effect on his rationality, without bothering to rethink his actions Rei fumbled for the door’s handle to see who or what was inside.

The room seemed completely empty at first glance. Rei stood there baffled for a moment before noticing a dim light coming from the left corner, mostly obscured by the gray wall. He stepped into the room, unsurely beginning to make his way towards the light. As he traveled closer Rei saw that the light was coming from another room connected to the one he was already in by a whitewashed door. The door was ajar, and a flickering yellow light spilled from the opening. Once he was in front of the door he slowly moved his hand to the door handle, wondering whether he should go inside.

The clinking sound came clearly from the room that lay behind the door. Rei tightened his grip on the handle as he thought about whether or not he should open the door.

On one hand he knew it would be a stupid risk to make his presence known when for all he knew an Exterminator could be in that room.

On the other hand… he just couldn’t think straight and really wanted to know what was making that obnoxious noise.

He slowly pulled the door towards him, opening the door fully. The bright flickering light hit his eyes, forcing him to squint. Rei noticed that the loud clinks were much clearer now. He slowly adjusted to the light and glanced around the room. He made out a human figure standing on a stool in a corner, holding some sort of tool and tinkering with a large spherical light that hung from the ceiling. The man on the stool turned as he opened the door, looking at Rei with large, inquisitive brown eyes.

“Shoot. I shouldn’t have come here,” Rei thought worriedly, immediately regretting his decision to come up here. “This is dangerous. And stupid.”

Rei slowly backed away, anxious over what the stranger was going to do now. Hopefully just stay there and leave him be. Rei didn’t know why he’d come up here. What was he thinking? He’d just wandered into the apartment building of some random guy, who could quite possibly be extremely dangerous. That was dumb.

As Rei turned and prepared to hurry out of the apartment a sudden voice interrupted him.

“Hey, buddy!”

Rei jolted at the sound and stood silently in place for a moment, slightly taken aback after unexpectedly being addressed by the man.

“Oh, hey,” Rei hastily remembered to reply after a period of quiet.

“Nice to meet ya,” the man said warmly, carefully stepping down from the stool and setting his rusty metal tool down. He walked over to Rei and extended his hand to him with a kind smile spread across his rough face.

Rei quickly decided he had nothing to fear in this man, returning the smile and shaking the person’s hand.

“Same to you! I’m Rei.”

“My name’s Joss. Good to see ya, Rei. You been in this building long?” the man replied merrily, a certain gentleness unmistakably present in his deep, hoarse voice.

“Uh, no, I just came here… around a couple of hours ago, I think,” Rei answered. He was glad to have found a companion to spend his time with, even if it was just for a short while. Rei would have to leave this place soon, and Joss was more likely than not going to stay put.

“Oh, that’s nice!” Joss exclaimed, scratching at the white stubble on his face. “I remember when I first got here. This place’s real nice. All the years I’ve been here, none’a those Exterminators and such ever bothered to come ‘round here. Couple times I’ve had folks like you come visit for a while. It’s always nice to have a companion.”

“Yeah,” Rei said. “So you just spend all your time here then?”

“Yep,” Joss shrugged. “I’ve got a lotta projects I like to mess around with ‘ere and there, just for fun.”

“Hm,” Rei nodded. “Projects?” he quickly added with curiosity after he finished processing what Joss had just said.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve got my plants, an’ lately I’ve been tryna do some stuff with the lightin’... just a buncha ways to pass the days by.”

“Oh, that sounds cool,” Rei replied. “What are those plants?” he asked. “Have you got plants here?”

“Oh, yeah. I harvested them from some place some distance from here… I think the place was called Shorewood or some’n. Been growin’ ‘em for food.”

“Shorewood? Wasn’t everything in Shorewood dead for almost two decades or something by now?” Rei furrowed his brows.

“Oh, yeah. Got my plants AGES ago.” Joss beamed. “Got a whole farm if you’d call it that down there in that room o’er there,” he said as he gestured backwards to another door: a dark brown wooden one tucked into the right corner of the main apartment room. The door that concealed Joss’s farm was mostly hidden from view by a large bed.

“Wow,” Rei commented after a moment. “What plants’ve you got in there?” he asked as he fixed his view on the door.

“Oh, I ain’t got too much variety,” Joss admitted. “Mostly just some edited roots I engineered myself a while back… stemmed them from, uh, carrot cells. Bred them up a lot, too, and they’re pretty darn good-tastin’, if I’m one to judge. They’re good for you, too. I’ve also got a lot of tomatoes. Really close genetically to natural tomatoes, close as you can get.”

“That’s pretty neat. Can I see your farm?”

“Yeah, sure, come on in!” Joss said as he strolled towards the wooden door, swinging it open. Rei went over to where Joss was standing, getting a full view of the greenery.

The room’s sides were coated with a tall layer of rich reddish-brown soil, with two foot tall glass walls constructed to divide the soil from the thin walkway that cut through the room’s center from the doorway to the back wall. The left part of the farm was covered with lush green leaves sprouting through the soil and some thin roots visible through the glass; these were probably the roots Joss was talking about earlier. The roots took up half of the right half of the farm as well, and the rest of the space on that side of the room was filled with tall, bushy tomato plants with small yellow fruits nestled in the leaves.

Rei stood there speechless as he took in the scene. “All the stuff here is edible?” he asked after a while, gesturing to the tomato plants.

“Oh yeah, all of it,” Joss answered proudly.

“Can I take some for when I leave? If you don’t mind?” Rei slowly asked, unsure of how his request would be received.

“Yeah sure, I’ve got loads! And it’ll grow back anyhow.”

“Thanks, Joss.”

“No problem, buddy,” Joss said with a grin. “So how long’re you planning to stay ‘ere at the apartment?”

“Oh, uh, less than a week,” Rei said. “I… I lost my brother; the Exterminators took him, so I’m trying to find him. I probably won’t, but… it’s worth a shot,” he shrugged, trying to mask how hopeless he felt about his situation.

Joss stayed silent for a minute with a blank expression on his face. Rei suddenly regretted his statement, in case it had been a bad thing to say for whatever reason.

“Sorry to hear that,” Joss finally replied with sympathy. “Really hope you find your brother, Rei.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Rei paused for a moment. “Do you have any family or friends or anything?”

“Oh, yeah. They live pretty far up in the north. I left when they made NET mandatory; I don’t want to mess with my brain an' all. They stayed, though, since they didn’t care as much as I did. They didn’t know as much about the specifics of this whole system.”

“Oh. Hope they’re doing fine.”

“Yeah. I’ve tried to contact them a coupla times through my tablet. I’ve never gotten a response, though,” Joss mumbled.

Rei wasn’t exactly sure how to reply to that, so he just nodded.

“Oh, uh, earlier I left my bag at this restaurant nearby and I should probably go get my stuff back now. I don’t know if you want to, but you can come with me if you want.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll go with you. I haven’t left this building for a long time anyhow,” Joss replied.

“Cool. Uh, we need to be careful. There were some Exterminators that tracked me there a little while ago, since they probably detected my tablet or something.” Saying this, a sudden thought struck him and he opened his mouth to speak.

“Have the Exterminators ever detected your tablet signal?”

“No, I’ve never really had to deal with the Exterminators. I try to cover up my signal, though, even though I don’t really use my tablet that often. They’ve never really been a real problem for me.”

“Oh,” Rei mumbled. “Okay, I think I’ll head out now to get my stuff back,” he said, stepping away from the farming room and slowly walking towards the apartment room’s door leading to the hallway. Joss followed him and the two silently headed down the halls and stairs and out of the building.