Chapter 18: Ringing
The phone kept ringing.
It wasn’t a ringtone Kai recognized. It wasn’t his phone, the TV, or one of the stream alerts. It sounded like a completely different device—a real phone somewhere inside his apartment.
Every ring seemed to echo from a different place. The dark hallway. The bathroom. The bedroom. His exhausted brain couldn’t tell anymore. The sound bounced through the apartment and scraped directly against his nerves.
Nobody moved.
Not Kai. Not Luna. Not chat.
For a few seconds, even one hundred and thirty thousand viewers seemed to collectively forget how to type.
Then the chat exploded.
Boobykiller_051:
ABSOLUTELY NOT
Peepee_666:
WHY IS THERE A BONUS PHONE
WetHamster_420:
WHO DROPPED A SIDE QUEST IN HIS APARTMENT
The ringing continued.
Kai stared into the hallway. The darkness beyond the glow of his monitors suddenly felt alive. Not because anything was moving, but because it wasn’t. The stillness itself was becoming threatening.
"Kai."
Luna’s voice came softly through the headset.
"Yeah?"
"Are you still by your desk?"
He glanced around at his chair, his keyboard, and the three emotionally damaged forks scattered nearby.
"Unfortunately."
"Good."
Something about her answer made his stomach tighten.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Just the growing realization that Luna always seemed to have a reason for everything she said.
The phone rang again.
Closer this time.
Or maybe louder.
His brain was not currently operating under laboratory conditions.
Discord pinged.
A new message from Luna appeared.
Open your apartment management app.
Kai blinked.
"What apartment management app?"
A pause.
Then:
The one your building uses for maintenance requests.
Kai stared.
"Luna."
Another pause, slightly longer this time.
Then:
You complained about the elevator being broken six months ago.
The realization hit immediately.
He had.
Once.
At three in the morning. Drunk, irritated, and convinced the elevator had personally insulted him.
And somehow she remembered that.
His chest did something deeply unhelpful.
God.
This woman was either the sweetest person he’d ever met or the beginning of a future documentary.
Possibly both.
"I hate that you know that."
"You don’t hate it."
The worst part was that she was right.
The ringing finally stopped.
The silence afterward felt enormous.
Kai hadn’t realized how much space the noise had occupied in his head until it vanished. The apartment became still again. The TV screen remained black. The hallway remained dark. Outside, city lights painted faint reflections across the rain-streaked window.
Nothing moved.
Nothing happened.
Which somehow felt wrong.
His phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A new text.
did you answer it?
Kai stared.
Then another arrived.
rude :(
The chat noticed his expression instantly.
Jacksonvill3_89:
OH NO
TaxFraudEnjoyer:
WHY IS THE STALKER POUTING
Peepee_666:
HE GOT GHOSTED BY THE HOME INVADER
Against every law of common sense, Kai laughed.
It was short and exhausted—the kind of laugh people made when reality stopped feeling real.
"This is ridiculous."
"It is."
Luna sounded surprisingly relieved to hear him laugh.
The warmth in her voice caught him off guard.
Again.
It kept happening.
No matter how terrifying the night became, Luna somehow found ways to sound worried about him instead of herself.
His phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Different number.
Don’t reply.
Kai frowned.
A second message followed immediately.
They’re watching reactions.
Then a third.
Stop reading the texts out loud.
The apartment suddenly felt colder.
Very slowly, Kai sat up straighter.
That wasn’t a threat.
That wasn’t a joke.
That sounded like advice.
Which was somehow worse.
Because now there were sides.
Again.
Different numbers. Different messages. Different agendas.
The internet had somehow evolved into factions.
Wonderful.
Exactly what every mentally stable person wanted at two in the morning.
The stream chat was already spiraling.
Boobykiller_051:
BRO HAS A LORE ACCURATE FANBASE
WetHamster_420:
THEY ARE FIGHTING OVER CUSTODY
Kai pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I am so tired."
"You should sleep."
Luna said it immediately, like she’d been waiting for an excuse.
Kai laughed a little harder this time.
"There’s potentially a stranger in my apartment."
"You’ve streamed on less sleep than this."
"...Fair."
Another tiny laugh escaped her.
Soft.
Genuine.
The sound settled somewhere deep in his chest.
Dangerously deep.
The apartment felt less empty when she laughed.
That realization scared him almost as much as the hallway.
A notification flashed across his screen.
Not a text.
Not Discord.
The apartment management app.
Kai frowned.
He hadn’t opened it.
The notification sat there.
Building Access Alert
His pulse spiked.
Slowly, he tapped it.
The app loaded.
A list appeared.
Resident entries.
Maintenance logs.
Delivery access records.
Then his eyes landed on the newest entry.
2:14 AM
MASTER KEY OVERRIDE
Kai stopped breathing.
The timestamp was less than an hour old.
Someone had used a master key somewhere in the building.
His stomach dropped.
"Luna."
Her voice came instantly.
"I’m here."
The words hit harder than they should have.
He stared at the screen.
"Someone used a master key."
Silence.
Not confusion.
Not surprise.
Thinking.
The kind of silence Luna always had when pieces started connecting.
Then she asked quietly,
"Does it say which apartment?"
Kai scrolled.
His pulse hammered.
The chat was moving so fast it blurred together.
One hundred and thirty-two thousand viewers.
Nobody breathing.
Nobody blinking.
The entry expanded.
Additional Information Available
Unit Accessed: ███
The rest was corrupted.
Glitched.
Unreadable.
Kai blinked.
"What?"
He refreshed the page.
Same result.
The unit number remained hidden behind a block of broken characters.
Then his phone buzzed.
One final text arrived.
Unknown number.
No smiley face.
No image.
No joke.
Just a screenshot.
The building access log.
The exact same screen he was looking at.
Taken from a different phone.
And beneath it:
too slow
Kai’s blood turned to ice.
Then the apartment door suddenly unlocked.
Click.
Nobody had touched it.
