Games.The only love affair I ever had.The kind that leaves you hollow when the screen fades to bck.

  I didn’t need vices—no drinks, no smoke, no trouble in the streets.My escape was coded in ones and zeroes. My victories were pixeted.And my failures? Real as hell.

  At thirty-two, I was a monument to wasted potential.6'2", Jamaican and American blood, built like a linebacker gone to seed.467 pounds of regret.Strong enough to bench press my insecurities. Not strong enough to outrun them.

  "Time to start."

  The words tasted like a lie. The game dev software flickered to life, its bnk canvas mocking me.Two years of tutorials, stolen hours, and half-baked code led to this.My dream since I was seventeen—back when I’d sweat through a summer of minimum-wage hell just to buy my first PC.

  I told Mom it was for college.Truth? I needed it for two things:

  Day trading (to cw my way out of the life we’d been stuck in).

  Games (to forget I was still there).

  Mom—Victoria Stacy, barely eighteen when she had me—never called me out on the lie.She worked double shifts at the hospital, came home smelling like antiseptic and exhaustion.I loved her more than I ever said.And I never gave her a reason to be proud.

  Until today.

  The software loaded.Then—

  Glitch.

  The screen tore open like a wound.Code bled across it in jagged white lines.A sound like a dying arcade cabinet shrieked from the speakers.

  My fingers locked on the keyboard.Lightning shot up my arms.

  My heart stopped.

  Not metaphorically.I felt it—a fist of pure voltage squeezing my chest.

  The screen went bck.Then, in blood-red pixels:

  RESTART

  Not an error. A command.

  I crashed to my knees.The world dimmed.Last thought?

  At least I tried.

  "Victor! You’re gonna be te for school!"

  I bolted upright.

  No pain. No static. Just sunlight and the smell of fabric softener.And something wrong.

  I stood—too easily. No creak of joints, no Everest of weight on my spine.My room was mine… but not.Same cracked ceiling fan. Same scuffed door (kicked after failing Algebra II).But the walls were naked.

  No Halo posters. No God of War shrine. No Gran Turismo fantasy I’d stare at instead of homework.Just an empty desk and a chair that had never known a 3 AM trading session.

  I lunged for the mirror.

  Seventeen.Chubby cheeks. Anime shirt. All my old weight, but none of the years.

  The door opened.

  Mom stood there—alive.Not the ghost she became after the diagnosis. Not the woman who aged a decade in one hospital winter.Just her. Smiling.

  "Mom…?" My voice cracked.

  She ruffled my hair. "Shower. Now. Orientation’s in an hour."

  Her hand felt real.The room smelled real.But none of this was right.

  The posters were gone.The weight was gone.The future was gone.

  Something had restarted.And I didn’t know the rules.