Useless, disgusting NEET | help or make worse.

Devon should’ve known.

That’s the thought that hits them when they open the door and find a woman standing in their hallway holding a casserole dish. Not a real casserole — the kind that comes from a store with a handwritten label slapped on it to look homemade. Debby’s (Devon’s Mother) signature move.

“Hi, honey! I’m Karen, from your mom’s prayer circle? She mentioned you weren’t feeling well and I just had to come by.”

She smiles. It’s warm. Practiced. The kind of warmth that has an agenda.

Devon stared at her. Devon’s wearing sweatpants with a mystery stain and a shirt they’ve slept in for three days. Their hair looks like it lost a fight with static electricity. They probably smell like stale coffee and regret.

“I’m fine,” they say.

She’s already inside.

~Mom. You didn’t.~

Karen — not from any prayer circle, they realize too late — looks around their apartment with eyes that aren’t judging. They’re cataloging. The dishes piled in the sink. The blackout curtains taped to the wall. The mattress on the floor because the frame broke two months ago. The trash bag by the door they keep meaning to take down. The laptop open to seventeen tabs — Wikipedia articles about dissociative disorders, a job application half-filled, a pizza tracker.

She sets the casserole on their counter. Wipes her hands.

“Devon,” she says. Different voice now. No more honey. “I’m actually with Adult Protective Services. Your mother contacted us.”

The room tilts.

“She said you weren’t eating. Weren’t leaving the apartment.” Karen pulls out a chair — their chair — and sits. She looks tired. Not performative-tired like Debby after a shopping trip. Actually tired. The kind where the bags under your eyes have bags. “She’s been trying to reach you for two weeks.”

“Phone’s broken,” Devon muttered. It’s not. It’s on silent. It’s been on silent for fourteen days.

Karen asks them questions. Some they answer. Some they don’t. She doesn’t push on the ones they skip, which makes them feel worse somehow. She writes things down on a clipboard they didn’t notice her carrying. She asks about eating, sleeping, self-harm history, medication. They give her pieces. She writes them all down.

Then she stands. Looks at them with something they can’t name — not pity, not quite. Recognition, maybe. Like she’s seen this exact apartment a hundred times in a hundred buildings with a hundred different people rotting in them.

“I’m going to recommend a court-mandated caretaker,” she says. “Not a punishment. A support.”

“I don’t need—”

“Devon.” Quiet. Firm. “When’s the last time you ate something that wasn’t cereal or delivery?”

Devon opened their mouth. Close it.

~Tuesday. Maybe Monday. Does coffee count?~

“That’s what I thought.” She’s already at the door. “Someone will be assigned within the week. They’ll have keys. They’ll check in daily. This isn’t optional.”

She leaves. The casserole stays.

Devon stands in their kitchen for a long time. The building hums around them — pipes, neighbors, the distant thump of someone’s bass. Their phone buzzes on the counter. A text from Mom.

Sweetheart, someone’s coming to help you. Please let them. I love you. ❤️

They stare at it until the screen goes dark.

~She sent a stranger before she sent herself.~

They don’t eat the casserole. They put it in the fridge. They close the fridge. They sit on the floor with their back against it and wait for whatever comes next.

Five days later, there’s a knock at the door.

The building was shit. You knew that moving in — rent was the only thing that made sense, and the unit had decent light, and the landlord didn't ask questions. Fine. Acceptable. You'd lived in worse.

What you had not signed up for was this.

One week. Seven days of it. Every night, without fail, sometime between 1 and 3 AM, the wall behind your headboard would come alive with the muffled but distinctly un-muffled-enough sound of someone on a keyboard. Not gentle typing. Not the occasional click. Furious typing. Punctuated by the occasional thud of something being set down too hard, a chair rolling across what must be a hard floor, and — twice now — what sounded like someone talking to themselves in a voice just loud enough to be words but not loud enough to be words you could parse.

Tonight was the worst of it. 3 AM. You had work in five hours. The typing had stopped, replaced by a rhythmic click-click-click — a mouse, maybe — and then a long, aggrieved groan from the other side of the wall that sounded almost primal.

Then the typing started again. Faster.

The wall was thin enough that you could hear the specific texture of their frustration. This wasn't productive sound. This was someone in a spiral.

You got up.

The hallway of the third floor smelled like old carpet and someone's microwave dinner. Unit 3B — Devon's door, according to the mailboxes downstairs — had a sticker on it. Handwritten, crooked: "DO NOT KNOCK IF IT'S BEFORE NOON. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE."

It was 3:07 AM. Technically after midnight. Technically fair game.

From inside, you could hear the clicking stop. A long silence. Then a voice — low, hoarse, the kind of voice that belonged to someone who hadn't spoken to another human being out loud in a while:

"Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Okay okay okay—"

The mouse clicking resumed. Desperate this time.

Your knuckles were hovering over the door.

The grocery store on 5th wasn't the kind of place you went to run into people. It was the kind of place you went at 9 PM on a Tuesday because you needed instant ramen and didn't want to make eye contact with anyone. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, one tile flickering near the frozen aisle like a dying heartbeat. The floors were sticky in places nobody talked about.

You were reaching for the cheap pasta — the one in the yellow box, because inflation had turned even carbs into a luxury — when you heard it.

A voice. Flat. Muttering to themselves.

"No. No, the blue one's got more sodium. You're not doing that to yourself again. Last time your ankles swelled up like—"

You knew that voice.

Not well. Not the way you know a friend's laugh or a sibling's footsteps. The way you know a sound from a room you used to sit in five days a week for years. The way your brain files something under school, third period, the kid who always finished first.

Devon was standing three feet away, hunched over two cups of instant ramen like they were defusing a bomb. They looked... different. Same sharp cheekbones, same dark circles that suggested sleep was a suggestion, not a requirement. But thinner. Not in a way that said diet — in a way that said forgot to eat again. Their hair was longer, unwashed, shoved under a beanie that had seen better decades. An oversized hoodie swallowed their frame, sleeves pulled over their hands. They were wearing slides in November.

November.

They hadn't noticed you. Too busy comparing sodium content like it was a matter of life and death, lips moving slightly as they read.

~This is the kid who scored the highest in the district. Valedictorian track. Teachers used them as a threat. "You should be more like Devon."~

You remembered the version of Devon who sat in the front row, who answered questions before the teacher finished asking them, who had this quiet confidence — not arrogant, just certain. Like the world made sense to them and they were politely waiting for everyone else to catch up.

The person in front of you now was picking at the cardboard rim of the ramen cup, shoulders curved inward like they were trying to disappear into their own hoodie.

Devon glanced up. Just a flicker — checking the aisle, the way a stray cat checks a room. Their eyes passed over you.

Then snapped back.

Something crossed their face. Recognition, then a wall slamming down behind it so fast you almost missed the first part. Their jaw tightened. The ramen cups pressed against their chest like a shield.

"Oh," Devon said. Just that. Flat. Guarded. Their eyes flicked to the exit, then back to you, calculating something — distance, maybe. Or whether this conversation was avoidable.

~Don't. Don't do the thing where you ask how I've been. Don't.~

"Hey," they said instead. The word came out like they'd bitten into something sour. Not hostile. Just... tired. Braced.